If you liked EQ1 and FFXI I woulld recommend Vanguard.  

AO is an interesting game but there are better, more active options out there.

Roll up 3 new accounts, you'll need to multi-log / box all three characters and then run missions to level up and collect loot. You will be playing alone for the most part.

Engineer, MP and Agent. Not the easiest classes but those 3 played together will give you all the buffs you'll need for 150 levels.

AO is indeed old school. Custom made Implants, abilities and some careful planning is required.

Best MMO I ever played. I wish Funcom would just let this one rest in piece instead of loading a new graphics engine over a very outdated game mechanics wise.

Whatever you do KEEP AN OPEN MIND! The game is old, but everything about the lore and concept of the game is, to me, still one of the best ideas EVER in the MMO universe.

Wish they would make a AO2.

Was fun in its day, and i do go back from time to time. I do believe they have f2p options, try it out and see if you like it. They do have some good deals to get all the expansions. <-- last time i looked of course, may have changed.

Originally posted by Magiknight
I'm thinking about downloading this game and trying it out. Games I have enjoyed were Everquest and FFXI. Games that bore me are WoW, TSW, and Rift. I know that AO is an old school game. But does it still have that old school feel?

Yeah its pretty oldschool.

The client isnt very big, you can use your Funcom account, just download it and maybe the trouble begins already´:p

The game is pretty hard in development these weeks, that mutch that i resubbed.

Its a sandbox queen with 11 years of content and a totally free to play original AO, just the expansions are all disabled for fr00bs, but thats kinda vanilla AO :)..

Actually im playing more fr00b characters then my pay'd ones because the payed ones are all too high and the lower levels in AO are plain fun, Subway, Temple, etc.

You cannot play AO, its a sandbox, you need to settle in.

Get your appartment, social clothes, and and and, the top of that is a crazy development team, supported by a lot of Funcom enthusiast employes that all love the world of Rubi-Ka.

They are not all the corporative typ of developer, in fact, we can see our developers and producer, director and whatnot from time to time at events or parties. I tell you that, because i think people have to understand that AO works a little different then nowadays mainstream games.  The developers have all been players and still are ^^

The servers are about to merge to new technology.

The sources have been spaghetti salad in the beginning, but hordes of people took care and what we have now, is a in-development dx9 client. Well, we, that is the producer allone actually, but i think that really may change soon™.

Funcom is as easy as the reality of developing such crazy things and the reality is not always nice to the players.

Everyone is dual logging because we all have our mule chars on fr00b accounts.

I think, everyone should have a character on Rubi-Ka ^^

To make the grafix look a little bit better, raise your color saturation up and force AntiAlias on the AnarchyOnline.exe .

Its also a CPU hog, Dualcore is clunky, i suggest 4 cores and more.

All that changes, when the new engine is in, but ... soon™

To be more precise, here is what you can do as a free player, a fr00b:

- create up to 14 Funcom game accounts in your My Account section

- every account can have up to 8 characterslots

- create 12 professions/classes out of 14 as the Keeper and the Shade professions are bound to the Shadowlands expansion

- fr00bs can level up to level 200 and have full access without any limits to the original Anarchy Online

- fr00bs have the Notum Wars expansion, wich makes towerwars and landcontrol possible

- fr00bs seem to be loved by Funcom as they have received Composite Nanos as well as AI building access

- fr00bs can own a standart appartment and decorate it

- fr00bs are totally cute !

- fr00bs have more, but im out of mojo, Inner Sanctum with fr00bs is simple awesome

- there is new buffs, items, clothes, weeeeeeeeee, its endless, fly your yalm, make a crafter, carry modified ShadowLands weapons, turn the fuse off.

AO = Homeplanet ^^

Originally posted by Onomas

Wish they would make a AO2.

 Agreed.

AO is an all time classic.

It definitivly have the old school feeling for me, but as someone said it is a world you need to live and not just play :)

I started playing over 10 years ago and I still find fun in it. Me and my wife just started a couple new chars and are roaming around on RK2. There so many options that if you get bored of doing one thing, you can always do something else.

It's a bit old and not the newest graphics, but it has lore, charm and lots of cool stuff!

And you can try it out for free.

EDIT: Forgot to say that this is my all time favorite game of all generes :)

What about me?

I used to play Star Wars Galaxies (before the NGE), and liked City of Heroes (before they took it away from me).  I also played EVE on occasion.

I'm not a big "twitch" fan, but I like a lot of good roleplay tools, customization, and a place where I can make interesting and unique characters.  Would this game work for me?

Originally posted by aRtFuLThinG

Originally posted by Onomas

Wish they would make a AO2.

 Agreed.

AO is an all time classic.

 

 

Nah they would just stream line it, dumb it down, and ruin the name.  Sequils im never a fan of.  If they could somehow modernize AO fully, combat mechanics and all that...and do something better with SL that its current use as a way to bypass origional content...then they would have something.

Im not sure as to the viability of what they are doing with AO.  My guess is that most who play it are hardcore fans whove been there from the start, and players with super low budget computers who dont have many options for complex mmorpgs.  Updating the engine just for textures and backround might drive them away.

The game needs a combat overhaul, to be a modern game.  As far as im aware all they were getting is a game engine that uses the GPU finally, and some new world textures...and its taking them longer to do than develop an entire mmorpg from the ground up (granted they have like 10 people who have been working on it)

Originally posted by Beatnik59

What about me?

I used to play Star Wars Galaxies (before the NGE), and liked City of Heroes (before they took it away from me).  I also played EVE on occasion.

I'm not a big "twitch" fan, but I like a lot of good roleplay tools, customization, and a place where I can make interesting and unique characters.  Would this game work for me?

AO isn't twitch based and has several pages of skills not to mention implants, armour, specials and weapons so you can tweak your character to your hearts content.  Haven't found a game to match it on this part.

Originally posted by PWN_FACE
I've been trying to get in, but I keep getting this runtime error when patching. I'm on XP. Anyone know what to do about this? I checked the official forums and didn't see anything. I ran the repair exe they have and tried reinstalling but no go.

You might need .NET Framework 3.5/4 or a visual c++ runtime(2005 or 2008). Try Windows Updates and make sure your system is up to date.

Originally posted by PWN_FACE
But can a total noob play this game without multi-boxing? I mean, will i be able level up by myself if I can't find other people when I'm online? I'm in GMT+ 9, so most games I play are off peak when I'm online. And is the leveling experience fun for an explorer or does it feel like a grind? Is the economy impossible for low levels now? Or can we buy gear as needed to level? Or are drops such that we can farm our own gear or implants or whatever we need?

Economy in AO has been screwed for a long time already. As a totally new player without friends to back you up you are going to struggle when trying to keep your character decently equipped. As a new player you will find even the premade implants quite expensive. At low levels you don't have that many good ways to make money really.  You can do generic missions and loot all the trash loot and sell them to vendors (not going to give you much credits but better than nothing), blitz missions at certain levels for certain items (like concrete cushions, nano crystals) higher level players might buy these if they are lazy but even this is going to be tough because population is so small nowadays.

When I was playing actively for about 2,5 years (I quit around launch of Lost Eden but came back several times just to check what was going on) economy was already weird. Anarchy Online is a great game, I loved it back in the day but trust me if you don't have any friends playing you are going to be in an uphill struggle :(

If you decide to give it a try with expansions, remember not to level exclusively in Shadow Lands because you're going to level fast but with no money to equip your character. Better to level in Rubi-Ka with your first character.

Originally posted by PWN_FACE
But can a total noob play this game without multi-boxing? I mean, will i be able level up by myself if I can't find other people when I'm online? I'm in GMT+ 9, so most games I play are off peak when I'm online. And is the leveling experience fun for an explorer or does it feel like a grind? Is the economy impossible for low levels now? Or can we buy gear as needed to level? Or are drops such that we can farm our own gear or implants or whatever we need?

Yes, you can play solo and build a character from the ground up. You won't find teams often; exceptions are the 25-60 range in Temple of Three Winds and Foremans 60-100. AO is grindy but funcom did add daily missions to ease the pain. The economy at low levels is very bad.

 Armor, weapons, deck slot items and implants/clusters are dropped in missions. Peopele can make Carb armor for you, it may take a couple hours of begging, but someone will do it for you. Weapons can be found as mission rewards, in chests and as mob drops.