Anarchy Online: The Notum Wars shipping

Funcom has announced that the first booster pack for Anarchy Online will be available this week. The game's servers will be updated to enable the booster pack on Thursday morning. The Notum Wars includes some features that were originally planned for a larger expansion, called Shadowlands. To make the new content available this holiday season, Funcom came up with the idea of doing less-expensive incremental expansions.

The major feature in The Notum Wars is to let groups of players control land and protect it with static defenses. Player organizations can build mines for the game's precious resource, notum, which can provide strong advantages to mine owners. But mining space is limited, so it's likely that players will fight over control of mines. Funcom expects this to add an entirely new group player-versus-player combat element, where organizations try to coordinate the protection or capture of mines.

The Notum Wars booster pack will be available in retail stores this week, and it may be possible to purchase it for download at a later time. The booster pack has a suggested price of $19.99. For more details, check out our previous coverage of Anarchy Online.