For those of you who just can't read enough about what people think about the game, Gamespy now has an AO review. Check it out at this link.

There is currently a 10 item limit to your apartment (including furniture). If you try to put an 11th, it will just disappear. This is a bug that Funcom knows about, but is probably way down on their priority list. So don't start decorating quite yet.

Gamesdomain put up an article called "Behind the Anarchy" with interviews with AO's U.S. staff. It is pretty interesting reading, although definitely one sided in its presentation. Here's an example: It appeared to be a consensus amongst the support team that harsh claims online concerning Anarchy "not working" or "not being ready" is unfair. While the message boards are filled with posts of complaints, they say you'll also see many cheerleaders - some are players with level 40 or 50 characters who have never experienced any major problems. "It's important that people get perspective on this," said Sean. Because of the hardware inconsistencies from one person to the next, it's apparently very difficult sorting through the real issues that the dev team needs to work on and the problems that are down to individual configurations. The support team says they get many people complaining that the game runs slowly, usually caused by them running on a machine barely at the minimum spec but unwilling to turn down any of the detail levels. And while these are standard issues with any modern PC release, you have to add in troubleshooting the online connection and they hope people will understand why it's such a monumental task helping everyone. You can read the entire article at this link.

The official Anarchy Online strategy guide is now available. I haven't seen it personally, so I can't tell you if it is worth getting. Still, if you are interested, you can order it from Amazon.com through this link.

There was another patch today aimed at reducing lag. I have to admit that the lag does seem significantly better since the last one. So keep bringing on those patches. In addition, Funcom posted a new update in their community section dealing with customer support and exploits. Here is the full text of the post: First of all I want to thank each and one of you for being part of the Anarchy Online community. The servers are getting better and better by the hour, we remove pesky bugs all the time, people are really enjoying themselves in the game, and more and more people log on. Or support department has really turned up the speed on the email communication with you, our customers. We still get a lot of mail but we feel we will soon have the situation under control. We also see that a lot of people send us mails that says "your server is down". This isn’t useful to us. We have people that monitor the servers every second, every hour, every day. All the time. If you have a problem and you want us to know about it, please let us know with as much detail as possible and exactly when it happened. Another thing that is being debated a lot now, is the use of exploits in the game. We know that there are some there. We haven’t done anything about them yet, since we didn’t want to punish you for our mistakes, but we are pretty sure we have managed to fix the worst of the exploits now. As a result of this, we will from now on start to take action against people that use exploits in the game. We will view it on a case to case basis and decide on an outcome for each single case. If you by accident find an exploit, please report it to a GM as soon as possible. In addition to this, I want to add that if you have been afraid that someone will ruin the game with credits exploits, you do not need to worry. None of the exploits have really been that bad in our view. Even though it seems like a lot of credits to have one million credits now, believe me, it's not that much when you get higher up in the level system.

PC.IGN has released a review of Anarchy Online. Here's the conclusion: As much as I want to like it, right now, I can't recommend Anarchy Online with a good conscious, especially if the problems aren't corrected by the time the game goes to a fee of $12.95 per month on August 9, 2001. While I think Anarchy Online does have the potential to be the best and most fulfilling MMORPG to date, it still has way too may problems right now that make it more of an exercise in extreme frustration than a rewarding gaming experience. As it stands now, it's extremely sadistic, because I know it's going to be good once it works correctly, but it's so damn maddening and annoying now that I can't play for more than a few hours without giving up in disgust. You'd do better to save your money until they get the kinks worked out. Look for our full review of Anarchy Online in a few weeks, and hopefully by then Funcom will have the game working better than it is now. You can read the entire review at this link.

Today's patch supposedly fixed some of the server lag. Here is the text of the patch announcement: During the last 12 hours we have been testing a lag fix on some of the most popular playfields. We are very satisfied with the results, and have introduced this fix to all of the playfields. You will probably still notice some lag while being in the major cities, but what this patch does is that it removes a lot of the lag on the servers.

Well the reviews of Anarchy Online are starting to come out, and they aren't very flattering. There are two out that I know of. Previews and links are inside. Something Awful has, among other things, this to say: FunCom decided to place emphasis on a player-driven economy by making it nearly impossible to use vendor machines in the cities thanks to the incredible lag (of the FUTURE!). Adding in unbelievable amounts of lag is FunCom's solution to nearly every problem in the game, ranging from city overcrowding to plaque and tooth decay (of the FUTURE!). They have also attempted to solve the problem of server overload by adding in code which causes your game to crash to the desktop every 20 minutes or so, thereby decreasing the stress of having so many people on the server at once. These are very futuristic and advanced concepts of the advanced conceptual future, and you should be thankful that FunCom spent so much time and brainpower developing these aforementioned conceptually futuristically advanced ideas. It gets worse from there. Read it at this link. Massive Multiplayer Org has this to say: [Gasp] "What??? Playable!" I shouted. I stared on with horror wondering if they had suddenly made smoking Hash legal in Norway as well. After a small rampage that no real animals were hurt during, I calmed down. "They must have a patch…yes, yes, one is scheduled for tomorrow!" I said. I waited till the next day, patch came. I started up…Crash. [WhatThe!] The game was worse now. In between crashes I hit the official forums, when those weren’t timing it that is. My anger grew…everyone was still having problems. It’s not just me…how can they call this playable. "That’s alright, I’m sure they’ll retract that tomorrow." I said. The next day came and went. No daily update. [Bastards!] What are they doing? I don’t understand it? I have a good job, $13 a month isn’t a big deal, hell I spend that on lunch…it’s the principle now! The rest is at this link. Of Course, we all know what they think over at Lums.

The Rubi-Ka News Network has put up an interesting video called Trainees. Check it out at this link.

For those who are interested, you can now create a character and play on the test server. I haven't tried it yet, but it is likely to have less lag than the regular server. Of course, you run the risk of a character wipe and will be getting the patches before the bugs have been worked out. For more information, and the downloads to get on the server, go to this link.