Anarchy Online

Classes:

• Adventurer – versatile wilderness experts with both ranged and melee options, backed up by practical healing tools.
• Agent – stealth-oriented marksmen, best known for long-range precision and a spy-like toolkit.
• Bureaucrat – battlefield controllers who lead through pets and support, often shaping fights with crowd control.
• Doctor – dedicated healers who keep teams alive while applying debilitating biotoxins to enemies.
• Enforcer – heavy front-liners built for close combat, able to soak pressure and protect allies.
• Engineer – pet-focused specialists who prefer letting droids do the dangerous work rather than trading blows directly.
• Fixer – mobility and utility experts who use The Grid for travel, and lean on evasion and disruption to survive.
• Keeper – melee fighters with supportive auras and shared buffs, available only with the Shadowlands expansion.
• Martial Artist – hand-to-hand damage dealers who can also provide heals and buffs, making them flexible in groups.
• Meta-Physicist – summoners who call in otherworldly entities and often fight indirectly through pets and nanos.
• Nano Technician – classic caster-style damage dealers, focused on powerful nano-based attacks.
• Shade – fast, fragile assassins that drain opponents and rely on reflexes over armor, available only in the Shadowlands expansion.
• Soldier – straightforward ranged DPS with strong weapons and defensive tools for surviving sustained fights.
• Trader – resource manipulators that siphon health, energy, and even skills from foes to strengthen themselves or allies.

Races (Breeds):

• Solitus – the most human-like and well-rounded breed, known for broad equipment access and dependable defensive perk options.
• Opifex – quick and agile, trading raw strength for evasiveness and a nimble stat profile.
• Nano Mage – highly intelligence-focused but physically fragile, often favored for nano-centric builds.
• Atrox – the powerhouse breed with top strength and stamina, commonly chosen for sturdier combat roles.

Anarchy Online Review

Anarchy Online is a 3D sci-fi MMORPG developed and published by Funcom. It launched on June 27, 2001 as a subscription MMO, then introduced a free-to-play option on December 15, 2004. It also stands out historically as the first MMORPG to include in-game advertising. The base game remains playable for free, but expansions are required to unlock the full scope of systems and endgame content. Over time it has received free updates alongside 5 expansion and booster-style releases, helping it remain one of the longest-running MMORPGs still operating.

Life on Rubi-Ka

At its best, Anarchy Online sells a grounded sci-fi conflict rather than a simple good-versus-evil adventure. You are dropped into a tense struggle on Rubi-Ka where competing powers, ideologies, and outside threats collide, and the narrative has enough texture to pull in players who enjoy faction politics and mature sci-fi themes. It is not a game that rushes you through story beats with constant cinematic spectacle, but the setting is consistently interesting, especially if you like older MMOs that rely on worldbuilding and written quests.

Character creation is defined more by mechanical identity than cosmetic detail. You still choose from 4 breeds and 14 professions, which is where most of the long-term impact comes from. Visual customization is relatively limited (a handful of face options, plus three height and three weight choices), which is not surprising for a 2001-era MMO, but it also reinforces that AO is primarily about building a functional character rather than designing a fashion model from the start.

Visually, Anarchy Online shows its age in textures and character models, yet it remains readable and coherent, and many zones have a distinct identity that helps the world feel larger than its tech would suggest. Movement and combat use a traditional keyboard and mouse approach; it can feel stiff compared to modern action MMOs, but it is serviceable once you adjust. The interface is also more flexible than many newcomers expect, with windows and tabs that can be arranged to suit different playstyles, whether you prefer minimal clutter or detailed combat and chat information. One design choice that will surprise players raised on modern quest tracking is the lack of obvious quest markers on NPCs, which encourages exploration and conversation, but can also slow early progress if you are impatient.

Progression and Build Planning

AO’s progression is famous for a reason, it is layered, numbers-driven, and packed with choices that matter. The foundation is a set of core abilities: Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intelligence, Sense, and Psychic. Breed selection influences how high those abilities can ultimately go, and those caps affect planning at endgame levels. For instance, Atrox characters cap Intelligence at 600 points at Level 220, while Nano Mages can reach 912 at Level 220. The game also ties point costs to these caps, so an ability that is easier for your breed to excel in is typically cheaper to raise.

On top of abilities sit the skills, grouped into 10 categories: Body, Melee, Misc Weapons, Ranged, Speed, Trade and Repair, Nano and Aiding, Spying, Navigation, and Protection. You can technically invest in anything, but your profession heavily influences efficiency. Trying to force an off-theme weapon choice, like a Nano Technician built around an Assault Rifle, is possible but so expensive that it usually comes at the cost of overall power. Abilities and skills also feed into each other, with ability investment boosting related skills, which further rewards coherent planning.

This system is a major strength, because it enables highly personalized characters and interesting build goals. The tradeoff is approachability. New players can easily feel overwhelmed by the number of decisions, especially if they do not know which stats matter for their role. The game does provide an auto-spend option, and the community has produced guides that help flatten the learning curve, but AO remains a game where understanding the rules pays off.

PvP, PvE, and the Wider Toolbox

PvP rules in Anarchy Online are unusually explicit and zone-driven, using a Suppression Gas system to define what kind of combat is allowed. Zones can be set to 100% Gas (no fighting at all, including PvE), 75% Gas (PvE plus flagged PvP), 25% Gas (PvE plus faction PvP), 5% Gas (PvE plus PvP against anyone except your organization members), and 0% Gas where everything and everyone is a valid target. PvP is further shaped by additional rules, including the 50% rule (weapons do 50% of their PvE damage), the 30% rule (you cannot deal more than 30% of an opponent’s health in a single hit), and a level range system based on multiplying or dividing your level by 0.8 (for example, Level 100 can fight in the 80 to 125 range). Beyond open-world conflict, Battle Stations offer structured matches where teams contest four areas to build points toward victory. PvP rewards such as items and titles exist, but they are tied to The Lost Eden expansion.

PvE is split between large-scale raids and repeatable missions. Raids focus on coordinated groups taking down major bosses, while missions are generated dungeon runs pulled from mission terminals (and certain expansion NPCs). Missions are goal-based and commonly used for leveling, practice, and farming. AO also lets you tune mission parameters with sliders: Easy/Hard, Good/Bad, Order/Chaos, Open/Hidden, Physical/Mystical, Head On/Stealth, and Money/XP. Those sliders influence enemy types, rewards, and the overall feel of the run. Mission objectives include Assassinate, Find Item, Find Person, Recover Item, Rescue/Repair, and Bring to Person, which keeps the loop varied even when you are repeating content for progress.

Outside of straightforward combat, AO offers a long list of supporting systems: implants, symbiants, perks, research, vehicles, mechs, and organizations. Implants are especially important, because they can dramatically increase your character’s effectiveness and enable equipping gear far above your level when planned well. That single system adds a layer of character engineering that many MMOs never attempt. Symbiants, perks, research, and mechs are expansion features, with each adding more customization and power growth. Mechs function as PvP vehicles, while organizations (AO’s guilds) provide structure and bonuses that matter for players who commit long-term.

Monetization and Paid Content

Anarchy Online includes a cash shop that focuses on things like vehicles, consumables, boosts, cosmetics, and convenience items. The bigger access question is expansions, since purchasing them is how you open up the full breadth of the game. Even so, the free-to-play portion remains substantial. Out of 220 levels, 200 are available to free players, which is a meaningful amount of progression for anyone deciding whether the game’s systems and pacing are a good fit. Historically, AO is also notable for adopting a free option very early (in 2004), years before hybrid models became standard across the MMO genre.

Final Verdict – Great

Anarchy Online is not an MMO you play for modern visuals or fast, reactive combat, it is a game you play for depth. Its strengths are the setting, the amount of content accumulated over years of updates, and a character progression system that still feels unusually flexible and rewarding. If you enjoy carefully planning builds, learning a complex gear and implant ecosystem, and exploring a sci-fi MMO with real history behind it, AO remains worth your time. It is best suited to veteran MMO players, system tinkerers, and anyone looking for a different flavor than the usual fantasy worlds.

Anarchy Online Links

Anarchy Online Official Site
Anarchy Online Steam Page
Anarchy Online Wikipedia
Anarchy Online Wikia [Database / Guides]
Anarchy Online Database AODB [Database / Guides]
Anarchy Online Subreddit

Anarchy Online System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 98 / ME / XP / Vista / 7 / 8
CPU: Pentium 2 300 MHz
Video Card: Any 8 MB DirectX compatible GPU
RAM: 128 MB
Hard Disk Space: 1 GB

Recommended Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 98 / ME / XP / Vista / 7 / 8
CPU: Pentium 2 450 MHz
Video Card: Any 32 MB DirectX compatible GPU
RAM: 256 MB
Hard Disk Space: 1 GB

Since Anarchy Online released in 2001, most modern PCs will exceed these specs easily. The requirements above are the official figures, but newer operating systems (such as Windows Vista, 7, and 8) can demand more CPU and RAM in practice than the numbers suggest. AO does not officially support Linux or Mac, but it can be played on both through Wine / PlayOnMac.

Anarchy Online Music & Soundtrack

Anarchy Online Additional Information

Developer: Funcom
Game Engine: Dreamworld Engine
Designer(s): Gaute Godager
Closed Beta Date: May, 2001

Expansion Release Dates:

Shadowlands: 2003
Alien Invasion: 2004
Lost Eden: 2006

Development History / Background:

Anarchy Online was created by Norwegian developer and publisher Funcom, with development starting in 1995, well ahead of its June 2001 launch. It was Funcom’s first MMORPG, following a period where the company was known primarily for console projects. Lead designer Gaute Godager believed the MMO market would expand quickly and pushed for Funcom to invest in a large-scale online world. At the time, many major online games leaned heavily into fantasy settings, so AO’s science fiction direction helped it stand apart from contemporaries such as EverQuest, Ultima Online, and Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds. Over the 1995 to 2001 development cycle, the team grew to more than 70 developers, and the project was widely considered ambitious within the studio. Anarchy Online was first shown publicly at E3 2000, with a beta present at E3 2001, leading into the full release on June 27, 2001. The game originally operated on a subscription model, then added a free-to-play option on December 15, 2004, making it one of the earliest subscription MMOs to embrace a hybrid approach. Rather than relying only on microtransactions at the time, the free version also incorporated in-game advertising, which was reported to generate around $1 million per year for Funcom. With both subscriptions and free access supported, and with the game remaining active even in 2015, Anarchy Online stands as one of the genre’s more durable long-term successes.