Anarchy Online: Shadowlands Wrap Report

Best Decisions Gaute Godager: 1. Remake Shadowlands training ground. I do not know if anyone remembers this from beta, but the beautiful Shadowlands training ground was not that beautiful. It was nice, by all means. It was much better than, lets say, the neutral training ground, or the other Rubi-Ka training grounds (which are in need of a face-lift, in my opinion).

My feeling was that the original Shadowlands training ground was not stunning enough. It is still the best looking, or at least the most stylish looking online world out there. Yes, I know I am biased. ;) We have so much beauty, so many varied environments and such strong art direction that I think exploring has become a rewarding experience once more. The problem was that the training area didn't show this off. It didn't promise anything of what was to come.

The decision we made (I never really make decisions alone; it is always a cooperative effort) was to use a lot more resources in the training ground, and to make it a showcase for the game to come. I think it paid off, and starting is now easily one of the best aspects of the whole game. It was a rather controversial decision though; many members of the team felt we revealed too much. I will still defend it though. I think it has, among other things, led to a much higher review average than what would otherwise have been obtained.

2. Add more monster textures. Due to a technical logistic slip, we lost a lot of monster textures on the CD. We decided to take the cost and add these to the initial and following patches. Even though this was a monetary cost to us, and the added megabytes a nuisance to the players, I still think it has enriched the environment of the game. It made a huge difference to see variation in monsters depending on which playfield you are in, I think. Red, burning, fiery monsters in Inferno as opposed to green? Need I say more? ;)

3. (Try to) reduce downtime. Shadowlands turned out a lot slower than what we wanted. Changing this would be welcome to all the players. They would now get their quest items faster, heal quicker, travel quicker, etc. It was still a high cost to Funcom - so much had to be changed. It was a bad decision to allow time sinks to sneak into the game, or rather not enough focus on creative control along those lines, and it was a good decision to spend time and effort to begin the process of rectifying it. (And now hopefully completed under Marius. *cheers*)

Key Strengths Marius Enge: First of all, I would like to mention the fantast art direction, and the ensuing implementation of the graphical elements by the artists and the world designers. I think we were able to create a world like no other. Together with the new musical score, we were able to create a truly special ambience. The reason it became so astonishing is that we actually dared to venture down a road full of complex challenges and a myriad of time-consuming tasks. We could have gone the easy way, but we dared to go the extra mile. It paid off.

After lots of troubles and challenges, we were also able to use the mission system from Rubi-Ka to create a huge number of static dungeons. This is almost like a Lego system, and in Shadowlands, 85 different "room pieces" were slotted together to create over 150 unique looking static dungeon systems throughout the Shadowlands. Without our invention from 2001, we would not have been able to pull this one off; at times, it seemed like it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get it into the game.

I must also say that I am truly impressed with the amount of information and images we were able to release during development. Everyone in production contributed with designer information or art assets, and even though we had to face a three-month delay, it still looks like our community was very pleased with how we handled our ongoing information process.

Another item I would like to point out is the increased degree of character development opportunities that came with Shadowlands. Most noticeably, the hundreds of new perks have been very well received by the players. The ongoing balance issues are a tough nut indeed (nerfs, reverse nerfs, favoritisms, etc.), but in the end, we managed to achieve a good balance.

Areas for Improvement Marius Enge: It's clear that we had extremely high ambitions for Shadowlands, and as Gaute explained earlier, we had to scale down certain aspects of it, most noticeably the quest system and its purpose. This is a shame, but we have learned a lot for our next projects, enabling us to do this better next time.

In hindsight, it's also easy to see that we should have had a faster transportation system from day one (it's fixed now), as well faster gameplay at certain places, as in faster spawn rates on certain mobs, higher drop rate on certain items, etc.