We have an awesome new piece of Fan Art to share with you this week from Jugular. Title Hot Metal, it's set deep in the Rubi-Ka desert. Click on the image below to view the full size picture.


Thanks Jugular!

With Anarchy Online starting into the home stretch, Funcom has begun to advertise the game a bit more aggressively. According to the Crossroads of Rubi-Ka, ads will start to surface on UGO, GameSpot, IGN, and Game Puppy (or did he mean Happy Puppy?).

The first ad to show up also includes four awesome new screenshots. Be sure to check it out!

A while back Funcom decided to remove the Thief profession because it gave the wrong impression as people normally think of a thief as someone who can pick locks. Obviously there isn't much need for this skill 30,000 years into the future. Also, the profession was very close to the Agent.

In its place though, Funcom has created a new profession called The Fixer:

The Fixer

The Fixer is the profession to contact if you want something on Rubi-Ka that is a bit unusual. They are able to “arrange matters”. It could be some stims that need to be smuggled into the city, a person that you don't have connections to speak to, or to get something that isn't strictly your's. The Fixer is a person that knows how to get things for the right price in the future urban society of Anarchy Online. On a mission the character is good for disarming traps and opening locks. All in all, an extremely useful character if you are willing to do things that isn't strictly legal.

Favourite breed: Opifex
Good at: Sneaking, social skills
Least favourite skills: Heavy combat, complex weapons

You can find a complete list of the professions, including The Fixer, in our Professions section.

It's time to start a new poll, but first here are the results from the previous week's:

The more information that Funcom can release about stats, monsters, the game world, etc. the better. Do you:

Strongly agree - 40.1%
Agree - 21.2%
Disagree - 17.4%
Strongly disagree - 11.7%
Undecided - 9.4%

Total Votes: 339

Thanks for voting!

AO Stratics will be holding a House of Commons chat with Tommy Strand on Wednesday, August 16th. All are invited to attend chat which will be held at 2pm EST at the Stratics IRC Network in the #aohoc channel. Be sure to bring some good questions for Tommy!

Question of the Week 13 arrived at the AO Daily yesterday. Here is what was asked:

In one of the forums there was debate over a screen shot depicting a flying wizard.

I would like to know how will the vertical system will work in AO. In other games, such as EQ, the Z axis was almost an afterthought and there are a lot of bugs with it (area of effect spells hitting things way below you, monsters hitting you through floors and ceiling, etc). Will players have any method of gaining control of their vertical postion (levitation nano-spells, engineered devices, etc)? If so, what effect would this have on combat?

You can find out the answer through the link above.

3DGN provided a quick look into Anarchy Online today. Here's a snippet:

Now, on to what makes it special. First of all, the engine that runs Anarchy Online is going to be as good as any fps out there. Supporting any resolution your video card can handle, it should look good, and with sequenced animation, you will be able to perform multiple actions without any sort of "skipping" of the animation sequences. Character interaction is going to be the focus of Anarchy Online, and this will go as far as having group projects and quests (where they are incompleteable without multiple players working on them), player initiated quests (players can send other players on quests), and even player marriages. The game WON'T be focused on just killing random monsters (however, there will be monsters roaming about to kill for you bloodthirsty commandos).

More Anarchy Online previews can be found in our Previews archive.

Tor Andre visited the official message board today where he commented on advantages for clans:

One possible advantage for a clan is a skill increase bonus, a set number. The advantage will not be that it is easier to learn a certain skill. How easy it is to learn something is only tied to the choice of profession. I think that the skill advantage of a clan will be small compared to the cost of learning skills. Note that all characters are able to develop sub-professions since they are able to learn all skills.

It only works while the character is a member of a clan, in the same way that some Omni-Tek equipment will be DNA-locked if a character leave the company.

Tor Andre
Funcom Support

The AO Basher posted a new interview with Funcom's Tor Andre Wigmostad. The interview offered some good news to European players:

Did you think about letting non american player under the first 500 beta tester? For example people from europe or asia?

We will most definitely have European and Asian testers in the first phase testers.

Follow the link above to read the rest of the article.

AODoctors.com recently released some new information on the doctor profession and healing skills from Tor Andre. Here's a snippet:

Everybody could use implants when they buy them. Doctors are not necessary to transplant an implant, but it is possible that a Doctor will be necessary to get an implant out of your body.

There are lots of other interesting bits of information in Tor's response so be sure to check it out!

The Bulletin Board Digest over at the Anarchy-online.com was updated today with some thoughts on apartments from Luppis and Geldonyetich. Check it out!

Funcom has been showing it's appreciation for active community members by sending them key chains. The key chains don't mean they've been accepted into the beta though as Tor Andre explained on the official message board:

So if you don't get a key chain, your not in? Hummmm...sounds like FUNCOM just sent some key chains for fun of it to me. If you got a key chain and DON'T get to beta test, try to not be to shocked...hehe

The key chain has nothing to do with the beta. It is a small thank you to some of the most active people in the community. We will continue to send key chain to the people that get their postings in the bulletin board digest version.

Tor Andre
Funcom Support

Funcom rocks!