Rating: 
Summary: Beware Buyers - Wait til the company gets their act together
Review: While Anarchy Online is an exciting new concept in online gaming that could replace the standard swords and sorcerors in the current "Big 3" online games (Asheron's Call, Ultima Online, Everquest), this game IS NOT READY to go online.Anarchy Online is another online game that was rumored to have been released before it was ready to help the cash-stretched company obtain quick income. I played the Beta version up until the week before the game's release and while I was impressed with the sci-fi theme (and new online concepts such as everyone owning a house for their possessions) even with the smaller number of users in the Beta stage, the server(s) could not take the strains of running the game. In other words, if you purchase this game right now, you can expect huge lags (This is the game pausing because the internet connections aren't working properly.), resolution problems and other frustrating dilemmas. These difficulties are even more frustrating when you consider that you're paying a monthly fee. During the game's initial release, the company did not start charging accounts because of the problems but as I write this review, the company has decided to start charging accounts which has many current owners of the game angry as they have yet to experience a "working" game. It looks like a great concept for an online game, but the best bet would be to wait awhile and explore internet sources to find out the current state of the game.
Rating: 
Summary: Great, despite flaws!! -which I believe will be addressed
Review: This really is a fantastic game. This is an online game with thousands of players at any time. Planned to cover 4 years of real time, you can start as one of 4 races, numerous professions and on either side of the coming confict or neutral. The professions are the real interest. As you grow in your profession, you can set up your own skills, set up shop building things for example. Such talents as secret agent, a techno sort of summoner or mage, ultra soldier types, doctors, ninja, etc. The equipment variety and combinations are staggering...it may take 4 years to be able to afford the ultra advanced items. The other area of excellence is the way teamwork really works--that is the best way to see this world- everyone gets credit and if the teamleader dictates (/team loot alpha), everyone takes turn getting stuff from spoils. Graphics are great, the world is vast, missions are excellent. There's very little not to like, but here they are- on the weekends in the cities, the lag is so bad that you literally can't move-hopefully they are setting up additional servers. The game does occasionally pop me out, but immediately reconnects me--the game is very good about not letting you lose any items or experience...even if you die, you get it all back. This is a very enjoyable experience overall...look for me (sablestar) and join my team.
Rating: 
Summary: WILL BE the best game ever! (Edit: How Wrong I Was)
Review: (Edit: The below review that I made a while ago is a testament to the power of self delusion. I really wanted this game to be all those things, but after a while you realize that even when it is working, the gameplay sucks. Very few promised features were put in. FunCom customer service sucks. Everything about the game sucks. Do not buy it. You may enjoy it for a week or three, but you will realize sooner or later, that it just sucks in SO MANY WAYS. I originally gave it five stars based on it's potential. But FunCom has proved, patch after patch, that potential will never be realized. Not anytime soon anyway, and there are lots of interesting titles in the pipe. One star! Don't buy it, and I really hope no one bought it based on my previous review. I'd feel a bit guilty if I led someone to waste their money as I did.) My previous review: Ok, I gave it 5 stars, based on me looking beyond the technical problems. The game play, the graphics, the story - everything about this game is so awesome. (the actual story line will not be implemented in game untill about 6 months after release) As of right now - the game is well on the way to becomeing stable. The disconnects are pretty rare, once a day at this point. I've not had an actual crashes since beta (I was in Beta 4). So you can stay in the game, but the biggest issue now is the lag. At busy times lag can be bad. Another biggie is zoneing problems. Other then these two big items there are numerous small bugs. But despite these problems, I have a lot of fun playing AO. When you are out in the wilderness (away from the city lag-fests) you can see how great the game is. Absolutely stunning graphics, great music, and immersive mood-setting sound affects. Now, it's still got major problems, I think it takes a real fan to put up with them for now. So be warned, if you don't want to deal with the problems then wait, but if your a die hard fan, I think you'll have fun while waiting for them to iron out the kinks. Make no mistake - if and when this game is fully working it will be fully desearving of 6 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Anarchy Flop
Review: Terrible release...Spent all of the first trying to install and nothing works. After several of the patches it made the problems worse. DO NOT buy this game until the bugs have been worked out. This game is still in beta.
Rating:
Summary: No Fun(com).
Review: In short, this is a [price] beta . . . Ten days since the game's launch and counting. Still unplayable. A powerful machine won't help you. (I'm reviewing this on a 1.1ghz machine, 64mb Radeon, 768mb ram, 768k DSL). Some of the current problems: + Pings commonly between 3000ms and 10000ms. + Unable to move from one 'zone' to another + Characters, experience, credits, posessions often randomly lost + Documented commands that fail to work + A lot of GUI and typographical errors abound + Servers are completely down between 10% and 15% of the day. + Logging in is a long and arduous process + If you manage to log in, lag is too horrible to play (for example, press the 'sit' key and you may wait up to five minutes before your character sits. + Characters can shoot you through walls, meaning you can't see them or find them, but they can kill you. + If a character attacks you, your nano-bots (aka magic) will fail to work on them unless you then seperately attack them (a combination of a couple buttons pressed and mouse clicks - enough time to be killed before retaliating). + Often doors contain no textures, causing a giant "blurp" to occur and the screen to go haywire. + The manual is attrocious. Read the first four or five pages and burn the rest. You'll have to wait until someone else figures everything out and find out how to play on Anarchy Online fan-websites. There are countless additional problems. This is just the surface and illustrates why it is a waste of time. The core of the problem is that Funcom's networking is done through TCP which most multi-player game developers will cringe at (and for good reason). Additional problems are a failure to test and scale their server-farm and server software to handle a large number of concurrent players. Well known players in the game industry (including some from iD Software) have offered their comments and suggestions along these same lines on FunCom's own Anarchy Online forums. Also, according to some of the .plans for the iD folks, they are into this game (and if the creators of Doom and Quake are into it, you know at the core it must be good). It's just a shame that something that appears so fun is currently totally unusable. You can use it enough to see what you're missing and that's about it. Some of the other problems you'd have encountered a few days ago were: + Sending your credit card number over an unsecure connection to register (even though the manual states it is a secure connection). + After registering, the email you recieved containing your password did not contain the password. + Patches would partially download and/or fail during application. FunCom used a couple excuses. The first was that there are too many users in each 'zone/city' (700!). The second is that 35,000 was a shock to them and they didn't expect to have that many users. There are two problems here. The first is that since the entire point of an MMORPG is to have a lot of players interacting and playing together, you would want to be sure the software and servers scale well and can handle *huge* numbers of players in each 'zone'. Otherwise, what good is a multi-player game? It's like one-man baseball. The second problem is that they claim now that 35,000 users was a shock and unexpected, yet their own press releases previously touted that they expected the number of users to rival all other MMORPGS previously released. Further, they had 100,000 users request to participate in the beta. This means that they could have had all the test users they needed to be sure the servers could stand up with 35,000+ users and that their cop-out over the 35,000 current users is wholly inaccurate. This product is currently still at beta-level. In short FunCom got 35,000 people to pay $50+ for an incomplete and far-from ready product. Perhaps this was an attempt to gain further emergency funding to pay for making the game usable, but it's still wholly unethical. Finally, if you're still not convinced, then realize that only one week after the game was released, Funcom has already mastered a second copy to be released (with fixes and all) because the first was so disasterous. But take heed, even with these changes, it's still as unplayable as ever. The game would be wonderful, exciting and fun if only it could actually be played. If you enjoy 10000ms pings and 10 frames-per-minute game play with, then this game is for you. Otherwise, wait a month or two and check back to see how things are going. At this point, I intend to return my game and get a refund if it isn't playable within the first thirty days.
Rating:
Summary: ack
Review: seriously this is a great game-and its quite refreshing considering all of the fantasy MMORPGS out there-and I have played bother EQ and UO and i got bored after a while-its just the same old thing over and over and over.....but this handles everything differently. Sure it needs some serious patching but consider this-i owned Daggerfall way back in "the day" :) and it was as bad as this. Play that and you will never say another word about bugs overrunning a game again. Black & White is also pretty buggy-so be patient people. It is still a great game-just give it a chance...please? :P
Rating:
Summary: Don't buy it for a couple of months!
Review: This is a nice game, but the support is terrible, the gameplay is horrid, the server performance will drive you crazy. I think that Funcom really screwed up with this one and are working very hard to avoid the lawsuits that are probably coming. This game in its current state should never have been released. Bottom line, don't buy it for a couple of months. If you do, you WILL be sorry you did.
Rating:
Summary: Lags, yes. Every MMORPG had this during the first month!
Review: No amount of beta testing could have prepared the programmers for the onslaught in popularity of this game. When a server (not to mention game software) is used to a beta-test load of a few thousand people and then it is suddenly subjected to the actions of 15,000 people, the entire game dynamic changes. If you want a seriously polished MMORPG then purchase Everquest. EQ is solid, fun, and rarely crashes. In another month, so shall AO. As other reviewers said, AO has a GREAT DEAL OF POTENTIAL. To some, it is not worth their money before the game is polished.
Rating:
Summary: Stability increasing
Review: I'm a veteran of EQ, AC, and GSIII. I currently play with a 56k modem, a 1.2Ghz AMD with 512 meg of ram on win98se and tnt2 ultra video card with 32meg ram (dsl and geforce3 in near future of course). I'm writing this review on July 5, 2001 and yesterday AO was one week old. Every day the game is more playable. I was able to play mostly the whole day (the 4th) with no problems. If you like sci-fi settings and terminology, with some blade runner sounding music, and great night skies to look at, this game is for you. I like to build up my characters in games (level), and the roleplaying happens in my head. Teaming up is very easy and lots of people are doing it (I play a doctor, so it's not hard at all to find a group when healing is in such need). One thing I really like is the fact that I can play solo (missions) or group (outside hunting) depending on my mood and time available. With EQ it was much harder and slower to solo after a certain point. Also, downtime in AO is almost non-existent. There are devices which are very cost effective to get back health and nano (read mana). Hope this helps you, and give me a call in the morning if you need those cyber implants inserted ;-> -Doc Lucid.
Rating:
Summary: Sorry, but this game [is bad]
Review: There is no excuse to release this load of garbage on the public. It has glaring flaws in almost every aspect of the game...from installation, to patching, to game play.
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