The main problem with Anno Online at the moment is that at first glance it’s a bit too similar to The Settlers Online. Whilst the old phrase of “you should never judge a book by its cover” does spring to mind, for the browsing consumer who doesn’t really know enough about either franchise, that face-similarity is enough. Even when you get down to the mechanics, there are cross overs between the two games. Whilst Anno is focused more on the building of your city and colonising other islands for self-sufficiency, there’s town development and expansion of a similar kind in Settlers as well. It’ll probably need some time to distinguish itself and to expand more on the actual co-operative elements outside simple trading.
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Misgivings aside, this is already shaping up to be a classic Anno experience... the different levels of population, all with their own needs, the economic buildings that all feed into each other and form chains - for example if your villagers need clothes, then you need to plop down a hemp farm, which then needs to be taken to a Weaver, and that then needs to be taken to the warehouse so it can be sold at market… that’s one of the basic production chains – they get much more complicated as time goes on and your population ‘evolves’ into more high-brow needs. Eventually, as your first settlement gets to a certain point, you'll find that it can’t meet the needs of its people with the resources of that island alone, which will prompt you to go colonise other islands, with different resources that can feed into each other. This will fire off another chain of tasks that basically results in you choosing another island to settle.
This is where the micro-transaction part of the game comes in, whilst everyone is allowed up to 9 islands per account, but only four of those are free for everyone. An additional four are ‘premium’ slots, which you have to purchase the rights too and we’re not really sure about the last slot. You can also buy progress acceleration, to speed up the building of say a big monument or a crucial resource building, and there will be a heft selection of cosmetic items to build as well, for those of you who like to make your cities look pretty.
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At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be much of an ‘End-game’ other than that eventually your entire island chain will specialise in only one rare resource, which you can then trade to other players. You can also work co-operatively with other players on building projects, especially monuments which are considered the pinnacle of the game at the moment (we’re told there isn’t going to be many at the beginning right now). There’s no direct or indirect PvP right now, just co-operative multiplayer, although they have had thoughts on using an Anno 2070 like meta-game system where you’re all part of a governing body, and so you can pass laws that affect everyone. You can also be part of Guilds and Alliances, and there will be various quests and quests chains to get involved with as well.
It may not be looking terribly interesting right at this moment, but you can’t say BlueByte aren’t giving you plenty to do – there’s plenty of content to keep you coming back over the course of several months, and if you multiply that over several islands, then there’s certainly value here. The online and co-operative elements (and possibly competitive) really need to be shown off more and highlighted before we can get excited about it though – the problem with online games is that they are in essence stripped down versions of the main product, and there reaches a point where if it’s not interesting enough, you might as well shell out of the main game. Still, keep an eye on it, as there’s still a lot of potential here. Anno Online is scheduled for a late 2012 release.
Most Anticipated Feature: Waiting with bated breath to see if the universe explodes, since this will be the first Anno game that doesn’t have numbers that add up to the number ‘9’
