Anarchy Online Preview

Funcom's (the creators of The Longest Journey) promise of a massive on-line RPG stands out in the sea of various over-exaggerated announcements of future revolutionary mega-hits. From the fairly developed story and what could have been seen at E3, much of that promise seems to be true.

Once connected, you become a part of the 30000 years distant future. The Nano technology occupied all aspects of life, and it can only be sustained by Notum, a rare substance found on the fringe-world of Ruba-Ka. (Frank Herbert's "Dune"? Well here's a chance to get to it). Omni Tech is a corporation with more than two billion employees (age and background - unknown), and it controls a great number of planets, but all its power actually comes from mining Notum. On the other hand the natives of Ruba-Ka are less than happy with the way their home planet is exploited, and the antagonism is rather obvious.

This is, of course, only the history of the world you are to enter, and the basis for further story development. For the four years from the start of the game (the game servers will work that long), the authors and Game Masters will keep writing the plot and changing history in order to complete the story. One side will surely win. Which one, it's up to the players.

The player will initially have to pick sides. Omni-Tech Corporation gives you the possibility of career advancement and all the hi-tech equipment at disposal, while fighting for the rebels, you will have the satisfaction of being one of the good guys and more freedom to move about. You will be able to choose to be one of the neutrals, but those characters will take no part in the "big picture". There are four races available (all of them human, with slight modifications made by bio-engineering and nanotechnology):

• HOMO SOLITUS: the race most like humans today, only slightly improved.
• HOMO ATROX created for heavy work, thus increased strength and toughness.
• HOMO OPIFEX sneaky, charismatic and swift, using their gifts in espionage, diplomacy and trade.
• HOMO NANO is a race with bonuses when using Nano technology.

After you picked your race, it's time to get a job. Omni-Tech offers work in:

• OMNI-Pol, police that takes care about the security of the corporation's employees, and the peril of the rebels.
• OMNI-InternOp, espionage and personnel disposals.
• OMNI-Med, a medical service where no one remembers Hypocrite,
• OMNI-Reform, public information, social engineering service and brainwashing. OMNI-Adm, a pen pushing job with a possibility to access valuable data.
• OMNI-Mine, Notum mining and exploitation - provides great influence on planet's economy.
• OMNI-Transcom, infrastructure and communication maintenance.

If you decide to join the rebel forces, you will have to choose one of the clans: New Dawn, Sentinels or The Knight, each with his own convictions and ways to beat OMNI-Tech (some clans are strictly destructive, and others will put some other goals before the clash with the enemy).

To make the characters more complex you can choose your affinities through 11 predefined occupations: soldier, marshal-arts fighter, engineer, agent, adventurer, administrate, worker, doctor, nano technician, salesman and metaphysicist. For fine-tuning your character you'll have 6 Abilities: STRENGHT, AGILITY, INTELLIGENCE, SENSE, STAMINA, PSYCHIC, and 60 (sixty, LX) more SKILLs. Newbies will be able to avoid this mess of numbers by picking one of the predefined characters and merge into action. Player recognition should prove easy enough as each sex of each race has 25 faces, and there will be 15 types of clothing with hundreds of textures.

This big introduction should only go to say how much the idea of creating a complete world with all the laws and rules actually is possible. Even the programmers, once asked where they got the courage to create a MMRPG declared that even if they don't succeed they hope they'll leave some notions and encouragement for future projects.

Technically, the game uses the same engine used in The Longest Journey with added support for hardware T&L bringing joy to all GeForce owners. The game is in full 3D with a 3rd person view that will occasionally change to 1st person view in order to give you better vision if needed. All the cities, buildings and sandstorms really look spectacular. The game will support resolutions up to 2048x1024 with 16 million colors. Character animation is continuous, without animation hick-ups. As this is an On-Line RPG, character interaction and communication have been emphasized, and the authors provided 70 Social Moves (from hand-shaking to bowing and even dancing). Using them could really prove interesting:

" At the moment you are able to trigger this through the chat-interface as commands. It should be easy to do this the first time you start up the game. My experience is that this is the first thing people start to explore when they start playing Anarchy Online. For the experienced player we have a macro system for scripting combinations of chat and social moves." Said Tommy Strand, the game producer.

He also kindly answered our questions concerning hardware requirements. This impressive character customization system sounds as if it required monstrous hardware and at least double ISDN to work.

"We don't expect the character customization system to affect the connection speed very much. All the data of the character model and textures will be on the client side. It will be necessary to communicate what the character is wearing to the server, but this data will be quite small. The detail in the character model is more likely to strain the graphic rendering technology we are using, but this seems to be working fine in the tests we have run thus far."

So, the game should work just fine on a PENTIUM 233 MMX with 32 MB RAM and a 3D accelerator card. Ruba-Ka is a world that allows you to explore, fight, communicate and solve quests. Enough quests, in fact, to satisfy the 60000 players that could play the game simultaneously. There will be: Pre defined quests: set by authors before the game ships.

GM quests: through which the game masters influence the story.

Apart from these, more or less, standard ways of introducing quests, the authors also promise a dynamic questing system. Funcom producer told us something about this feature:

"We wanted players to be able to find something meaningful to do at all times. Quests or missions are something the team has been wanting in other online role-playing games. It is difficult for the designers to create sufficient fresh quests for thousands of players and all the cheat sites. The solution we use in Anarchy Online is player-created quests and auto-content quests. When the player wants a quest, he or she approaches a quest booth in one of the bigger cities. There will be a list of missions personalized for the level and profession of the character or team. If the player(s) choose to accept the quest, a mission will be created with goals, monsters, items, rewards and areas to explore. If the mission includes a closed area (like a building, mine or mutant lair), only the character(s) that received the quest and the people they invite will be able to enter the area. The goal of a quest could be to find an object, kill a monster/NPC/player, explore an area, guard something etc."

Some easier quests will be designed for a single player, and the tougher ones will require an entire group. Joining forces and creating guilds will be rewarded in a special way. The newly founded organizations will get their buildings; have their rulebooks, beliefs and goals. All over internet you can already find sites gathering future clan members.

As for the weapons in Anarchy online, all we know by now is that there will be short ranged weapons, energy weapons and conventional weapons. Some will be given at disposal to the members of a certain group, and some will be tied to their characters with a special DNA locking device (Judge Dread). There will be no real magic, but the nano technicians will be capable of performing similar things. There will also be all sorts of equipment available, ranging from computers to stim-packs and implants.

Introducing peaceful mission has solved Newbie protection problem. Even though combat is important this type of a mission will give you an opportunity to advance without it. You won't be able to influence the course of combat much. All you do is click on a target, and your character (depending on his characteristics) wins or loses. This will make character advance much more important than your ability to move your mouse and click quickly... PvP (player versus player) combat will be poorly rewarded, which should make players concentrate on fighting monsters. There will also be zones in the city where all hostilities are made impossible by a nervous gas pumped in through ventilation. The cities will be connected by a subway system, so that the players can successfully avoid conflicts and move through the most of the planet. For those of you with severe bloodlust, there will be civil zones where you can shoot enemies, and the wilderness where you can attack anyone your heart desires. An adventurer who sets foot into the wilderness will get special score bonuses, but this is only for the toughest, the bravest and the maddest.

The subway system will provide transport about Ruba-Ka, which, the authors claim, wouldn't take more than three hours of running to run about. There will also be very expensive teleports, and some personal vehicles (hovercrafts).

The planet will be divided into 55 playfields, and the transition loading should not take more than five seconds. Everyone will start the adventure in his own room. The rooms will be your safe places to store things and once you get too much money, you can even buy or design a house. If a player dies all his insured property gets returned, and he won't loose his characteristics either if he remembered to store them in a tissue bank. All this will be quite expensive, so you'll be able to save games only if you can afford it.

Each ACCOUNT will be able to create up to 8 different characters, but their advancement will be controlled in order to prevent someone to create a character, which becomes the leader of the rebels ad a high-ranking Omni-tech official at the same time. This would reveal secrets of both sides and make the game less interesting.

If the programmers stick to the deadlines, the game should appear by the end of the year. Beta-testing should have already started, but if you want to know more about that, I suggest you to visit official site.