Anarchy Online: Why?

Anarchy Online is a weird game. It is ancient; unwieldy in a way that only ancient games can be. The interface is bad, the gameplay is stale, and I can't think of a single reason to keep playing it. But I do. AO is one of those games that I keep coming back to. I can't help but wonder why.

I started playing AO a bit more than a decade ago, right when they began allowing players to play for free. Free players (colloquially known as 'froobs') have access only to the base game and the Notum Wars boosters, not any of the (4 at present) expansion packs. I played on and off as a froob for much of that period, never reaching higher than level 80 (of 200).

So why do I keep coming back? More than that: why the hell did I pick up the full expansion set this last time around? It was only $20, but still: Why? I am beginning to understand, I think. The game is one giant puzzle.

I was playing my new Fixer, running around in the Shadowlands, trying to figure out where to go next to keep leveling. I googled it, found some info, and set about trying to act on it. And failed over and over again. Dangerous enemies were between me and my goal. As of writing this, I have yet to figure out a way to slip past them.

It isn't that these enemies are over-leveled for me either: they are on level, and I can fight one and sometimes even two at a time without dying. However, every entry point seems to set me against situations where I fight minimum two and often three of these creatures.

There are many possible ways I could deal with this. Maybe I need to temporarily blow some IP (for the uninitiated: IP increase skills) in Concealment and sneak past them. Maybe I need to go hunt for better nanos and the requisite buffs to equip and cast them. Maybe I need a better gun (or two). I don't know.

As someone who loves puzzles and is absolutely unconcerned with reaching the level cap in a timely manner, I enjoy this. The struggle just to succeed. I have fond memories of pugging ToTW on my Agent (Emallson – my namesake), pushing all the way to the legionnaires for efficient XP or the final boss encounter for the wonderful loot (though I can't remember these days what he drops). Getting there as a solo player without any consistent help was hard. For about a month I was stuck on level 41, continuously dying before dinging and feeding the XP into my bonus pool (Aside: dying loses XP, which goes into a bonus pool that gives you 1.5x XP until you've regained all of it. I really like this system).

Again: it was a puzzle. How do I survive? What can I change? Where do I go? Who do I work with? It was fun. It is fun. This is why I still play this ugly, unwieldy game. Come to think: its unwieldiness actually feeds into that. It gives you most of the information you could reasonably ask for, but it's scattered around. Figuring out which nanos I can buff into reasonably requires finding not only what nanos I can get (in the shop) but also what buffs I can get cast on me (by an MP most often), what weapons I can pull from missions without spending too much on the search is something that doesn't have a good answer because of the QL system, etc.

There are a lot of things that I like about this game. There are enough of them that I feel I can look past the ugliness and unwieldiness to enjoy it. It's fun to explore this world. And that's what I want from a game: fun.