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Anarchy Online Q&A


Labeled With  anarchy online pc funcom
Written by DM on Monday, April 10 2006

We got the chance to speak with Anarchy Online Game Director Morten Byom about AO's past, present, and future.

So, Anarchy Online has been up and running well for awhile now. In retrospect, how do you think the game has done now that it is in its mid-life?

Anarchy Online has done very well breaking new ground in a business genre dominated by large multinational companies. We have established a firm position and are thriving in a growing MMO market. Having years of experience developing an MMO has been extremely beneficial to Funcom, this experience is of course used to develop the next generation of games.




For those of our readers who are not familiar with Anarchy Online, can you give us a brief rundown of the storyline and the game itself?

The storyline of Anarchy Online is not easily described. It is one of the deepest stories ever told in a game and its continuously being updated with new chapters. I will try to give you a short summary of the most important aspects of the backstory.

Anarchy Online is a Sci-Fi MMO set in the future. Humans have traveled throughout the galaxies looking for new planets to colonize. One of the many planets that were colonized contained a previously unknown substance (called Notum) granting humans extraordinary powers. This is the planet Rubi-Ka where the game takes place.

A war is now being fought on Rubi-Ka between a corporation named Omni-Tek and small rebel forces trying to overthrow Omni-Tek in an attempt to gain their freedom.




The game launched over 4 years ago now, and it is still going strong. What do you think is the greatest factor in AO’s success?

Anarchy Online has broken with a lot of the “norms” in the MMO genre. Players have almost unlimited opportunities to tweak their characters and hone them to perfection. Your character has 73 various skills he can adjust as they like. All of these can be boosted through various ways, be it leveling, acquiring new items, receiving special boosts through our Perk system, installing implants and much more. It’s this power to affect your own characters and destiny that so many of our players appreciate. Your character can truly be unique in a world filled with tens of thousands of players.

What has been the general reaction to the latest expansion, Alien Invasion?

Alien Invasion was very well received overall. It set out to provide content for organisations (which is what we call player guilds in AO) and it did that very well. It also brought a uniquely science fiction update to the storyline with an Alien menace attacking Rubi-Ka. The player cities have proved very popular and players seem to enjoy the alien attacks as they are something a little different from your regular MMO gameplay, and that’s something I think our playerbase appreciates.

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