Anarchy Online Extreme

Final Beta 4 Report

Let me start off by saying i had a hell of a lot of fun during Beta 4. I started off playing on version 11.1 which incidentilly turned out for me to be by far the most stable version. At first i knew nothing about AO but i very quickly got the hang of it. The progression early on was fast and fun and that did keep up all the way up to my final level 35.

Both i and Devlz went on many adventures which you can see in the huge screenshot section to follow. I chose the fixer profession while Devlz decided to try out the martial artist and a few others. I tried out both Omni-Tek and Clan at first but after playing for a bit i chose to stick with my Omni-Tek character.

As you all know you begin the game in your own small backyard area but you can quickly progress to level 4 which is when you can leave and go out on your own to begin doing missions or hunting monsters in the wilderness. I ended up spending about 30% of my time exploring and 70% doing missions and hunting in the wilderness.

At first the game played very well and stable for me and i was able to do just about anything. Then Funcom introduced the 11.2 patch. After installing it the game was completely different for me i had massive amounts of crashing/disconnecting and many times i was completely locked out of the game for up to 8 hours at a time. These problems continued through the rest of the beta with many missions being broken and other assorted bugs.

In my time playing Beta 4 i saw and took part in many very kick ass adventures and battles. I believe i only saw a very small part of the world though as most zones were so massive it was unbelievable. I could go on for hours and hours about all the things i've seen and done but then this document would get way too long for anyone to read. A few of the most memorable things to me were the PvP battles that began happening nightly around the 4 holes, Stret West Area during the last week of beta. Also let's not forget about all of the hilarious things that happened while we explored such as running aroud with autorun on and looking with mouselook and running right into the lava. Or the time i decided to take my Omni character to see the Clan War Academy and got completely owned by the guards who caught up to me even though i had grid on.

Ok well on to my final impressions of the beta. If Funcom plans on having a successful 4 year span with AO they are going to need to learn how to communicate better with their customers. Nine times out of ten there was huge problems and Funcom would not say a word about what was going on. The first beta 4 version i played 11.1 was remarkebly stable even much more so then the current retail version which proves Funcom can make a stable client but it will probably take some time. The mission system is one of the best ideas/implementation i have seen in any game period. With a little more variety to the missions and a few tweaks this will undoubtedly be one of the best features in any MMORPG ever. The graphics, sound, and presentation are all the best i've seen and probably the best parts of the game. The gameplay is also more interactive and entertaining then some of the other MMORPG's out there as you can use many different special attacks and nanos during battle. If Funcom can make the story interesting and keep updating the game over the next 4 years they will have a huge hit on their hands despite the initial diffculties they are having.

In closing i found the beta to be very promising and well done. Once the current stability issues and bugs are fixed this is going to be one hell of a game. I look forward to seeing every one of you in Rubi-Ka.

I promised some great high quality screens of all my exploring, hunting, PvP, and other events. Out of 350 screens i took i've decided to post 35 of them. Have fun and feel free to email me or post on the forum with any comments. After the release version is out about 1 week i will post my impressions of it so you can look forward to that also.

High Quality Screenshot Gallery