About Anarchy Old School:
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. I put the summary in the beginning: 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 TIP: FIND AN ORGANIZATION QUICKLY! (AO’s jargon for Guild) Ask around in public chat channels (such as “OOC”) and you will find an organization in no time. OK here come the details: Setting: AO is literally the world’s first scifi MMORPG. It has a unique world that combines elements from Shadowrun (main influence), Dune and others. But it also contains many unique, sometimes humorous, sometimes quirky and sometimes outright weird aspects. The game’s world is totally lovable and one of the reasons it still has an active playerbase. Fun fact: women seem to like the game world too. I have seen more women in this game (proportionally) than in any other online game. AO also has a well crafted story, which is not forced upon you if you are not into it. But if you are, there are tons of lore available, and even a novel (“Prophet without honor”) There are many seasonal events, which are now part of the game’s traditions and add a lot of fun. Social vs Solo: Most things in this game can be solo’ed. In fact, some of the greatest achievements are when someone is able to solo something that normally would require multiple players. You can solo almost all the way to endgame. But it is much more fun and easier to do it with other people. The game factilitates social interactions and fomations of communities and the existing communities are mostly very welcoming. I have created a couple of long-lasting real life friendships as have many other players in this game. Graphics: I won’t lie: the game has aged graphics. Probably one of the least pretty MMOs that you can find on the market. But it is very easy to get used to it. The environments are well crafted, especially the Shadowlands. NOTE: there is a “new engine” game client, which is not shipped with Steam, but you can download it from the AO website. It makes the game a lot prettier, but it is still in Beta and there are a couple of bugs in it (nothing game-breaking, I play on the new client for instance) Game mechanics: It is quite similar to other online RPGs, but a lot more complex. It is mostly stat-based. The learning curve is huge, but not steep. The game will go easy on you in the beginning and you will learn it gradually. This complexity is one of the biggest appeals of this game. Equipping your character the best possible way is very challenging, but at the same time very rewarding. For instance when your low level character is able to whack high level monsters. In most cases you can adjust the difficulty of the game to your character by choosing appropriately leveled missions, or killing the appropriate level monsters in the open world. Having said that, the game has a massive open world, but also contains many instanced (somtimes even randomly generated) areas. The are unique open world bosses, open world raids, instanced raids, PVP-PVM mix raids and many others Professions (the game’s equivalent of character classes) are wildly different and unique in their own way. BUT most items are not class locked, and there is a big room for experimentation. You are not really forced a certain path like in other games, say in SWTOR where if you are a smuggler you must use blasters. In AO blasters would be the recommended choice, but it can happen that someone comes up with a creative setup that outperforms the recommended one. The variety options are immense. PVP in this game is the “smartest” pvp I have seen in any game. It takes a lot of skill and game knowledge to be at the top, but the entry level is not that scary. I reiterate though: you do not need to be knowledgeable to get started. It will come both naturally, and the community will answer your questions. Your organization members will lend their deep game knowledge to you and will help you along the way to stand on your own feet, if you need it. Microtransactions: Completely optional. Most players get by without ever spending money on microtransactions. On the other hand it’s a good way to support the developers. Membership: Around 50% of the content is tied to a subscription plan. It is farily affordable, but more expensive than pretty much any other MMO on the market. Bummer, a dated business model. As a F2P player, you will have access to “Rubi-Ka”, the main world of the game. Subscription players gain access to the “Shadowlands” which presents an alternative progression (ie. you can level both in Rubi-Ka and the Shadowlands) which is arguably faster in the Shadowlands. You will get acces to more endgame content too. More powerful items etc. You can choose to play the full game from day one, or remain a free player as long as you want. Many of the subscription players today started out as F2P players, and there are some players who still play F2P accounts after so many years. Complaints, negative reviews, vitriolic statements from veterans: AO runs on minimal support from it’s developer company. This makes the game somewhat riddled with problems. You will hear a lot about exploiters, broken economy, inflation etc. None of them are exactly true, though none of them are false either. Very rarely it happens that a small group of exploiters pop up. Since AO does not have constant supervision, these are not addressed promptly. Still the holes are plugged and the “outbreak” itself does not have much effect on the game anyway (not even close to what many veterans would tell you – they usually see this problem being a lot larger than it really is). Also, despite what anyone says, the economy is not (that) broken. It will not affect your gameplay much anyway. It will not prevent you from having fun or getting what you need on your character.
