Credits to         Getting started is straightforward enough. The Game mechanics, as with most MMORPGs is very simple: create a character based on race, sex, and profession (And in Rubi Ka, height, body Mass and face can all be selected to make your character look and feel more unique.) Once that has been done, you venture out into the “Newbie-lands” and start on your career path to fame, wealth, and success, or whatever the hell it is you ultimately wish to get out of the game, by beating up the low level critters, monsters, and enemy agents who wander around aimlessly for the sole purpose of getting whacked by Joe Newbie. After each successful encounter, you receive experience which goes towards attaining you a new level and resulting in more power and skills, and a credit reward for the slaying of this critter. The credits are used, as you’d expect, to upgrade your equipment allowing you to purchase more powerful weapons, and better armour. The skill system in AO is very well done. All characters have access to all the skills, and there are bunches and bunches of different skills. When your character reaches a new level of experience, you receive an amount of improvement points (or “IPs”), which you can put towards improving the base level of your skills. Each profession has skill sets that are easier or harder to improve. Enforcer’s, the meat shield types who tend to go face to face with the Mobs (A term referring to monsters in on-line games) are less skillful at improving more cerebral skills, such as Nano Engineering. The martial artist has ease of improving his or her Hand to Hand skill but learns Heavy Weapons skills slowly and so on. The Main purpose of the skill level is to determine your proficiency in using it, but almost as important, a certain skill level is often based on a combination of multiple skills such as the ability to use, wield, or wear better equipment, weapons and armour. We tried out a number of professions, including the Nano Technician, whose fantasy equivalent would be a wizard. An Enforcer (…because sometimes brute force is the only way to go), a Soldier – master of combat weaponry, the Martial Arts – well, ok – name me one person who at one time or another didn’t want to be able to fight like Bruce Lee, and finally a Fixer. Fixers are shadowy members of Rubi Ka’s underworld. Almost thief like in terms of skills and abilities. All classes were very easy to understand, play and level either solo or in a group. The world of Rubi Ka is extremely beauiful thanks to a top rate graphics engine and some very talented artists. On a suitable system (We recommend a P3 500, with a 16MB graphics card plus 128MB Ram) it is very smooth indeed. The amount of equipment and options for advancement at first seems daunting. The game world is pretty damned big. Some travel is possible via Whoompas. A kind of site-to-site transporter tower, that allows players to very quickly move from one area to another. The other alternative for high level players is called “The Grid”. The Grid requires high technical knowledge to even be able to enter, and once you do enter the grid, selected destinations are easier to reach than others, again, dependant on the necessary skill levels. However, travelling through the grid is rapid, allowing high level players the ease of traversing the game world. The equipment, at first seems very comprehensive, with lots of different pistols, rifles, and submachine guns to choose from, and the same variation with types of armor. However, we did find that the equipment had not been balanced very well, with several weapons and armor types having a lot of strength and no real weakness – this of course leads to invalidating the whole idea behind having multiple choices. Everyone, it seemed, wanted the same armour and the same weapons. The type of creatures faced by players also suffers from repetition. There are only really three categories of creatures – enemy Humanoids, Mutants, and Wildlife. And each of those categories have only a few types of each model, merely increasing in their level of difficulty. While the initial fun of encountering new creatures in, say, Everquest, tends to continue as you advance, you can very quickly see the same creatures over and over again by the time you reach only a moderate level in AO. There was none of the thrill of Seeing your first Griffin, or first Hill Giant in Anarchy Online. One of the much-hyped features in AO is the random mission generator. Rather than quests that are given to players by NPCs and often require creatures or components that are hunted by other players, in AO you can go to a booth, and tailor make a mission that is initially available only to you (There are game mechanisms that can allow you to bring friends with you). This was both a blessing and a curse for AO. The missions, initially buggy, were functioning very well when we tested it, however, because missions were the easiest and safest way to gain experience, items and credits – there ended up being really no point in hunting out in the wilderness. Sadly, this is where AO really begins to drop behind the current selection of online games. It’s so very quiet! There is almost no interaction with other players except for trading items in cities and the occasional hooking up with other players out in the wilderness when the prospect of doing your 15th straight mission in a row, solo, is beginning to wane. This is due, in part, to the poor communications system, but mainly due to the ease of self-reliance. Essentially, this ends up being a solo game online. Is this a bad thing? Well, if you hated the dependence of classes in Everquest on certain types of encounters, you will find AO very refreshing. However, if you enjoyed the social element of Everquest, you will find the world of Rubi Ka more than a little lonely. Almost as quiet as Asheron’s Call was when it first came out. Given these factors, there really is only one thing left to keep the game fresh and that is the PvP system. On starting out – each player chooses an allegiance: Perhaps you will choose loyalty to Omni Tek, the corporation that has funded the colonization of Rubi Ka and rules with an iron hand. Alternatively, you may opt to fight on the side of the Clans – those who have rebelled against this oppressive regime, or perhaps you will choose to remain Neutral and decide later which side deserves your allegiance. PvP occurs only in selected zones, and typically those that border the Lands of the Clan and the Omni Tek Corporation’s holdings. The most basic PvP takes place in Political Zones. Where the three teams can fight members of the opposing two teams. Alternatively, you can go to the badlands and fight your own side in a free for all. By zoning PvP, Funcom were able to let players who wanted to fight other players do so without forcing those who do not to also risk dying at the hands of a player. The PvP system is relatively well done, although I do feel more zones should be available for political combat. So what is my overall thoughts on Anarchy Online? Funcom made a valiant attempt to combine the strengths of those games that went before and removing the weaknesses. However, what resulted was something that had as lackluster a challenge as Asheron’s call, without the somewhat overbearing polishing of Everquest, and the chaotic fluctuation of life and death of Ultima Online. Some of the features, were really quite inspired. Death, for example is handled very neatly with your body being recloned at the last place you “saved it” all your equipment, that was likewise saved is returned to you automatically, getting rid of the necessity for running around trying to find where you left your body. This is a nice feature, but I can’t help but feel it detracts from the overall challenge of the online game – by removing the fear of loss of your belongings, players can take more chances… a good thing, or a bad thing? Your choice. The overall stability of the game has been improved. There are still a few bugs, but that is somewhat inherent in the nature of the genre. Ultimately, seeing now that Funcom are allowing players to try AO for free, it is certainly worth your time to try out Anarchy Online for a month. After that? You decide.   A brave foray into the sci fi genre of MMORPGs, hampered by lack of content and long term goals. Doesn’t satisfy hardcore role-players, and provides a sometimes lag-ridden, single player online game, randomly interspersed with meeting other players. However, for the low, low price of free – this game is worth checking out.  

70%

                                             Credits to Velkyn As of this writing, it has been almost two years since the release of Oslo-based developer Funcom's flagship Sci-fi MMORPG, Anarchy Online. Set on a planet on the far reaches of the galaxy in the 200th century, the game pits two rival factions, the evil Omni-Tek Corporation and the rebel clans against each other. Anarchy Online: Shadowlands, released last September adds a bevy of items, weapons, areas, mobs, armor, abilities and even two new classes to the lineup, the Shade and the Keeper. However, these changes are not without their flaws either. Essentially, this expansion takes place in another dimension dubbed the 'Shadowlands' by the inhabitants of Rubi-Ka. The portal to this world has just recently been opened to average citizens (Read: Players), by scientists in Jobe, a floating city straddling this newly opened portal. As usual with AO, the lore surrounding this place is quite good. The contents, on the other hand… Technically, the Shadowlands functions differently from Rubi-Ka: items which use "Advanced Nanotechnology", things such as medkits, stims, and some "nanoprograms" (spells) Do not function in this dimension. This results in players having to shell out more money for another set of healing items, and constantly replace them in their hotbar should they be traveling between the realms frequently. Shadowlands brings new special attacks, self/group buffs, and various other goodies to the table in the form of perks. Perks are a new type of skill advancement added with the new expansion. You earn one perk point every 10 levels, and one every "shadowlevels", which can only be gained after level 200 in the Shadowlands. Perks allow you to add something like a class-based attack, just a generic ability, such as a few percent experience bonus or self-applied stat boost to better your character. This allows for a total of 35 perk points. The expansion changes little in the way of combat from the tried-and-true AO model. Core combat still remains similar to the combat present in Everquest, though the expansion modifies several minor aspects of battle. Firstly, there are things known as "Shadowbreeds". Basically, in the Shadowlands there are factions, such as the Redeemed (Good guys.), the Unredeemed (Bad guys) and various other neutrally aligned factions. Depending on your alignment, you can unlock your breed's true potential. Unfortunately, this feature has seen little use since the game's release, as land control has not yet been enabled in the Shadowlands. In addition, Shadowlands brings new special attacks, self/group buffs, and various other goodies to the table in the form of perks. Perks are a new type of skill advancement added with the new expansion. You earn one perk point every 10 levels, and one every "shadowlevels", which can only be gained after level 200 in the Shadowlands. Perks allow you to add something like a class-based attack, just a generic ability, such as a few percent experience bonus or self-applied stat boost to better your character. This allows for a total of 35 perk points. The problem with the perk system is that, as with the IP system, there is an ideal which is needed for groups. If you are a certain class, such as the all-purpose crowd-controlling, Bureaucrat, you will be unwanted in teams if you do not have the "Insurance Reclaim" Experience perk. In fact, that's another point altogether: this expansion greatly simplifies the experience gain. When you die in AO, you lose all experience gained since your last level/save. Recently, Funcom have halved this penalty by putting the lost experience in a "pool" to be reclaimed. Thus, you gain experience twice as fast until your pool runs out. The aforementioned Bureaucrat perk line allows a person to regain experience at a 50% higher rate, allowing players to purposely die several times in order to get a big "pool" which they can then use to level at an amazing rate. And speaking of experience …You'll be killing a lot of the same mob to get it. In the Shadowlands, Hecklers arguably give the best experience gain, more so than the missions which can be rolled back on Rubi-Ka (Even though those too, have been retooled with bells and whistles). They're too good, in fact. So good that every spot with any of these mobs present is extremely overcamped, by the worst MMORPGs have to offer in terms of players. Spammers, killstealers, griefers and the like all hang around these areas, doing what they do best. The groups that form in these synamic mob camps are extremely elitist, accepting only the "best" characters to form the ideal groups for mindless heckler pulling. This is due to some of the best nanoprograms being prohibited in the Shadowlands, replaced with inferior versions which leave a lot of classes hung out to dry in the endgame (150+). The new classes, the Shade and the Keeper are no exceptions. Taking a step back, the Keeper is little more than an underpowered paladin. They do not camp as well as Enforcers, and yet also do less damage over a period of time than an enforcer would. The Shade is essentially a spiritual assassin, complete with "spirits" to bond with instead of implants, and stat-boosting tattoos. However, people would prefer a higher damage class or healer than a Shade in their team, as is the case with many other classes. Shadowlands has also prompted a major market fluctuation in the game's established economy. Rare 'loot', or more specifically items which improve a less viable class tend to be sold for absolutely jaw-dropping sums. The best Fixer weapon, for example, the Syndicate Messenger Gun sells for around 900 Million Credits, compared to expensive weapons barely breaking the 100 Million barrier some months before Shadowlands went live. Symbiants, essentially hyper-powered implants, are among the big sellers as well. Unfortunately, these items don't come from anywhere. They have to be hunted for, sometimes in hunts spanning several days of real time to just find the unique mob you need to kill, not to mention the drop rate. Thus, a player who wishes to better themselves has little choice in the matter; either he must camp the item himself, a next to impossible task with the dozens of other players doing the same, or have the money to do so. There is some light at the end of the tunnel, however. The new areas are extremely innovative, sporting excellent new music, improved textures, and brilliant new effects. The new monsters, not to mention the factional characters have a ghastly, ethereal sort of quality about them. Shadowlands essentially adds weeks more life to the game, even for those who already feel there is nothing left for them to experience. The AO of the past was heavily RP-oriented, and filled with enthusiastic players who cared more about having fun than becoming the best. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case any longer. Anarchy Online has come a long way over its lifespan, and it still has a ways to go to become an alternative worth taking.

Anarchy Online

• Platform: PC/Windows

• Genre: RPG

• Publisher: FunCom - www.funcom.com

• Developer: FunCom - www.funcom.com

• Good Thing 1: Well designed interface.

• Good Thing 2: Good looking graphics.

• Good Thing 3: Excellent communications ability.

• Bad Thing 1: The game still needs some polish.

• Bad Thing 2: Disconnects! Lord, save us from disconnects!

• Bad Thing 3: Same story - kill, level, repeat.

• Summary: Anarchy Online isn't much different from the other MMRPG's out there, needing a little polish before it's ready.

War is the only constant

Humankind is pretty predictable if you look at it over the long scale. There will always be death and taxes, love and life, progress and regression - and war. Somebody is always trying to kill somebody else for some reason. I'm guessing that Osama bin Ladin is pissed off because there's no McDonald's out there in Afghanistan. Or the stick up his ass. So we journey to Rubi-Ka, a far off planet that works like your normal colony. For those who recall your United States history (and if you don't, just remember that the United States is that country south of Chile), the US was originally a "colony". That basically meant "the colony gives the mother nation all the good stuff in return for the honor of claiming to be a part of the mother country". Rubi-Ka went through the same process. Colonized by miners under the eye of Omni-Tek, it seemed like a perfect situation. The miners would be worked like slaves, and Omni-Tek would get rich. Hey, it works for Kathy Lee Gifford's clothing line. Well, you know the pattern of other colonies. The colonists finally get pissed off enough to rebel, Omni-Tek tries to put down the industrial plated boot, and next thing you know, everybody's shooting everybody else. Time for you to choose sides, folks. War is here, and it's not going away in any hurry.

Choose your face

Most people are just born with the looks they have. Lucky for me I look like this. (All right, stop the laughter. Thank you very much.) When you first start Anarchy Online, you're given the option of shaping up your life. Will you be a big guy so you can focus on being a soldier? Or perhaps you like the idea of using the planet's ample supply of Nanites, invisible robots that permeate the air, to do your bidding. Once you've chosen your looks and profession, then its your chance to decide who's team your on. Will you ally yourself with the Clans, who fight for their freedom, or with the ever present Omni-Tek? Either way, once you start out, you start the good old RPG game.

Over-breeding

For the most part, Anarchy Online isn't too different from other MMRPG's. Instead of spells, you have programs. Your weapons are guns and force fields rather than swords and arrows. If you're a Nano expert, you can even make little pets for yourself in the various form of Anger representations. It was interesting to command the ugly floating glob around to attack my enemies, or just hang over my shoulder, or to cry like a baby every time I got killed. That happened a lot. And there's the monsters. At first you'll just find the critters in the training area, and they'll kick your butt. And they leave some credits behind when they die, and sometimes something useful. (It appears that even in the future, monsters like to carry gems and things useful to you, just like they did back when there was magic.) And thus starts the great circle of MMRPG's. You kill monsters to gain experience. The experience then becomes Improvement Points that you can use to increase your basic stats, or to become more specialized in some field that interests you. With your better skills you go out to kill more monsters (or accept a mission that may require you to kill monsters or find people so you can get more money). When you kill the monsters/complete missions, you get more experience, which lets you gain levels, which lets you get more Improvement Points, which... If you haven't figured out the pattern by now, well, play the game a bit and you'll get it. It's not that the pattern isn't fun. Blizzard's been peddling with not one, but two Diablo games since, um, Diablo I. Nearly every RPG is based on the idea. Of course, like a good MMRPG, Anarchy tries to use the MUD approach. For the unwashed masses, MUD's were around in the days before Netscape Navigator was crushed by Microsoft's Monopoly.

Warning: The Microsoft Browser you are using has detected a disparaging remark about Microsoft. We now order you to rid your mind of all such impure thoughts. Linux is communism. Repeat that over and over until you believe it.

...And I was like, "Dude, if you want me naked, why don't you get over here and-" Oh, sorry. I didn't know you were back. Anyway, MUD's were text based games that you played over the Internet with hundreds of people. You'd communicate by typing in "say I like cheese", and then you'd see "Johnhummel says: I like cheese". Or you could type "me makes shadow puppets on the wall", and you (and the other people around you would see) "Johnhummel makes shadow puppets on the wall". But now...with Anarchy Online you can do the same thing...with graphics. You can talk to other people in chat groups, or just people close by, or use a plethora of commands to make your character do things like dance, "puke", or whatever else you can imagine. All right, so it's not like being in the Matrix. But it adds a little something to the interaction with your fellow players.

Good Stuff, Bad Stuff

The best part of Anarchy Online is how well they've designed the interface. Everything opens in a window that you can move around the screen, showing you your stats, what missions are available, who's on your team - well, anything you can think of to know about, you can find it out through a window. And the rest of the game looks good as well. I couldn't help but be impressed as I watched the sunrise and sunset, slowly lighting up the darkness around me, or plunging my world back into the darkness. Or take the camera. While most of the game plays in a 3rd person perspective, you can adjust the camera as you like with the keypad, zooming in or out for the best conditions for whatever you're working on. Like everything else, simple to use and works well. Sooner or later though, you're going to die. It happens all the time in RPG's. But get this - nobody dies in the future. Makes it really hard to declare who wins a war, but hey, whatever works. If you get killed, you'll reappear at a Resurrection Terminal. Your skills will take a temporary hit, but if you just sit down and wait long enough, you'll restore your health and nano bar (aka "mana" in any other RPG), and the Terminal is even kind enough, after 60 seconds, to let you reclaim all of your stuff, negating the need to go find your rotting corpse out there. It's not a perfect system. Besides the aforementioned standard "kill-level-kill" system, the biggest issue hampering Anarchy Online is that it feels like it's just not quite done yet. Whenever I tried to move from one section to another, there was an impossibly long pause as the server realized that I really wanted to leave this section. Some of the creatures also seemed awfully familiar as well, just different colors and a little harder than monsters I'd met before. Or the annoying way that I'd be playing along, and for no apparent reason, I was disconnected. So I'd try and re-connect. Sometimes it would let me in, other times, I'd have to wait for several minutes, hoping the little Roller Rats wouldn't gnaw off my ankles while I was waiting. I always hate it when that happens. So there we go. Anarchy Online is out, needs a little bit of polish, but with a little more work, it should turn into a find MMRPG. (Hey, look how long it took Everquest and the rest to get it right.) We'll keep an eye on it and see how it pans out. Oh, yeah. And that really good looking guy? That's me. (No, really. Honest!) As always, I'm John "Dark Paladin" Hummel. And that's my opinion.

It took 4 days and about 16 total hours to do it, but I finally installed and played ANARCHY ONLINE for the first time. Now immediately this should tell a few things to you grrlgamers out there - 1. That obviously AO was not READY to launch. @. That AO was REALLY, REALLY not ready to launch. And finally 3. That should you actually buy the game and attempt to play it, you my dears are in for a potentially long and painfully frustrating adventure - and this is before you even login to the game. Although I was supposed to participate in the beta test I never got the damn thing to run on any of my computers. Finally, I decided to wait and just cover the boxed retail version. I should have waited longer. Don't know how long exactly would have been long enough but even out of the box there was no guarantee that AO would ever run on my computers. There were three patches that appeared pretty much as the disks were shipping. I downloaded the first patch but the next two were faulty and even hours at the AO bulletin boards was not enough to finally decipher what was wrong with the game and why it would not patch. I waited several days and went back to the bulletin boards. Some uber geeks had found and posted work arounds to several of the errors I had been getting. Oh thank heaven for the geek squad, for those crafty Norwegians were avoiding customer service like the plague. Note to Henreid, Martin, Ingrid, Boobla - whatever the hell their names are: an auto-responder is NOT CUSTOMER SERVICE. My laptop ( the GAMING Dell laptop with a ton of RAM and 32 MB video card) crashed just after login, a hard crash that made me have to reboot. My 650mhz Pentium III test computer (and personal fave) with 384mb of RAM just refused to even let me get to the login screen. It hated the game. I deleted. Finally the only computer that I could get the thing running on was the two week old Compaq 1.4GB Athlon, with 256mb RAM amd the GEForce 3 with 64mb of video ram. After a successful patch AO booted up and I got into the game and the Compaq, laughed at its competition. With as much contempt as I have for FUNCOM, I have praise for Compaq - this machine is one bad mutha. So, my Compaq humming along like birdies around Cinderella's head, plunged me headfirst into the world of Rubi-Ka. Brace yourself. Here it comes. The verdict. I am blown away. I see now where the man hours (or rather, geek hours) have been spent. In creating this positively gorgeous world. Even the music is not that UO or EQ midi crap. This is real Euro sleek jazz baby. You are in country, deep in the fray of this world 30,000 years in the future and you have only stepped into the damned training grounds. The conventions are eerily similar of course to EverQuest, but when you are trying to outdo the best, you have to study the best. I don't think the characters are as attractive in AO as I've seen in other games, notably in EverQuest, where often the characters outclass the landscape. But you won't be looking at yourself too often or anyone else really. You'll be too entranced with the world around you. It reminded me a lot of the first time I played Unreal. Or the first time I played Half-life. It was a step back and take a picture of this moment in gaming history, moment. Right away I knew that I had never seen anything exactly like this and that it would be a while before I saw anything close to it again. As for the old RPG conventions, it's not a fancy beginning - much of the interface is buried several clicks in, so you have to hunt a bit for information in the beginning. Hopefully there will be some great fan sites developing soon to disseminate the information in a more user friendly fashion. You start out as flotsam, unformed, waiting to choose a breed. There are four different breeds on Rubi-Ka, but the only one you should even attempt to play at first is the Solitus, which is the standard human template. There's an asexual brute (but what fun is that?), a mage type template and a thief type template. For the first time player, its easier to stick to what you know. So play a human, then pick a face, a body type (fat, thin or muscular) a height (short, medium or tall), a name and a profession. There are quite a few to choose from, all of the standard conventions, mage type, melee type, thief type, traders, skill users etc. The most interesting part of the character creation comes at the end, when you pick a side, either join OmniTek, the big corporate big brother, go neutral or join the rebellion. Each has it's strengths and weaknesses, but in general neutral is for sissies (or commitmentphobes). Once you've chosen a side, you are ready to train. You come equipped with skills and points to put into those skills per every level gain. But before you concern yourself with that, learn how to fire your weapon, which creatures in the training area will kick your ass and how to get your stuff back when you die. Death is not fatal on Rubi-Ka or so the saying goes. When you die, you will resurrect in a weakened condition and will have to wait a full minute before you can retrieve your goods from an Insurance Reclaim kiosk. Now I have no idea how this will work when you are deep in the city or a dungeon or the wilderness, but right in the training ground it works pretty well. You can also buy things from the shop kiosk and sell your monster parts too for credits. You'll want to do this right away because you start with zero credits. You do have a healing kit, a weak weapon and a nice introductory nano-program. Nano-programs are what you would call spells in the old style RPG's. You have nano-juice (or something like that) that is really mana, that you can use to run these programs. I admire that they tried to make things original but they could have had a little magic in the world just as well. I don't know about anything else yet, because you have to be level 4 before you can even leave the training area. I'm waiting to see the world, killing leets (like ugly rabbits), reet of paradise (ugly birds) and roller rats (hedgehog looking things). I trade in my monster parts for credits and I am learning how to use my crappy solar pistol. I am a bad shot, have only a thin leotard between me and the elements and a roller rat can take me down in only a few hits. You'll know more, as soon as I do.