False Statements in Funcom’s Press Release Regarding Dispute With BSI.

Funcom’s Press release dated March 14th, 2002, contained Statements that were inaccurate or outright false. An example of these statements would be that our lawsuit with Mythic involved our accounts being banned for exploiting. This is a clear and factual misrepresentation. All of our accounts with Mythic are in good standing and none of our accounts are banned, nor is our lawsuit in any way related to exploitation or in-game misconduct in anyway. Our dispute with Mythic is solely related to the sale of DAOC related services outside of the game.

Other statements made in Funcom’s press release are also false, and we are considering seeking legal redress for the damages caused by libelous statement(s).

Lee Caldwell

But the killer are the ICQ Logs given to us by BlackSnow's Lee Caldwell...within this set of logs is some stunning information, but seemingly more harmful to BlackSnow than to FunCom. In it, not only does Lee admit that BlackSnow has hacked, macroed and duped their way to their $60,000 a month income, but he offers Adam Young $7000 to "leave us alone and protect us, and we will always tell you the exploits as they come out and that is undoubtedly a win win for funcom and us."

The rest of the ICQ log is a stunning admission of the methods of duping, trading non-drop items, macroing and token-selling. What is amazing in this case is that according to sources, Adam was told to negotiate getting the macros and exploits from BlackSnow in exchange for releasing some of the less-dangerous accounts. The problem that cropped up is that Adam slowly overstepped his bounds and began warning Lee of ways to "keep their characters under the radar," so to speak.

In exchange for their cooperation in resolving the rapid level exploit, I discussed the possibility of releasing some of their accounts. That was until the characters were looked over and some serious item duplication exploits were found. This altered the negotiations, as I could no longer return the other accounts due to the extreme nature of the exploits present. The final arrangement was that I would allow them to retrieve legit personal equipment and credits from their personal AO play characters to transfer to new characters in addition to some tokens. My rational being that two 1000 token boards on two characters was a worthwhile compromise for eliminating eight serious exploits from the game.

Funcom announces that the free Anarchy Online offer has been a tremendous success and will be fully extended throughout all of 2005 and into 2006. Anarchy Online now has more users than ever before, and the player feedback about the experience Funcom is offering has been fantastic. The game is setting records on an ongoing basis, with more active players now than seen in the month of launch more than 3,5 years ago.

It’s currently the long-term goal for Funcom to make sure that the removal of subscription fees, client costs and the need to have a credit card when registering for Anarchy Online will become a permanent offering, making sure that anyone curious about the heralded qualities of the ultimate sci-fi MMORPG can play without any financial commitments.


"The free initiative has been a tremendous success" says Ole Schreiner, Project Director for Anarchy Online. "Throngs of new players have entered the game and created a vibrant pioneer feeling for all those who see the wonders of Anarchy Online for the first time. Even though our servers and customer service have been under strong pressure, it’s assuring to see our technology holding up with such stability".


"Seeing the great feedback from the free offer we are aiming to extend it into 2006 and beyond should it prove to be a continued success" said Trond Arne Aas, President and CEO of Funcom. "We are happy to be part of something which has sent such positive waves throughout the MMO communities, while significantly lowering the entrance barrier to enter Anarchy Online."


This new and totally free approach allows everyone tired of elves, fairies and gnomes to enter a futuristic RPG world full of fun action totally free of cost, and makes it possible for all sci-fi fans to explore a world hailed as the best sci-fi MMO available today.


Download the free full version of Anarchy Online

Prominent awards and press quotes


*Offer valid only on new accounts. No charges involved. Offer valid on all sign-ups until 15.01.2006. Other restrictions and conditions may apply. Offer may be terminated at Funcom’s discretion in the case of unforeseen events. See registration information for details. The free version does not include access to any of the three expansion packs. Should you wish to upgrade to any of the expansion packs monthly subscription and client fees will be added.

Hello fellow Rubi-Kans!

With this letter I would like to introduce myself and give you a small insight about who I am and where I come from. I will also shed some light on my many plans for Anarchy Online in the years to come. The first thing I want to say is that I wish Marius the best of luck in his new career, and I hope that he will one day return.

I have worked on Anarchy Online for 5 years. I was initially hired as a World Designer, and have since held several roles on the team. My first task was designing and building the world of Rubi-Ka, before I became Lead World Designer for the Shadowlands expansion pack. There I created the playfields Nascense, Penumbra and Pandemonium, amongst other duties. During Alien Invasion I was responsible for adapting all the existing playfields to cater for the player-made cities, and I also created large parts of the ICC shuttleport. Additionally I served as Lead Graphics Artist overseeing the graphics production.

Besides being involved with the development I am an avid Anarchy Online player and can honestly say I am addicted to both the game and its surrounding community. Over the years I have played several characters above level 200 and well into the shadow levels and hope to one day soon reach 220. Experiencing the game from a player’s perspective has given me invaluable insight to the different aspects of the game, both its strengths and weaknesses, and this will hopefully improve my perspective when making decisions"?

When it comes to my main priorities for the coming period I promise I will go through all the current gameplay elements, and evaluate if any immediate changes need to be done. When I have concluded I will do my best to implement the necessary changes as fast as possible. There are already features and game elements that I would like to change, and I hope several of these adjustments are out before Christmas. I would like to mention that when we are dealing with a live product we must tread carefully to ensure that we do not break or unbalance the game. It is more important to us to get these improvements right, rather than to sacrifice quality to rush untested features into the game.

When it comes to long-term goals I would like to increase the amount of free content upgrades and I would also like to strengthen several aspects of the end-game. As you have read by now we have started the process of upgrading the graphics, and I am very positive to what this will bring in terms of world beauty. Additionally we are working towards creating new expansion packs, which will add new features and much more to the game.

I am aware that I am standing on the shoulders of giants when it comes to being a Game Director for AO. Still, as I have been an integral part of the team for years I feel confident I can carry on the torch to further illuminate AO. I truly look forward to take the creative lead, and will do my best in making the ultimate sci-fi MMORPG even better. This means that I, too, will keep focusing on the sci-fi aspects of AO, as well as building on strengths like fast-paced action, deep character advancement opportunities, intriguing gameplay-on-demand features, adding more landscapes to an already beautiful world and naturally expanding on the social opportunities.

Feedback from you has told us that besides improving our graphics, there seems to be a strong desire to see features such as shared banks for account holders, changes to SK and a wish to see our veteran players rewarded, among other things. We are already working on finding solutions for these needs. We are listening and will never lose sight of the fact that the world of Rubi-Ka is a partnership between us and the players. I therefore hope you will continue to give us constructive feedback through fansites and forums. This enables us to become even better at what we do.

To round off I would like to bring forth a few images from one of the upcoming Alien playfields. These areas can be found in the non-terra formed part of Rubi-Ka, and will contain some brand new experiences and challenges never before seen in Anarchy Online. This playfield will be out before Christmas!

See you on Rubi-Ka!

Sincerely,
Morten Byom

Hi, and welcome to another edition of the AO newsletter. It’s now more than a month since we successfully launched the Alien Invasion expansion pack, and as many of you know, a lot has happened to the game since then. In regards to the recent launch we therefore bring a few words from Marius Enge, Anarchy Online’s Game Director:

Hi, as many active players have happily experienced by now, the new alien threat is now firmly in place on Rubi-Ka. I must say I am really proud of what we have created, and I would like to give big kudos to everybody at Funcom working on Alien Invasion. Once again, I am proud of what we have created!

We launched in a technically fantastic way, but we did have some issues we weren’t too happy about. Luckily our great community manager, and you, our players, have given us feedback in a (for the most part) constructive way, enabling us to swiftly shape up what wasn’t good about Alien Invasion. You might have seen my previous post regarding the changes in Alien XP, and perhaps the one where we said we would lower the city upkeep, or that we made the entire alien attack concept into a truly "instantly on demand system"? All of these elements, and many other improvements we have implemented, are a testament to the fact that AO is ever-evolving into something better, thanks to your feedback.

There are still a couple of issues we are seriously looking into, and one of the most pressing right now is the player-made shops. I know we promised this feature to be implemented at launch, but we decided to pull the shops altogether instead of releasing a system which hazarded your money and items. I can ensure you we are redoing the entire system to make sure it works as intended when we launch it.

Looking back at the launch of Alien Invasion we have yet again learned a lot on how to continue improving Anarchy Online, and I am very glad to see that so many of our existing players have gone out and bought the expansion. Actually we pre-sold more of Alien Invasion than what we did of the original AO and Shadowlands, which I hope is a sign that all of you liked what we put our hearts (and all our weekends) into. Personally I was very curious to see how the AO community would receive Alien Invasion once it went live as it changes some of the basic "accepted" structures in MMO games. I am therefore very very happy to see the community having so much fun with the expansion.

Of course we won’t stop improving AO, and Alien Invasion, and we have lots of cool ideas of on how to take AO to the next level. We have quietly hinted at a bigger alien presence on the planet... who knows what may come over the next few months ;)

Sincerely

Marius Enge, Game Director, Anarchy Online