QUOTE FROM "MEANS", NEW GAME DIRECTOR, October 4, 2008

On October 4, 2008, Means posted some news about the new game engine (and about the new Booster Pack as well) and announced that Enno Rehling was coming back to AO. He also posted the Meeting in Old Athen with Means and Macrosun from FC picture you can see above. You can also see a very high resolution version of this picture HERE.

"Thank you to the following players for taking time out to pose with me and the amazing Macrosun for our screenie taken in the new engine (...)

Our drive to get the new engine up and running got a fresh boost this week when Enno "I Break Stuff" Rehling returned to the team to help us refocus our efforts. Enno was here at the beginning of time when a great deal of the AO source was written and it will be a great help to the rest of the coder team to have him aboard again to help us bring the dream home. We have all been waiting a long time for this and it still gives me goosebumps when I get to see the world we all know so well looking so bright and new."

Link to the whole post from Means

 

QUOTE FROM "MEANS", NEW GAME DIRECTOR, September 17, 2008

On September 17, 2008, Means, former Lead Designer on Anarchy Online, became the new AO Game Director (Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison became Game Director on AoC). Means immediately posted on AO forums and, among other things, declared:

"While some things will change with the departure of Silirrion...some things will not.

Not Changing: ... The new graphics engine initiative. I am looking forward to this upgrade more than anyone else. This is going to get done if it kills me or preferably someone else..."

"Means"
Game Director - Anarchy Online

Link to the whole post from Means

QUOTES FROM SILIRRION, GAME DIRECTOR, January 22, 2008 and before

"The video was prepared for the press tour attending a press tour for Age of Conan here in Oslo on Friday. I admit I wasn't expecting them to get it up so fast but yes, it is official and it is footage from the alpha version of the new rendering engine.
One slight correction is that I believe some of the sites have credited as being the Conan engine, which isn't the case, the updates to the new anarchy engine are being developed independently and its not the same engine tech as we have said before the engine for Conan isn't backwards compatible with the AO engine.

"I t is looking fantastic and the guys here are doing a great job on it so we wanted people to be able to see the progress so far"

"It wasn't leaked, the sites were allowed to post it, they only just left Oslo early this morning so just wasn't quite expecting them to have it up so quickly! We will make sure its linked and posted on the main AO site during the week"

"We arent developing specifically for DX10 no, it will be updated to DX9 with the options for later development down the line. The first priority is bringing it up to date in the first place. So the new engine will not require or utilise DX10 when released."

"It’s all still on course for mid to late next year [note: 2008] (since there is a lot to test with something like this)"

Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director - Anarchy Online