But if you do please make it to level 70 at least before you decide to upgrade.

Because when you upgrade and do the expansion content you will run into a lot of selfish elitist people, they have been playing the game for many years and have multiple max level 220 characters with acceptable-great gear.

Quite a few people  will not want to be bothered explaing to you how things work, unless you get lucky and find a good org or meet someone durign leveling that isn't a douche.

At low level in Shadowlands things can be slow it can be hard ot find teams at low level sometimes but the people at low level in sl aren't to bad, the problems with sl really come once you out level the starting land at level 70 and need to move to elysium, there is a good chance that as a new player you will have a very hard time finding teams to level , but even then you will eventually get luck and get to level 140ish,in ely but by 150 you will be wanting to level in the next zone, and even though the next zone is good xp for awhile al lthe elitists leave there at 160 and skip the next zone and goto the last leveling zone and leech off of friends/orgs or use their max 220 character to level thier characters or help their friends.

so a lot of unlucky people that actually make it to the 140+ level area called "adonis" find it's even harder to get teams there then it was from 70-140ish in elysium and the make a new character. Eventually they get to that same point and quit

And funcom know this and they know they can't do anything about it, because without these elitist they wouldn't be making whatever profits they are from the game. you don't want to upset those people.

The game is repeatative like every other mmorpg but unlike other mmorpgs there isn't a lot of solo content unless your well equiped and spent alot of time "twinking overpowered stuff on stuff onto your character or you manage to make friends or org that will help you when they have time or hapen to need to do what you do.

Most people will get frustrated with you if you ask for help in guild chat", since most of them are max level they don't want to help new players often. When there was a good population it was different, the nice people kind of shielded you from the jerks because they where the majority.

People that are playing the game will not agree with most of what i said, but i have met  people in the game or read post from a lot of people on the official forums that have had these problems.

And there where those that don't have this problem and actually succeed in the game and even at a fast pace, but once they go to 220 and got well geared and mayeb made another character because they got bored with thier first they jsut quit.

I got a friend to join my server i played on for 4 years and had level made it past 201 with a character and in 6 months they got max level and pretty high alien level and had the best gear at that time then quit.

He told me he got lucky at first because at low level i gave him alto of credits and gear i had then at some point got a realyl good org that helped him alot.

For 4 years i didn't know you had to be around the elite to make it in the game, but once i found out i was able to accomplish my goals, and i was lucky enough to find elitists that wheren't jerks, im not anti elitist i liek elitists the good ones are leaders and can help people like me become better players who help others player become better.

I was not trying to achieve much the first 2-3 years i played though because there was so much social and rp stuff to do back then and i spent alto of my time helping other people, jsut chilling in a city buffing people and chattign with my "guild"

But the elitist that are arrogant and selfish just ruined the game in my opinion.

So yeah Ao is a good game and if you try it it might make you want to upgrade but there is a chance you will have just wasted your time and money.

well that is really like all games.... but from what I can remeber save for some intances you can pretty much lvl alone and fast, just learn the plasma trick to farm for money and you are gold, also some begginer quests help a lot for some equips and knowledge, reading forums also helps, since pretty much all info you need is there.

I was burned out by it when I hit lvl 50, also all the good things are for paying members so if you really want to have all you will need to pay for it.

yeah as a free player and the early levels of the "shadowlands" but by 70 you get more and more dependent on teams in shadowlands and that is because shadow lands mobs give a lot more xp and are harder to kill compared to the rubi-ka (free player zones) so with a good team you level really fast in sl but without a team and as a new-sh player you are might be able to kill stuff a lot lower then you for xp that isn't that great but that gets annoying after awhile.

TLDR: Anarchy Online is an old school MMORPG that doesn't hold your hand, is grindy, and takes a long time to level solo. Being so old it also has a rather small, but dedicated player base that has little or no desire to play anything but end game except for maybe power leveling alts.

Hence, unless you can find a good org willing to help you, group content is pretty much out of the question and it takes a lot of work to level. So if you aren't willing to deal with these quirks of the game, and don't have a few friends either already in the game or that will start playing with you, then it is probably not be for you.

Also I get the feeling that someone(s) in the game took a healthy pee in the OP's corn flakes, because the post sounds a little too bitter to be just a QQ about how hard the game is to solo... Don't let other people ruin your fun, especially pathetic eThugs and internet tough guys.

man you are my hero, you said what i was trying to say in a simple way, i have a hard time expressing myself without rambling

You summed up my post without even reading it..

And yeah i am bitter, i used to be angry but i don't care about the game enough anymore to be angry.

I had people turn on me even after i dedicated all my time to help them, people always accuse me of being arrogant when i the truth is i kind of have low self esteem while at the same time knowing i could be worse of a human begin than i am.

And after all that money and years i gave Funcom, after all the people i met online and in other games that i brought into AO and helped try the game and some went on to be better at it then me and have more luck ,my account gets stolen along with other games i bought and played off and on but never loved as much as i did , and funcom refuses to give me my account back because 8 years ago i was still young and didn't have a bank account yet so had to use my friends fathers credit card to purchase the game till i got my own debit card a few months later. Me knowing the name on the card that was used in 2003 wasn't enough i had to know the numbers. So someone had my account from 2008-2010 till i was finally able to get fc to close it since they refused to give it back.

But even after my account got stolen in 2008 i started over on a diff server and did better in the first year playing less than i did in the 5 years on my old account. And when i got a few 220's i remembered my mule on my old server had alot of my items i collected over those 5 years. So i sold it and xfered the money, i had a hard time selling my ai armor and stupid me posted in shopping chan i needed to sell items asap and for cheaper than normal because i need to get credits on the other server.

So a few people pointed me to someone who said they could help me out and just give me the credits on the other server for my stuff. My stupidity and being up for 20 or more hours playing the game might of made me more gullible then i was back then and he scammed me. i petitioned in game and a gm said they would look at logs and talk to the people who refereed me to the person, and hours later i get told sorry we cant help you and they wouldn't tell me why so in 2010 i finally had enough with funcom.

I haven't even gone into all the years of drama i put up with in AO, I should of quit the game for all the dram with players years before i got my account stolen and started over. So yeah im bitter lol.

But yeah i was able to get acces back to the other games that got stolen when my ao did, and wow was one of those accoutns that got stolen but i had bought wow ehn it came otu and never used it till after i quit ao and a months later in wow i had a bunch of lvl 80's and tons of gold and quit for a few months and when i came back i had been hacked and my stuff was all gone and my 30k gold was gone, blizzard gave it back to me right away.

AO is a good game but the the playerbase turn to crap slowing since 2006 and funcom doesnt seem to care abotu the game they don't fix important things and if they try they do it is a bad way. I been waiting years for them to fix so many things and upgrade the GFX.  If ihad know this would happen  or the game would turn into what it did in 2006 i never would of tried the game in 2003. And the only reason i did was because both my roomates started playign it and i tried it with them, they quit shortly after and i stuck with it till 2010.

Actually i don't regret the first 3 years of my time in ao i take that back, those where the best times i've had online

Omg i just tried to log in to the ao forums and couldn't then i checked all my accounts and they are all banned wtf. bleh i don't even care. i was just logged in a few hours ago. I got 5 paid accounts linked  that are banned, im not going even play the email game with them again to try to get them all unbanned. I don't even know why they banned all my accounts, seems they banned all accounts connected to my email address.

I reactivated a account i don't use just to post on the forums because it's the 10 year anniversary tomorrow and i love the game just not the company or the people, i guess i must of broke a rule and they banned all my accounts that are linked, i don't know what i said on the forums though to get banned, i don't even care though, but they should at least should of sent me an email or allow me to see on the forum or account page the reason. I have no idea why and to find out i'd have to email support and probably wait days to find out, that is kind of lame imo.

Oh well im done my story and opinion is out there,  probably won't save anyone from wasting thier time with ao, im the type of person myself that ignores what people tell me about a game and try to form my own opinions.

And since i probably didn't express myself that well no one will even get anything out of this so i just wasted my time, but im used to wasting my time so it's not a big deal.

Hmm i guess i got temp banned for somereason, i still don't know why though but atleast my acounts are unbanned so if i ever one day do decide to go back to ao i could, i got to many items and characters in that game to lose, even if i never plan to play again i'd like the option.

The thing about anarchy, which was true in its past, as is true now even, is that the community acts very diffrently towards you based on attitude.

Some of the people most willing to help new players are still playing the game, i know because i made a froob account a few months ago, asked a few questions in chat, and got swamped with offers of help in any way possible, that included getting gifted anything i could want basically, most of which i turned down since i wasnt playing for those reasons.

However, approach the community in an immature manner, demand things, or act like most people do in other games, and youll find the AO community (for the most part) will do its best to drive you away.  In AO's prime, most forms of trolls and immature players would get harassed and counter trolled, even shunned.  AO had a great natural player filter (bing so complicated) and those who acted obnoxious got no help.  This is why AO use to have one of the best communities.

Now, of course things are diffrent, however my assumtion is that the OP approached these "elite veterans" in a manner that resulted in him comming here and posting this.  Its good to see the community does some form of cleaning house, despite its low population and old age.

If you are new to the game, do yourself a favor.  Dont act obnoxious, dont beg for stuff, and try to act maturly.  Do this and the community will still do its best to set you on the right track and keep you playing.  This is a very complicated game, information on what to do is hard to find, you NEED the communities assistance if your brand new.  Dont make the mistake of typing immature jibberish in chat, harrasing others, begging, or acting generally obnoxious, then expect the "elite veterans" to bend over backwards to help you.

Im sorry but i wasn't saying you don't get help as a new player, and i've been playing ao for 8 years, i have multiple max level character and over 1billion credits and 2 sets of ai armor, (im not tryign to boast either, i know many other people who have way more then me and are better than me im actually gimp and noobish compared to alot of people) if i do have questions im not asking them in general chat, there are websites with info about new content added or forums, i don't need to asked questions in chat. But even if i did, i know most of the time people would respond in chat  even if what they say is actually wrong, which a lot of the time i and other people have to respond when someone give someone bad advice in chat, i've see people give people the wrong answer to their question a lot, someone always has to let the person know the original answer was bull. But yeah usually people will help you.

And i try not to talk to anyone anymore in-game unless  they are in my team or have a simple question .

People could jsut use ao-universe to find most the answers they have or the ao or free players forum.

That is not what this thread is about though, this is about the fact that as a new player there is a chance that if you upgrade before level 40-70 you might get to sl and see the game is totally different and the people there might get more rude or selfish as you progress in levels or that it just takes to much time to get a team.

If you want to play AO for free i got nothing against it, but if you play free for a few days or weeks and don't make it too or past lvl 60 before you decide you want to try sl, you might regret not playing free for longer before you decided to upgrade.

I'm just saying at this stage in ao's life the paid content is more for people who have a lot of time on their hands and can spends hours doing nothing or waiting, too much waiting unless you got a guild or friends that play your time and are low level, some "guilds" are mostly level 220's and it might be hard to find someone in your org who might want to do stuff with you at low level in sl.

For me it was worse because when i usually played, the game was dead so i had to change my play time, which sucked because i couldn't put in as much time as i would be able to when nobody is usually on. But even during the most active time it can still be hard to find teams in sl, especially 150+. because most people over 150 are like 200+ and mostly 220 doing the most current content and usually with their friends so you don't even see them especially not on lft system.

1-200 as a free player is a total different game then with the expansions, especially since expansion mobs where designed to require a full team to kill. And so many people just trying to power level, everyone would like to power level but people usually pay for it or a org takes a spot or a person uses their pocket and lets people they know into the team, it's nothing new but now it seems like they feel they can just take multiple spots at once instead of just one spot like people used to, and that  the mentality im talking about, me being obnoxious would have nothing to do with that.

And as a free player you might have the sense you can just log in and kill some mobs for a an hour and level a few times, and you don't realize when you upgrade it's no longer as simple as that, you need to have a team to get xp and it can be hard at certain levels if you have no friends and can't find a good org.

But not only do you need a team for xp you need a team or Alien xp and pvp and research etc etc, and you think since there are so many things to do it should be easy to find a team for one of those things at any given time, well you will usually just go lft for a bunch of stuff and take whichever you get. other people act like they get invites right away but i've waited hours for teams, yet if you tell someone in-game that they say that is never happened to them they get teams for everything without much wait, i don't know if they are bs'ing me or what.

And the fact that funcom doesn't really support AO as well as other companies support their games, you should be sure you want to put you money and time into ao, because if you do fall in love with the game you are probably going to have to spend a lot of both time and money, alot of people pay for more then 1 account and feel they need too.

I'm not anti-AO i'm more anti-funcom and AO community, the game is great, even though funcom is committed to try to make it more like wow by taking away a characters uniqueness and options and that to succeed it's more about who you know or when you play then how much time you can spend ingame.

And while i want AO to succeed, i think it hurt the game more that all these people tried the game over the years and won't be whiling to come back if things get better because they went from free to paid and really regretted it. or the drama made them quit.

How many people never played ao again after the first few weeks of release because of all the bugs and problems they had, and even after the game got fixed they never bothered to try it again. And i would like people to be prepared and notice what i mentioned instead of jut falling in love with low level game play and not realizing things change when you upgrade.

After reading your entire thread I can surmise that you made it to 200, could not complete the grind to 220, are a solo player, never posted on the forums, never tried to find an org, always looked at the bad side of the game, and probably played a Troxenf or Troxav.  Thus I can conclude this thread should be taken with the LARGEST grain of salt possible, and generally disregarded.

Oh and before you say I probably don't know what I'm talking about, blah blah...

Hej jeg er Athx :).

Originally posted by KanoRain

After reading your entire thread I can surmise that you made it to 200, could not complete the grind to 220, are a solo player, never posted on the forums, never tried to find an org, always looked at the bad side of the game, and probably played a Troxenf or Troxav.  Thus I can conclude this thread should be taken with the LARGEST grain of salt possible, and generally disregarded.

Lol the opposite of everything you said is actually the truth.

I do have a 220 advy and enf but the advy is solitus and my only trox toons are my enf and shade , 220 soli doc,220 opi ma, 220 trox enf, 220 nano mp, 220 soli advy had and a 205 trox shade and 214 soli trader 200 nano engy and crat and a few few 160-190 characters not to mention the 200ish toons i deleted over the years .

Getting to 220 isn't hard if you got a good org and friends and the time to spend grinding inf missions like i used too, all my friends quit years ago though and i find it hard to make new ones now, and i've have to make new friends a few times over the years because they often quit or took long breaks. But now i jsut find the post Alien invasion players corupted by what LE and Xan brought. And the smaller population added to the fact Le made all the proffesions feel like cookie cutter professions turned the game more liek the rest on the market.

So i guess i shouldn't be surprised by all the arrogant peopel callign me the arrogant one. If hthey dealth with wha tsome of us dealt with they would be bitter too. I used to be angry though feelign bitter is so much better then when i felt angry, you can feel angry about somethign you don't care strong enough about.

And i was in a few orgs over the years.

And i used to be really active on the ao forums and the $5 shadowlands was suggested my me on the forums months before fc did it. But anything i suggested on the forums for years just got replies telling me how stupid my ideas where so i stopped making suggestions.

Im not a newb like you seem to think, you don't need to know how to build one of those clocks with all the years and stuff  to know it doesn't seem to be keeping time right.

So even if i never made it to 220 with a character after many years of playing (which there are a lot of people who played and and still played ao that never got a character to 220 so i fail to see your point there) that doesn't mean i'm making all this up, i have many reason to be bitter and people who say it's my fault are just idiots in my opinions, if someone steals my account that i had played for 4 years how is it my fault or at least why wouldn't the email i had attached to it and the name on the credit card i used to pay for it for almost 4 years be enough proof it's mine?

Anyone that has a legitimate problem with funcom and the playerbase gets the blame on the AO forums and in-game and are called crybabies. If you just mention something that can be taken as a QQ it will be, Even though for years people in game and the forums could just talk about the bad things in ao without being flammed , i used to think forums where for discussion and debates, but back in the day there weren't many people on the forums and ingame talking about the changes they saw, if you would go on the ao forums now there are tons of people saying what i and a few others where saying for years, but when i was saying it back then i was called a crybaby and told to stfu even if i was just trying to be constructive and help come up with ways to help the game.

Clearly you don't have any idea who I am.  Which means either, a.) you're an idiot and play on RK1, which would mean you really do know nothing about the game - or b.) You're a liar.

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php?t=37842

what i don't understand is, how does who you are make who i am a joke and my opinions bull?

Edit: and yeah well from 2003-2006 i was playing mostly on rk2 then when my main account got stolen and fc refused to give me it back i had to start over so i never went back to rk2, a big part of my decision not to make my new main account on rk2 though was mostly because of all pvp drama that was going on at the time and all the orgs fighting in ely after the ingot nerf i just got tired of the clans turning into arrogant idiots like the omni, and yeah the reason clan turned to crap back then and i decided to leave was because clan had such a high side xp only orgs started changing side and eventually i'd have clanners in sl starting shit with me not just the omni's like it occasionally was.

And shortly after i started on Rk1 a lot of clan "leaders" got banned for exploiting towers or some bull on rk2, i was in leet-bloc on rk2 and they where always doing towers and bor pvp, i wouldn't be surprised if some of them got banned. Point is when ever i left rk2 it was a bad time for rk2 and i haven't looked back at rk2 since i made rk1 my home and for awhile it was ok there. but now rk1 is a joke too.

Originally posted by skuly

what i don't understand is, how does who you are make who i am a joke and my opionions bull?

Point proven, tot ziens!

i had to add more, because i figured you wouldn't understand what i meant.

and just because you are better than me doesn't mean im making my experiences up and the drama hasn't been there for the past few years, so i don't know where you are coming from telling me, the only way i can feel this way is if i am a noob. let me guess.. you still play ao don't you?

Because it seems like you might have the attitude i run into so often in the game these days ....

"if you got a problem with the game and people it must be because you're a noob.. because if you where awesome like me you wouldn't be crying like a little baby"

LOL was that what you where trying to tell me? or did i take it the wrong way?

No you got it spot on when you said you were crying like a baby.

Ok well nothing left for me to say then, i said too much already, and it wasn't enough so.

 I'll stop "crying" now, i see there is no point really anyway, people looking into a game should only have the opinions of the elite because only the best of the best have opinions that matter anyway.