I'll try to do these a little more often from now on. Anarchy Online Credits is to take all of your comments from previous columns, sift them for "oh man, why didn't you include [name of tune]? That's the best!" mentions, and compile a few of them to share with everyone. After all, I'm certainly not the beginning, middle, and end of taste in MMO music.Unfortunately, none of the mixes I've seen on YouTube rarely ever seems to get the right sound (I think it's an issue of layering. Most of the videos I've seen do each sample individually while I'm pretty sure there is some layering going on in-game.). I've always loved the acoustic bit that this video starts with."A new graphical engine can make an old game feel new again. Anarchy Online has had a new engine in the works for what feels like forever now, with one delay or another pushing back implementation repeatedly. But fans of the game can rejoice, as the end is in sight -- the new graphical engine is open for beta testing, with all of the same content as the existing game and a much prettier way to look at it.I guess Anarchy Online Credits goes to show that we're often quite clueless what goes on behind the curtain. There's always this balance between the number-crunchers (who need players and money to justify continued operations) and the passionate creators (who are often developers putting in the effort because they simply love the game and its community). If nothing else, Anarchy Online Credits reinforced my belief that SOE does bend over backwards to keep these games running as long as possible, much longer than some other studios would in a similar situation.And there were those initial World of Warcraft dungeon runs where I thought nothing was wrong with rushing into fights even though I was just DPS and the tank was over there beating his head on the wall due to my stupidity. Sometimes this resulted in me creating a wide selection of possible candidates, each vying for my affection while I cruelly sentenced the losers to permanent deletion. But in the end, here are 10 classes from 10 separate MMOs that tickled my fancy and totally kicked woolen mittens in the interest department.
