Anarchy Online

Our full review of Funcom's MMORPG..

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Anarchy online, billed as the first of the next generation of online role-playing games, has been surrounded by vastly differing public opinion since it’s release in the US. Now it’s set for release in Europe, we thought we’d take another glance at the World of Rubi-Ka and the life of high science fiction in Funcom’s ambitious, if troubled, online role-playing game.

Getting started is straightforward enough. The Game mechanics, as with most MMORPGs is very simple: create a character based on race, sex, and profession (And in Rubi Ka, height, body Mass and face can all be selected to make your character look and feel more unique.) Once that has been done, you venture out into the “Newbie-lands” and start on your career path to fame, wealth, and success, or whatever the hell it is you ultimately wish to get out of the game, by beating up the low level critters, monsters, and enemy agents who wander around aimlessly for the sole purpose of getting whacked by Joe Newbie.

After each successful encounter, you receive experience which goes towards attaining you a new level and resulting in more power and skills, and a credit reward for the slaying of this critter. The credits are used, as you’d expect, to upgrade your equipment allowing you to purchase more powerful weapons, and better armour.

The skill system in AO is very well done. All characters have access to all the skills, and there are bunches and bunches of different skills. When your character reaches a new level of experience, you receive an amount of improvement points (or “IPs”), which you can put towards improving the base level of your skills. Each profession has skill sets that are easier or harder to improve. Enforcer’s, the meat shield types who tend to go face to face with the Mobs (A term referring to monsters in on-line games) are less skillful at improving more cerebral skills, such as Nano Engineering. The martial artist has ease of improving his or her Hand to Hand skill but learns Heavy Weapons skills slowly and so on.

The Main purpose of the skill level is to determine your proficiency in using it, but almost as important, a certain skill level is often based on a combination of multiple skills such as the ability to use, wield, or wear better equipment, weapons and armour.

We tried out a number of professions, including the Nano Technician, whose fantasy equivalent would be a wizard. An Enforcer (…because sometimes brute force is the only way to go), a Soldier – master of combat weaponry, the Martial Arts – well, ok – name me one person who at one time or another didn’t want to be able to fight like Bruce Lee, and finally a Fixer. Fixers are shadowy members of Rubi Ka’s underworld. Almost thief like in terms of skills and abilities. All classes were very easy to understand, play and level either solo or in a group.

The world of Rubi Ka is extremely beauiful thanks to a top rate graphics engine and some very talented artists. On a suitable system (We recommend a P3 500, with a 16MB graphics card plus 128MB Ram) it is very smooth indeed.

The amount of equipment and options for advancement at first seems daunting. The game world is pretty damned big. Some travel is possible via Whoompas. A kind of site-to-site transporter tower, that allows players to very quickly move from one area to another. The other alternative for high level players is called “The Grid”. The Grid requires high technical knowledge to even be able to enter, and once you do enter the grid, selected destinations are easier to reach than others, again, dependant on the necessary skill levels. However, travelling through the grid is rapid, allowing high level players the ease of traversing the game world.

The equipment, at first seems very comprehensive, with lots of different pistols, rifles, and submachine guns to choose from, and the same variation with types of armor. However, we did find that the equipment had not been balanced very well, with several weapons and armor types having a lot of strength and no real weakness – this of course leads to invalidating the whole idea behind having multiple choices. Everyone, it seemed, wanted the same armour and the same weapons.