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

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.