Anarchy Online
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Anarchy Online<tr><td colspan="2" style="font-size: 100%; text-align: center;"> </td></tr>
| |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Funcom
<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)</th><td>Funcom</td></tr><tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Latest version</th><td>16.4.4</td></tr> |
| Release date(s) | June 27, 2001 |
| Genre(s) | Sci-Fi MMORPG |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer
<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Rating(s)</th><td>ESRB: T (Teen)</td></tr> |
| Platform(s) | Windows
<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Media</th><td>Download, CD</td></tr><tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">System requirements</th><td>Intel Pentium II CPU, 64 MB RAM, DirectX 7, Internet access, 700 MB hard drive space, video card</td></tr><tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Input</th><td>Keyboard, Mouse</td></tr> |
Anarchy Online (AO) is a science fiction MMORPG released in June 2001 by Funcom. It is one of the few popular MMORPGs that makes use of a science fiction setting as opposed to the more common fantasy setting. The game is set in the years following June 29475, predominantly on the harsh desert planet of Rubi-Ka and its extra-dimensional twin, the Shadowlands.
Contents |
[edit] The Story
The story of Anarchy Online revolves primarily around two factions, the hypercorporation Omni-Tek and the rebel worker caste, the Clans. These two factions are fighting for control of Rubi-Ka. In addition to these two, there is a third faction of Neutral observers, people who have decided to take no side in the conflict. This conflict has been waged on and off for centuries. In addition, there have been larger conflicts between Omni-Tek and other corporations over the control of Rubi-Ka.
Rubi-Ka, a seemingly useless desert planet, is of such tremendous importance because it is the only known source of notum in the universe. Omni-Tek, having been granted exclusive ownership rights to the planet, controlled notum for many years and benefited tremendously when it was discovered that the mineral would revolutionize, and eventually become the key component of, nanotechnology. The discovery of notum's properties led to the development of technologies that seem very much like magic, including programs that create things such as fire and ice, heal injury, shield people from harm, affect their physical bodies, and even achieve resurrection. Notum even makes its way into the very genetic makeup of some sub-breeds of humans.
Due to Omni-Tek's unfettered control of Rubi-Ka, the corporation was largely free to do as it wished with its colonists and the planet. For most of the early years, Omni-Tek did its best to treat its people well, even to the point of receiving commendations for its treatment of workers. However, over the centuries, Omni-Tek's policies degraded, until finally, approximately 500 years after the planet was first settled, a significant number of poorly-treated colonists rebelled and began to secretly trade stolen notum to a rival corporation. This led to a series of wars between Omni-Tek and the colonists, and between Omni-Tek and its rival corporations.
The background of the game is described in greater detail in the book Prophet Without Honor: Anarchy Online Book 1, by the Anarchy Online creator Ragnar Tørnquist. A detailed timeline of events, from the discovery of Rubi-Ka until 29479, is available at the official Rubi-Ka Timeline page.
[edit] Character Creation
A player chooses one of four breeds and one of fourteen professions for his character upon creation, and one of the game's three factions shortly thereafter. All combinations are possible. Breed and profession are permanent, but faction can change an indefinite number of times, subject to some restrictions and potential loss of progress. While a player can swap allegiances between Clan and Omni-Tek, they may not switch from either faction to Neutral.
Faction influences a character's costs and profits when using vendor terminals. It also determines a character's starting city and which territories he may enter without being attacked by guards or rival players.
Breed primarily determines how expensive it is to raise the character's basic stats, how high each of those can ultimately become, and how efficient the character's skills are at increasing his health and program-running "nano energy" reserves.
Profession determines the improvement cost and ultimate maximum of the character's other skills. More importantly, profession also determines which nanoprograms the character can use. Although nanoprograms are analogous to spells in fantasy MMORPGs, all professions — not just a subset — make heavy use of them. They define a profession's play style more sharply than any other single game element.
As in many MMORPGs, characters in Anarchy Online gain experience points, and thus levels, through defeating enemies and completing missions. However, a character's level has almost no direct impact on his capabilities. Instead, the game is skill-based. Each level awards the character with a number of Improvement Points, which may be spent at any time to raise skills of the player's choice. It is these skills that determine what a character is capable of doing. The efficiency of each skill is affected by a combination of breed and profession; however, no skill is denied outright to anyone. Since there are 85 improvable skills, character development is flexible and complex.
[edit] Professions
[edit] Adventurer
A generalist profession, the Adventurer combines a balance of weapons and nanotechnology with a deep understanding of nature, which enables him to morph himself and others into several animal forms conveying various benefits. He is adept with both pistols and one-handed bladed weapons, typically wielding a pair of either at once. The Adventurer can serve as a front-line combatant and a secondary healer, with a healing ability rivaled only by Doctors.
[edit] Agent
The Agent is a ranged combatant who fights with a combination of stealth and disguise. He favors rifles, especially those capable of the high-damage special Aimed Shot attack that can only be used while hidden. Agents are able to temporarily assume the guise of other professions, albeit with significant penalties, and gain use of items and nanoprograms normally exclusive to the imitated class.
[edit] Bureaucrat
Bureaucrats use nanoprograms to hinder, immobilize, and pacify enemies, either singly or in crowds. They also use nanoprograms to damage foes directly, as well as summon a robotic servant plus mind-control up to two enemies, all of whom can be ordered to fight on the Bureaucrat's behalf. In a nod to the stereotypical image of bureaucrats, the profession features formal suits, briefcases and Bureaucrat-only coffee machines.
[edit] Doctor
Doctors are the primary healers in the game. They use a range of nanotechnology to keep characters alive, from maximum health bonuses to continual health-replenishing effects to instantaneous healing. They slow enemies' attacks and whittle them down with damage-over-time nanoprograms.
[edit] Enforcer
Enforcers are front-line combatants with the potential to excel with any melee weapon type. They protect teammates by attracting the attention of nearby enemies onto themselves. They protect themselves through nanotechnology that boosts their health and absorbs damage on their behalf.
[edit] Engineer
The Engineer creates, augments, repairs and controls fearsome combat robots. Defensively, Engineers provide a variety of shielding effects that reduce damage to their teammates and/or injure the enemies who attacked. Engineers also have an affinity for crafting items. Engineers also have the ability to warp players to the Engineer's current position.
[edit] Fixer
The Fixer is a master of escape and shady acquisitions. He can greatly boost characters' running speeds and can bring characters into an alternate version of one of the game's global transportation systems — one with a significantly greater number of destinations. In combat, a Fixer keeps his foes at a distance both by hindering their movement and by augmenting his own, all the while pelting them with his favorite submachine gun. Fixers also use nanotechnology to become difficult to hit, and what few injuries they do suffer are treated by continual health-replenishing effects.
[edit] Keeper
The Keeper is the first of two professions introduced in the Shadowlands expansion, and is similar to the fantasy RPG paladin. Keepers have a range of nanoprograms that provide continual benefits to themselves and all nearby teammates (including damage increases, health and nano regeneration, and armour improvements). They prefer to fight in melee combat with two-handed edged weapons.
[edit] Martial Artist
An offensively-leaning front-line combatant, the Martial Artist eschews weapons in favor of his bare hands, a multitude of special attacks and nanoprograms boosting the chance for critical hits. As a defense, Martial Artists evade most blows and heal the ones that land.
[edit] Meta-Physicist
Meta-Physicists are exemplified by their trio of individually-controllable pets that they use to attack enemies, pacify enemies, and heal allies, respectively. These pets can be temporarily improved by the Meta-Physicist as well. MPs also use nanoprograms to damage foes directly, weaken and slow enemies' attacks, and greatly increase their allies' nanoprogram skills.
[edit] Nano-Technician
The Nano-Technician uses nanoprograms to cause great amounts of damage, either to single targets or to all foes nearby. They also immobilize and pacify single enemies, or blind them so their weapons are less effective. Nano-Technicians also wield the program "Nullity Sphere", which immobilizes them for a small period of time but grants total reflection of all damage except incoming reflection damage from attacking shielded enemies.
[edit] Shade
The second profession introduced in the Shadowlands expansion, the Shade is this game's version of the fantasy RPG assassin. Shades favor offense heavily over defense. In exchange for an inability to wear most protective gear, they can cause unrivaled damage with their piercing melee weapons. Their strikes may steal health from their victims, or afflict them with further damage over time or other debilitating effects.
[edit] Soldier
Soldiers are a ranged, front-line combatant favoring assault rifles, heavy weapons, or a pair of high-damage pistols. Much like Enforcers, Soldiers taunt nearby enemies, living through the subsequent attack with the help of nanotechnology that reflects most or all of that enemy's attacks back at it.
[edit] Trader
A Trader's defining characteristic is trading — taking health, nanoenergy, armor, or weapon and casting skills from his enemies to improve his own, as well as lending any of these from himself to his allies. Foes that still prove troublesome can be immobilized or pacified. A Trader's weapon of choice is his trusty shotgun. Outside battle, Traders have an affinity for crafting items.
[edit] Release
The release of Anarchy Online was considered a near failure. The game became known for the massive number of problems and bugs that nearly ruined it. [1] Most of the major problems now fixed, Anarchy Online shows no trace of its problematic launch. Nevertheless, the game remained, for a time, best-known for its poor performance.
[edit] Expansions
[edit] The Notum Wars
Anarchy Online received its first major upgrade, labeled a "booster pack", by Funcom in late November 2002. This expansion introduced one of the major components of the game's PvP system, the towers. In this expansion, players and their organizations (AO's name for player guilds) became capable of building towers on specific land areas across Rubi-Ka, for the purposes of mining notum. These towers included a central controller and a vast array of defensive towers, which typically conferred bonuses to individual players or their organizations, or which conferred penalties on invading players. These towers would regularly become open to attack by players of the opposing factions, who, after successfully destroying the towers of their enemy, could claim the land as their own. Funcom recently upgraded its free-to-play offer to include this expansion.
[edit] The Shadowlands
Perhaps the most well received of Anarchy Online's expansions, the Shadowlands presented a tremendous new world, collectively called the Shadowlands, which is the last remnant of the world Rubi-Ka was before it was wrenched apart by a dimension-breaking cataclysm in ages past. Enriched in notum, this diverse world is inhabited by vestiges of the ancient races that lived on Rubi-Ka, called the Redeemed and the Unredeemed, as well as a giant, world-reaching computer, named Ergo, who recognizes character races as descendants of the past and whose motives in propelling players through the Shadowlands are ambiguous at best.
Released in September of 2003, the Shadowlands expansion was very well received critically, though there were concerns that it had too strong a fantasy bent to mesh completely with the AO universe. In addition to the tremendous world the expansion added, it also introduced significant changes, improvements and additions to virtually every aspect of the game, including music, character development, items and interface.
[edit] Alien Invasion
Building on the storyline introduced in The Shadowlands, Alien Invasion was the next major expansion to the Anarchy Online game. This expansion introduced player-built cities, new social interactions, including clothing, and, most significantly, a new threat to the world of Rubi-Ka, in the form of an alien race that has suffered tremendous pain and death because of Atrox interference in the Shadowlands. It was released in September, 2004.
[edit] Lost Eden
Lost Eden is the title of Anarchy Online's upcoming 4th expansion pack. The expansion is currently undergoing external closed beta testing, and is expected to be released in December 2006 according to the latest financial report. This expansion will focus on PvP elements and is expected to add a variety of new features, including player-controlled mecha, orbiting space stations that players can vie to control, artillery fired from orbital cannons, and huge organic alien motherships.
[edit] Free Play Program
Since December 15, 2004, Funcom has run a promotion allowing players to download and play the core game and The Notum Wars expansion entirely free of any charges. This program is currently scheduled to end on January 15, 2008 [2], though it has already been extended past previous deadlines. Players using free accounts are subject to billboards featuring real-world advertisements. Paying customers are able to remove these advertisements or replace them with ones for fictitious game-world products. Free players wishing to use the content available in any other expansion would need to purchase that expansion, after which monthly subscription fees would begin.
The slang term for free account users is "froob" (or "fr00b"), a portmanteau of "free" and "noob". Although the term "noob" is normally pejorative, and although many free players are no longer new to the game, the term has remained in common use with both positive and negative connotations depending on the speaker. Funcom has even incorporated it into the game as a t-shirt slogan.
Other online games that have instituted similar offers of indefinite free play with restricted content include PlanetSide, The Saga of Ryzom and RuneScape.
[edit] Content
[edit] Transportation and Other Technology
Three forms of global transportation exist in the game world: Whompahs, the Grid, and the Fixer Grid.
- Whompahs are point-to-point teleportation booths. (The name comes from the sound they make when used.) Whompahs connect key cities in a sparse network. Because of this, it can take multiple trips, sometimes through hostile territory, to reach one's final destination. On the upside, all whompah booths can be used by anyone simply by entering them.
- In contrast to whompahs, the Grid is a hub. Grid travel involves exactly two trips: one into the Grid, one out. Characters enter the Grid at terminals in key locations throughout the world, travel directly to their desired exit terminal, and leave. Unlike the whompah, Grid terminals require varying amounts of Computer Literacy skill to use.
- The Fixer Grid is accessed via special keys that only Fixers can produce. It may be entered anywhere the normal Grid can, but has different and more plentiful exit locations.
Several single-passenger vehicles exist for personal travel to other sites. The most common by far are variants of the flying, stealth-jet-shaped Yalmaha, though the land-bound Kodaik [sic] ground vehicle can be seen on occasion. Other craft exist but are rarely used due to having very specialized utility or being exceedingly difficult to acquire.
Many MMORPGs allow players to equip various armors, weapons, and jewelry to improve their performance. Anarchy Online goes two steps further. First, each beneficial nanoprogram affecting a character takes up a certain amount of "nanocontrol units", or NCUs. Players can improve their characters' memory gear to allow more, and more powerful, programs to be applied to them. Second, characters can wear an entire additional set of equipment inside their bodies in the form of implants and advanced ancient symbiants.
Lastly, the game features "Insurance Terminals" where players can "save" their character. The terminal is able to capture a character at a particular moment of time, and upon the character's death, the terminal is able to recall and resurrect the character at that location. The act of resurrection has a negative impact on the character, termed "resurrection shock", which results in temporarily reduced skills.
[edit] Leets
A "Leet" is the name of a furry, cuddly creature resembling a rodent. Living up to their name, leets speak in leet speak and have a strong following of players. The names of the various kinds of leets found in the game world plays on the term, with progressively stronger leets named Eleet, Leetas, Soleet, Phear Leet and Supa Leet, in addition to special unique leets named Joo, Ownz and brb. Their cuteness has in many ways made them a mascot for the game, with calls for plush leet dolls being common, stories such as the Leetville series being made, and a special set of leet pets being the pre-order gift for Alien Invasion. Additional variations of leets have appeared in the game, such as giant leets that attacked cities during special events.
Players are able to morph into a leet through the use of an ironically-named nanoprogram called "Pronouncement of Greatness".
[edit] Cultural References
- At Rome Blue, you are asked to deliver a burger to Mr. Blake. Upon receiving it, he says: "Um hum, this is a tasty burger". Both the character's name and the line mentioned is a reference of Quentin Tarantino movies. Mr. Blake is similar to the known "I want to be Mr. Black" argument at Reservoir Dogs, and the sentence is said by Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) of Pulp Fiction while eating a "Big Kahuna" Burger. Also, there is a social command "/pulp" which causes your character to dance in a fashion very similar to John Travolta and Uma Thurman in the movie Pulp Fiction.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android features in the game, and will quote lines from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. When asked about the meaning of life, Marvin will answer, "42."
- An NPC outside the Crypt of Home will recite the famous witch's brew recipe from Macbeth, Act 4, scene i.
- Bartenders often offer to sell a bottle of Hit-The-Floor-Jack which the description that starts with "And you won't come back no more, no more, no more no more...."— a reference to Jack Daniels and the song "Hit the Road, Jack."
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Official sites
- Unofficial sites
- Anarchy Online Wiki
- Anarchy Arcanum (guides)
- IGN's Anarchy Online Vault (guides + forums)
- Anarchy Online Universe (guides + forums)
- AOFroobs: Forums and Chat
- Auno Anarchy Online Item Database
- Anarchy Mainframe Item Databasecs:Anarchy Online
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