So what happened during the last 10 years?

I played AO from 2004 to 2008. Those were some good times!

I just logged in and ran around Rubi-Ka. A lot seemed to have changed.

  1. Where did all the cities go? I went to where my old org’s city was located (Newland Desert), but now it’s an empty plain.

  2. The shops looks the same, but items seems to have been dumbed down, and way easier to just purchase instead of tradeskilling them. Also skills have changed with some of them now “legacy”.
    Did the entire gameplay get a big change?

  3. Back in the day some of the high level raids where controlled (via bots) by persons not related to Funcom at all. For example if you were Omni and tried to raid “the beast” on the wrong week, you could pretty much consider yourself banned for life in the game… as these bots would be connected to ban lists, effectively locking you out of any raids in the future.
    I always found this behavior completely ridiculous, like big kids in a school yard running things.
    Did this madness ever stop? By itself, or did Funcom do anything about it?

  4. Has the game been changed to become less of a grind? I quit at level 217 after doing a quick calculation that told me, that getting to 220 would require me to do several days of in game time of boring Inferno missions.

  5. Anyone around from the good old org: The House Of Black Star?

Welcome back.

Quick answer to couple of your points.

1: All player cities are now instanced. The entrances are located in ICC on the top floor of the transport tower. There’s three different city plots available now, which two of them are large and one is a small plot. If you’re already in an org with a city, the entrance is still in Grid.

3: Pretty much all end game raids are now instanced so there is no omni/clan/neut weeks anymore. The old uninstanced beast/pande still exists but it’s ffa.

The instanced pande and other encounters require you to be in raid group. You can open raid menu with ctrl+shift+r to convert your team to raid and manage the raid teams.

Some raidbots still exists and those still help players in dead timezones or small orgs to get their gear.

4: New daily missions help the grind a lot. Clan mission agency is in OA. No idea where the omni one is. Neuts can use either one.

There’s also some dailies in SL. Easiest is the Doja chip which you need to loot from certain mobs and return to the office in jobe. Also Elite dailies available in SL from same office.

There’s also a new mid level area called “The Reck” which has a few new dailes, some pretty nice loot especially for froobs and even a new elite daily which all are in different cooldown than the regular dailes from the agency. Level limit for The Reck missions is 90-170 iirc. No level limit to enter.

Check AOU for guides and info about the new encounters etc.

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To add to the above, there’s a new starting area too “Arete”, which is better set up to introduce new players to some of the more complicated parts of the game, such as tradeskilling and implants.

Pyramid of Home was opened as an end-game raid instance where you’ll find several items that can be used to upgrade the armour drops from Beast.

And there was also the introduction of the new client that added a nice boost to the graphics, though it’s still considered a beta and many people frequently complain about crashing with it.

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#5 HOBS still exists but is a shadow of its former self. Does have a large city and its bot is up all the time. (I don’t log on much anymore)

Omni Daily mission agency is in Rome Blue. If neut use the Clan one-- it’s easier to get to.

The “Freelancer” missions in the ICC Holodeck building are good too.

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Thanks all of you for your replies.
It’s interesting that the game actually changed quite a bit, even though I thought of it as almost dead in 2009.
I logged in and ran around, and found the anniversary party, while listening to GSP.

There was not a single known face, or HOBS, around… so instead I ran around the different areas. It was a nice trip down memory lane.

I logged in my HOBS main and found the note from the prez that hobsbot will be coming down for good at the end of this month :frowning: There are active orgs recruiting still.

Heh, I logged on today and they’ve found a new host.

Wazza Teedee ! Long time no see :stuck_out_tongue:

ICC is the main hub with lots of new shops. You really should make an alt and go through Arete progression at least once. New whompa locations - one to PW. Jobe cluster vendor in ICC. New stims.

000 weapons were added to weapons terminals. Calling things ‘dumbed down’ is kinda unfair. Not like anyone really wanted to use those weapons. I recall farming and making 000 shotgun for my trader and the fling pistol for my bureaucrat. Both were disappointments.

I was in HOBS years ago. My froob “improved tango dirk” Opifex doctor Satiricon went from 1-200 in HOBS. People in hobs were very helpful, especially with digging through their banks for stuff like Miy’s tank armor pieces - and later farming Ian Warr and crew for me for a full set of Azure

Take a deep breath and have a look at our huge information and archive thread on Athen Paladins’ forums:
IF YOU ARE COMING BACK TO AO AND WANT THE LAST NEWS

I remember House of Black Star well, old memories. And don’t worry, one thing AO has NOT become is “dumbed down”. AO remains with no equal in the MMO market. :slight_smile:

Chrisax
MP 220, AL 30, Research 70, active, Born on Rimor
In AO since 2001
Founder and elected President of Athen Paladins, in our 16th year
/www.athenpaladins.org/forums/
Recruitement thread [Recruitment] ATHEN PALADINS - recruitment: open [Clans]

Just a question is there any raidbots still around? The ones I used to be a part of seems to be gone.

Yes there are. The only one I know of is Dclan (for clans)