All Posts by Phoenix_Hawk

On RK you could go anywhere at any level (excluding lvl locked dungeons), it was just a matter of going there. With SL there are multiple new large regions but you progress through them based on your level or if you can do the required task for each ring (acts as a pass and buffs some stuff) to move to the next region. Although once you have keys to side gardens/sanctuaries (kinda like towns) for a region you can hop from one to the other but if you got SL after playing a char to 200 and wanted to go to the sixth region you would have to get yourself through the five before it first (could skip the first actually with a Jobe portal). Rather than the grid or whom-pahs there are many statues through each region that you can access from the gardens/sanctuaries of that region and keys can get you from one gardens/sanctuaries to another.

There are no real lvl locks for anything in SL short of some quests and the starter area (can go back in till lvl 50 I think). You could play from lvl 1-220 in SL and never go to RK once if you wanted. SL is mainly for the much better XP and the only place to get SK (Shadow Knowledge, XP to gain lvls past lvl 200) plus of course SL only items. With SL RK would be for getting various items of interest from the different dungeons and quests, tokens plus anything relating to the AI and LE expansions.

The perks, new items, new nanos, new areas and such from each expansion didn't really change how you play, just added more to play with and more options. SL was the first expansion and the biggest by far in regards to game area and only one to add new profs of the three. Closest thing to totally changing the way you play the game would be how a lot of people used the generated missions to level but with SL you will get most of your XP at lvls 1-200 from various mobs outside or in the various static SL dungeons.

Because most MMORPGs have far more to it than this does. With others there's many varied places to go, items to try to get, mobs to fight, things to do, abilities to try to gain and so on. All of which would take far longer than a one to two week trail period allows. Here aside from gaining the licenses for the higher ships you'll be able to do and try about everything the game offers within that trial period. The description makes it sound like EvE with a different ship control method but it's really much closer to Quake in space than EvE.

FC paid support staff is shared between all their games. There aren't AO only or AoC only ones so they did not pull people from AO's GM staff as they are just FC game support staff. Since they're shared and since AoC was only just launched the current mess is to be expected. There were various problems apparently where people would need to petition but as always there would be a lot of petitions about simple game stuff they could ask other players about or read the freakn manual for but don't. As a results everyone from AO and AoC that needs GM help is boned till things calm down.

Another thing is it's summer. At this time of year the students go home, people go on vacation, spend time doing other things outside or what not and so on. As a result the player population always goes down and as the player population goes down so too do the number of ARKs as they are players themselves. So first the paid support staff are tied up with things at AoC and to make matters worse many of the AO volunteer support staff are not around either. Since AoC is brand new they likely don't have much in the way of volunteer support staff yet so even more needs to be done by the GMs. It's basically a mess all around.

In regards to someone leaving AO dev staff that's hardly new. People come and go from one game to another in a company constantly.

AO Universe is a better source for info on what quests and what not are available.

There's the FAQ in this forum which also has links to other sites to get help from. RK2 (Rimor) has the largest population but the AO population isn't as big as other games such as WoW.

Regarding levelling how long it takes depends on if you have the expansions and how you play. With SL levelling is much faster then if you're willing to team you can move along quite well. Someone that really wanted to push things managed to do lvl 200 or maybe even lvl 220 in twenty-four hours of game time so how long it takes you depends a lot on how fast you want to level. Although your first chat will take some time as you don't know your way around and can't get at items as easily. A good Org will help you there.

Also this is a MMORPG, not a single player RPG. The idea of these types of games is that you can do whatever rather than follow some scripted routine of one quest after another like in single player RPGs. WoW isn't more mature, they just made levelling too easy and had it so you could solo up to cap before needing to do much anything with others. There are some quests and such you can do if you want to so as to gain some quest specific reward but you're not required to do any of that if you don't want to.

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Originally posted by burmese
yep, today Silirrion put out another Letter from the Game Director:
current patch is 17.8, 17.9 will be next, then they expect to have the new graphics engine in 18.0

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That's not how software version numbering works. There could be a patch 17.99999999999999999.0 before 18.0 comes along. The graphics engine upgrade is planed for the later part of the year, how many version patches we get before then is impossible to say.

Also remember this is an engine update, not a graphics in general update. Originally they said all it would do was take advantage of current video cards to take the work load off the CPU and that visual improvements would come after that over time. Now it looks like at least some things will look better right away but still, don't expect night and day changes. It will look better but the main gain at the start will be that it should play more smoothly. Considering how many textures and meshes there are in the game it will be some time before they can give everything to most things a facelift.

See "C-30 Can you Rest your Skills?" in my Anarchy Online F.A.Q. thread in this forum.

C-30 Can you Rest your Skills?
When you start you'll be given some IPRs (Improvement Point Resets) and you get more at each TL. If you have the expansions then you'll have more IPRs to play with than fr00bs and can also buy them for credits at a terminal in the Hardware Dimension in Jobe Plaza (250 million creds is the base value) or for 50k VP at one of the LE shop terminals in the Tower Shops.

To reset a skill you first must stip off everything from the three tabs in your wear window (ctrl + 1). Next open your skills window ("U"), click the "i" icon in the top left corner of that window, select "reset skill" from the menu that pops up then click on the skill you want to rest in the skills window. When you do that a button will show up towards the bottom of the window with the number of remaining IPR noted beside it, click the button to reset that skill. Map Nav can't be reset and abilities generally can't be reset properly since to raise a skill very much at all you need to increase the related abilities as well.

After big game changes like expansions you may also get a single use "reset all skills" option as well which will reset everything including abilities but still not map nav (some abilities may not be fully reset if you have put some points in map nav). This is a limited time option FC gives us due to the changes that expansion brought us but you don't need that expansion to get the reset. Right now with LE it is possible they will offer another "reset all skills" reset later on (said they might do that before LE came out) but last I heard they have no plans to do so.

Sounds more like a firewall issue. The game is trying to connect but can't due to your firewall not being setup properly to allow it to connect.

Missions generated by mission terminals will give you a map location and a key. With those you get from NPCs (aka quests) you need to pay more attention to what they tell you and the mission description as not all will give you a defined go here location and they tend to be completed above ground rather than in mission areas. If you get really lost check out AO Universe for help. The NPC missions tend to provide more specialized or unique rewards and can come in mission chains where you do this and that for one NPC then get directed to the next in the line to do this and that and so on till you get to the end.

Missions from different areas can send you to other areas depending on the mission level. Just pull missions from different zones to see where they send you (don't actually do them) then go back to pull missions from the ones that sent you the easiest to get to locations. Think at around that level if you're Clan pulling them in OA or Tir can get you sent to locations in the city of Bliss which you can get to from OA. Another thing is don't pull one mission at a time, pull several all to around the same area.

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Originally posted by mo0rbid

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I take it you never tried the grid?

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nope, Fixers can hack into the grid and teleport theselves around right?

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There's the regular grid and the fixer grid. Regular grid has a terminal in most zones then the fixer grid (there's a self-only and team version) has multiple exit points in almost all zones and is entered from regular grid terminals. Multiple profs have nanos that can stuff their char and/or team into the regular grid from anywhere on RK. There are also beacon warps on RK for engies to bring people to their location. Add the whom-pahs and a yalm on top of that and getting around RK isn't too bad at all.

In SL there are statues all over each area you can use to get to and from one of the two SL sides sanctuary and/or garden. SL recall nanos for engi and MPs can bring people in their team to their location (little more involved than the RK engi beacon warps). There are garden/santuary keys to get you from one to another plus vet items (beacons) to help you get to or from SL and RK.

Getting around in AO isn't bad at all, if you have to go way out to the ends of RK where there are no handy access points you could be flying about in your yalm for a few minutes from the nearest one but generally (especially if you're a fixer) you can get around in pretty good time where ever you need to go. At earlier levels and when you're poor you're slower and it takes longer but before long you can get all over quite nicely.

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Regarding performance the current graphics engine (an updated one in in the works) is from back when the graphics engine of a game relied largely on the CPU, not the video card (it is an older game and that was the norm then). In fact AO can play better on some older machines than newer ones as some of those had CPUs with extra help for graphics. Lower some of your settings then the in game ones that will make the biggest impact are the two distance ones. Press F10 in game, then select Preferences > Visual > View Distance and move the two sliders there to the left as much as needed. Those control how far another player needs to be for you to see them (you'd still see their names floating there, just not them) and how far you can see things like trees, objects and the like clearly. After some tweaking you should be in good shape.

He's not asking for a newbie prof but if those would be able to solo well. Besides, a doc for a newbie is a really bad idea. Sure they are always in demand for teams but teams want the docs to be twinked out to run the best possible heals and a newbie would have a harder time managing everything at once. A new player won't have the creds, gear or the know how to manage a doc very well.

When there are big updates and around when they were just added they can take a long time to get through the updater due to all the people trying to get them at once. Because of that concert thing recently there have been two such patches as of late. Personally if I can I will always get them from their FTP site as even if they aren't shown on the web page listing the patch files they are often on the FTP site already and it can take a lot less time getting them that way. Plus then I have them on file should I need to reinstall later.

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A-03 Getting Started (Downloading & Patching)
1. Get the client.
2. Register an account.
3. Install.
4. Patch.
5. Log-in and play.

1. .....
2. .....
3. .....

4. The game version you've downloaded will likely not be the current one and the main folder you just downloaded will have the version in the name (AOInstall16.0.0_EP1_EP2_live = large client version 16.0.0). Rather than using batch patching AO applies each of the required patches one at a time in sequence. Once installed you can run AO then let the patcher get the patches and use them or you can download each of them from the AO site. If you download them get the ones from the version you have to the current version on the servers. Also if you download them yourself from SL/15.x on there are two of each patch (ex. 16.0.0 - 16.0.1 and 16.0.0_EP1 - 16.0.1_EP1). The ones ending with EP1 are for those with the large client, the ones without are for those with the small client, make sure you get the right ones.

The patcher may need to restart one or more times as it patches from your downloaded version to the version on the servers when it hits certain updates. So there is no problem if it restarts and says you need to patch some more. Then in the bar at the top of the log-in window it shows what version your client is at and what version is in use on the servers, until those match you will need to patch further.

Since patches are applied one at a time what I like to do is download them from the AO site, use an app like WinRAR to extract the files in the "Patches" folder each contain and save them in one folder I could back up to a CD later on. Should I need to reinstall for some reason I just put all those files into a single "Patches" folder and put that into the main AO game folder. When the patcher goes to work it finds the patches in that folder so won't need to download them, just verify and install them.

5. .....

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A-04 I let it Patch but it Says I Need to Patch Again
AO does not do batch patching but goes through each patch one at a time to get the installed version up to date with what is on the servers. During this process the patcher may need to restart one or more times as it moves along. So there is no problem if it restarts and says you need to patch some more. Then in the bar at the top of the log-in window it shows what version your client is at and what version is in use on the servers, until those match you will need to patch further. (See point four in the above topic for more info on patching.)

Agents have no heals of their own and they run out of MP heal pets they're allowed to use before long. Generally they're rather frail and not a prof you can go around soloing with. Crats have pets, can control a mob to fight for them and have good or maybe even the best crowd control nanos so could manage, but it won't be easy. Generally both of them are support profs.

MAs, Advy and Enf are good newbie chars and can solo fairly well too. FC geared a lot of things towards teams, especially at higher lvls, so don't expect to solo everything all the time. The reason people (fr00bs likely) may have told you that MAs don't solo well at high lvls is that they run out of new heals between lvls 140-204 (need SL for 201+) or so but they do also get perks, research procs and such for heals and evades which help. They can solo pretty well but all profs will need the support of a team for many of the high lvl things you can do.

The best thing to do is try and learn about the different ones and see which you'd prefer. Take a char to a fairly high lvl to get gear and creds for your other chars then you can always abandon it later.

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Originally posted by Aguitha
The original poster was talking about the zoning when in fight. Can you still zone during a fight in PVE (in a mission)?

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The can not zone while in a fight thing was declared an error some time back and they are removing it. Zoning out of mission areas while under attack was never a problem, getting in was.

As for the other points in the original post every expansion for pretty much any MMORPG cause people to quit for one reason or another, AO is no different. LE was regarded as largely incomplete with a number of bugs. Although all the procs seem to be working now, the zoning issue is better but I haven't tested it since the last patch (17.2) so there may still be issues. They've added a number of new items and nanos, reduced the timer on perk resets from 24 hours to two, the Beast timer was cut in half, comp nanos all have two second attack times from 24s, new more PvM high level encounters were just added, MPs and traders finally got a bit of love and other things. There's more coming in 17.3 and they'll likely be adding after that so it could still be a while before we see what LE gave us.

See "A-03 Getting Started (Downloading & Patching)" in the Anarchy Online F.A.Q. (http://mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/thread/74194) thread.

Just open the stats window (ctrl+9), it has the health, nano and XP bars with text showing your current/max for each plus your attack rating and ACs are there as well. As for the short-cut bar that is fixed to ten slots to go with the 1-0 keys on your keyboard. Although you also have ten groups of ten slots (shift+<a number key>) so 100 slots gives you a decent amount of room for things. I find it best to use a group for related things like one or two purely for combat, one for healing, related buffing nanos and so on. There is a fair bit you can do to tinker with the windows without having to get into skinning though. Dovve skins are basically retro pre-SL skinned windows, they don't really add much of anything, I just use the options available and stick with the default one.

I would suggest you toss everything from the GUI wings except the little bars at the bottom (F10 for options, select the Preferences tab and expand the GUI list). Personally I like to split the text that rolls in over more than one chat window. I have combat related text and vicinity in a window at the top which is set to 100% inactive transparency, auto fade (text goes away after a while), turn off auto subscribe new channels, turn on auto hide input bar and click through (ctrl+7 for the friends window, right click the chat windows name and select Enable Click Through). I then have my general chat in a window at the bottom (100% inactive transparency and click through as well). You could then add other windows to your liking like one that records your and/or others damage and you could set it to log that and so on, those can be shown and hidden from the friends window (ctrl+7). You could also use normal chat windows rather than borderless (right click or alt+right click the chat window then select visual > mode > normal) and then you can stack chat windows together (right click window name, drop it on/beside the tab of the chat window you want to added it to) and select them from their tabs (tabs change colour when new entries roll in).

With the GUI wings gone I pull the NCU window (ctrl+0) out from the right bar (right click the name then click somewhere open on the screen), turn the window auto fade option off (click the thumb-tack icon) expand it to my liking and stick it in the bottom left corner (you could set it to list to show the names and exact time remaining in text too). The short-cut bar I have set to vertical (right click the tab on the far left/top to change orientation) and stick that in the upper left corner. The little floating health, nano and XP bars I have on either side of my character so they're easy to keep an eye on. The bars for your target I move just under my combat chat window and over my health, nano and XP bars.

Other stuff to yank out of the right side bar is the programs window (ctrl+8) and shop window. Be a good idea to set both to list mode (click the "i" icon at the top left) and expand them to a good size. Then for the windows you leave in the right bar except for the team window you can vertically stretch them by dragging the little grey bar at the bottom of each.

The updated textures was a pre-expansion update made several months back now and available to pay and free players as everyone can use the large client (the RK ones would be in the small one too), you just need to pay to use the expansion stuff and such.

Every time there's a new expansion for AO or most other MMORPGs there's always doom sayers that predict that it will mark the end of the game. With SL people left as they didn't like the deviation from the Sci-Fi theme, that they had to grind more levels, there was new gear they had to get to remain on the top of the dog pile, etc... With AI they left and griped about it not being as big as the SL expansion, that there were new levels to grind which you needed cities and teams to do, new gear they had to get to stay at the top of the dog pile, etc... Now we have LE, so now people leave and bitch that they have more levels to grind (sorta), there's little in the way of uber gear to get (damned if they do, damned if they don't), it didn't add as much as SL, etc...

The zoning issue they are now calling an error that will be corrected in a coming patch to the way it was before LE. Messed up procs will be corrected in time. More adjustments to weapons and armour may or may not happen. But one thing people keep forgetting is that a lot of what we've had added for the past year or more was going to be in LE so that sort of reduced the volume of new stuff in stuff in this expansion. APFs were suppose to be in LE, the new SL quests, SL missions, the "PvP" missions and the engine adjustments were LE updates we got before LE. LE came to us in a sloppy manner really, some things worked, others didn't work as they should or not at all while others got screwed up (zoning). Eventually they'll get things working and more new LE things will most likely be added over the coming months.

I came in not long after AI but from what I understand the AI and likely SL introductions weren't that smooth. AI from what I heard had problems that needed to be corrected after release. SL mobs were tougher and offered about the same XP as the easier RK mobs so people stuck to RK till the XP of SL mobs got boosted which resulted in far less people on RK until the fr00b deal started apparently as well. Eventually people forget these things or came along after.

So in time the complaining will die down, people will adjust to the new stuff and how to go about doing things and life will go on. Right now it's easier to gripe about what we see as wrong than right as it is new and still not working as it should with more stuff likely to be coming. Eventually it will all calm down then the status quo will be obtained again so all the profs (especially traders and MPs) can go back to their usual griping about they're missing and so on. LE won't kill off AO just as SL and AI didn't kill off AO then if they should tell us of another expansion underway we'll get to start all over again.

LE has mucked somethings up for me but for the most part I rather like it.