Hey, remember Anarchy Online? Apparently, they're still going, and to remind us of the fact, here comes an expansion pack:
Anarchy Online: Lost Eden
Wasn't I just banging on about PvP? Well, it turns out that Funcom have remembered that AO is essentailly a game about colonial civil war, a fact which seems to have gotten buried somewhat among the metaphysical meanderings of Shadowlands and commercial redevelopment of Alien Invasion.
Lost Eden hopes to refocus the players on the fine art of the gank, with orbital space station PvP arenas, etc, etc, blah, blah. I was a big fan of AO, and devoted a large proportion of my life to it at launch, but the one thing that ended up driving me away, (apart form the infinte staircase that is 'Levelling',) was the Notum Wars pay-patch, which effectively flagged out huge areas of the previously 'safe' world for PvP. Certainly it was consentual, if by consentual you mean 'don't go there', but that wasn't for me - ever the pacifist explorer.
Plus PvP in Anarchy Online was always an unsatisfying affair, based on knowing the uber template, having the best gear, and managing to mash the hotkeys before your opponent spotted you. Assuming they survive the inital overwhelming assault, perhaps then some degree of tactics might be applied, but more often, one or both of the combantants would balk and run like hell. Stat-based PvP 4 teh lose!
Yet again, we see PvP being applied as a panacea for End-Game Mediocrity, when really, PvP is a different game entirely, and should be designed as such.
Also, because it's 'the future', they're adding Mecha. In the future, we'll all travel to and from work in 150ft flying battle robots, and personally, I can't wait. MMORPGs on the other hand, can probably do without this junk, and in any event, I expect AO's Mechs will be an underwhelming dissapointment, being neither tall enough, nor stompey enough to satisfy, and end up having to be nerfed over and over anyway.
So, summing up: More PvP, and Mechs.
Where have I seen that before?
Interesting, but probably not enough to make me dig out my credit card again...
(Why a civilisation capable of creating anti-gravity sports jets, surface-to-orbit cargo rail-guns, remote point-to-point matter transmission and a thousand and one unpleasant uses for nanobots needs to resort to a bipedal walking tank is beyond me. Surely some kind of hover-tank chassis would be more versatile?)