Anarchy Online

[Morreion]

BioBreak - The Day of Days: Anarchy Online’s Launch

So what went wrong with this launch? Just how bad was it, really? Let’s take a trip through the timeline of the disaster:

* June 27, 2001 – Anarchy Online launches in NA and Norway. “The number of subscribers we had at launch were much more than we had anticipated.” (CM Tor Andre)
* June 27, 2001 – According to Wikipedia, “Customers were unable to register to play using the product keys included with their installation discs. Others were accidentally billed for the registration fee twice, although they were never charged for the second bill. The game software would crash repeatedly, according to reports from players. Significant portions of the game world were inaccessible, and the game’s servers were routinely out of service.”
* July 2, 2001 – “Numerous complaints from Anarchy Online customers cited problems with registration and difficulties retrieving patches needed to play the game.” Funcom issues a statement through Gamespot saying that they were hard at work fixing the registration system.
* July 2, 2001 – Funcom announces 35,000 registered accounts created.
* July 3, 2001 – Funcom issues a statement on their website, apologizing for the disaster, and promising that no player would be charged until the mess got fixed.
* August 12, 2001 – Funcom sends out a Post Launch Newsletter, detailing why the launch went so wrong.
* September 21, 2001 – To lure players back, Funcom opens a free one-week trial.

I can be nostalgic now about the original bad MMO launch! *laughs* The launch was indeed bad, with unplayable lag in cities. They tried to have 1 big server, but that didn't work out- they ended up with 2. After the first month or so, AO settled down into a good game that I enjoyed playing. It was my 2nd MMO, and my first sci-fi setting. It had instanced missions for groups and individuals- you could choose your difficulty settings for these missions- and it was completely 3D, unlike UO, which to me looked amazing. I'll never forget seeing my first sunrise in game- stirring music queued up and played, it was a wonderful moment. The combined level & class/skill system was interesting as well, taking a bit of the best of both worlds.

AO was ahead of its time (and ahead of the technology that existed then), and though it looks dated now, is still not a bad game. You can play it for free.

TTH - Anarchy Online Developer Journal #5: The Best Memories

Anarchy Online

[Morreion]

Massively - ReSubbed Episode 3: Anarchy Online

Check out the 36-minute video of an AO visit- ahh, nostalgia.

[Morreion]

Anarchy Online : Ninth Year Anniversary Celebrations (MMORPG.com)

Hard to believe that AO is 9 years old! I remember it fondly.

Anarchy Online details account merges and spruces up art (Massively)

The long-promised graphics overhaul is allegedly coming closer to release. I'm going to check it out when that happens.

The Game Archaeologist and the Girdle of Anarchy: The history (Massively)

From the first sci-fi MMO having 'the worst launch in history' to the mystical Shadowlands expansion to the first major game to go F2P.

The Game Archaeologist and the Girdle of Anarchy: Your stories (Massively)

Fond player memories and stories from AO. Some of my own:

I remember watching the two suns rise one morning, accompanied by stirring music. I was just blown away by this (I was used to UO 2D graphics!).

I remember being part of a group of about 30 players outside the neutral city of Borealis who decided to try to take out a deep red NPC Clan guardsman. We were pecking away at his health bit by bit, while he would run around saying stuff like, "I warned you, <player name>! You're going to die now!" And he would blow away a player with a huge damage shot from his powerful assault rifle *laughs* I think we got him down to maybe half health before he killed all of us. Awesome fun watching people who he would call out by name run in panic trying to avoid the inevitable doom as we all chipped a point or two of health from him with our puny shots.

The Game Archaeologist and the Girdle of Anarchy: A chat with Colin Cragg (Massively)

Cragg is the head of AO now.

The Game Archaeologist and the Girdle of Anarchy: My expedition (Massively)

Justin Olivetti goes back to AO and gives us his impressions of the F2P game 9 years after release.

AO is the first fully 3D MMO I played back in 2001. I remember it with fondness, and go back and play it occasionally. It was the first MMO to use instanced play, with its quest-like missions into certain city doorways or cave mouths that generated random corridor & chamber maps. You could pick the level of difficulty, and whether it was a solo or group mission. There'd be a decent reward at the end. Cool system.