November 24, 2004 - Set almost 30,000 years in the future, Funcom's Anarchy Online takes place in an age when humanity has reached deep into space to find, explore and colonize huge numbers of worlds spanning the length and breadth of the Milky Way. One of these is Rubi-Ka. A small, rather inhospitable planet in a distant sector of the galaxy, it would be little more than just another insignificant dot on a star map were it not for the fact it holds deposits of notum. This material is both rare and essential in nano-technology. As a result, its discovery many thousands of years ago led the enormous Omni-Tek Corporation to begin terraforming and extraction operations. Since that time, the company has established a city, Omni-1, which is Rubi-Ka's capital, its largest population center and the primary focal point for the authorized export trade.

In many outlying areas, Omni-Tek's control is less than absolute. The challenge comes from rebel clans that have banded together in a somewhat loose alliance, and there is also a third faction regarded as more or less neutral. The interaction among and within these groups plays out in a massively multiplayer game featuring an exceptional range of character customization options including some 80 skills, hundreds of special attacks and thousands of items. After a rocky start in the summer of 2001, it has rebounded very nicely to win countless endorsements from players and the media plus more than a few awards. It has also evolved via the Notum Wars "booster pack", the Shadowlands and Alien Invasion expansions, and innumerable smaller additions and changes. In this series, the team has agreed to tell us about running its thriving persistent state world.

Includes eight assorted exclusive images

---

Hi, and welcome to the first segment of It's Alive. In this mini-series, we will go through several aspects of the live situation of a massively multiplayer online game, with Anarchy Online as the obvious case example. My name is Morten Byom, and I was recently appointed as Game Director. In this first article, I will describe the work and processes that we go through when it comes to adding live content in Anarchy Online. I assume, and partly know, that our processes are somewhat similar to how many other MMOs are doing it, so even if you are not a regular player of our game, I hope you will find this interesting.

The new playfields will thus be the next chapter of the alien story, further revealing information on their agenda.

For those of you who haven't followed Anarchy Online very closely, I guess it's appropriate to mention that the game was initially released in 2001. Since then, we have added three retail expansion or booster packs, a special edition and, of course, lots of live content. When I say live content I mean everything that has been added outside of the booster and expansion packs. This includes everything from major dungeons and whole new areas to smaller upgrades like adding more items and weapons.

The update I am talking about in this article is huge, and it consists of a total of four new playfields. It's therefore the single largest free content update we have ever done in Anarchy Online. The focus of this article will be on the production of these playfields. Some aspects like creating a patch, general bug fixing, balancing and other upgrades will not be covered.

Out of the four new playfields, three are what we call "raid zones". This means that they are staged fighting areas where the players are faced with progressively harder challenges - as opposed to regular playfields, where you can do a lot of exploration. These three raid zones will be the hardest challenges we have ever added to Anarchy Online, and will give *great* rewards. The fourth playfield is an old abandoned outpost hidden away in a canyon. Even though this area is linked together with the three raid zones, we will leave it up to the players to find out how!

Let's move on to the actual production process.

Pre-production
An idea is born
The process of deciding what to put into a live update often starts months before the content is moved to the live servers. It starts with the Game Director deciding what part of the game that needs to be strengthened. Since we just released the Alien Invasion expansion pack, it was a natural step for us to continue on the alien story arc. The new playfields will thus be the next chapter of the alien story, further revealing information on their agenda.

Now, I think it's important to mention that the creative decisions are heavily based on feedback from our community, be it from bulletin boards, feedback mail or direct communication with the players. Based on general feedback, mixed with the overall plan of the Game Director, a decision is then made. For this particular update, we wished to increase the high-level content, while also introducing an alternative mean for players to gain alien experience. A secondary goal for the update was to make it story-driven, meaning the players reveal story info by playing. There are, of course, other aspects we considered, but I choose to focus on these main things.