Straight from the "Anarchy Online F.A.Q." post which was directly below yours.

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

1. Go to the Game Download page and select either the small (about 800 MB) or large (about 1400 MB) client. The small client is only for free play while the large one will allow you to play for free or any of the expansions. You can get either by way of a BitTorrent download or through various listed download sites. With a BitTorrent download you will get a small torrent file from the AO download pages and then need to open that up in a BitTorrent client. You can use the official BitTorrent client or a host of other ones (personally I like Azureus).

2. While the game is downloading you could register your AO account. As a new player it would be a good idea to get used to it the basics of playing by playing for free for a while. Once you've got the hang of things you and if you're thinking of going P2P there's the MMORPG.com 14 day SL trial offer which gives you a trial code. Also Funcom offers 7 day upgrade trials for either expansion which include NW but if you decide you don't want to keep playing you'd need to cancel the account before the seven days are up or your credit card will be billed. Please note though that both trial and paid accounts are not reverted to free accounts when their period expires and cancelling a trial account will likely result in the deletion of all related data including player accounts and characters. Also you will need the large client to use any of the expansions.

3. In the downloaded folders you'll find a setup.exe file, run that. If the installer asks for numbered disks when installing browse to the main folder you just downloaded and select the folder with the same disk name that was requested (disk1-disk3).

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. Start up AO, enter your account info in the log-in window, log-in, select create a new character (not that you have a choice), make a new character and off you go.

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Originally posted by tek13
alright im pretty much retarted wen it comes to using things like it torrent, all i know is that i have it instaled and wen i started downloading anarchy bit torrent was downloading it for me, but wen it was at 100% nothing happened, wat do i do? its done downloading, but i dont know how to open it

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