Here's Today's Update from the official site: A lot of people are asking about how many subscribers and players Anarchy Online has. Also, the issue of exploits is discussed with fervour on the message boards. After two months we have about 60,000 active accounts. The game is currently only released in North America and in the Nordic countries, so the majority of our customers are from these countries. On the 28th of September, the game will be released in Germany, France, UK and the Benelux countries. We look forward to welcoming more people to the game world. During peak hours we have about 10.000 players on the two Rubi-Ka dimensions, with a 75/25 split between Rubi-Ka 1 and 2. The most serious exploit-bugs have been solved through the last few patches. Unusual movements in level and credits have been fewer over the last week. The hunt for exploiters has also been stepped up. During this week we found 7 players that cooperated in duping items. The seriousness of the exploit made it necessary to ban them from the game. We will continue this work to make it clear that we expect people to report exploits and protect other players from this behaviour. The new guidelines are very clear on our policy against exploiters. Yesterday we released a server-patch to improve server stability. Based on the server-log we are able to observe an improvement in the stability. However, there still remains more work to do for the team in this area.

Even though they didn't really have anything to say, funcom must have still felt they had to post something. So here's today's sorta kinda update from the official site: There will not be an update today. We are aware that there are several issues you want us to comment on, but at present we haven’t made any decisions about these issues that we are prepared to commit to. We will be back with an update again tomorrow.

Because of an exploit inadvertantly introduced in yesterday's patch, Funcom has decided to roll back the character database a day. Here is their report on it: Today’s update will encompass the problems we experienced with our latest patch, yesterday. The patch we released 19.20 GMT yesterday had one very serious exploit that made it possible to get an almost unlimited amount of ip-points. 22.20 GMT we decided to take down the server as the exploit was too serious to keep the game running. The team was called in to find a solution, they worked to fix the problem, and brought up Rubi-Ka 2 05.40 GMT and Rubi-Ka 1 06.55 GMT. The players were updated on the situation every 30 minutes in the launcher. The IP-exploit was very serious and would have lead to great imbalances within the game. We decided it would be unfair not to react, and that is why we decided to roll back the database and recall all the characters to the state they were in before the patch. We are very sorry for the roll back of the database. We know how bad it feels losing only 5 minutes of play, and a lot of players lost several hours. We deeply regret the loss of xp, items and credits that some of you experienced. The team is evaluating and changing the procedures to be sure that we catch serious exploits while they still are on the test-server in the future.

PC Zone has put up a review of Anarchy Online. Here's an excerpt: The premise of the game is not unique (create a character in a futuristic environment and fight monsters to gain experience with increasingly impressive armour and weapons as you progress through the game), but it's in the execution of the game that Funcom has truly excelled. Teaming up with other players around the world is easily achieved, and communicating with group members and distributing the loot earned through battles is simplicity itself. The arguing between group members over who gets what loot that is noticeable in EverQuest is eradicated in AO through a command that forces team members to take turns looting dead enemies. You can read the entire review at this link.

IGN has put up a review of Anarchy Online. Here's an excerpt: Whew...I could literally go on for hours and hours for a game as big and deep as Anarchy Online, but I'll spare you. I think you get the gist of it by now...it's a brilliant, engaging, profound MMORPG, but with enough atrocious technical problems to make you scream more obscenities than a French truck driver. This game has the potential to be the best MMORPG ever, and I've seen it work right in the beta phases, so I know what it can do once the technical issues are fixed. Unfortunately, we can't review a game based on "potential" -- we have to review it based on the facts, and the facts are that Anarchy Online simply isn't up to spec right now because of a few major bugs that still need to be worked out of the system. However, with that said, it has gotten better since our first impressions, and with 60,000 active AO account as of this writing, it seems that many of the early adopters are having a great time with the game. I have no doubt that Anarchy Online will live up to its potential in a few more months after the initial growing pains are over. However, I would still recommend waiting a few months for Funcom to work on the bugs and get more servers online, especially since you'll be paying $12.95 a month to play the game. You can read the entire review at this link.

Inside is the patch message for today General Exploits: - Fixed a bug that allowed people to trade no-drop items. - Fixed a dupe exploit involving banks. - Fixed the exploit involving the runspeed debuff nano program. Stability: - Fixed several bugs to improve server stability. - Fixed a server crash caused by a failure to complete a certain type of teleport. - Fixed the most common client crash reported. It happened due to a bug in the animation-system. - Fixed a client crash caused by the highlighting ("flashing") of people's heads when chatting. - Fixed a number of crashes in the rendering-engine. - Fixed a client crash, caused by certain visual effects. - Fixed a memory leak that occurred whenever other characters enter/leave view-range. - Improved playfield shifting into dungeons. This will be noticeable as an improved probability of your character to shift playfields. RPG Tweaks, Bugs and Changes: - Several broken Insurance Terminals are fixed. - A redefinition of the way monsters fight have been implemented: 1. Ranged combat monsters will no longer attack with close combat attacks when you melee them. The effect of this is that monsters close and far away deal the same amount of damage. 2. High-level monsters have more hit points. 3. Monsters lower than you in level, fight slower, and higher than you faster. This should make soloing green monsters more accessible to professions that deal less damage. 4. The experience points earned when killing a monster have been increased. This has been done to make killing monsters an alternative to doing missions on higher levels. 5. Monsters have had their Minimum Damage reduced, and Maximum Damage increased. The overall damage output is somewhat lower than before. This change will also make armor more effective. - The Martial Arts Skill attack has had its damage output increased somewhat above 200 in skill. Also the damage range is increased, and the critical minimally increased. This was done to fix a problem where people attacking with unarmed skill only did minimum damage. - The mystical line of skills locking Martial Arts, like Attack of the Snake, has been remade. They have higher damage output, but all locks the Martial Arts skill. Several bugs have also been fixed. - Flurry of Blows no longer locks the Fast Attack skill. It has had its effectiveness somewhat improved and some bugs removed. - The Adventurer Ranged Multiple Skill increase cost has been reduced. - Some armor has been tweaked. Note: Omni-Tek labeled armor is now for OT employees only. If you're wearing the armor now, you will not be forced to remove it if you are clan / neutral. But if you do, you cannot put it back on. - Changed character movement rules: You will now move slower when you are seriously injured. - Fixed a bug in the skill locked timer system. This made some special attacks and other items locking your skill recycle too slowly. You should see First Aid and special attacks respond more rapidly. - Effect of Aggression Enhancer increased, making it easier to "taunt". Please remember that you must allocate points to your Psychology skill to use "higher quality" Aggression Enhancers. Do not expect your quality level 4 AE to be good enough when you have reached level 15. - Several new valuables should be found in treasure-chests. - Trade-skill items for melee weapons are now available. - Several new melee weapons and some new distance weapons - The Breathing Space weapon-line has been fixed. No more Long Range Energy skill is required there (Energy Melee weapon skill instead). - The Seburo weapon-line has been fixed. No more Mechanical Engineering needed for use. - Some unique monsters with unique items have been added to some playfields. - Rebalanced some weapons. Most quality level 50+, one-handed weapons have had their Multi-Ranged skill requirement increased. - Some lower-quality weapons have had their Dual Wield skill somewhat increased. Trader nano-programs: - Added a new "mind-control" line of Nano Programs for the Trader. - Lowered the credit cost of the nano-drain line. - Lowered the execution time of the health-drains a little. - Increased the execution time of the skill-drains a little. - Changed resist-rates on skill-drains. Doctor, Agent, Nanotechnician nano programs: - Damage Over Time (DOT) nano-programs no longer do a range of damage. The result of this is that the damage output has been slightly increased for some of the programs, while others remain the same. Nanotechnician nano-programs: - Fixed the effects on the humidity extractors. Enforcer nano-programs: - The Rage line of nano-programs now use Material Metamorphoses instead of Time & Space for its criteria check. - Extended the duration of the Mongo buff by 2x at the low end, and 3x at the high end. - Extended the duration of the Challenger line of nano programs. Martial Artist nano-programs: - Extended the duration of the super damage buffs by approximately 10 seconds each. Adventurer nano-programs: - Added several new nano-programs for the Adventurer, increasing his ability to heal. Soldier nano-programs: - Soldier Mirror Shields have had their "damage returned" aspect changed. Grid Access nano-programs: - Added for Fixer, Doctor and Trader

The L.A. Times has an interview with AO's lead designer Tommy Strand. Here's an excerpt: Q: How does "Anarchy Online" advance the genre of massively multi-player games? "Anarchy Online" has more focus on the casual gamer. If you don't have much time, you can still play. We have an auto-content system that generates content for you on the fly. The mission is generated specifically for you or your friends. In "EQ" ["EverQuest"], you spend a lot of time looking for people to group with. You also have to camp for hours waiting for your turn to attack a monster. In "EQ," they have static content, so the same monster will pop up every two hours or so. If everybody on your server wants what that monster has, there will be many people waiting and you have a queue. In "Anarchy," we will generate a new area just for you. It's a unique mix between single-player and massively multi-player. You can read the entire article at this link.

Here is today's update from the official site: Today’s topics are the patch that we are currently testing on the test server, some news on the progress of our community manager, and a word on the e-mail problems we had this morning. On Friday, we released a data patch on the test server that is mainly an update on content and data, but also introduces a number of bug fixes. There are some people helping us test it on the test server, and the initial feedback they have given us after playing with the new patch over the week-end has been very good, and the progress is very promising. As far as we can see, the patch looks good, and at this stage in the testing we haven’t discovered any bad effects or major problems introduced with the changes made in the patch. There is more testing to be done however, and we will continue to keep you updated on the progress as well as an estimate on when we will release it on the two live dimensions. If you would like to help us test the patch, or just check out the changes to see what the patch does, all you need to do is follow the instructions on the link testserver to be able to log onto the, well, test server. The introduction of our new community manager has sparked a plan to improve the communication with our players. His first week at work he wanted to get an overview of the current situation in the community, reestablish his contact with the fan-sites, get active on the forums, and update the FAQ and online manual. This work is already well underway; we hope you have noticed the effort, and that you will also see a lot of improvement in this department very shortly. The focus of the community team long term will be to continue these things already started, and increasing that activity to the extent where you, the players can feel more included and updated. We recognize how our flow of information hasn’t been as extensive as we would have liked, and as mentioned this will now be put into focus and improved. As mentioned earlier, we have been experiencing some problems with our support e-mail. These problems are now fixed, and the people affected by these problems have received an e-mail from us.

Computer Gaming Online put up its review of Anarchy Online. Here's their conclusion: It's a common trait among online games that they all stink during the first few months. Since Funcom has raised the bar for monthly fees to $12.95 (almost a one-third increase from the de facto genre standard of $9.95), you might expect a corresponding increase in stability and service. Instead, Anarchy Online is arguably less stable than were its competitors during their respective launches. It features great graphics, a slightly modified version of EverQuest's gameplay model, and lots of frustrating problems. True to its theme, you should only consider playing it in the future. You can read the full review at this link.

Here is today's update as posted on the official site: Unfortunately, there was a mixup among players and our support as to what the last patch was going to fix. We'll try to explain what happened. Also, yesterday's patch is now ready as an .exe file. There is a big patch in our pipeline improving gameplay and balance as well as many different data-related problems in the gameworld. This patch was internally called 12.4 and it had not been put out even on the test-servers, becasue it simply wasn't ready yet. Then yesterday, we finally traced down a bug that was causing players to disconnect while zoning. We decided to release this patch without waiting for the data patch to go out first, because of the improvements it would bring and because it was not dependent on the other changes. So we renamed the data patch to 12.5 (since it will be later on the list), and named this new patch 12.4. Apparently, this has caused a mixup somewhere in our organization about what it was that was in the patch. This much talked about patch from yesterday is now ready as an .exe patch as well for those of you who have not had problems with the auto-patcher. You will find it in the launcher window as you load the game.