Anarchy Online

Anarchy Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game published and developed by Norwegian video game development company Funcom. Released in June 2001, the game was the first in the genre to include a science-fiction setting, dynamic quests, instancing, free trials, and in-game advertising. The game's ongoing storyline revolves around the fictional desert planet Rubi-Ka, wherein a valuable mineral known as Notum is found. Players assume the role of a new colonist to Rubi-Ka. With no specific objective to win Anarchy Online, the player advances the game through the improvement of a character's skills over time. After more than 20 years, Anarchy Online has become one of the oldest surviving games in the genre.

Plot

Fighting for military and political power on Rubi-Ka are the Omni-Tek corporation, as well as separatist clans, terrorist groups, extraterrestrial life, and ancient civilizations. The narrative was developed to be played out as a series of virtual "role-play" events over the course of four years, influenced by the actions of those taking part in the game.
According to the game's back story, the Source is the "essence of life" deep inside the planet, which created the first forms of life, who called themselves the Xan. They began as a small, perfect, immortal civilization, living in peace and harmony. The Xans' eventual discovery and research of the Source changed this. It led them to create powerful technology and a great civilization, but this made them greedy and arrogant. Two factions formed within the Xan, calling themselves the Redeemed and the Unredeemed. These groups fought over how best to use the Source—now strained and unstable from their tampering. They tried in vain to fix the problem, but discovered that they were too late, as the Source would soon destroy the planet. Rubi-Ka was ripped apart in a cataclysm, leaving it a barren rock. The Source, and small fragments of the Xans' dead civilization, were thrown into another dimension known as the Shadowlands. The survivors left in search of other habitable planets, where they planted versions of their species, and hoped that one would prosper and eventually return to Rubi-Ka. Earth was one of their destinations.
In the year 28,702 AD, a mining survey ship from the megacorporation Omni-Tek carried to Rubi-Ka the first humans to land on it. The Interstellar Confederation of Corporations granted Omni-Tek a one thousand-year lease on the planet shortly after. It was a seemingly useless, arid landscape far from civilization, until the discovery of the mineral Notum, unique to Rubi-Ka. Research of Notum and its properties led to major leaps forward in nanotechnology, making possible the creation of powerful new technology, as well as the resurrection of the dead. After terraforming a portion of Rubi-Ka and constructing several cities, outposts, and transportation infrastructure, the company began importing colonists under contract as miners and other professions.
The first five-hundred years of Omni-Tek's control of Rubi-Ka were marked with an exemplary record of worker treatment, but as time passed, their policies degraded. Their scientists', tinkering with the mutating effects of Notum on the colonists in a quest for efficiency, led to many failed experiments. Survivors of these experiments became the game's four playable races, or "breeds", each designed by Omni-Tek to specialize in a type of work. Together with the original Solitus race, were the genetically engineered and herculean Atrox, the intelligent Nanomages, and the nimble Opifexes. They continued to labor in the midst of an increasingly hostile and totalitarian culture. This caused a significant number of workers to rebel, and begin to trade stolen Notum to a rival corporation. These rebel groups, collectively calling themselves the Clans, fought a series of wars with Omni-Tek over the next several centuries.

Player point of view

Anarchy Online's story, from the player's point of view, began in 29,475, after the most recent peace treaty had been signed between Omni-Tek and the Clans. ICC peacekeeping troops later moved into some cities to protect neutral observers of the war who had rejected their contractual obligations with Omni-Tek, but did not align themselves with the Clans. Omni-Tek, the Clans, and the neutral observers make up the game's three playable factions and control much of Rubi-Ka's terraformed surface.
After scientists opened a portal to the Shadowlands, players discovered the Source, killing the guardian the Xan had left there to protect it. This prompted an alien race known as the Kyr'ozch to begin attacking Rubi-Ka. The story's current plots revolve around the fight by all sides for control of the planet.

Gameplay

Players assume the roles of new colonists to Rubi-Ka or the Shadowlands. The game world is occupied by human players and computer-controlled characters, both friendly and hostile. The game begins with the player creating a unique character, choosing its name, sex, height, weight, and facial features. Each character is also one of the four humanoid "breeds". The final choice is that of the character's profession, similar to the character classes of other role-playing games.
The game's multiplayer nature and "free-form" gameplay encourage creating personal networks, and cooperating and fighting with other players. Players interact with Anarchy Online's interface via a keyboard and mouse. The game's heads-up display consists of a series of windows, menus and buttons located on the periphery of the screen. Players communicate with each other by typing text in chat windows, and occasionally through emotive character animations. Communication with computer-controlled characters is executed via text windows, in which players chose from a menu of possible responses to the conversation being shown. Like most role-playing games, Anarchy Online provides structure for role-playing events, organized either by players or officially by Funcom staff. Most major cities include night clubs and other venues specifically for this.
Groups of players, large or small, are often required to complete objectives. In addition to forming teams and informal chat groups, joining a player organization is encouraged. These are, like guilds in similar games, officially recognized groups bound together for technical and social benefits. Organizations are able to build their own cities across the game world, control areas of land, run player markets, and access other special content.
Among the most distinct gameplay elements of Anarchy Online are dynamic missions. Missions, or quests, are a traditional gameplay element in the role-playing genre. The player or team is given a set of tasks—usually related to the story—to complete somewhere in the game world; in return, they are rewarded with experience points, items, and money. Dynamic missions are similar to traditional missions in purpose, but are created at the player's request. Once they choose its difficulty and other options, the game generates a new, indoor area filled with computer-controlled enemies. The player or team is told to go to its location and finish a task inside for their reward. Dynamic missions, like many other encounters in Anarchy Online, are "instanced": each mission area is available only to those assigned to it.

Skill system

Much of what characters can do, and how well they do it, is determined by the game's eighty-three distinct character skills. A skill is a numerical representation of a character's proficiency in an area of skill, starting from zero. As players kill computer-controlled enemies, they gain experience points for their character. After gaining enough points, the character levels up. The current maximum level is 220. At each new level, the character is given "skill points", which are used to increase any combination they choose of the eighty-three skills.
Any character can access and increase any skill. The character's profession, however, provides unique resources called "perks", "alien perks", "research", and "nano programs" that increase specific skill further. This makes each profession more adept at elements of gameplay than others. Doctors, for instance, can increase skills related to healing much higher than a soldier because of these additional resources. Perks are chosen from a menu when the character reaches certain levels. Alien perks are gained when the player kills enough of a specific type of alien enemy. Research is gained by diverting a percentage of earned experience points toward personal or faction-specific research projects, instead of new levels. Nano programs give temporary increases to certain skills.

Combat

After targeting another character and initiating combat, the player and their opponent will damage each other automatically with their weapons. This continues until the player stops or the target is dead. Each profession's unique nano programs, perks and research also provide combat abilities used by the player during the fight. These can heal the owner, cause additional damage, lower the skills of the enemy, blind them or otherwise hinder the enemy's ability to fight. Once the target is dead, the player is able to loot money and items from the enemy's body. After death, the character's skills are reduced for several minutes, making them much less powerful in combat during that period.
Combat between two or more human players, called player versus player or "PvP" is encouraged by both the reward of special equipment and the social nature of the game. Killing other players also rewards characters with a "PvP ranking", permanently shown beside the player's name, which represents how many other human players they have killed. Player versus player combat is controlled by the percentage of "suppression gas" in the area that dictates whether a player can start combat unprovoked with another player. Generally, this percentage approaches 100% in major cities, providing safe havens, and decreases while moving to more remote areas.
Combat was updated with the release of the Battlestation expansion. This allowed for a pure PvP environment where Clan and Omni players could square off in a spacestation arena, with Neutrals able to join any side. Much later, due to a declining playerbase, Clans and Omni were allowed to join teams side by side. Battlestation points were scored by capturing up to four locations, one in the middle and three down long corridors; teleporters shortened the distance between the corridor ends. Battlestation allowed for much higher team and individual kill scores; the highest scoring team kill player of all time was Ndonaden.