Anarchy Online får Booster Pack

I går annonserte FunCom at de vil slippe en booster pack til Anarchy Online. Booster Packen vil utvide mange av de featurene som allerede er i Anarchy Online.

Booster packen vil bli utgitt rundt julen 2002, og vil fungere som Mech Pak utvidelsene til Mech Warrior. Den kommer til å inneholde ny musikk, flere karakterer og nye oppdrag.

Her følger et utdrag fra pressemeldingen: Funcom unveiled the Anarchy Online expansion pack, Shadowlands, at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). The company hoped to have the product finished in time for this year’s holiday buying season. However, the expansive scope of Shadowlands meant the team needed more time and release is now planned for the first half of 2003. Funcom realized several exciting but smaller ideas scheduled to be additions to the expansion pack could still be ready in time.

"These cool features were still too large in megabytes to offer as a regular content patch, but not large enough in content to call an expansion pack. We needed something in-between," said game director Gaute Godager. "We hated the idea of holding stuff back from our players until everything for Shadowlands was done. So, we came up with the idea of booster packs."

Land control is the main feature of the first Anarchy Online booster pack along with additional graphic updates and new sounds. Much larger in scope to Funcom’s previously discussed ideas of land control, this feature will be vital for those players taking an active part in the conflict between the planet’s two warring sides: Omni-Tek and the clans.

Existing areas of Rubi-Ka will be opened up for control by player organizations. A "controller" is purchased by the organization and placed in the area they wish to hold. The controller then mines notum, the element unique to Rubi-Ka used in advanced nano-technology across the galaxy. Members will gain personal and organizational benefits and advantages from their notum mine, including skill and experience bonuses, land-holder titles, and more.

The exciting part is that a controller can be destroyed by enemies such as other players and creatures within the world. Protection of the controller will be managed through placing permanent towers in the surrounding area. Towers will have both defensive and offensive abilities, and a tower’s attributes will be based on the cumulative skills and abilities of members in the organization. Booster owners can also place personal, temporary towers in almost any area for time-limited bonuses.