IT’S ANARCHY, I TELL YOU! [Author: Lum the Mad]

Lots of news on Anarchy Online lately, here’s some summarizing for those of you not interested in eFront raping sCary’s taxes or something.

Gibme.com, which is apparently a Norwegian online gaming mag, cornered Tommy Strand, AO’s lead designer, and got him to fess up to tons of stuff. The target date for release currently is this summer (in Norway at any rate) and a P2-450 is the recommended spec, which will make AO the most demanding MMOG out in terms of hardware horsepower. (On the plus side, he promises it will run on your modem dialup just fine.)

Personally, I belong to the group of “hardcore gamers” who notice the big demand today for something new after EverQuest and Asheron’s Call. We believe that Anarchy Online will be the next MMORPG which a lot of “hardcore gamers” will enjoy. We already have established a fair share in the MMORPG community worldwide, and we believe that our science fiction world will be a welcome change for players who are tired of “orcs and elves”. But, we do hope even more people will discover how fun it is playing with others in a huge virtual world. We have tried to make Anarchy Online a fantastic gaming experience not only for new players, but also for the well established players of online games. It is a unique way of meeting people on the internet, and a lot more exciting than chatting! 🙂

Stratics also held an AO HoC with more infobits dribbling out; here’s one on the PvP side of things.

A9-Lokist: question for the devs: how will the war between omni tek and the clans be represented? will there be large scale PVP battles? will either side be able to capture territory?

Tommy: We will be releasing story sequences during the live period of 4 years. During this time players will be participating in events that lead up to story events. Some of these events can be as you suggested large scale PVP battles. The sides can not automatically capture territories dynamically .. only through a story event.

And again, from the AOHoC, Tommy on AO’s release date. In other words, don’t expect to get AO from EBWorld in March like they’re promising:

The original date was 1st quarter and the pre-order sites have calculated late march to be the release date. We are no longer aiming for 1st quarter (since that ends in about 20 days .. hehe) The beta is going fairly smooth and with the coming stress test we’ll know the exact date. There is very little NEW functionality beeing added from this point. We have one patch in the pipeline now with a large new set of features including the organizations and the next non bugfix patch is most likely the last patch to include new functionality before live To the question where we will release first .. the answer is both Europe and Us.

And probably of least importance, as you can see from the probably not terribly exclusive screenshot over there in the corner, Lumcorp now has a presence in Rubi-ka. Expect a full preview of Anarchy Online as soon as we finish poking and prodding.