!
Digital RealmsOn Feburary 27th, 2019, Funcom
opened their fresh start progressive Anarchy Online server. Being a long time player, I was in on this from Day 1. For years, I had wanted a fresh start to the economy, without duping, rampant exploits, and mountains of pre-existing credits and buffing items. To be able to revisit old content at level without max level characters cheapening the experience.
Funcom's plan was to start the game with the original "vanilla" areas. They had a hard level cap that was raised every two weeks or so. Expansions would be enabled later after "player input". And at first, this was amazing! I hadn't seen that many players in
years. Dungeon runs in the Subway and Temple of Three Winds were packed. Lots of people cooperating and working together. AND Funcom patched the game three or four times in the first couple weeks. Presumably fixing some of the duping and stat stacking exploits which had ruined the main server. This is the first time they had patched the game like this in years!
However after a few months, the threads started to unravel. Since Anarchy Online is an old-school MMO, it does get
extremely grindy in the later levels. Especially without expansions, or the newer daily quests that the main server has. Once the base game gets up to about level 100 (out of 200), you really need a team to feel like you have accomplished anything. And that takes time. Time to get into a team. Time to level as a team. Forget solo mission grinding, your eyeballs will bleed before you gain any measurable level increase.
So, here is where the trouble starts. At about the level 125 cap, Funcom popped up a poll for players which asked "Which expansion should be enabled next?". On the poll were all of the games various expansions and an option which said "No expansion for one month". Of course, the Shadowlands expansion won the poll. It makes leveling less grindy, has a added skill system to make combat more involved, adds two new classes, new content for levels 1 to 220. When Funcom announced that Shadowlands won, they said it would be enabled one day after the level 200 cap. Over a month out into the future. Of course, this pissed off a lot of players. The result is there are a fraction of the players that there were on server launch. Not because they hate the classic experience, but because grinding for hours for a minimal gain IS NOT FUN.
Oh well... I do have six months of subscription paid up, and will be playing more often at the end of June when Shadowlands opens. I suspect there will be many returning players at that time.
#
mmo #
anarchyonline #
gaming
