Anarchy Online

This review is mainly for those who have never played this game: Many of the reviews here will criticize the game for its many aspects. Note, that those are most likely written by veterans like myself, but without taking into consideration the viewpoint of a new player. [b]I put the summary in the beginning:[/b] Yes, this is a dated game. Yes, the code is far from perfect. Yes, the population has declined over the years. BUT! The game's visuals aged quite well, easy to get used to it and some of the environments are really well crafted to look appealing even with dated graphics. The game has an extreme amount of content in it. Even by staying F2P ("froob" by ingame jargon) you can spend years with it. Not mandatory though, you can play this game both casually and hardcore. You decide. Microtransactions are not pay to win. There is a relatively small, but active population. In short: despite it's shortcomings AO is still the best MMORPG ever in my opion. And I have tried a few. GOLDEN...

Is it possible to simply "review" a game experience spanning 16 years for me ? My time in AO began in 2001 and I am still here now, I have been away from time to time, tempted away by the promises newer titles made and yet I always found my self back here on Rubi-Ka There must be a reason right ?. In fact there are several, ... several thousand that is. Too many to list just here. Not least the still unmatched complexity of the skill systems, oh yes there are a few; if your excited at the prospect of mastering several systems and interlinking them together to weave your own characters unique tapestry, then welcome friend, welcome home. The communities, as diverse as those in the real world and just as extreme in all areas, do you want to involved yourself into the deep lore of Rubi-Ka on voyage of self discovery ? Because you can if that's your thing. Or are you PvP'er a hard-nosed, smack-talking player killer ? Oh then I think you'll make friends here too... just watch your back...

Anarchy Online is the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind of MMORPG's. It was pretty much perfect at the time (with an awful launch, mind you) and with an in-depth skill/fight system that should've been the standard to any MMO following it, but that of course never happened as the following big games presented a more casual, newb-friendly format and instead that became the norm, leaving AO with a small core of players. Much like with Skyrim, the genre became mainstream, but to this day many die-hard fans religiously still stick to Morrowind nevertheless because of its more rough, but more detailed ways. Such is the case with AO. Other reviewers already pointed out the dated graphics etc, so I won't comment on that, personally it was never an issue for me. I've been playing AO since the end of 2005, during my AO years I found new friends that are friends IRL up to this day, I grew up, had years long breaks, found more appealing MMO's even, but time after time I always ended up with coming ...

My absolute favorite MMORPG ever released. Main catch is unique skill/equipment system that no game has ever surpassed or offered. Scifi world is also very nice change from the usual fantasy affair, a fight between good corporation and evil terrorist. Also some further fantasy setting with Shadow Lands exist.

I used to love this game. Great community, amazing atmosphere, several really original concepts, some of them unsurpassed to this day (hot-swap twinking anyone?). But that was decades ago. Literally. It is a miracle that the game is still running today, but is it really worth it to revisit the nostalgia? Honestly, I don't think it is. The very first thing you see after you create your character and enter the world is a message to pay money for power leveling. With more messages offering more shady services following. The once-great community is long gone, the whole place seems to be hijacked by annoying bots. I wasn't even able to finish the first quest (the very first quest!), since the spawning area is being camped 24/7. Maybe if you are a ranged character armed with an insane amount of patience, you would be able to finish it eventually and continue on your journey. But honestly, why would you want to waste your time in such toxic environment? It is quite sad to see the game in...

When you really want to be positive, but you can't. Yes, I am one of mentioned old timers that might have something negative to say. Only that I have a lot of negative to say, that's not to say there aren't anything positive to find with Anarchy Online. Cons: Yes, AO did get a new rendering engine. But you're not gonna see it unless you download it manually. Then you need to find the community fixes as it crashes rather often. Instead enjoy this 16 year old rendering engine set to 1024x768 fullscreen instead. Exploits, and lots of exploits. GMI (auction house), PvP, leveling, duping, NODROP transfers, ability boosting, dmg exploits. Yes, AO has them all. In its heyday AO was less prone to extended damage from exploits. More developers and money allowed for swift fix and ban of exploiters. These days AO barely has 1 developer, severe exploits can go on for weeks before they are fixed. Input multiplexing, yes AO allows for input multiplexing. You can use 3rd party software to contr...

Take it from someone that played this game for many years since launch, this MMO has gone downhill in a big way and is sadly now the most exploited game I've ever played. There are no devs currently working on it, the exploits are well known and widely used for a long time without any fixes. The ingame economy has increased in value about 15 fold in the past year due to the dupes (AO's version of the WoW token called GRACE that gives 30days gametime for ingame currency was 300mil credits a few months ago now it's 4bil, the max credits can you hold on a single character is 1bil). Exploiters can become godmode to 1shot any player and be unkillable even by 50 endgame players at once. They can solo all endgame content meant for large raid groups. Recently the auction house was even hacked so it removed everything you were wearing for anyone that tried to use it. The game is a mess while Funcom does nothing to help the community there. It's a shame really since the game really does have go...

The game is only worth playing with a sub fee. As a non sub this game is unbearable. The free stuff is sub par in every way, forces you to gimp your character (required skills to equip items) and you will most likely never find anyone to play with. When you sub once you will never have access to your account if not subbed. The veterans have this game in a stranglehold. No changes, no new ideas nothing will be done that could potentially piss of the vets thus stagnation has set in (for the last 10 years). Vets even act as customer support, The economy is in ruins. There hasn't been a server reset...ever. Over the years there have been so many exploits that creds are ultimately useless and you will need billions and billions for a decent item. Did i mention that you can only use the "auction house" as a sub? Well actually doesn't matter because the items you would want to buy are only available to subs as well. Progression in this game is grind based. Go to one area grind to level x...

If I'm not wrong, Anarchy Online was my first Massive Multiplayer Online RPG game I have played. I still remember it was added as bonus in GameStar magazine in 2005 year, with subscription for a whole year. I decided to try it and it was cool. I wasn't a big MMO-addict back then, so I didn't spend much playing it. Probably gave up pretty quickly, since it wasn't an easy game for the young me. Still, I remember how cool it was - unique atmosphere, graphics, music and everything. I'm really glad to see it's still alive and works just fine. I'm not sure how many things have changed - I remember that starting location was different, and few other stuffs. If it's for better, or worse, I cannot say. It's kind of sad that when I was younger I didn't had enough patience to stick with it and now that I would love to give it a little bit more time, there isn't enough of it in my life. Give it a try, that's if you are fan of this kind of games. Sure, the graphics aren't fancy for today's standar...

Probably one of the best MMO's I have ever played. You will either love it or hate it, within the first 15 minutes. but it is most definitely worth it. The community is extremely genuine, far better than most others. Players are always ready to help eachother out. There is so much depth to this game, there is ALWAYS something to do. ALWAYS something to upgrade. Heavily based on community/group activities. So much more can be said about this. i'll probably post up another comment attached to this to go into more detail.