Anarchy Online

The Good
The game got my attention during it's third beta phase with the prologue "Are you tired of little elves with bows?". I like the Science Fiction genre and thus I saw myself as a fan of AO quite soon.

There is even a book "Prophet without Honour" which tells the story from now until the 30th millennium - which is a good one to read.

The homepage of AO keeps track of all bigger events, being Funcom or player based - but in game you hardly take note of any of those happenings.

The Bad
AO (as probably any other MMORPG) needs a lot of time and passion. To be on the headlines is a thing nearly impossible being one player of thousands. Furthermore the 'original' background (being told in the book) hardly affects the happenings in game - which I hoped to see. Funcom even has some digital movies, but the storytelling by movies got dropped for no apparent reason...

The Bottom Line
About one year out already, the developers had extinguished all the major bugs quite soon after release. It is quite fun to play - better in team than alone. You don't have to know the book to play; but if you do, don't expect any impacts of the story you know in game. (but there are still three more years to go...)