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Fun but way offers up big rewards for little effort.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: March 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I played the free Anarchy before buying this expansion. I was level 95 and once I got it I did wander around for a bit but then, like half the people on, heading out to the beach for hecklers. At that point I just leveled and leveled. Garden keys and quest, who needs it. Just keep killing hecks and level 2 to 3 times an hour. And then go back to AO classic and flaunt your new levels. You also get much better gear that they cant use. Has it ruined the game since I now only to a single place. Sort of but I play with the same players so socially it is nice to group with people you know. Still it creates a real imbalance compared to AO classic and at least in Elysium everyone just about camps the beach.

Great expansion but.......

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: April 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Having played shadowlands for several weeks now I find that the expansion is well worth the price. But...Unfortunately having bought this product in order to save on a huge download via a dialup connection i found that it is only a cheep way to get the product key. Funcom has (and continues to) made so many chages that you will be forced to DL the large client from one of their sites. For anyone with a high speed connection this is only a few hours but on dialup better have a friend DL it for you.

OMG BEST EVER GAME

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: March 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

You people who say the quests are hard slaying monsters over and over again till it drops a quest item what is this supposed to be every mmorpg game u become highest level in seconds sure there will be glitches dude iv played ut for 6 years that still has glitches you all expect everything to be good leveling like so fast quests to easy in an mmorpg game its supposed to be hard if you want a hard leveling game i advise you to go to endless online i asure you that this game is 100% OMG GOOD LIKE EXCELLENT The scenery= =O breathtaking it actually doesnt make the game harder cos u cant solo maybe it takes a while to get a team together but is that because its designed for that i mean it actually makes the game more team based instead of solo u 1 person no frended homo so STFU this game is so cool i actaully advise you to buy the game off Amazon as also you'v got an infinite back-up cd a cd key i mean all you gotta do is keep em organized unless ur a 13 year old prick and cant even keep his/her room clean cos your so unorganized leveling-70 in 3 days and all you said leveling was so hard well heres how to get ingame to actually find the game fun and lots of others alike GET FRIENDS ON THESE GAMES DONT BE A BILLY NO MATES COS U GOT NONE i think this game and expansion is excellent and all you that saying you gotta have this armor but wait u need SL to equip it WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY MADE SL FOR? TO BE THE EXACTLY SAME AS ANARCHY-ONLINE-ORIGINAL? PEACE OUT

Shadowlands fails to deliver

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 11
Date: September 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

AO's latest expansion was hyped to be a game-changing, evolutionary masterpiece from Funcom, a company who was attempting to gain the image of being a competent software publisher. Sadly, they fell far short of the mark, and many players' faith in Funcom fell down the drain with it.

Good things about Shadowlands:

- Zones (think: Worlds) look pretty.

- New creatures look pretty.

Bad things about Shadowlands:

- Entire expansion is quest orientated, and just about every quest involves mindlessly slaying creatures until you find the items needed, or slaying the same creature over and over waiting for him to drop a certain quest item. Not to mention the competition around these creatures from other players and groups.

- There are bugs, bugs, bugs, and more bugs. People get stuck often. People "fall" off of Shadowlands and land back on Rubi-Ka (sometimes into enemy territory).

- Some quests do not work. It's hard to be specific but there are a lot of quests that simply do not work, and block access to proceeding to the next "level" of Shadowlands.

- Every measure was taken to ensure that players who do not purchase Shadowlands will be unable to compete with players who did. Items require you to own Shadowlands before equipping them, there is a new "perk" system that gives big bonuses to stats which people who lack Shadowlands can not access. People should buy an expansion because they want a quality extension of a proven game, not because they are forced to by design from the ground up.

This expansion has all the traits of a rushed release by a company who is barely hanging on. I, and many other players, are very disappointed with the status quo and outraged by how hyped this expansion was.

We can only hope that Funcom follows it's model of release-first, fix-later, and has everything at least halfway decent within 3 or 4 months.

My advice: wait 6 months for Funcom to fix AO.

Don't waste your money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 11
Date: November 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Do not be fooled by the 7 day trial. Shadowland is good for the first 7 day and after you actually pay for the game / month you will find youself annoyed and frustrated at the gameplay. The quests later on requires you to kill monster that are lower lvl then you are, yet you need a full team to kill them. It wouldn't be such a bad thing is there were enough people on the game to actually team with to complete the quest. It will take you 3 hours to just find a team, and 30 minute to actually atempt it and get frustrated and have people just leave the team and be stuck in the same area. Shadowland is more for the highest level people from the original game with 100+ million credit and all have the top notch armors.(if you start from scratch it will take you days to even get 50 thousand credits). Do not be fooled with the trial and never purchase the bulk 1 year contact to save money, beacuse you will regret it. If you do not believe me check out the offical forums, it is filled with people complaning and the moderators shutting down the threads.

From veteran AO player

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: June 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I played AO for 2 years before Shadowlands Expansion Pack came out. The game, by itself, is one of the best on the market but IMO Shadowlands ruined the fun in the game.
AO is an item based game. In another words, to be good, you need good items. With a current drop rate on some of very good weapons, it might take you weeks to get it if you are unlucky. The droprate is like 2-5% on a mob with respawn time of 25 minutes. Basically, SL made AO a camping game. (Personally I camped one monster for 35-36 hours with no luck)
The adventuring part in SL is boring. How long can you look at beautiful graphics? Day? Two? Monsters there are very hard and you will have problems killing them even if they are your level or even lower. Since most of the items that are good for your level drop from SL monsters, you wont be able to get them until you are higher level and they become useless to you. Or on other hand, you can buy them for over inflated prices.
This brings me to another big issue SL brought to the game. SL ruined the games economy. Relatively easy cash income from hecklers (monsters in shadowlands), inflated the prices beyond believe. The thing is though, you will have to find a team to kill them because they are too hard to solo them. Finding a team might take from 2 mins to 2 hours... Only high level characters can solo kill them with a good gear.
If you are a new player and have not ebayed money, you pretty much wont be able to get a good gear or weapons until you raise your first character to 200 or more.
On the positive side: yeah, graphics is beautiful and FunCom added static quests for garden keys. Plus, AO is a great place to make new friends.
I would recommend to wait for the next expansion (Alien Invasion) to come out before trying out this game.

GREAT GAME!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: June 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Well if you don't like the original Anarchy-Online, than the expansion obviously isn't for you. For people like myself after playing the Shadowlands add-on I can imagine playing Anarchy-Online without it! The new armor, weapons and professions are GREAT!

Many people who havn't really experienced the game say its "too hard" or that its a "camping game". I disagree. There are always ways to improve your characters without being a high level or being rich with credits. Shadowlands added a whole new dimension to the game, from the perks, to the tier armor, I just couldn't imagine playing this game without it!

Also looking forward to the upcoming Alien Invasion Release!

Great expansion, I guess, well, maybe... not

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: September 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

AO is an excellent game and one in a world that I love. I was really truly looking forward to the Shadowlands because I'd hoped it would add more high end content, "raids" if you will. The sort of thing you don't do on a weeknight, but do on a weekend when you can spend oodles of time and really get a good group together.

Well, Shadowlands isn't it. And frankly, Shadowlands isn't a whole lot of fun. The new playfields are gorgeous, there's no doubt of that. The concept is fascinating. The storyline is actually interesting! What the heck happened?!

The execution leaves a lot to be desired. This is really one large adventure, meant to be played in a linear fashion as one levels up. But there aren't enough creatures for everyone who wants to advance within the Shadowlands to advance and the quests are, well, dull and annoying. Mostly they involve killing things repeatedly hoping for a quest drop and then running around -- and we're talking 15-30 minutes of running for each step, usually followed by running back to where you started. The quests break one of the best rules of thumb for determining when a quest is too long: if you kill yourself because the xp you lose is better than having to go through the run back, then the quest is way too tedious.

To a great extent Shadowlands takes many of the worst elements of Everquest and adds them to the game. While at the same time, I've yet to see anything that mirrors the kind of raiding game that EQ had. Meanwhile, EQ adds missions, an addition to the gaming world that started in AO and which AO got right.

In the end, there is a lot of territory in the Shadowlands. And there's a lot to do. But it could have been so much more.

Anarchy Online proves to be good..

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

People have constantly called Anarchy Online (AO) the mini-Everquest. Shadowlands, the most recent AO expansion and sequel to the Notum Wars, has proven critics of this game quite wrong. The landscapes are breathtaking, the two new classes of Shade and Keeper and the new levelcap (max level one can reach) of 220 make things even more entertaining to both newbies of the game, and seasoned veterans of this 2 year old+ MMORPG. I reccomend it to anyone and everyone who is an MMORPG fan, as it's a great addition to anyone's Anarchy Online account.

INCREASE YOUR POWER!! (Evil laughter here)!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: June 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is one of the most interesting expansions to one of the most fun instant messenging platforms I have ever seen. Oh wait, it's adding more to the game that the instant messenging platform was based on. This expansion adds a whole new (very pretty) world to the game half of Anarchy Online, making it now interesting for gamers, social people, and action fans instead of just social people and gamers.

If you do not have this expansion, you will be without some of the new must-haves of Anarchy Online, such as perks, wich allow you to boost attributes in specific fields of your choice. One of the selling points for Anarchy Online was the ability to create and customize a character based on what YOU (and not some faceless corporation) wanted your character to be, wether that be a tank with legs, bullet dodger, lifegiver, area blaster, sniper, swordsman, computer hacker, money maker, or whatever other type of character you want to be. This expansion even furthers this ability.

Also note: Funcom is coming out with another expansion for this priceless game. It will be called 'Alien Invasion', and it looks like another must have expansion for all players of this great game.

I know amazon.com is going to hate me for listing competion, but you can download both the original game and the expansion for cheaper. But I'm also going to be fair and list reasons to or not to do this. You should do this if you don't want to wait for delivery, have a CD burner so you can make a backup copy so you won't have to pay all that money again if you have to format your computer (BACKUP COPY! NOT COPY FOR YOUR FRIENDS!), and a good enough connection to download the game (But then again if you dont have a good enough connection to download the game in 10 hours or less, you probably don't have a good enough connection to actually play it either). You should buy this off amazon.com if you don't have a CD player and are willing to wait a few days or a week for delivery. I chose download since I have a CD burner (wich you can also buy off of Amazon.com), but according to a friend (in the game) that bought this game from amazon.com, Funcom fails to enclose a decent instruction manual, so if you find yourself embarassed at your computer skills, higher the nearest nerd to install this for you or try to figure it out for yourself.

Also note: everybody is going to get stuck in the scenery at least once or twice through the game. Do not panic, delete your character, and start over. Just sit down and type /stuck to get out.

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