I can assure you this will not be “just another rage quit”. There are many aspects of Anarchy Online that I love and in many ways I’ve learnt more since being back, and had a more diverse experience than the first time around.

You see my initial toon started in 2007 had originally been froob and joined a very helpful org early on. I had really enjoyed playing that soldier but if I must be honest then a lot of my gaming experience was hand held by more experienced org mates. Especially when it came to questing and getting gear, and not forgetting getting twinked.

I still enjoyed myself immensely with that initial soldier and did eventually level him up to become a very well twinked 220 with almost all the bells and whistles. Except alphas perhaps and a BOC.

When I initially left the game I had gotten to the point where I was just flat out bored. I had done all the instances, farmed all the times I wanted from the new Xan experience. I was logging on and had almost no aim or purpose. The org I was in was changing and my good friend in the game started getting grumpy.

I had over stayed my welcome and it was time to leave. So without much ado I stopped playing my account and for about 5 years I didn’t look back much. At times I would check out the forums to see if there was any progress with the new engine and yet nothing ever materialised.

In the meantime I continued to play a considerable amount of games, I upgraded my computer and got lost in all the good titles I could find. I had come to enjoy the single player experience. A solid rush of polished game experience and once all the good stuff was extracted it was time to swiftly move on.

I played through games like Skyrim once. Not focusing too much on side quests. Just playing the main bits and getting short term pleasure. And once I was done, there was a seemingly unlimited amount of games out there to keep me busy.

From time to time I got stuck on one title or another. I remember playing Fallout New Vegas extensively and Age of Empires online. I wasn’t limited to genre nor too invested in just one title.

The sometime around 5 months ago I got an invite to try out the new beta. As it turns out, I never did get a real invite, and the email was more of a fishing hook trying to catch a few old players. I rolled a froob and believe it or not, once again a soldier. Thinking I would go for a stroll around, checking for old org mates and just pure nostalgic value.

The game had changed here and there, and I guess I started seeing the game in a new light. I reinstated my main account, and got really into a new org. Within no time I was promoted to SC, and had a few good org mates.

At around this time I rolled a new MA, specifically for S10, since lately without a S10 twink you don’t stand a hope in hell of making any real credits. S10 is a gold mine, no other instance in the game even comes close to the earning potential.

My MA alone could farm the relays, but I needed to be self reliant. It wasn’t too long then before I rolled an Engi. The engi turned out to be a massive amount of fun to play, after having learnt how to cast bots 2-3 times my level. Honestly what a blast. Now I could build my own relays.

Still just being able to farm and build relays didn’t leave the picture complete. One still needed to kill the boss, and that would require a team. My org mate rolled a tank, and I with help managed to level up a Doc in 3 days to 150, twinked and ready. Able to CH and although the first pb was a wipe, the 2nd one and subsequent 10 were not – life was good.

I continued farming and got the MA very nicely setup with living dragon body 450m and slippers 350m. I picked up a crit scope from HI, and a 4/5 prisoners robe. IS for attacks and after upgrading the symbs the MA was more than capable.

More work on the Engi.

But somewhere over the past 2 weeks I’ve just lost interest. There is just no true incentive for me to play anymore. I can’t see any real decent progress on the horizon. The beta will take another year (at least) maybe two before it becomes a public reality, even then the new engine isn’t revolutionary, and besides some performance tweaks, the game will still be clunky.

Don’t get me wrong, I would still highly recommend the AO experience to anyone unfamiliar with the game, but I really think for now I’ve exhausted nearly every drop of fun out of the game.

It’s sad in a way, such a great game with such amazing potential which is becoming stagnant. I wonder if all MMO experiences end this way.