Released!
The Shadowlands is an expansion pack under development
for Anarchy Online. It is a continuation of the Rubi-Ka story,
and will take the game from its present, strict science fiction
focus, to a game with metaphysical proportions.
Visit
the official Shadowlands website.
-Anarchy Online: Shadowlands planned for 4th
quarter release -
Oslo, Norway—April 29, 2002 –Anarchy
Online: Shadowlands is the new expansion pack currently in development
to compliment Anarchy Online, Funcom's award-winning massively
multiplayer online game. Shadowlands is currently planned for
a 4th quarter 2002 release and will contain many new areas to
explore, profession specialisation, additional breed variations,
higher quality armour and item options, improved graphic effects,
and much more.
"Anarchy Online provides players with more
freedom to develop their characters than any other MMOG on the
market," said Online Services Director Henning Solberg. "With
Shadowlands, players will be able to take that to an even higher
level while having intriguing new areas to explore and new modified
breeds to choose from. We are having a lot of fun making this
expansion and we are happy to include many things our current
players want to see."
Shadowlands E3 Preview:
A comprehensive preview of Shadowlands has been
posted on AO Stratics and Stratics
Central. You can find it here.
Shadowlands is the first expansion pack for the
award-winning massively multiplayer online game Anarchy Online.
Shadowlands introduces an impressive range of features; new and
exciting playfields, professions, monsters and game-play improvements.
Shadowlands is a dark, mystical realm where the
laws of physics are changed, and everything you ever believed
in, breaks and inverts. Underneath lies the remnants of an ancient
civilisation, so advanced, so magnificent it challenges the myth
of human authenticity.
Ancient horrors and spiritual encounters unfold
inside the dark and eerie dimension, and the epic struggle for
control of Rubi-Ka evolves towards its zenith, inducing an experience
truly unique to the MMORPG genre.
The Cradle of Life
Thousands of years in the future, in the name of
complete galactic colonisation, man has started a small mining
community on a distant desert planet called Rubi-Ka. It's a hostile
planet, arid and red, scorched by the immense heat of the twin
suns it circles, and torn from the gravitational pull of its large
and mysterious moon.
Terraforming the planet to make it habitable was
an enormous challenge, but funded by the world's most powerful
hyper-corporation, Omni-Tek, humans are slowly turning the tides
of time, and with the help of nanotechnology, they are transforming
the planet into a lush and fertile environment.
Rubi-Ka proved different from other planets; blessed
with enormous quantities of notum, the mysterious fuel for advanced
nanotechnology, and the building blocks of scientific progress.
Omni-Tek cunningly acquired the mining rights to
Rubi-Ka, and has greedily exploited the planet's supply of notum
for over a thousand years. They rule the planet through a strict,
corporate autocracy with limited allowance of personal freedom,
and an affinity for swift and hard punishment for any resistance
and dissent.
Humans, however, are rebellious by nature, and notoriously
hard to control. Miners revolted, and established clans of freedom
fighters to challenge Omni-Tek's right to govern the planet. Civil
war, and years of open conflict are approaching a climax, and
all-out revolution seems inevitable. Omni-Tek is rapidly losing
ground, and is delving deeper and deeper into the secrets of Rubi-Ka
in a frantic search for the origin of notum. They believe "The
Source" will secure unlimited powers for the one who controls
it, and they have just made a breakthrough...
In the floating city of Jobe, a team of Omni-Tek's
most skilled scientists and powerful nano-technicians have opened
a portal into a parallel world; a world more incredible and fantastic
than even the wildest fantasies…or the darkest, most terrifying
nightmares. It is the Shadowlands – a world of dense contrast,
spiralling down through increasingly intense metaphysical worlds,
separated from each other by portals guarded by the mysterious
Guardians of Shadow – deformed and scalded by feral and horrendous
beings ripping and tearing through it, in a timeless struggle
for absolute domination.
There is intelligent life in the Shadowlands, unexpectedly
mirroring the situation on the surface of Rubi-Ka. Beings who
call themselves the Redeemed are aligned with the clans and the
Unredeemed are aligned with Omni-Tek, and an equally disturbing
conflict is raging between them. There are wild creatures there
as well, and they are more terrifying and powerful than the ones
on the surface. They arbitrarily, seemingly mindlessly, tear at
the edges of the Shadowlands, turning the very earth into dust,
throwing it into the void.
And from the bowels of the Shadowlands the precious
notum swirls and spirals into a gigantic vortex in the sky, sucking
with it anything not solidly ground to the earth.
The Shadowlands bear evidence of an ancient civilisation
of human-like creatures thriving there, clearly more advanced
than mankind ever was. But the Shadowlands are scarred, and it
seems something happened there, a terrible struggle of some kind,
or some cataclysmic event, that ultimately constructed its demise.
What happened? Who were those creatures? And why are the Shadowlands
ever in our dreams?
As the journey through the Shadowlands progresses,
it becomes clear to all who venture inside that more is at stake
than the simple acquisition of wealth and power...
Life in the universe had to come from somewhere...
and now it has come to a crossroads.
The following images are either "Work in Progress"
or "Concept Art".
Gatekeeper
Theme
Shadowlands
Battle Music
Adonis
- Mighty Castle Music
Lush
Elysium Music
Dark
World of Pandemonium
Unredeemed
Theme
Shadowlands
- Music as SFX
June
1st 2003 - The road to Shadowlands - Piecing it all together
May
4th, 2003 - The road to Shadowlands - Toys & Puzzles (Tradeskills
& Quests)
April
6, 2003 - The road to Shadowlands - Professions and Perks
March
2, 2003 - The road to Shadowlands - Playfields, Creatures and
Beta Test of the expansion pack
February
2, 2003 - The road to Shadowlands. Development of AO during the
first half of 2003
Minimum:
Pentium II 300 MHz, 64 MB RAM, Windows 95/98/ME/2000, 8 MB
DirectX-compatible video card, DirectX-compatible sound card,
2x CD-ROM drive, 700 MB hard-disk space, and 28.8 kbps modem
Recommended:
Penium III 450 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 32 MB DirectX-compatible
video card, 1 GB hard-disk space, and 56 kbps modem
|
| Gameplay |
7 |
| Graphics |
10 |
| Audio |
9 |
| Interface |
7 |
| Lag
& Stability |
9 |
| Support |
8 |
| Overall
Score |
8.3 |
Gameplay: 7
Badly balanced and without easily available save-locations,
quite repetitive.
Graphics: 10
Entirely beautiful, captivating, stunning. Nothing
to say other than "Great!"
Audio: 9
A little bugged at release, but the music and sound
effects themselves are wonderful. As usual for Funcom - sound
and music are one of the strong parts.
Interface: 7
The new GUI has some bugs and is not very intuitive.
Trading is harder right now with the GUI overlapping trade windows
when 2 other menus are open. Most windows are now movable though,
which is a definite plus.
Lag & Stability: 9
A few zoning errors here and there, but overall
it is very stable. Lag happened only when my graphics card could
not keep up with the stunning environment, but not server-side.
Support: 8
The volunteer customer support from Funcom called
ARK (Advisors of Rubi-Ka) was not able to help with the zoning
problems. Reimbursing lost experience points due to bugs does
not happen either. They are doing their best and GMs are somewhat
rare to find, so with most issues a player is left on their own
with some comforting words from the ARKs. Email support from Funcom
is usually fast and reliable. The ARK Events team does some nice
events occassionally.
Overall Score: 8,3
The expansion is a good product. It was not yet
ready for release which caused unneccessary problems at launch.
However with the mass of new things to do and explore, Anarchy
Online has reached an entirely new level. The game is highly recommended
for everyone who wants to play - the in my opinion - greatest
MMOG on the market today.
Definition
of Stratics Ratings
Stratics Central
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