Anarchy Online Revisited

I’ve been a Science Fiction fan my whole life. When Anarchy Online first came out in 2001, I rushed to the store to get a copy, and I remember playing it for several months before somewhat reluctantly canceling my account.

Recently I received an e-mail from Funcom, urging me to return to the AO fold. They promised that all of my old characters were still there, but the real lure was that for the remainder of 2005 there would be no monthly subscription fee to play the basic game. How could I resist with an offer like this? This free period is open to anyone who is interested in playing the game. You can find out all of the details at the Anarchy Online website.

Installing the game was an adventure in itself. It took me only 15 minutes to install the game, but it would be another two and a half hours before I could step into the world of Rubi-Ka. That’s how long it took me to download and apply all of the patches that have ever been released for AO.

With my copy of the game finally patched, I logged into AO for the first time in years. I immediately noticed the interface is totally different from what it was almost 4 years ago, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. I understand that with one of the expansion packs (which is NOT free to obtain or play) you get a skinnable interface. Another thing that really bugged me from my previous attempt with AO was the performance. There was a ton of lag. Now it's much better, though that might have more to do with modern hardware than it might have to do with game optimizations.

Realizing that I had forgotten practically everything about how to play the game, I decided to create a new character rather than to play one of my existing ones. The game does a good job of walking you through the character creation process, and in no time at all I found myself on the shores of ‘Newbie Island’. For the next hour or so, I performed all of the quests that I could find and reacquainted myself with AO.

When the creatures on the island were no longer challenging, I realized that it was time for me to move on. I found the Omni-Tek recruiter, and with the help of the folks in the newbie channel I was teleported to the Rome area.

I found line of site issues to be a bit of a drag. For example, I can see a portion of my target, but when I go to fire my weapon, I get a message that tells me I can't fire because there is no line of sight to my target. This was very frustrating.

I spent some time running around outside the city talking to NPCs and doing quests. One thing that I noticed was that the area I was in didn’t have a lot of creatures for me to kill, so I decided to enter the city and try my hand at a few missions.

The first mission I got was the type where you have to bring back an object. After going through the mission area and receiving the object, I learned that you have to return to the same mission terminal from which you received the mission. Sadly, I wasn’t paying attention to such things, and the text of the mission didn’t help me either. Reluctant to just delete the mission, I had to spend some time trying to find my mission terminal. After about 10 minutes, I located the terminal and I completed my mission, resulting in me being both richer and wiser.

My next few hours were a haze of me doing missions and running around the city desperately trying to find shops where I could spend my hard earned credits. I remember at this point wishing that the maps were just a little bit more helpful.

I would recommend Anarchy Online to someone who is a Sci-Fi fan and is looking for a casual game. AO was the first game to introduce instanced dungeons and personal missions. Anytime you login, you're no more than 5 minutes away from an adventure.

All told, I found myself having fun playing Anarchy Online! I can see myself spending quite a few hours roaming around Rubi-Ka again.