The Secret World Website now has an August "state of the game" letter from Funcom's Ragnar Tørnquist, as the senior producer on The Secret World offers reassurances about the future of their MMORPG, in spite of a rocky launch that's resulted in staff cuts. He discusses the need for layoffs and goes on to emphasize that the conspiratorial MMORPG still has a bright future:

How do we plan on doing this? First off, we're going to stick with our monthly release schedule. Like we've said before, we feel it's important to give our paying customers new content and features every single month. Our second issue -- Digging Deeper -- has unfortunately been delayed by two weeks, due to the restructuring of the team, but issue #3 (title to be announced, but there are cats and it ties in with our Halloween event) will be released on time.

Secondly, we'll be polishing, fixing and streamlining the game based on feedback from our community, in order to make The Secret World even more inviting to new players. We won't mess with the core game, but we will continue to improve the experience -- visually and mechanically -- and this will certainly benefit players both new and old.