ANARCHY ONLINE THE GAME THAT I LOVED

Everyone who played or plays mmorpg’s have there favourite game. For some it might be the infamous WOW for others it might be a less know mmorpg. For me it is Anarchy Online (AO for short). Some might say Anarchy What!

The game I played for over 9 years. And I will explain why I loved it and why I eventually quit the game. First of all let me make a very bold statement. There has never been a game like it. And until now I know of no game being developed that is even remotely doing what Funcom did with AO.

Why is it so special?

• Classes / breeds
• Skills
• Twinking / Items
• Gameplay

Classes / breeds

First of all there are 4 breeds in AO. And all have there pro and cons when playing different classes. So the choice of the breed has a big impact on the gameplay of your class. Some are horrible and others are doable and then you have the best. But in the past some have picked the horrible choice and made one of the best character ingame. So what the majority believes is the worst can be the best :D

In AO there are some special classes that no other mmorpg did. The classes are very diverse from the normal tank – healer – dps to the uber support and the allrounders. There is something for everyone. There are a total of 14 classes (called professions in AO) 2 of them you need a expansion to play (shadowlands). There are guides enough of these classes online so I will link the wiki of the classes here.

Skills

The skills in AO are something else. In AO you need a specific skill to equip a item. Sometimes several skills. When you level up you get Improvement points (IP for short) and those IP can be invested in any of the skills. Everyone can put IP in all skills but choices need to be made.

I believe there are over 250 different skills in AO some that are almost never used and others that are necessary for everyone. Some useful for a specific type of weapon and so on and forth. You have your basic skills like agility – strength – stamina - …. And the more specific like 2 hand edge, brawl, full auto, …. . But the base skills reflect on your secondary skills. So if you don’t raise your primary it might be impossible to increase your secondary.

Twinking / items

In a lot of games twinking means equipping the best item out of a dungeon on your class and going pvping. Well in anarchy online this is on a whole different level. If I say that most items do not have a level cap or a class specific modifier. And in theory can be equipped on a level one as long as he has the skills for it. Now how do you do that?

Trikeling is the name of the game. Nearly all items in anarchy online have stats required to wear. Some of these items have stats they give when you wear it. So to make a easy example. You want to wear a item required 20 stamina. You only have 10. Meaning your short 10 stamina. Now lets say a item in a different slot requires 10 stamina and gives you 10 stamina. When you equip that item you get a extra 10 stamina. This is very basic but it gives you a idea of what is possible.

There are so many items in the game that some people have managed to twink in items that developers thought was impossible. There was a time when one of the top players made a twink that developers stripped because they could not figure out how it was done. They publicly said sorry and reequipped the character after the player explained how.

Gameplay

The gameplay was very interesting as you had 3 factions. Clan – Omni – Neutral, even before I played the factions decided they would need some sort of agreements on how to tackle the end content. As all end content was server based and there where no instances back then. Some bosses spawned every 18 hours and other spawn every 6 hours and so on. So at the start as there where not enough high levels with gear all the factions tackled the bosses together. And after a while there was a Omni – Neutral week and a Clan week.

Back then having a end game item was a sight to behold. As every 18 hours there was a chance of something to drop but no guarantee. I raided over 12 months for my "burden of competence". Back in the day that was the best back piece in the game and everyone wanted one.

Some players build bots with a dkp system so there was some fairness to it all. The bots where mostly hosted by some of the biggest influencers of the specific factions. And we were all grateful that they did.

The curve in anarchy online of getting to the final levels was HELL. At some levels you could only grind Hecklers and everyone who grinded Hecklers back then new, if you find a good team stick with it until your drop of your chair. At the final 5 levels it took me over 1-2 months to get those. To give you a idea. (not constantly ofcourse)

Why I quit

The devs made promise after promise and never did what they said. The where promising since 2006 that they would get the game a new and improved engine. And I believe they are still waiting on it. Instancing content and making people able to multibox them solo. Meaning you could buy your gear with either ingame or real life money :’(.

Back in the day it was a achievement to get endgame gear. Nowadays if you have the funds you could deck out your char without even doing one instance or participate in anything.

The decline of players. At the peak of the game the major cities where lagging because of the big number of players running inside of them. The last time I logged in the servers where merged and even then there where practically no one running around.

I believe that as soon as they made the acquiring of endgame items to easy the people had nothing to do anymore and left the game. In essence it is because people whined about the difficulty of the game. So I hope developers in general stop making games to easy and stop listening to whining kids a challenge keeps people around!

This is my story about AO if you need extra info, comment below.