[h3][b]NOTICE[/b][/h3]
Keep in mind for this review:
[list]
[*]I have been playing for about 2.5 weeks
[*]This is from a pure F2P (froob) perspective
[*]Highest level toon is a 120 Meta-Physicist, and a few <60 toons to test classes
[*]All of my playtime is on the standalone client, not steam
[/list]
[h1]Anarchy Online...[/h1]
So Anarchy Online is a very old Science Fiction MMORPG released in 2001, putting this up there as one of the oldest MMOs to still be running. This shows a lot, so off the bat you really have to have low expectations going into this or you will probably bounce off very quickly. Read [i]everything[/i] through this lens. I tried to play the game 2 or so times over a decade ago, but resources were even worse from what i can remember. A guide mentioned below is the reason i decided to give it a real try this time. Theres bugs, quirks, sometimes crashes, inflation, sparse updates, basically most issues you can expect from a game running this long. So let me try to lay things out in a manner that seems coherent and helpful. I will try to split the categories meaningfully.
[h1]Before You Play[/h1]
Before you even play theres some things you need to know:
There are 2 clients. The "old" client and the "new" client. The old client is the original 2001 client while the new client is an attempted "remaster" of the graphics. The new client is marked to have increased instability and incompatibility with community addons/themes. I have never used it but this is the prevailing idea. The old client is mostly stable, but sometimes crashes when zoning into the main "hub" of the game (or at least of the non expansion places, ICC). As in it happens maybe once a play session at most and most of the time not at all. Steam only uses the old client.
This game is from a time where information was not spoon fed, datamined, easily available, and nothing has been done to change that. You will want to use various resources outside of the game to help with this:
[url=https://discord.com/invite/anarchyonline]Official AO Discord:[/url]Very active, very helpful, people answer my questions at all times of the day and have helped me kill hard bosses or other things.
[url=https://www.ao-universe.com/main/news]AO-Universe[/url]: Massive resource for general use guides for the game, i always have this up.
[url=https://ao.tinkeringidiot.com/]TinkerTools[/url]: Items database, implant planner, nano list, etc. All very useful tools.
[url=https://aosetups.com/]AOSetups[/url]: Build setups, although not very useful for a while.
[url=https://ao-stonks.com/]AO-Stonks[/url]: Online database for the in game Market, bot scrapes it and updates the DB.
[url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JcenbCuf84TYSDrLk1ibnH6fhP_dGTXrTS7vxwvp4A8/edit?tab=t.0]Faffy's Froob Guide[/url]: [b]THE resource for any new player looking to get into the game.[/b]
Faffy's guide is single handedly the reason i decided to give the game a fair shot. It includes a massive amount of things you need to know to get off the ground, start your character, and not ♥♥♥♥ it up. It even has a mini guide for every class on gear and other milestones. There are other resources linked inside of itself, so please make use of everything.
[h1]Monetization[/h1]
So AO's model is essentially F2P have access to base game + 1st expansion (Notum Wars) while a paid subscription allows you access to the entire game. No box price. This includes the Keeper and Shade class not being available to F2P players. The base sub price is the typical [b]$14.99[/b] per month. It does scale down heavily, the yearly sub only costing about $99.99. One thing of not is that F2P players do [b]not[/b] have access to the market system or are able to send mail. This means you have sell things the old fashion way and need to make an alt account to transfer credits (games currency) or items to alts. You can receive mail from paid players however.
It does have a [b]cash shop[/b]. The good thing about this is the cash shop is mostly irrelevant. Most things can be purchased from other players with credits (more on the economy later) but also the value of a lot of these items are very low. The biggest thing is that this game DOES have a way to legally purchase credits, as you can buy an item that gives 30 days subscription time from the cash shop and sell it in game. This is called a [b]GRACE[/b]. One thing of note is that you cannot purchase a GRACE until you have been subscribed for a full month, presumably to combat CC fraud.
[h1]Story, Setting, Theme[/h1]
Gonna be honest i know a story exists but this is going to be an area i have zero idea of. What i do know is that the vibe is VERY Sci Fi. Guns, energy weapons + armor, flying vehicles, etc. A lot of areas though do give off a more Phantasy Star or Star Ocean "sci fi but also not really" vibe, if you get what i mean. I still really like the idea. A lot of the classes are also very flavorful.
[h1]Classes[/h1]
This game basically uses the holy trinity. Healers, Tanks, DPS. Issue is that there really is only one dedicated optimal Healing and Tank class, while the rest basically fall under DPS with varying amounts of supportive elements (buffs/debuffs/CC/etc). Some classes can perform other roles to a lesser degree. [b]Note this will be the only thing i will be going off of paid accounts for, i was provided this info from a veteran player[/b]. Fixer is reportedly not used in end game groups at all.
[table]
[tr]
[th]Class[/th]
[th]Role[/th]
[th]Utility[/th]
[th]Secondary Role[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Adventurer[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[td]Tank[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Agent[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[td]Tank[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Bureaucrat[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]CC/Debuffs[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Doctor[/td]
[td]Healer[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Enforcer[/td]
[td]Tank[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Engineer[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]Buffs[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Fixer[/td]
[td]Not used[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Keeper[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]Buffs[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Martial Artist[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[td]Healer[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Meta-Physicist[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Nano-Technician[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Shade[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Soldier[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]N/A[/td]
[td]Tank[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Trader[/td]
[td]DPS[/td]
[td]Debuffs[/td]
[td]Healer[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
[h1]Okay the limit is smaller than i thought and cant be continued in comments meaningfully, idk ill figure it out lol[/h1]
