I'd heard much about how buggy Anarchy Online was, but I expected to at least get past my first login before experiencing it. Maybe this is part of the game? You know, to weed out those people that aren't really dedicated gamers?

After clicking login a bunch of times, I finally got somewhere.. minutes of waiting at a dialog. Progress! I must be leveling in the 'dealing with broken technology' skill!

Unfortunately, the server decided I wasn't yet at a high enough level to continue.

The 'first login' menu didn't have the 'delete char' button grayed out, so I decided to see what would happen if I deleted anyway. :>

I finally entered the game and created an Opifex female agent by the name of Silvai. Unfortunately, I hadn't read the message-boards to realize the agent class was basically a walking nerf-ball thanks to patch 12.6. The 'special attack' that I could rarely do actually did less damage than my normal attacks! Apparently this is Funcom's innovative new way to keep classes balanced, by making them all useless. The only problem is, they only made agent useless. Regardless, I arrived in the newbie starting area.

There are NPC guides in the game that are supposed to answer your newbie questions. You have to be rather firm with them to get an answer as you can see..

Amusingly, the newbie chat channel was busy discussing how much better Ultima Online was than this game.:> They'd even heard of me!

The conversation was cut rather short, however..

*Your skill in 'dealing with broken technology' has increased 5.0%*

Anarchy Online has a lot of clothing options for you to customize your character with. At least, as long as you don't mind looking like a tramp.

As I was saying..

Anarchy Online basically depends on you running computer-generated 'missions', which in addition to making it feel like a massively single-player online game, means you'll spend a lot of your time in randomized rooms. Here I am fighting something through a door in such a randomized room. Apparently these advanced weapons of the future (I have a solar powered rifle..) are so advanced they can shoot through solid objects!

I'd like to say this hall-of-mirrors bug was some isolated chance happening that the developers couldn't have possibly caught and fixed in the months during beta, or before release, or after release, but you run into it every hour or so as the game forgets to draw door portals. Then again, maybe it's a feature?

"Hey Joe, the boss sez we needs 'particul effects'!"
"Like how much of 'em?"
"Dunno, he sez u can never have enuf of a good thing!"
"k"

This is a single, normal shot of my 'El Dieu' pistol by the way.

So what does this have to do with my review? Nothing, I just thought he died really effeminate. :)

A pox on thee, vile door!

After many tedious hours on the leveling treadmill (which consists of targeting a monster, pressing 'q', waiting, sitting, waiting, and repeating) with no real light at the end of the tunnel, I decided to check with the locals to see if there was something I was missing. You know, that part they call "the fun".

"Anarchy Online: A different definition of fun."

I discovered some of that 'different definition of fun' shortly after when I fell into a hole with no escape in the city of Tir.

I went ahead and '/petition'ed, knowing full well from experience with Ultima Online that I could count on it being rather pointless. 2 hours later, I gave up and '/terminate'd to escape.

Surprisingly, 4 hours later while I was shopping, my plea was answered! Of course, it was no longer of consequence considering I killed myself 4 hours ago rather than go mad staring at the walls of my level-designer imposed cell.

The really sad part about this is the 6 hour customer service turnaround time puts Anarchy Online near the top in terms of customer service when compared to the other big MMOGs. I'm hesitant to praise it for that though, as it's like saying how lucky you were for catching the plague instead of Ebola.

I remember people noting the graphics were incomplete at release. Well, they still are.

Eradim was asking what the equivalent of EQ's "/who" command was. Granitehand pointed toward "/list", but when you use that, you get a rather interesting message (seen at the bottom). I have a feeling I'll be at a job interview someday and they'll say, "Well, we would have hired you, but it seems in a game you once used an UNAUTHORIZED COMMAND and were LOGGED".

The poor pathing of mobs made me feel right at home having played Ultima Online. :> Here I am taking a quick rest break, safe in the knowledge that the door-jam will protect me. This is obviously a renegade 'clan door-jam'. And who said Anarchy Online had no story yet?

Apparently, Funcom finds faces highly overrated. In addition to it being nothing more than shaded blank polygons at the core, neither of us could hit each other. Well, we'd hit, but just do no damage. This went on for 15 minutes until I managed to break free, like a spatial anomaly being escaped by Picard from Star Trek, or like a fat person being escaped by anything edible and capable of locomotion.

Professional level designers are not shy to making bold, original statements like this "door to nowhere".

This is a polite way of saying, "You probably should just go watch TV for a while until the server starts working".

After a particularly bad crash and small revert, I found myself once more attacking a ferocious door, but this time with an audience. Apparently the crash had rattled the brains of this poor mob who was quite happy to wander around and watch me maim its randomized friends.

Some missions require you to find an object and return it. From the picture, I'd say this was a 'find and return a spleen' mission.

My character moved up quite a few levels! She advanced her 'buggy' skill to "shooting through walls" instead of the more newbie "shooting through doors".

The best part of this level is that your camera often gets stuck outside the level. It makes it more challenging, and challenging is fun, right?

My first group!

Unfortunately, we met in a city which means moving at 1fps.

We picked up a third member and headed for 'the beach' to do some killing.

Crazy Ivan's Level Design Tips, page 78:

"Nothing makes a game more fun than putting an aggressive ubermob in the zone newbies like to hunt small game in! It will give them a sense of challenge and adventure, and keep them from leveling too fast! Make sure it can run faster than your players to provide for maximum fun factor!"

Unfortunately, death returns one to a city which means returns one to 1 frame per second.

The server felt bad for me having to endure 1 frame per second conditions and gave me a break by crashing.

Off we went to the beach again.

This time with a larger group.

We would have had a larger group, but the game decided it would be more fun to gently remind us we're basically playing a beta.

I'm not sure what's more dangerous, player-eating monsters, or player-eating levels. Regardless, there's something inherently funny about people getting stuck on a cliff.

I went exploring the shops around Athen and found a liquor store. Despite this beer being billed as the strongest stuff available, drinking a whole mess of cans of it did nothing for me. Not even a *hic*. What self-respecting game designer puts potent booze in their game but doesn't let you get drunk?

I decided to go cliff-climbing as well. Due to the horrible collision detection in the game, you can scale basically any sloped surface by jumping along it. I found this nice mountain outside of the junkyard..

Halfway..

.. and I reach the top! It's not a bug, it's a feature, right?

On the way down, I suddenly found I was running out into space instead of running down the hill. My character was quite happy just standing around in space.

Well, at least until I took another step. I must have lost my 'happy thought'. I tried to concentrate on canceling my account, but it was too late for happy thoughts by that point..

I decided I might as well go explore the architecture of the cities to give myself time to forget about my troubles 'flying'. I was poking around the city between Tir and Athen when I discovered a certain area of the map that when looked at, causes the game to crash. The fun part is, when you login, guess what you're looking at? That's right, that area that caused the game to crash. So basically, that ended my Anarchy Online career.

We must comment, of course!