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The alien motherships are built using our proven (and often imitated!) technology that's been developed down the years and expanded upon for Lost Eden, called Automatic Content Generation. Basically, the hallways will shift and change layout each time you enter an alien mothership, so new challenges will arise each time you visit one. Aliens will spawn at different locations, but at the end of each adventure through the mothership, you will always reach an end "boss" that will put up a huge fight. These are usually gargantuan beings that take quite some work to put down.
You can also gain victory points, as you would when fighting players on the battlestations, when emerging victorious from the alien motherships. There are also special alien materials available when you've gone through a mothership, that can be used to upgrade the new armor and weapons that are coming with the expansion. You see, the expansion adds a bunch of new weapons and armor for the players to acquire. For instance, each new profession gets a unique armor set that can be bought only with victory points. There is also a selection of brand new nanos in Lost Eden, nanos being Anarchy Online's equivalent of the spells found in traditional fantasy-based games.
Enhancing land-control battles
The first expansion to Anarchy Online was Notum Wars, an expansion that added battles over land areas on Rubi-ka. It introduced the concept of Notum Towers, gigantic towers that harvests the precious energy called Notum. Players would fight over these towers and the land area they were placed upon, giving player-versus-player combat in the game a serious boost. Lost Eden enhances this gameplay considerably, and will make it much more interesting to take part in the Notum Wars battles.
One of the most obvious additions is the massive air strikes and the orbital bombardments that players can utilize. An organization officer – an organization being the equivalent of a guild in Anarchy Online – can place a special homing beacon on the ground during a land-control battle, and summon either an air strike or a devastating laser-like beam that shoots down from outer space. When running around on the battlefield, players will be able to see these strikes through dazzling visual effects. The air strikes looks something like a napalm bombing taken from "Apocalypse: Now", while the laser beam should very much alike the terrifying alien beam in "Independence Day". Your opponents will never see the homing beacons on the ground, but you will have a chance to run away to safety while leaving your enemies on the battlefield to roast.
These things have a cool-down period, of course, and they will only be possible to use in an active land-control area. There are also other additions to the Notum Wars experience, such as the new SAM battery tower that can be built that will have an innate chance to prevent an air strike if one is called down by the enemy organization officer. There are also stationary turrets that work much like mechs, except they can't be moved.
It is obvious that Lost Eden is a player-versus-player expansion. It does add elements outside of this gameplay, such as the alien motherships and the personal and global research, but the real meat of it is the enhanced Notum Wars functionalities, the epic fighting on the battlestations, and all the rewards that is obtainable using – for instance – the victory points gained in player-versus-player combat.
The fourth expansion to Anarchy Online promises to enhance both current gameplay as well as adding new, and should be a good addition to a legacy that has lasted over five years now. It should also be noted that it's possible to play Anarchy Online for free by downloading it from the official website. You will only get the original game and the Notum Wars expansion, but you will not have to pay a subscription fee until you add more expansions to the mix.
By: Xavier Marce |
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