Lets play... Anarchy Online!

[vampire2948]

Hello Playground!


So - I'm trying to get into Anarchy Online (http://www.anarchy-online.com/wsp/anarchy/frontend.cgi?func=frontend.show&template=main), a fairly old nanotechnology themed MMO. And I think it'd be pretty interestin' to make an Let's Play! of, with the assistance of the playground in the important choices.

I'll be running two instances of the game at once, and therefore controlling two characters. And I'd like the opinion of the playground as to which two classes I'll be using.

Classes are:
Adventurer - Dual-wielding [pistols or melee weapons] generalist, capable of healing, buffing, etc. Can turn into animals later on.
Agent - Sniper and sneaky guy. Can mimic other classes to use their nanotechnology.
Bureaucrat - Various debuffs and team buffing abilities, good at crowd control, has a robotic assistant that can fight for them.
Doctor - Healer, has some disease-based offensive nanotechnology.
Enforcer - Tank and melee DPS. Can get very large in size with various buffs :3
Engineer - Gets a better robotic pet than the 'crat, works with damage shields and such.
Fixer - Fast, hacking themed class. Uses SMGs.
Keeper - Paladin-y sort of melee fighter, has various healing auras and buff auras.
Martial Artist - Melee combat themed fighter, gets some healing and various martial art maneuvers.
Meta-physicist - gets pets made from emotions, up to three of them. Aswell as various blasty nanotechs.
Nano-Technician - the 'mage' class, lots of single-target and AoE nuke spells.
Shade - Sneaky melee combat person, has many abilities to drain life from enemies and heal itself. Uses two daggers usually, very fragile. Can drain souls and use them instead of the implants that other classes use.
Soldier - What it says on the tin. Is a ranged tanky class, lots of damage shields and damage buffs. Can use a variety of weapons.
Trader - Buffs and debuffs to 'trade' stats around. Can do the same with health and nano energy, fairly interesting. Uses shotguns usually.


The Let's Play will probably be in the form of videos hosted on youtube, or possibly screenshots. Depends how well I think I could do videos.

Hopefully it will convince a few of you guys to try out the game :) I'll be playing on the RK1 Atlantean Dimension [Server].


So - What do people think? Any two classes. I'll go with whichever are most popular. Would be nice if people chose different ones for the pair.

I'll be playing with all the expansions, most likely through the 'Shadowlands' one mostly, since I like the zones there.


Also - Would people be interested in this? I'll probably create it either way. ^^

Thanks!
Vampire2948,

[Castaras]

Hah, I have a 220 Engineer on AO. :smallbiggrin:

Atlantean is awesome. I'd tell you to look up my old org, Paragon, but unfortunately I think pretty much everyone either left or went to other orgs. :smallfrown: Go clan though. Clan is the way to go. Old Athens is a much nicer place than Omni-Entertainment and Rome.

I'd say if you're duel-logging, a Keeper and an MP. Or Enforcer and MP. Or even Engi and MP. What you'd want is one toon that you can hit q and afk on, and the two to have some healing between them.

I'd recommend against staying purely in Shadowlands, you get very little money - dunno if you have a main account on there or not, but unfortunately the AO economy is very borked.

Or you could go for an Bureaucrat and a Bureaucrat. :smallamused: (There was an experiment a while ago on Atlantean that had a raid of all Bureaucrats doing some of the end game raids. They beat them. :smalltongue:)

Actually... thinking about it, a Martial Artist and a Metaphysicist would be a good combo. The MP can sit with their healing pet on the Martial Artist, and have their attack and mezz pets attack (at low levels, pet professions are unlikely to have enough IP to be able to put up many weapon skills, so are better off relying on their pets for damage), while you mainly play on the Martial Artist, which has some healing nanos and quite a few interesting special attacks. Plus the two characters are reasonably cheap to finance, what with Martial Artists not needing weapons, and it being easier to roll for/pick up in missions the special attacks, and MPs mostly needing nanos rather than extra armour. (don't tell anyone and definitely don't do this, but my engi wore a Medsuit [+78 first aid + treatment, no +ACs] up until the 120s... :smalleek: :smallredface:)

So yeah. Martial Artist, MP, and do a few Rubika missions, and try not to get into pocket teams (they're boring :smalltongue:).

Oh, and just to warn you - you might be doing this Let's play a very long time. :smalltongue:

Edit: Holy moley, I might be a bit drunk. :smalleek: I only ramble like this when I'm drunk. Oops. Well, at least I fit the demographic of the normal AO player. :smalltongue:

[vampire2948]

Hehe, :smallbiggrin: thanks for the lengthyish reply.
'crat and 'crat sounds... awesome! So many pets! o_O

I don't have a main account. Scraped together about 1m on my first character through farming pearls and other items in SL. Cripplers are like little bundles of credits with wings <3

And yes, I hope I would be doing it for a long time. I've always kinda wanted to play AO. But I keep dropping out after a week or two :/ Want something to give me a little more motivation to beat the learning curve and find out why there're peoples who've played it for years. It is a very interesting MMO, imo.


Thanks again *passes cookie*

Vamp,

[Pie Guy]

So exactly how is Anarchy Online different from a standard mmo?

[vampire2948]

So exactly how is Anarchy Online different from a standard mmo?

Well, not much, that I've seen so far. Except for that is has a steeper learning curve than most, makes it difficult to get into it... really hurtin' the game's playerbase. Since that, combined with it's age and graphics, seem to be makin' the playerbase steadily decrease.

I like the game because it is sci-fi themed, and does items and skills in a fairly interesting way. There's a lot of 'twinking' that goes on - Trying to work out how to get your stats high enough to equip nano-programs [like spells] or gear, or similar. This gets rather complicated.
I also like that all the classes feel very different, makes it interesting for alt-o-holics.

Other than that, they've pretty successfully had player-owned cities for years, which is something other MMOs like WoW still seem to lack, despite the playerbases in those requesting them all the time.

Has a very active RP community - They released a novel shortly after the game as an introduction, and it remains amongst my most favourite books. You can read it here (http://www.anarchy-online.com/anarchy/frontend/files/CONTENT/download/documents/prophet_without_honour.pdf) for free, if you're into sci-fi / are interested.

Hmm. Not really sure what else, I've not played it very much, and not seen the end-game content. It is an interesting one [To me, at least]. Unfortunately suffering from lack of support, since the company which created it are putting their resources into other games.
Tis worth a look, if you've the time, and can forgive fairly terrible graphics [new graphics engine is coming... soon(tm)].


Vamp,