Anarchy Online: Shadowlands

"All in all, a good expansion to a good MMORPG."

Anarchy Online is one of the veterans in the MMORPG genre now. Released back in 2001, it is still going strong even now in 2005, in fierce competition with games like Everquest II and World of Warcraft. This is much due to the great expansion packs for it, and the first real expansion pack released for Anarchy Online is Shadowlands.

Story
Shadowlands is a place with ancient pasts, quite possibly the origin of man and the planet Rubi-Ka. After many years, the scientists in Jobe manages to open portals and maintain a link between Rubi-Ka and Shadowlands, and they are finally offering the inhabitants of Rubi-Ka to enter the dangerous new world.

The story of Shadowlands is actually very good, but it is mostly hidden and not revealed to the player much apart from the manual. Instead, you are left to solve cryptic puzzles and riddles on items you find around in Shadowlands that often explains the background story. There's a mystic being called Ergo located in each zone in Shadowlands which somewhat drives the story forward, but just like everything else, he mostly confuses you with more questions. That being said, nothing is wrong with finding out things for yourself, especially when the story is rich, but the way it is presented is executed poorly.

Gameplay
Where most expansion packs offer some new skills, and some new locations and quests, Shadowlands has a huge amount of new content. Even though it still is plagued with some bugs that should have been fixed a long time ago, the gameplay is greatly enhanced with Shadowlands.

First of all, there are two new professions. The Keeper is a paladin like profession, using various sorts of Auras to heal or protect Party members. Skilled also in the arts of Swords and defense, the Keeper is an excellent solo profession which is highly durable and also works as a good tank.

Then, there's the Shade. It's a shady profession which uses backstabbing and lifedraining, and it is a very active profession that requires you to be focused while playing in order to utilize well. The shades has one of the highest damage outputs in the game, but sacrifices it with their weaker defense, only relying on life tap and evades.

These two professions, while they have some problems, are a great addition to the original profession selection, boosting the total from twelve to fourteen(Which is a big amount compared to most other MMORPGs). Of course, this makes balancing the game, especially in PvP really hard, and this is a problem.

Then, there's the Shadowlands itself. Shadowlands consists of Seven huge outdoor zones, with tons of dungeons and locations, NPC's, Quests and monsters. There's plenty to see, and even though the AO engine is getting quite old, it still has a certain magic. In order to get to Shadowlands, you also have to visit a new town, called Jobe, which ties Rubi-Ka and Shadowlands together. All of these new places means that there is a lot to do and see, and it will take you a long, long time to explore the new locations. They scale nicely upwards, from the beginning areas in Nascense, to the high-end levels in Inferno and beyond. The last zone is purely a raid zone, with all the best loot but also all the toughest monsters in Shadowlands.

In order to boost the characters to better stand a chance against the new world, several character improvements has also been made. Perks are one of the biggest. For every ten level you gain, you get a perk point, which can then be placed on a list of skill improvements. This list is unique to each profession, so a Martial Artist have a different set of profession perks compared to a Soldier, and so on. This further enhances each professions role in the game, and the perks are very important to be able to survive further on in Shadowlands. Some increase Health, some increases Evades, some increases Damage, some adds special functions like Nano Regeneration and Life Drains and some are purely stat boosters that help you equipping armor and new equipment. In addition, several perks have Perk Specials which lets you execute special attacks.

The second big character improvement, is the Symbiants, which acts like highly improved Implants. Symbiants boosts several skills instead of the max three that the original Implants did, and they also become very important in order to survive deeper in Shadowlands.

The third big character improvement is the increased level cap, which increases the Max Level from 200 to 220, and the last 20 levels can only be obtained in Shadowlands, but each level is approximately the same as 5 normal levels under 200, so they serve as a big improvement.

Then finally, there's all the weapons, equipment and the new nanos. There are tons of equipment in Shadowlands which easily surpasses the ones found on Rubi-Ka, giving the player more or less no choice what to use. This is somewhat bad since it limits the player to using only Shadowlands equipment if he want to be even just decently equipped, since the old Rubi-Ka equipment is now heavily outdated. But, it's also necessary, because the difficulty in Shadowlands is increased. The monsters have more health, they hit harder and they like to use dangerous status effects to make things nasty. They provide a greater challenge for the unprepared player, and puts the Character Improvements to good test. It works well in the end, despite several design flaws and bugs and some severe imbalance between some professions, and Shadowlands does what it set out to do, bring the players to a brand new world while giving them lots of neat stuff to go with it.

Graphics
The AO engine looked good in 2001 and 2002. However, games have evolved but the graphics and the engine has not. There's very little interaction with the game world, the character models and the textures are getting blurry and washed out compared to the details of newer games. Graphics are not everything, but the world needs an update in order to look decent again. Granted, some things look quite nice, some armor are well designed and look nice, monsters have a nice design and the locations themselves are impressive. From the green, lush Nascense, to the enigmatic but beautiful blue and green Elysium(With long green fields and a blue sky), to the barren highlands of Scheol, to the rocky wastelands of Adonis with the mighty sea surrounding it, to the beautiful snowy Penumbra and the mighty burning Inferno, the zones themselves are breathtaking. It's just a shame that the engine is not able to do them justice.

Sound
What does work, is the music. AO has absolutely fantastic music with both beautiful sweeping melodies, to ambient dungeon sounds, to the mysterious songs of the locations in Shadowlands. It must be heard to be believed, and it's just stunning. It easily rivals music from all other MMORPG's on the market.

When it comes to sound effects, it does not work well. Most sounds are muffled and low quality, and there's not much variation in the sound. In order to improve, Funcom needs to make more sounds, and increase the quality.

Summary
But in the end, Shadowlands ia good expansionpack. Sure, it does have some flaws, it does have bugs and imbalance, but the basics of it works and have integrated into the basic Anarchy Online almost flawlessly. What seemed like strange and unfamiliar character improvements during release, is now seamlessly working with the game, making it easy and fun to obtain the treasures of Shadowlands and enjoy them.

But the biggest treasure of Shadowlands, the one that is ignored and overlook, is the combination between the design of the zones, the music and the story. It all creates a picture of a very dangerous, but beautiful lost world, ready to be explored.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/05