Anarchy Online: The Notum Wars Preview

Norwegian developer Funcom had already made something of a name for itself with the outstanding graphical adventure game The Longest Journey in 2000, but the developer had high hopes of becoming a game industry heavyweight with its futuristic online role-playing game, Anarchy Online, which was launched last year. Unfortunately, Anarchy Online launched with a lot of problems, including technical issues that proved to be frustrating for its users. It was unfortunate, because the game was the first futuristic sci-fi online RPG, and it had good graphics, great music, a distinctive sense of style, and a complex and intriguing background story. Since the game's problematic launch, the developer has dedicated itself to reworking the game and went so far as to 2880097cancel its other upcoming project, Midgard , which was to feature a number of intriguing and innovative ideas, in favor of focusing on improving Anarchy Online. And the developer is now putting the finishing touches on the first retail add-on for the game, The Notum Wars, a "booster pack" that will add several new features, along with the game's upcoming 14.6 patch.

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you know what phrases like "14.6 patch" and "online RPG" refer to. Anarchy Online, like most online RPGs, is a game that lets you create a single character from a particular race and profession, then adventure in a huge online world with other players, and games like Anarchy Online get regular updates and fixes with incremental patches that get automatically downloaded each time you play. But you may not be familiar with Anarchy Online's futuristic story, which takes place on the remote mining colony Rubi-Ka in deep space. Three major Rubi-Ka factions have been vying for control--the huge and sinister Omni-Tek corporation, the rebel clans, and the neutral independents--though in Notum Wars, a new ordinance is passed on Rubi-Ka, one that lets anyone from any faction build mines to harvest the planet's most precious resource, notum, which powers all of the advanced nanotechnology on the planet.

Considering that nanotechnology powers everything on Rubi-Ka, including pretty much all of your character's abilities, discovering a notum vein can help greedy adventurers become wealthy and powerful, provided they have the right tools. In order to mine notum, you will need to spend lots of time and effort on craftsmen, particularly engineer characters, to erect controllers--huge towers that pump notum out of the ground and grant powerful bonuses to their owners. Since most controllers will be expensive and difficult to make, the most lucrative notum deposits will have to be mined by the largest, wealthiest player groups (known as "organizations"), and all the new contested notum areas will appear in the wilderness outside of city walls. That's not to say that only high-level players will be able to build or afford controllers, because some notum deposits can be mined by players of as low a level as 10.

Still, notum controllers can be significant assets, whether they're controlled by organizations of powerful characters or a group of friends casually squabbling over turf. The player that builds a notum controller will be designated as the "lord" of that area--the game's map will even give you a message to that effect when you enter it. Owning a notum controller gives significant bonuses to any members of your organization and gives further bonuses to you--and it also assigns generic bonuses to any players of your faction (Omni-Tek, clan, or independent) that happen to be in the area. So if, for instance, you happen to be affiliated with Omni-Tek, and you're wandering through the notum fields and see an Omni-Tek controller under attack, you may want to jump in and help defend it, even if you're not specifically affiliated with the owners, because the controller gives you generic bonuses that you'll lose if the controller is lost.

He Who Controls the Notum...

Funcom is taking specific measures to ensure that players of practically all levels can participate in battles over notum deposits, and apparently, these battles will involve a surprising amount of strategy. If you own a notum controller, you're of course going to want to deploy yourself and as many of your friends and associates as possible to defend it if it comes under attack. But when you're not around, you can also buy or build defense towers, a new addition to Anarchy Online that will automatically defend a notum controller against hostile encroachment. These towers will draw their power from the controller itself (they'll be connected to the controller by glowing notum rays), so if a controller is destroyed, its towers will be destroyed too, so breaching a controller's defenses won't always be a time-consuming campaign. However, it's safe to assume that high-level organizations will guard their rich notum deposits jealously with huge networks of the most expensive and powerful towers in the game. Funcom plans to implement several varieties of towers, including towers that attack hostile players outright, as well as towers that may have other adverse effects. One of the nastiest new towers will have the disruptive ability of disabling a flying Yalmaha vehicle, so anyone attempting to stage an aerial strike from the relative safety of the high ground will be in for a very nasty surprise and an equally nasty fall.

You'll be able to build towers or buy them from a new set of clearly marked stores that the booster pack will introduce to the game. Interestingly, towers won't just be for controller defense, but can also be purchased for individual adventures. These towers can either radiate a defensive aura or act as a stationary turret that will help you when you get attacked. These towers will come in handy for players of all levels, though wealthy, high-level players will also be able to take advantage of the booster pack's new vehicles, which include new Yalmaha hovercars and a powerful vehicle that will actually be able to attack enemies on the ground.

But Funcom apparently wasn't content to keep all the updates confined to the booster pack, since the developer also plans to include a number of additions to the game in the upcoming 14.6 content patch. The developer plans to overhaul Anarchy Online's occasionally confusing character-creation system, for instance, so that instead of choosing your race from a list, you'll be able to see each race and gender side by side and get a better idea of what you'll be getting. You'll also choose your profession from a display of different characters engaged in their normal abilities; if you're considering choosing the doctor class, for instance, you'll choose the character dressed in a med-suit, kneeling to administer to a wounded patient. Once you've created your character, you won't get dropped directly into your apartment or a hunting ground, either. Instead, you'll begin in a "new arrivals" area that resembles a futuristic airport, and you'll be able to talk to various characters that will give new players a good idea of what each of the game's three factions stands for.

It's clear that The Notum Wars will have a lot more to it than a few more monsters or items--definitely much more than you'd expect from a standard patch file. It's also clear that Funcom is making every effort to involve lower-level players as well as high-level players; most expansion packs for online role-playing games tend to add new features for high-level characters and little to nothing for everyone else. And the new changes in the upcoming patch should make the game far more accessible for beginners, too. Though the upcoming Anarchy Online expansion pack, Shadowlands, which will feature lots of brand-new areas and a further advancement of the plot surrounding Rubi-Ka, won't be out until next year, The Notum Wars will be available at the end of November.