I have a few minutes - my "four o'clock" never showed (no, I haven't switched jobs with the dentist upstairs; I had a meeting with Gaute G., the game director on AO, but I guess he forgot) - and I wanted to write a few words about what I'm working on. The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy, as I'm sure my Regular Readers have already guessed. Few updates, and a general lack of content on this site usually means that my attentions lie elsewhere.

First and foremost, the Anarchy Online expansion pack ("Shadowlands") is keeping all the designers extremely busy. My involvement thus far has been much more limited than I would've liked, but I've worked quite a bit on the Jobe part of it. Jobe is a brand new city that will, in the most poetic of terms, kick arse. Yes, yes, I know; I have promised arse-kickings before. But Jobe is something everyone's excited about, and I'm confident that this will show when the city is finally revealed. Arse-kickingly good or not, at least it will provide the players with some original scenery. And there's some important story elements attached to Jobe...which will not be revealed. Yet.

Secondly, I'm putting together a revised and fully updated AO "Bible", containing information on everything from the broad history of the AO universe (going back more than 30,000 years, in fact, to the very dawn of mankind), to details on the upcoming storyline. There's stuff in the Bible that I'd like to share with all the players - how, exactly, I'm not yet sure. But I'd like to integrate this information more closely with the game, and avoid the "stick it on the website and forget about it" procedure we've often resorted to in the past. There's still some things that need to be added to the out-of-game timeline, and I still believe the website is an important resource, but I want to do most of the important upcoming storytelling inside the game.

Oops...gotta run. More later!
  ¶ 17:02