Take me to the Question of the Week Archive Anarchy Online has been one of the most anticipated games of this year. It is the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game to be set in a persistent futuristic, sci-fi world. It is also the first of the next-generation MMORPGs to be released, and as such, it marks an important stage in the genre's evolution from its rather shaky, troubled beginnings. Anarchy Online began as a project in 1996, and GameSpot has followed its development from its much simpler top-down two-dimensional form to the fully real-time 3D game it is today. But perhaps the most important thing about its development is that the developer Funcom has taken some of the problems and frustrations players have encountered in other online role-playing games--issues such as player killing, corpse recovery, and the intricate relationship between death and experience loss--and has offered more-elegant solutions that would make gameplay more enjoyable, especially to casual players.

　　Since Anarchy Online's June 27th release, it has caused a fair share of controversy, especially on Internet forums. But as improvements have been and are being made to the game, the GameSpot editors have had the chance to spend a lot of time in Rubi-Ka. For some, Anarchy Online is the first online RPG they've played. In light of the game's release, we're asking, "What are your impressions of Anarchy Online?" And if you've been waiting for Anarchy Online, please vote in our instant poll. If you'd like to tell us more, send us an e-mail. We're also posting your letters to last week's question, "What makes a game mainstream?"

　　If you have a burning question about games or the game industry, be sure to send us an e-mail! Your question might be selected as our next Question of the Week.

　　First: Andrew's time in Rubi-Ka

　　Managing Editor

　　This week's topic is about personal impressions of Anarchy Online, though I imagine some might prefer that my entry be some sort of explanation as to why I gave EverQuest or Asheron's Call .

　　Next: Continue to read Andrew's impressions

　　Looking for a group...anyone? Anyone? But I was actually supposed to be describing my own personal impressions of the game. Have I experienced many of the game's bugs? Yes, I have. But the game's technical problems haven't completely stopped me from truly enjoying the game. Prior to Anarchy Online, I'd spent many, many hours of my life playing EverQuest and Asheron's Call, and though I enjoyed each game greatly and for different reasons, I remember being frustrated at each game's limitations. For instance--and this is just one example--in EverQuest, I remember having to spend inordinate amounts of time sitting and waiting for my character's wounds to heal and spell power to regenerate. I also remember being frustrated that I simply couldn't do any adventures alone, and if I wasn't able to find a hunting partner or two, I was out of luck. Asheron's Call was something of the converse; other players would figure out how to create an exceedingly powerful and independent character, and they couldn't be bothered to deal with me or anyone else, since they were too busy becoming even more powerful on their own. Anarchy Online falls somewhere between the two; I've enjoyed completing single hunts and missions on my own, but I've gained significantly more experience points hunting with companions. If nothing else, I've been able to strike up a conversation with other players based on the clothes they were wearing, how they looked, or whatever crazy animation their characters were performing (the solitus's "disco" animation is one of my favorites, as is the atrox's "chicken").

　　A trader with an assault rifle? Sure, why not? I've also really enjoyed creating different characters and playing them in different ways. Though Anarchy Online has futuristic equivalents of standard fantasy role-playing professions (for example, the enforcer is a melee weapon fighter; the nanotechnician is essentially a wizard), it also features some unique character classes, like the bureaucrat, which defeats its enemies with robot "pet" companions and with nanoformulas (the game's equivalent of magic spells) that damage, hinder, or enthrall its enemies. There's also the trader, a class that's proficient in using shotguns (of all things), as well as "trading" health, skill points, and nano energy (the game's equivalent of spell power), either by siphoning them off to friends or draining them from enemies. I also happen to think that the game's character-class system and skill system provide enough structure to give players a clear idea of their characters' strengths but are flexible enough to allow for a lot of freedom. For instance, in EverQuest, if you were a cleric (a healer), you didn't fight--you sat in the back and cast healing spells. In Anarchy Online, if you wish to play as a doctor (primary healing class), you can wear heavy armor and carry a heavy-duty pistol; or you can play as an adventurer and use that class's "quick healing" spells, or you can play as any other character class and use the standard healing spells that are available to any character, provided that character's skills are high enough. There's no "must-have" character class for an Anarchy Online adventuring party; any player character can be self-sufficient, provided that player has the good sense to stock up on treatment kits. I also really enjoy the game's missions; yes, they suffer from lag that's sometimes slight and sometimes pretty severe, but they're also completely self-contained and can be done at any time. All missions grant an actual award of an item or two, and you can occasionally pull up a mission with an exceedingly good reward (so mission kiosks are actually slot machines of a sort). Also, easy and medium-easy missions can usually be completed within an hour, tops, which makes them perfect for when I can't find a decent group to hunt with or would rather go it alone.

　　Next: Gerald's new home

　　Codes Editor

　　I've said a lot of really cruel things about Anarchy Online since its release. "The only 'Anarchy' here is trying to register for this game" was one of my personal favorites. Saying that Anarchy Online was buggy and unstable at first would be a gross understatement. It was absolutely unplayable, causing me undue amounts of grief as I lost characters to crashes, lost experience to lag death, and encountered a host of other annoying bugs. The only constant that remained when playing Anarchy Online was that my computer would develop some new bug after each session, be it turning off by itself, running out of memory and causing my cursors to vanish, or causing my hard drive to churn incessantly--in what could only be described as a plea for help from my poor, overworked PC.

　　Hello, traveler. I am an apprentice of the martial arts, let us hunt together? (15MA LFG!) Two weeks ago, I was reaching absolute frustration with AO; the instability issues were so severe that I even managed to level my Diablo II character past 50 in between crashes. I stuck with AO, however, patch after patch, because I had high hopes for the kind of game that it could be and, I'm happy to say, the kind of game it is quickly becoming. I have never been this amazed by character depth in an RPG. I've made no fewer than six characters so far, and I'm still not sure which one I'll stick to for the long haul. My latest character is a martial artist I've named Shouryuken, and my experiences with him so far have been exhilarating.

　　This young bronto doesn't stand a chance. I've enjoyed embarking on the various missions, but the greatest fun has been had while grouping with other characters for hunts. Just recently, I teamed with a group of players for several solid hours of relatively lag-free bronto hunting. In comparison with other computer RPGs, I was leveling extraordinarily fast, and the action was absolutely nonstop. While we were hunting in AO, brontos spawned at regular intervals, and we were never actually camping, just having enough time to heal and buff ourselves before the next melee. Each character had a specific role to play--long-range fighters pulled the enemies in, doctors kept us alive, and I threw lots of punches. While the gameplay wasn't especially visceral, the experience was intense and loads of fun.

　　What's more rewarding, the loot, the XP, or the memories? Now that I can play Anarchy Online for extended periods of time with no crashes, I'm decidedly hooked. Even with nearly all of the visual effects turned down to preserve a decent frame rate, Anarchy Online continues to impress me. In the wee hours of the morning when fewer players are online causing lag, I'm able to explore the many different cities, each massive sprawl a pleasure to behold. The passage of time plays out beautifully across the sky; weather effects are varied and well done, while the wonderful music sets the tone for the very distinctive sci-fi atmosphere that AO works to a T. Funcom has also injected a healthy dose of humor and wit into its world, with monsters that poke fun at gamer "leet speak" and designs that are veritably borrowed from other sci-fi universes, like Star Wars. I'm having great fun with AO currently, while I wait, desperate to see how the storyline will affect the game. In the meantime, you can find me hunting in a zone near you, so give me a tell and we can meet for a bronto burger or something.

　　Next: Greg's writes from Rubi-Ka

　　Executive Editor

　　Here I am outside of Omni-1! Hi guys! Needless to say I was dismayed along with everyone else at the condition in which the suitably named Anarchy Online shipped. Yet despite how badly I or any other player might have felt at not being able to get into the game, these problems hurt Anarchy Online and its developer Funcom more than any of us. The fact is, the game must now fight an uphill battle to regain the faith of its players, and for many players, the game is already a lost cause. That's too bad--Anarchy Online has a lot to offer. A lot of players have already found this out for themselves, but just imagine how much more successful the game might have been had its technical issues not been so numerous and so significant. Fortunately, most of the most egregious problems were fixed within a couple of weeks, and as such, I've set aside plenty of time in the evenings to explore the game. And as I do so, my experience with Anarchy Online keeps getting better. I'm especially impressed with how the game handles a lot of the gameplay issues that frustrated me in EverQuest but which I came to accept after many hundreds of hours' worth of play. Now I'm starting to wonder whether I'll be able to go back to EverQuest after Anarchy Online.

　　Anarchy Online is clearly inspired by EverQuest and the other major online role-playing games, including Ultima Online and Asheron's Call. It revisits a lot of the gameplay concepts pioneered in those games and reinvents them in a consistent science-fiction context. The result is a game that's both immersive and interesting to play in a variety of different ways. It also looks really impressive.

　　Here I am taking care of some mutant riffraff. The experience is well worth it! There are plenty of interesting gameplay details in Anarchy Online. One good example is how the game treats character death. In EverQuest, when you die, you typically lose a ton of experience points--sometimes even your current experience level--and warp back to a bind point without any of your equipment. You need to then run and retrieve your corpse, a process that's extremely frustrating at best and, in a worst-case scenario, maybe even impossible. As a result, death is certainly a fearsome prospect in EverQuest. Unfortunately, even the most experienced EverQuest players would readily admit that death is an inevitable part of the game. Yet the frustrating and very punitive consequences of dying in that game are rather inexplicable within the context. I'm a literalist, so it always kind of bothers me in games when you have a certain number of "lives" or when you just magically restart after you die--especially in a game like EverQuest, which is supposed to absorb you in its fantasy world.

　　Anarchy Online is set thousands of years in the future, where genetic reconstruction is readily possible. When you die, your body is essentially rebuilt in exact accordance with the last time you recorded your character's state. That is, you can essentially "save" your character at any time for a small fee at various insurance terminals that you'll find throughout the game. When you die, you just respawn at one of these, having lost any experience since you saved. You create your own risks in this fashion--if you save often, you'll have little to fear from being killed in battle. There are no frustrating, dangerous corpse retrievals.

　　My new helmet looks stylish--and it's flame-retardant too! I usually don't have a huge amount of time to put into these types of games--I certainly can't commit to a regular scheduled playing time--and this always puts me at a disadvantage in EverQuest, in which my warrior troll was pretty much useless until he found a good group of adventurers to fight alongside. That's why I'm really glad that Anarchy Online features so many solo-play options. First of all, any character can readily use healing treatment items to get himself back on his feet almost instantly between battles. Also, the random-mission feature makes for a persistently rewarding and viable means of earning cash and experience. The missions are straightforward but pretty fun, and they're already a lot better than when the game was first released.

　　I can't wait until the story of Anarchy Online begins this fall. The game's great sci-fi premise makes me hopeful that the story will be very engaging. All in all, I'm really enjoying Anarchy Online, and I plan to stick with it.

　　Next: Craig's travel journal

　　Downloads and Media Editor

　　Anarchy Online is the first online RPG I have ever played, so I can't compare it with others in the genre. As I have said before, I never played EverQuest or Ultima Online because I couldn't justify a pay-to-play system while I was in college--I wouldn't have played enough to make it worth my money. Now that I am able to actually check out these types of games, I think I was correct in my assessment. That has nothing to do with Anarchy Online itself. I've had good experiences with it, and I do think it's a good game. It's a personal preference--I just can't get involved with the game.

　　The Omni cities tower above you. I have been playing Anarchy Online off and on since it was released. The first couple of days were indeed troublesome. Timing out was frequent, so it took forever to gain levels. The worst part of the time-outs was losing experience and items. I'd lose half a level's worth of experience, and once even a nice pistol, when I'd start to see the lag set in. All I could do was groan and try again. Fortunately, this is one of the first things that I have seen fixed in the game. It seems to save your information much more frequently now. My character is a solitus engineer working for Omni-Tek. I still laugh at my automaton pet. It makes these ridiculous sounds and runs off to fight things. About five days after the game's release, the servers were becoming increasingly stable, and I was able to spend a lot of time playing in one sitting. I shot up from level two to level five in no time.

　　My engineering skills aren't enough to get my pet to steal. At this point in time I ventured from the newbie area to Rome, one of the Omni-Tek cities. The city is visually impressive because I love to see cities made to scale. It's a shame that Ultima IX had such frame rate problems, because I thought the cities in that game were done well. I've explored Rome quite a bit, and I've already forgotten where my apartment is. Not that I cared too much--putting a bunch of furniture there would have me feeling like I'm playing The Sims.

　　Apparently Harry Potter still exists in the future. Rome's atmosphere is dark and bleak. It's creepy to see Omni-Tek signs everywhere you turn and hear an intercom saying, "Omni-Tek is your friend." I spent the majority of the time walking around checking out the many shops. I wanted to find some clothes for my character. Apparently the company issues pistols but not clothing to its employees. I'm told that you are given a suit, but I never found one in my inventory. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford anything. Inflation must be a problem in the year 30,000 because pants cost more than I will ever earn in a lifetime.

　　I think this is when I grew despondent with the situation. I mean, if I can't even get a pair of pants, what is the world coming to? I wanted to resort to armed robbery and knife someone in an alley, but I don't have the skills to use a melee weapon. I don't think my character has programming skills either, or else I'd tell my automaton to go pickpocket some fool. Perhaps this all just means that I wasn't taking the game seriously. Or perhaps it's because I'm addicted to the Diablo II expansion at the moment. I'm sure that I will pick up the game in a little while and give it a more thorough spin. It's the same thing that happened with Baldur's Gate II. I played it for a couple of hours and stopped for a few months. Now I'm about 30 hours into the game and loving it.

　　Next: Amer takes in the sights and sounds

　　Senior Editor

　　I can't say I had too much interest in this game before its release, and the only interest I had in Anarchy Online after its release was because of the number of technical problems it was having and the astounding number of outraged players who felt that they were somehow wronged by the game's temporary shortcomings. But my lack of interest wasn't due to any faults with Anarchy Online at all. It's just that I really don't have any more patience to play massively multiplayer online role-playing games anymore. I was a huge fan some years ago. I actually started out playing MUDs, you know, those text-based online games that required every last drop of your imagination in order to make them halfway enjoyable. I participated in the beta of Meridian 59 and played the game for about six months before moving on to the beta of Ultima Online, which I played for a little more than a year. Playing Ultima Online made me realize just how many hours I was wasting each day on a glorified chat program. I know, that's a very unfair and unrealistic characterization of the game--arguably, one of the greatest online RPGs of all time--but it's still how I felt. So I stopped playing MMORPGs and instead flocked to the action, driving, sports, and even simulation genres.

　　Under the cover of night, this newbie agent plies his deadly trade. Having said all that, I still managed to create a character in Anarchy Online and to kill enough parrots--excuse me, I mean, reets of paradise--to reach level two. My character, Sonny "Jackryan" Fukuda is an agent without any pants, although he does have the best face paint this side of Rubi-Ka. I did have some trouble running the game at first (fixed only by an unsupported patch that a player posted on Funcom's forums), but the only problem I have with Anarchy Online is the constant lag, although this too has been fixed. I also firmly believe that the character-creation process is too similar to that of Phantasy Star Online to be more than just a coincidence. These are just personal pet peeves, however. Anarchy Online is certainly deserving of some praise. The graphics, for instance, are simply gorgeous. Sure, the character models aren't as detailed as Quake III's, but even I can appreciate what these graphics mean to the MMORPG community. The professions are numerous, and some of the choices you get are quite intriguing. I especially like the description for the agent class.

　　This smoldering reet of paradise lies in ruin at Jackryan's feet. I actually would like to play Anarchy Online, especially now, since all the other players in the office are relatively low-level, and I'd be able to adventure with them without being a liability. But my time is consumed with the likes of NBA Street, Gran Turismo 3, Counter-Strike, and Twisted Metal: Black right now...games that you can play for an hour at a time and still have a sense of accomplishment. Regardless, I do plan to make time and throw my life into complete disarray once Verant decides to release Star Wars Galaxies. That will mark my return to the world of online RPGs. But until then, "Jackryan" won't be killing anything much bigger than a parrot.

　　Next: Sam tours the huge world of Rubi-Ka

　　Hardware Editor

　　The Longest Journey looked like a great game. I didn't really play it much myself, as I think I lost my capacity for adventure game puzzles around 10 years ago, but I watched a fair amount of it and was really intrigued by the game's slyly futuristic setting, Euro-chic visual design, and character-driven story. If it were a book or a movie, I'm sure I would have been a fan.

　　Created by the same company, Anarchy Online appears to have some stylistic similarities with its adventure game sibling, and that's a good thing. Even in my first hour in the game, I was amazed by how lush the graphics and environments were. Running through the tall leet-infested grasses of the Omni-Tek training grounds in the glowing dawn light made a strong impression on me. Stepping through into the first zone of Omni-1, I was greeted by warm, jazzy music played in an intimate, carefully designed plaza.

　　A proud customer of Bronto Burger. It was the first week of the game's retail release, so sure I crashed out--a lot. But I rushed back on, because I was dying to see more of the world. Rubi-Ka is a destination with a style and atmosphere all its own. In playing both a clan and an Omni-Tek character, it seemed that both sides were equally interesting. The glitzy highrises of Omni-1 stand in stark contrast to the humble stone buildings of Tir, but there's still some charm in the run-down clan capital.

　　The world is enormous. I haven't seen even 1 percent of the tremendous area you can explore in the game. But I do have the sense that after seeing these central well-crafted areas that some repetition sets in--like in the missions, which take place in closed spaces randomly generated from a limited number of tilesets. After playing on and off for a couple of weeks, exploring Rubi-Ka isn't really enough to make me log back on, especially after getting so many of those continuing "server lost" errors. And I probably just don't have the patience for the stats-based hack-and-slash gameplay. I wasted plenty of time in college killing foozles in MUDs with +10 swords, and it's just as endless now as it was then.

　　About to keep the Mongol Meat at bay. Stats-based combat can be addictive, yes, but it's not necessarily very interesting. Perhaps I'm a bit too stuck in my action- and strategy-gaming ways, but I'd rather have outcomes based on my personal skills rather than my character's stats. And, getting right down to it, the combat really isn't the point. You're not killing for fun, but for profit. I felt a rush of envy and overwhelming poverty when window-shopping in Anarchy Online's expensive general stores. Lusting after items meant for characters 20 levels above you is a big incentive to keep playing. Anarchy Online is my first experience with the current crop of online role-playing games, and I'm not sure how long my first flash of wonderment will keep me logging in. Certainly, it'll help when the servers abruptly stop disconnecting me.

　　Next: Readers discuss the mainstream in computer gaming

Reader Letters

What Makes a Game Mainstream?

　　Games like RollerCoaster Tycoon become mainstream by being unique. A game becomes "mainstream" by being the most inventive and innovative game around. Diablo moved the mainstream to its level just by being as good as it was. The question should really be, "What makes a game not only good but stand out among its peers and predecessors?" Half-Life is probably the perfection of Doom and Quake, but when you strip it down, it's just another first-person shooter. When Doom came out, it was the first first-person shooter--no other of its type could even attempt to compare to it. Sure, there are other factors such as stability, replay value, learning curve, and interface. But there is a good list of games that fulfill most of these "requirements" and get high reviews from critics. For example, The Longest Journey didn't sell anywhere near what The Sims or Diablo sold. Still, I believe if developers aimed at inventive, innovative, and solid games, they will be rewarded in the end.

　　--T. Duong

　　There's a difference between "mainstream" and "successful." Mainstream games have a broad appeal to different age groups and interests, whereas successful games are usually measured by the quantities sold. Games that are mainstream are not necessarily successful, and vice versa. Quake is not exactly mainstream in the same way Super Mario is, but both are successful. Mario games are probably more successful because they're not restricted to mature audiences. Family movies and TV shows have the same benefit.

　　Mario games are successful because they're not restricted to one age group. Developers and clients I've worked with in the games industry usually target success by being conservative rather than innovative. They'll compare their plan to the previous success of their competition, their own licensed hits, marketing data, or the input from focus groups. A mainstream game can be created by being "kid-safe," but if the targeted age group is too young, older gamers will not be as interested, so it becomes less mainstream. Measuring a satisfying game, however, is a different topic.

　　--David Clemons

　　Although I agreed with many of your points, I thought one thing was overlooked: the lack of violence. Many of the popular games mentioned, such as The Sims, RollerCoaster Tycoon, and so on, contain no violent content. At our place, I define mainstream as games that my girlfriend plays, too, and if she even thinks that there is any kind of fighting involved, she's not interested. I don't think that this is because she's a pacifist at heart, but that these games truly don't interest her. Conscientious parents can buy a game like RollerCoaster Tycoon for their kids, and end up loving it themselves. So in a nutshell, a non-violent theme can make a good game a smash hit by appealing to a much broader segment of the population than a shooter, RTS game, or dungeon crawl.

　　--Mike Baker

　　[It] would seem to me that had most developers actually made games based on your criteria, those games would have resulted in a very low standard, and we might not have experienced games like Thief or Baldur's Gate. Making games for the sake of appealing to the mainstream gamer and for money is horrible in my opinion. Really good games are too much "art" to let them be ruined by money.

　　--Asger Kallesoe

　　Next: More reader letters

　　Deer Hunter would've piled up if it hadn't been so inexpensive. The problem that exists today in PC gaming is that you have one of three choices to try and move a lot of software: (1) Come up with an innovative way to "play" an everyday concept and count on almost no coverage in the game media since the people writing for the sites are hardcore much like the readership. A simulation of an everyday activity seems kind of banal to the railgunning, tank-rushing elite without some kind of hook. If Will Wright hadn't been involved with the Sims, I doubt much fuss would have been made about the game until after it came out. When you lose that immediate interest, you lose your early adopters. The buzz from these early adopters is what the companies use to guarantee shelf space for their games, and in cases of shelf space in discount retailers, what sells is what shows. The only exception is bargain software. Operation Flashpoint is one of the most original and well-thought-out first-person shooters I have seen in a while, but I have seen much less press coverage of it than of Aliens vs. Predator 2. (3) Get a good license (see Aliens vs. Predator) or put out a game with "Blizzard" on the box.

　　--Gabriel

　　I believe what makes a game mainstream is purely hype. Maybe not hype from an Internet site or a magazine, but hype by word of mouth. Just take a look at Mortal Kombat. These games brought nothing new (gameplay-wise) to the table, but it was a hugely popular series. It wasn't due to the great gameplay, graphics, or replay value--it was due to kids informing other kids about the game.

　　--Steven Sneddon

　　There are many reasons why a game is popular. Making a revolutionary game is a pretty high risk, but can lead to huge profits and payoffs. I think that for a game to be popular, you would need to have originality in the storyline. Without a good storyline, games will become boring fairly quickly. You should connect the missions in the game with each other, and the way you work on them should affect the outcome. If you lose in a strategy game, why must you replay it? How about making you take a new path to victory? You need the storyline to become part of the game or to get to know the game.

　　Arcanum is an example of something original among role-playing games. Innovation is important too. If you played every game in your favorite genre out there, then you don't want to play a crappy rip-off with a good-for-nothing storyline. You want something new, something that will appeal to you. I think that the upcoming Arcanum is a good example. Hardcore role-playing gamers have played many a fantasy-oriented game, as well as some post-apocalyptic ones. Arcanum offers them something new, because it is based in the industrial age. It's appealing to them, and beginners will certainly not be turned off because it still offers all the stuff a normal RPG would (if not more).

　　Lastly, for a game to be effective, you need to make it have surprises all the time, not just in the beginning. It's a great feeling when you learn a game and discover a new tactic or something, and use it against your friends. The developers should try to make this feeling stick around. Hardcore gamers should be able to find new loopholes and strategies, too. The game should adapt to you, and not the other way around, it should offer you new surprises and things to look forward to. This will also make you remember the game. I have a great example: I was playing Deus Ex and I decided to explore the women's area. I was yelled at by someone in there, and then when I visited my boss for the mission briefing, he told me I'll get into more trouble if I go there again. I think this is really awesome: the game showed how even small actions like that have an effect on what people think of me.

　　--Voytek

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