The game has stability now to rival the games that have been on the market for years. While a few minor bugs and the occasional graphical glitch still exist, the game tends to play quite seamlessly.
Hands down the deepest and best gaming experience I have ever had on ANY computer or console.
If you are a new player in 2024, you will have to spend a few hours getting past the complex UI before things starts to loosen up. Give this game some time and it will reward you big time.
Gameplay, music and community 10/10/10
Once a month I do a websearch for "new game" and "like Anarchy Online". For more than a decade I've searched and found nothing. There has never been a game or MMO like Anarchy Online. It's vast in underlying data and complexity. It's weird in it's visuals and story lines. You can delve into it shallowly and have a great time.. but OH.. if you delve deeper you can discover features and functions that perhaps no one has ever seen. It's that vast and complex. Build agility implants so you can install intelligence implants that are 20 levels above what you should be able to use. Use code scripting to enhance controlling your Meta-Physicist pets. Play a Bureaucrat and learn to charm mobs 100 levels above you and destroy entire areas. These developers don't "confine you" to a hard coded reality.. but you won't easily breach their secrets. I'll continue searching once a month, for any new game that's a fraction of what Anarchy Online once was.
If you can brave being part of this polish stage in exchange for being part of something that’s new and a little bit of a break from the norm, then give AO a try.
It's a brilliant, engaging, profound MMORPG, but with enough atrocious technical problems to make you scream more obscenities than a French truck driver.
It features great graphics, a slightly modified version of "EverQuest's" gameplay model, and lots of frustrating problems. True to its theme, you should only consider playing it in the future.
I've played Anarchy Online since 2009, and I've never once said I would never come back to it, because I enjoy it.
In my opinion, It's a pretty unique game.. I dont think any other game that is like it.
I tried it out for a while but it just couldn't hold my interest for that long. It's not a horrible MMO, but it's just not quite as good as some of the other titles out there. The gameplay was just a bit too generic. I haven't tried playing it in years though, so my review is solely based on my experiences when the game was relatively new.
Attention: There is a chance Funcom will freeze your account and demand image files of yourself, your credit card, and your ID (passport if you have nothing else) as the only solution for you to get your account back, even if there is no issue with your credit card and no suspicious activity on the account. If you're not willing to trust Funcom with your identity, they will keep the account frozen forever with no alternate solutions. All your time invested in the free account will be lost. There are several discussion threads about this, on Reddit and elsewhere if you want to look them up.
Some of you may not realize what a huge deal it is to send that kind of personal information to a third party in a foreign country - a company that recently had their forums hacked and is struggling financially. Don't do it. Sending that kind of information to a third party is illegal (for good reason) in some countries, and even if it's not illegal in yours - your proof of identity is more valuable than any game account, and the fact that Funcom wants it so badly even though they could verify your ID in other ways should give you pause.
For the record: this happened to me, and others. I've had no issues with my credit card ever, I had a different account that was paid without issues with the SAME credit card as the frozen account, and I didn't share the account with anyone nor was there suspicious activity. The fact that one account (by the same player) gets frozen but the second account, played at the same time and paid with the same card, does not, should tell you all you need to know about Funcom's 'security' system.
Avoid this game if you don't want to risk losing all the time you invested.
I have played Anarchy Online since 2001 and stopped back in 2006 for 8 years because they launched Age of Conan and took all the server bandwidth for that game making AO lag so badly you couldnt do anything worth while. I came back last year as a paying customer in hopes they would have made some major changes but not much has changed. Game still lags, mobs warp and kill you, people hacking the game for XP and items, hard to find people for content of your level without being lvl 200+ meaning you will likely have to solo most of the time till then.Sure they added a **** new engine thats so choppy you cant run 2 accounts with it...Sure they added some new solo daily quest you can do that seem to cut off around 175 leaving a 25 level gap to figure out until you can do inferno , s7 or battle station with the higher players. I was so disappointed i canceled both accounts in December and refuse to play again until something changes. Waste of time and money if you ask me. Majorly outdated.
SummaryFuncom's massively multiplayer science-fiction online role-playing game, referred to as a "sci-fi Everquest" & fraught with bugginess and stability issues upon release, caused some critics to lose sleep over whether to review the game out of the box or after the release of routine patches.