Bad billing happened to me and about 15 other people on various forums I read. I'm not sure if they're still doing it now, but I wouldn't risk it personally. My advice is to avoid AO completely; there are better MMOGs out there and they won't likely try to steal money from you.

EDIT: Also #28, did any of your guildmates try to cancel their account? That's where Funcom started overbilling me, right after I cancelled. Also I've heard of people cancel, wait about 1 month, then go back to their forums to post a message and get 2-5 credit card charges just for posting. Last time I checked they don't explain a fee for posting on their forums

Of course you wouldn't be at risk for posting fees if you never registered an AO account with Funcom, since they wouldn't have a clue to what your credit card number is.

This comment was edited on Aug 15, 18:04.

I also don't think ppl who haven't actually played it since last patch should post here at all. You do not represent the playerbase as it is right now. And I have never heard anything bad about billing, noone in my guild has had problems and we are pretty huge.

Anarchy Online is still going strong by the looks of it. Plenty ppl online and last couple of patches have been bringing more than enough to keep me and a couple of others here

Nah, they didn't have one server. They had one "dimension". Each dimension was a distributed server network with dynamic load balancing between each server. It was a neat setup. Course they had a crapload of other problems that made me cancel.

It did not get bad reviews, it got VERY good overall reviews

Realize, of course, that Funcom pretty much begged reviewers to NOT review the game when it came out. Had they, then AO would have gotten very bad reviews indeed, instead of lukewarm reviews.

I played AO those first few weeks (well, "played" is not really the word) and enjoyed some of it. But the constant downtime, unfinished features, and incredible lag/CPU drain was just too much.

Had this been the first MMORPG, then you could understand the problems. But DAoC lauched at the same time with nary a problem (well, no problems getting into the game, at least). And Funcom just seemed to ignore the problems for too long.

They Had 1 server at launch becuase they were hoping to fit many thousands of people on it. It was meant to be like that. Even now they have 3. 2 US 1 German and I will say that they are VERY stable, must more stable than DOAC or EQ's. It was meant to be like that. If I remember they also did the 12.95 a month, ppl are like, wow, 12.95 that is more than the others. BUt now, everything is that way. Also Customer Service in AO is a lot better than some of the others. Everyone is just againist this game, heh. There are still thousands of players and dont forget they have a free trial, Play it yourself. Also, dont forget , it did get MMORPG of the year also, hehe.

They had 1 server at launch. The game was doomed. Why news continues to be posted about it is beyond me..

The stupid people still playing the game.
There are fans of Diakatana too.

I guess they are barely keeping afloat thanks to the rabid loyal fanboys, but they must not be getting a lot of money from them, from what I can tell. Why else would they be introducing booster packs and having AOHell equivalent billing practices going on?

Well, I like AO , It did not get bad reviews, it got VERY good overall reviews. It is a good game, It has some great content in it currently for ppl that have played the others. AO was the only real MMORPG that took me back into it. Although MY CC company has a problem with them for some reason, I would be playing it right now if it was working correctly. Dont just get teh idea, it suks , it blows. Try it yourself! That is all i have to say right now. If these booster packs are like 5-10 bucks, I think it is totally worth it, If we see 20-30 dollar "booster Packs" then, Funcoma dn them need to re-think there Ideas.

How do these guys stay in business if their products suck so much?

you type too much

Hehe. Well there are lots of reasons Anarchy Online was a letdown. Not all of them are the developers/publishers. I think one of the major reasons netcode was so bad early was something to do with an older method of code they used, as someone explained soon after launch at AO vault. It had to do with how in the older type, client packets have to come in in sequence, and if some packets are lost, the server waits, or something like that. The newer code is a lot more lenient, with packet loss causing no bottlenecking of server CPU power at all.

Other more important issues causing failure, of course, are the simplification and slowing down in combat. I, for one, followed AO diligently at AO vault and AO basher for a full year before launch. My artwork by "BigAlski" is all over the formers fan art section. However, beta didnt work for me, the problem wasnt even fixed at launch, and it didnt work then either. 100's of people had my problem, and it never got fixed, that I know of. Most of us were shocked at the slow action in the early movies in like Aug. 2000 anyways, and many decided to bail then. I think the "Random Mission Generator", too, turned out to suck. A game like AC has like 300 dungeons, so players enjoy the underground game. AO has nearly nil, which limited the melee game a great deal. As far as ripping off the gamer now, I guess Funcom was looking for 300k subscribers and I bet they have less than 50k now. Thats a lot of planned overhead that isnt affordable now. Their other big MMO, Midgard, was cancelled, and I bet that was to be funded by AO's profits, which might be none. Too bad, really, it sounded great. If the release would have been postponed 3 more months, they would have had a smooth launch, generated enough revenue to have an expansion out by Feb 2002, and a second by Holidays 2002/2003. That would have put them at AO 1.5 before AC2 even launched, the next major MMORPG, with enough revenue to ride it out till AO2 or another game was done for a super release in 2004. But all we got now is a pile of smoldering "what could have been", hehe.

By "awesome" I'm assuming you mean "poorly implemented despite that it's a complete ripoff from three other MMO's", and by "contents" I'm assuming you mean "horrible exploits".

I'm one of the few, strange people that played AO at launch, cancelled their account, and went back to playing about 3 months later.

I got bored of the game eventually, and decided to cancel again, except that for some reason Funcom kept overbilling me. This wasn't just $10 a month, it was more like 7 seperate $10 charges right after I cancelled. I read on other forums that they've done this to other people, so it was no mistake. Seems that they were getting desperate for extra cash, but I called them up to remove the charge and they were polite and agreed to.

I can only imagine that they were cooperative since I caught them doing it, and didn't want a lawsuit or something. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I don't want to go through that BS another time, so I'm never going back to AO.

"Boost (our wallets for Xmas) Pack".

It's just not right. Put it into the expansion instead of reaming us for the expansion and the "booster pack". Totally not fair.

134.71, I think you need to register as "POO-ASS" on the board. That way, no one will confuse you with jeff k.

hAY MAN WHAT UP!!!!! no im not jeff k i dont want to say my real nmae here tho!!! n e wayS tank foer telling me abot ANARDCHIES online so i tlook like sit is a POO-ASS games man!!! tank for help any1 else tihink that ANARCHDIES online is poo-ass!!!

Welcome to Blues News, JeffK!
No, Anarchy Online sucks. The interface is cryptic, the world, while pretty, is empty, and the economy is completely screwed up and unrealistic. (If I have to sell a helmet for 10 credits that costs me 10,000 credits to buy, something is blatantly wrong.)

HAYy didnt anrachy onlines gets soem POO-ASS reveiwws!? if so is teh gmae batter now or not? i am slooking for a good mmopg to paly so maybe i get tis if it si good! any review link??