Anarchy Online: Alien InvasionAnarchy Online players will need to defend their planet from an alien invasion when this expansion pack arrives. |
This expansion will help address one of the main complaints about Shadowlands and shift the emphasis back to what the players liked about the original Anarchy Online. The fast paced action with little down time will be back with a twist. While the previous two
expansions have served to deepen the conflict between Omni-Tek and the Clans this time the Alien Invaders will be a new and outside threat that makes little distinction and will gladly attack any humans on sight. Expect lots of fast paced combat as players have to decide how to best defend themselves, will Omni-Tek and the Clans be able to set aside their differences to fight together against a common enemy? Time will tell.
They're aiming to have the expansion ready sometime in September of this year with a closed beta period.
Player Towns
Besides the aliens, player built towns is the major new feature that will be introduced in the AI expansion. Organizations(guilds) within the game will be able to finally build and maintain their own headquarters and towns. In addition to organization HQs, players will be able to build everything from houses, shops, indoor swimming pools, to public buildings such as grid terminals, radar towers(to detect incoming alien attacks), cloaking towers(to reduce the chances of alien attacks) and, even guard houses that will spawn NPC guards to help defend the towns from invasion. The incentive to protect your cities? Buildings will give bonuses as long as the town controller is in good shape. If the aliens manage to disable the town's controller, the players will no longer receive those bonuses.
When asked if players of different factions (Omni / Clan / Neutral) can build in the same town, the answer was yes. In fact, different sided organizations can if they choose, 'unite' together and build their headquarters in the same town.
Alien Invasions
The players will be able to have some control over how often the aliens will attack their cities by building cloaking towers for their towns. When turned on, these buildings will greatly reduce the chances of the aliens from 'seeing' the town and things will be relatively peaceful. Turn the cloaking tower off however, and the risk of alien attacks go up dramatically. One thing to keep in mind is that there is no way to be 100% safe from alien attacks but that the use of cloaking towers can greatly reduce the chance of having it happen. Using this, players won't have to baby-sit their towns constantly.
The invasions themselves will be handled automatically with the game automatically scaling the size, number and level of the attackers depending on how many players are present during the invasion. If more players suddenly show up the game will recognize this and the aliens will send in more reinforcements. The level of the defending players will also be a factor in determining the level of the attacking aliens and they have the aliens scaled up to level 300, giving the potential for some truly brutal assaults spanning several player cities simultaneously if enough high leveled players gather.
We got to witness an alien invasion as the huge alien mothership flies overhead blotting out the sky followed by alien dropships touching down outside the player town and unloading the alien invaders. It was quite a sight to behold.
Boarding Alien Ships and Rewards
When the players successfully repel the alien invasion a boss monster will appear at the drop ship. Defeating the boss will enable the players to take the fight to the alien's own ship. Adding to the dramatic effect, players will only have a limited amount of time to explore the alien ship and to get back out it takes off. If the players are still on board when this happens they will all die. Success during these boarding missions will net the players involved new alien technologies and alien xp that they can use to purchase new perks.
Closing
A bonus will be available for players that pre-order the Alien Invasion expansion, they will be able to have pet leets. The player will be able to choose from several different themed leets. These leets will be purely social in nature and can be pitted together for 'leet fights'.
It looks like that Alien Invasion will have something for everyone. A big thank you to Marius and Terri for showing us what is in store for the players in the upcoming expansion.