First love?

Don't worry I'm not going to start getting all soppy and cry on the internet about some girl who broke my heart.
What I'm actually wanting to talk about is that very first game that you fell in love with and still have rose tinted memories of playing and all the little quirky bits and pieces and crazy, funny and epic moments that took place in it.
I'm sure we all have that. The one all others get measured by.

Mine is Anarchy Online.
A little about Anarchy Online (AO) . Its set around 29487 AD on the planet of Rubi-Ka, the galaxy is ruled by mega-corporations, the largest is called Omni-Tek and as you can probably guess they're not exactly the good guys they would like you to believe they are.
However in the northern territories of Rubi-Ka there are the rebels, ex-corporate employee's who have stood up for their rights and want freedom from the yoke of Omni-Tek control. After a series of wars, Omni-Tek with all its military might was pushed back from the northern territories it once owned, and hasn't been able to establish any major footholds there since. However you start playing in a period of cold war. the Clans in the north are content with what they have to a large extent. They control a series of cities and are able to export and import and basically run themselves how they like. In the south Omni-Tek is held at check by ICC (basically CONCORD, but without real military teeth.) In the middle is a more nebulous group, the Neutrals. Those who don't want to work for Omni-Tek and be a mindless drone, yet also don't want to have to bow down to the Clans in the north. they have set up two safe haven cities, Newland City and Borealis. players were able to choose any of these three factions with Funcom the games developers not intending Neutrals to be a valid option till players first started to refuse to sign up to either the Clans or Omni-Tek. The neutral classification was initially to allow new players to make a better informed decision on which side to pick.

As far as the gameplay goes, it was incredibly complex, items were level locked and also stat locked, but there were items which buffed stats and nano's (read sci fi spells) which also buffed stats and there were allot of nano's available for all 12 professions (Classes) as well there being four races or breeds.

It was released about 12 years ago, and its still running somehow, though on what I suspect will be life support once they have finished the couple of development projects they have been working on for the past three or so years.


I first really started out in AO when I was still in school. I had just got my first computer and had tried out Runescape and probably some other horrific free mmo's which were available at the time. It wasn't long till I was talking to some friends and they suggested that I should give AO a go and that they could help me out a bit.
At the time I hadn't really any experience of playing a game where you have an avatar, to customise and improve, and kit out with equipment. They gave me some direction and I flailed around on my Froob account barely existing on their handouts till they suggested a method of making some quick credits which I didn't have to be high level to do.
I began starting to import Omni Med Suits from Omni Tek controlled regions where they could be bought from vendors at about 1-2k per piece and passing bags of full sets over to my Clan main to sell in Old Athens for a couple of million credits. Soon I was importing via this way about 20 or so sets a day if not more and selling them for these vastly inflated prices and making what I thought was bucket loads of credits at the time.
In reality I wasn't but at the time I was actually becoming self sufficient with it.
Anyway I persevered with it, eventually upgraded to a paid account and stated to push myself up the levels. After a couple of failed characters I switched to the third faction available in the game (Neutral) and really hit it off, ending up with an endgame character. Time flew by as I progressed through all of the content. I spent a couple of years on that character, logged a silly amount of online time, and spent half of it just talking to people and helping out or running my guild.
This was the golden period of this game for me, there was plenty of fresh content, more was being added, the grind was over and my character was pretty damn well equipped and pretty damn badass.
Eventually the bitter veteran grew in me and as the rate of development slowed down and the storyline ground to a halt to be largely ignored I grew more bitter, the same old gripes kept on coming up till I reached a point where I threw in the towel and moved on.

 Anarchy Online had a learning curve much like Eve's. It was high, painful and long. The grind was also immense, unless you put money in and paid others to do it for you. Before you watch the video, guess what level he is going to finish leveling and hit level cap at.

Most of you I guess went for around 80 or 90? maybe 100 tops. He actually stops at level 220.
the combined level cap of AO was actually described as 200/20/30/70 but most commonly as 220/30/70. Basically you had to grind 200 normal levels, at an incredibly slow and dull rate, which often caused people to call in higher levels to tank masses of monsters and allow them to just kill them and get the xp or pay for one of the professions (classes) to team them, and kite around aoe'ing everything in an area till it died, whilst the lower level player just sat out the way and twiddled their thumbs. This was continued with the further 20 shadow levels which were introduced with the second expansion Shadowlands, which vastly improved the game, by pretty much adding an alternate dimension which was far better to level in and raid in. Following this came the Alien Invasion in which a further 30 alien levels were added, and then following on from that they released Lost Eden which added a further 70 research levels ontop of all the rest. This grind became such a joke that when the developers held a competition to name a new orbital night club they were adding to the game players backed the name "The Grind" far more than any other suggestion.

As you can probably tell it was a horridly broken game with little real thought it seems put to progression and the grind they were introducing. The economy is also still shot to hell as well with inflation and not enough good gear available or ways to make money available which doesn't involve camping out at sites where the good gear drops.

When you moan about this or that in Eve, just remember there's a game out there where the company behind it has pretty much abandoned it to chase after profits from other games its produced and hasnt bothered to listen to its community and sort out its problems.

Hopefully this has given you some insight into just how bad a game company can be. How little it can care about its community and how a game can stagnate so much more than Eve. I have nothing against the actual team developing Anarchy Online its the company which they work for which is screwing itself and perhaps leading itself to ruin. In other words be thankful for CCP actually giving a damn or even pretending to as its more than what others do.
No doubt someone will make the argument that its a twelve year old game and that I shouldn't expect miracles or for its development to be continued. I will point out that Eve Online is only about two years younger and is in far better shape.