Lots of exciting new changes on Test, here are just a few:
The mission areas have received a major upgrade in looks and layout, and should now be both more varied, challenging and visually pleasing.
New dangers in missions include proximity mines, cameras and gun turrets. The "Map Reader Upgrade – Monsters" will help somewhat against some of these hazards.
A nano program for summoning your pet(s) is now available. It's a very low level program, with no profession restrictions, and can be found in the general nano program store.
The frequency of individuals surfing the ground instead of running has diminished. It's simply not in this year.
The client will now store visibility data for outdoor playfields on your hard-drive. This will cause some extra client lag the first time you enter a given playfield, but a lot less lag after that, as the visibility data doesn't need to be reconstructed.
And this is just a sample complete details here.
Funcom tells us how the recently implemented land control feature and Notum will factor into the expansion.
An organizations that owns control towers can extract Notum directly into a special canister. This can be used for energy consuming tradeskill processes. Another way of using the energy is to charge items directly; e.g., you can construct items that contain both biological and psychological information of certain creatures. Charging these items through an active control tower will be the penultimate step before creating life itself.
Full story at RPGvault
The world of AO is growing more and more each day. If you're planning on getting the Shadowlands Expansion this might be of high interest to you.
Playfields **Spoiler Warning:** Reading the following might reduce the thrill of exploring the new areas of the Shadowlands, so if you value that form of excitement, stop reading here.
The Brink
The Brink denotes the edges of all playfields in the Shadowlands. It is a barren, torn and twisted area, beyond which there is nothing but void. It's literally the End of the World.
Monstrous beasts roam the Brink and tear at the Shadowlands, slowly, painfully, ripping it to shreds. The monsters at the Brink are much more dangerous than the creatures roaming the central parts of the first Shadowlands playfields. They are unbiased in their hostility, inherently destructive, and both powerful and aggressive. The purpose of their presence is a mystery to all, and they seem to thrive on making everyone unfortunate enough to cross their path victims of their relentless aggression.
Separating the Brink from the inner parts of the playfield there is a transition area where, in Nascence and Elysium for example, vegetation degenerates and the creatures become increasingly hostile and exotic.
Elysium
Elysium is an Eden-like place; a lush and plentiful garden where ripe fruit curve the branches of trees, and lakes and golden beaches divide land. Deep valleys cut through high mountain ranges, and in their bosom, dark forests harbour the unknown. Despite its stunning beauty, Elysium is considerably more dangerous than Nascence, and its creatures are more intelligent and have different powers, providing fresh challenges for travellers.
Elysium is strewn with relics from the ancient ultra-technological civilisation; the original inhabitants of the Shadowlands. Piecing these relics together, and rebuilding the ancient technology, is one of the obstacles which is most important for players to overcome in order to solve the mysteries of both Elysium and Nascence.
Experience from the Notum Wars' land control battles will give organisations and everyone on their sides an advantage in the Shadowlands. Like in Nascence new gameplay elements demanding strategic warfare when it comes to controlling the notum veins will be crucial for players who wish to benefit fully from the notum in Elysium.
This gives an advantage to natural puzzle-solvers, well planned organisations, and determined players who are able to draw on their experience, and take advantage of it. There is of course plenty to do for casual players, but if they want to stay at the forefront of events instead of following in the wake of others, they will have to nurture their information-gathering skills, and prepare and plan well.
Only time will tell how this plays out exactly, but I believe that in the end information will be everyone's key to unlocking the magic of the Shadowlands, regardless of side, profession, and organisation status.
Something we can all look forward to exploring! Check out the entire story HERE -Kenti
Playfields **Spoiler Warning:** Reading the following might reduce the thrill of exploring the new areas of the Shadowlands, so if you value that form of excitement, stop reading here.
Something we can all look forward to exploring! Check out the entire story HERE -Kenti
The Rubi-Ka Timeline has recently been updated to include all the major events - as a kind of 'news in short' - of the year 29476.
This is a great place for everyone unfamiliar with the stories pushing the planet of Rubi-Ka further, the subtle games being played through politics, and the actions of the players that have had a permanent impact on Rubi-Ka.
The entire timeline can be read here:
http://www.anarchy-online.com/content/story/past/timeline/rubika/index.html
- Funcom unlocks closed accounts for trial of The Notum Wars -
Oslo, Norway - March 3, 2003 - Funcom has today unlocked cancelled Anarchy Online accounts for a 30 day free trial of the The Notum Wars. The motivation behind the initiative is to allow people to try out the award-winning booster pack with their old characters.
"We're extremely proud of the product and the unique gameplay it adds to the game," Funcom CEO Trond Aas explains, "but we feel our regular free trial is more a trial of Anarchy Online, not The Notum Wars. Land control and organization warfare can take a little time to get into, so we wanted to let former subscribers log on their characters and get straight into the action without having to level up a new character first."
The trial will give former Anarchy Online subscribers a chance to see for themselves why the game received the coveted "Editor's Choice" award from IGN in December 2002, and why Computer Gaming World characterised the game as "Enhanced, Updated, and all-around fantastic" in their March 2003 issue. Additionally it will be a good opportunity for the players to scope out all the new content that's been added to Anarchy Online over the last year.
Funcom is dedicated to provide their subscribers complete value for money, and takes pride in delivering more quality content updates than any other online game.
List of additions since launch:
- Exciting features of land control and organization battles
- Revised pet pathing and collision detection system
- Over 450 monsters
- More than 400 weapons
- 8 static dungeons
- 6 nightclubs and bars
- More than 80 sets of armour
- Team Missions with multiple floors, and challenging bosses
- The "Fixer Grid" - unique grid access for the Fixer profession
- Improved help system with pop-up tips
- Static missions from non-player characters (NPCs)
- 140 monster camps including high-level ones with raid-like gameplay
- Brand-new 3D character creation system
- Futuristic arrival hall for new characters with informative NPCs
- All new NPC multiple-choice chat system in new player areas
Picked up some info on the Shadowlands over on AO Basher:
Check em out on AO Basher's site HERE -Kenti
Following Sunday evening's interesting Developer Chat on the Stratics IRC Network, the logs of which are now available, Cz has released two screenshots to the community that show 'In Progress' work on the Shadowlands Expansion Pack. The picture received by AO-Stratics shows a strange creature in a snowy landscape, while the AO-Basher screenshot reveals a lush mountain area, both of which will look even better when the Expansion Pack's graphical update is in place.One patch we are really excited about is the Modular Hallways patch, hopefully being launched this spring sometime, which will include a complete overhaul on all the dungeon styles. The rooms will be different, the floor plans will no longer be only square and there will be long, winding hallways that the rest of the dungeon will populate around, sort of like the spine of the mission.
Check em out on AO Basher's site HERE -Kenti
In an effort to keep this page a little bit more updated, I hereby promise to post at least one thing every couple days on here. The info is out there, I just gotta find it!! So here goes!
This was posted over on AO Basher today:
Its some pretty good info, so I really suggest checking it out! -Kenti
Not being content with presenting their readers with just a single guide this week, the staff at Anarchy Arcanum have pulled out all the stops and published two articles, one of which discusses the various Dynacamps that exist in the game as well as where they can be found. The second passage takes a detailed look at in-game options, describing how a player can use commands to access hidden client settings that are not available through the standard menu.Today we'll be taking a look at the options in Anarchy Online, or more like how you can change them without ever hitting the F10-button, all via the power of in-game commands or scripts. We also, after some heavy-duty pressure from all you fans out there, have taken a look at the Dynacamps that are now spread out across Rubi-Ka.(Cool picture here) To read the new guides, visit Anarchy Arcanum by clicking here
Its some pretty good info, so I really suggest checking it out! -Kenti
Some community-based changes are being made!! Here's the article off the official site:
Refocusing the Community Work 20 January, 2003 Thomas Johnsen After a thorough evaluation of our community work, where the wish to focus a lot more on the Anarchy Online community sites was at the core, we have decided to do some major changes to the Anarchy Online bulletin board. About half the forums will be closed on 22 January 2003, greatly reducing our time spent on administration and moderation, and making us able to focus the work elsewhere. Since the Funcom Community Team started up in August 2001, it has gone through a lot of changes, both in tasks and personnel. We started out with three people, working with the official Anarchy Online bulletin board, the myriad of large and small AO community sites, and - of course - huge piles of e-mails. Since then we've had several people moving in and out of the team, and perhaps unfortunately, mostly out. Currently it's a one man team, but working closer than ever with the designers and coders makes up for that to a large degree. We have tried different ways of covering the community needs as well as possible. The AO community sites (often just called "fan sites") have gotten varying attention over the 17 months the team has been operating. The bulletin board has gone through several rounds of both major and minor changes, and we have added the Funcom IRC server to the list of community gathering places. Lately, an evaluation has been done on how to best satisfy the community's needs, and one of the most important wishes has been to give more back to those dedicating a lot of their time to run AO community sites. We want more life on those sites, and to be more present there ourselves, as we feel that's something the people working together on the sites deserve. Lately we've agreed on several regular events with the major sites, and you might have noticed that some already have regular rounds of questions and answers with us. At the same time, it's always a question of resources, i.e. time. Learning from having moved the day-to-day operation of our IRC server to volunteers, we looked into what tasks we can leave to others, while concentrating on what basically only we can do. In this process one task presented itself as the one demanding a lot of time - now as always - and that was maintaining the bulletin board. Maintaining the bulletin board is a lot of work, and even though we have volunteer moderators helping out, this is taking up many hours every week. Hours that we feel could better be spent on more rewarding work for the community. But closing the bulletin board down was not seen as a viable option. Instead we took a close look at each forum to see whether it was absolutely needed to be run by us, or could be handled by others. Those we found possible to hand over to others, we will close for new posts, and leave to the AO community sites to cover. Spreading the forum activity to several sites does not mean we will stop reading what people post. We will just read it without at the same time having to think about whether the post is on topic, in the correct forum, using proper language, etc. Funcom employees already frequent other bulletin boards, and we're going to continue with that, and hope to increase the activity too. All in all, we are sure this will lead to more activity on the AO community sites, both from us and the rest of the community, which is something we all owe to the people behind those sites. It will free up more time for other community work, both for the team and the volunteers who help out. And - in fact - it will allow those who post on the forums more freedom, as we simply have to put some restrictions on an official bulletin board that other bulletin boards might not want - or need. Which forums will remain? The forums we'd like to keep are:
Those most needed by new players, namely the Beginners' Corner and the two technical help forums.
One official forum for posting community updates; Community Corner.
One forum for dealing with the test dimension; we will merge the current two into one.
The forums concerning our feedback program Professionals; hence we're keeping all twelve profession forums.
Two extremely active forums which we would like to see very good alternatives for before we close them down; the Atlantean and Rimor Exchange forums.
The rest will be closed for new posts, and archived. No posts will be removed, and at request some will be moved to the still open forums, if appropriate.
What about e.g. suggestions and bugs?
Bugs should be sent to bugs@anarchy-online.com, and suggestions to feedback@anarchy-online.com, together with all kinds of feedback. We also know some AO community sites have suggestion forums, and will frequent those for picking up great ideas, and also expect to have some especially popular ones forwarded to us by the sites.
Where do we find other forums?
For the English speaking community we would especially like to recommend the bulletin boards at these endorsed sites
Anarchy Online Stratics
AO Basher
AO Vault
In addition, you might want to take some time to browse through the site listing on the official AO site, as bulletin boards can develop different personalities, and finding the one that suits you best is often worth the extra effort.
When will we see results?
Hopefully you have noticed some of them already, as lately we have worked with the AO community sites to keep them more updated with news from us. As mentioned earlier, some also have regular questions which we answer, and I can mention dev chats and competitions as other things you'll see soon. In addition we've spent more time on the Professionals program, to ensure designer updates to major profession concerns, and we have an idea or two more ready too.
I'm confident that we'll see a more thriving community through this, one which will continue to grow and be both diverse and close-knit. The official Anarchy Online bulletin board will continue to be a gathering place for this community, together with the AO community sites and their bulletin boards, and both our own and others' IRC servers. And of course, we'll see each other on Rubi-Ka.
Discuss this article here.
Best regards,
Thomas "Cz" Johnsen,
Funcom Community Manager
Quite an eyeful, but this was long overdue. The people at Funcom are really working hard to make AO what it needs to be to survive in the marketplace today. -Kenti
Refocusing the Community Work 20 January, 2003 Thomas Johnsen After a thorough evaluation of our community work, where the wish to focus a lot more on the Anarchy Online community sites was at the core, we have decided to do some major changes to the Anarchy Online bulletin board. About half the forums will be closed on 22 January 2003, greatly reducing our time spent on administration and moderation, and making us able to focus the work elsewhere. Since the Funcom Community Team started up in August 2001, it has gone through a lot of changes, both in tasks and personnel. We started out with three people, working with the official Anarchy Online bulletin board, the myriad of large and small AO community sites, and - of course - huge piles of e-mails. Since then we've had several people moving in and out of the team, and perhaps unfortunately, mostly out. Currently it's a one man team, but working closer than ever with the designers and coders makes up for that to a large degree. We have tried different ways of covering the community needs as well as possible. The AO community sites (often just called "fan sites") have gotten varying attention over the 17 months the team has been operating. The bulletin board has gone through several rounds of both major and minor changes, and we have added the Funcom IRC server to the list of community gathering places. Lately, an evaluation has been done on how to best satisfy the community's needs, and one of the most important wishes has been to give more back to those dedicating a lot of their time to run AO community sites. We want more life on those sites, and to be more present there ourselves, as we feel that's something the people working together on the sites deserve. Lately we've agreed on several regular events with the major sites, and you might have noticed that some already have regular rounds of questions and answers with us. At the same time, it's always a question of resources, i.e. time. Learning from having moved the day-to-day operation of our IRC server to volunteers, we looked into what tasks we can leave to others, while concentrating on what basically only we can do. In this process one task presented itself as the one demanding a lot of time - now as always - and that was maintaining the bulletin board. Maintaining the bulletin board is a lot of work, and even though we have volunteer moderators helping out, this is taking up many hours every week. Hours that we feel could better be spent on more rewarding work for the community. But closing the bulletin board down was not seen as a viable option. Instead we took a close look at each forum to see whether it was absolutely needed to be run by us, or could be handled by others. Those we found possible to hand over to others, we will close for new posts, and leave to the AO community sites to cover. Spreading the forum activity to several sites does not mean we will stop reading what people post. We will just read it without at the same time having to think about whether the post is on topic, in the correct forum, using proper language, etc. Funcom employees already frequent other bulletin boards, and we're going to continue with that, and hope to increase the activity too. All in all, we are sure this will lead to more activity on the AO community sites, both from us and the rest of the community, which is something we all owe to the people behind those sites. It will free up more time for other community work, both for the team and the volunteers who help out. And - in fact - it will allow those who post on the forums more freedom, as we simply have to put some restrictions on an official bulletin board that other bulletin boards might not want - or need. Which forums will remain? The forums we'd like to keep are:
Quite an eyeful, but this was long overdue. The people at Funcom are really working hard to make AO what it needs to be to survive in the marketplace today. -Kenti
This little tidbit was posted on the AO mainpage today:
Anarchy Online was yesterday (15.01.03) named "Best MMORPG" of 2002 by Jive Magazine. In the awards JIVE Magazine Best of 2002-Games, Movies, Art, And More Anarchy Online was named as the best MMORPG of last year. From the awards text: "The new expansion pack "Notum Wars" has brought back many people who went on hiatus and has lighted the fire for more PvP and excitement than ever before, which is what many of the veteran players damanded. Anarchy Online is now one of the best MMORPG you could invest time and money into when comparing graphics, animation, server capabilities and storylines." Read the reveiwer's entire article.
Anarchy Online is definitely on many people's lists. However, the community is somewhat quiet these days. With all the improvements and good press its getting, I'd say watch out in the near future... -Kenti
Anarchy Online was yesterday (15.01.03) named "Best MMORPG" of 2002 by Jive Magazine. In the awards JIVE Magazine Best of 2002-Games, Movies, Art, And More Anarchy Online was named as the best MMORPG of last year. From the awards text: "The new expansion pack "Notum Wars" has brought back many people who went on hiatus and has lighted the fire for more PvP and excitement than ever before, which is what many of the veteran players damanded. Anarchy Online is now one of the best MMORPG you could invest time and money into when comparing graphics, animation, server capabilities and storylines." Read the reveiwer's entire article.
Anarchy Online is definitely on many people's lists. However, the community is somewhat quiet these days. With all the improvements and good press its getting, I'd say watch out in the near future... -Kenti
Are you really into Anarchy Online? If so, we are looking for you. We need a dedicated AO player to help us revitalize this site and build it back up to where it should be. If you have some spare time and want to make a difference, please e-mail me at allakhazam@allakhazam.com and tell me all about yourself.
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