Anarchy Online has come a long way since its infamous launch two years ago, when it debuted with unstable servers, clunky graphics, and enough player discontent to make it live up to its own name. Back then, if you were to tell frustrated players that this would become a very polished game, accessible to casual and hardcore players, good for groups or soloing, set in a richly detailed visual world that invited exploration, with a finely tuned and addictive character development system with long legs, they would probably laugh at you.

Similarly, when the first add-on pack (Notum Wars) was released last year, a lot of fans were disappointed to find minimal new content geared almost solely towards higher-level player organizations. If you were to tell them that the next expansion pack would raise the bar for MMO expansions, they would also laugh at you.

Brave new world.
With Shadowlands, the developers at Funcom continue to surprise us. This is a superlative expansion pack that breathes new life into Anarchy Online, and adds plenty of content for veterans and newbies alike. Beyond just introducing two new classes, it reworks the old classes and presents a new game-world with a different look and feel, as well as some refreshing gameplay twists.

The eponymous Shadowlands are an alternate dimension, connected to Anarchy Online's world by a floating city called Jobe. You can reach Jobe from other cities, or you can choose it as the starting location for a new character. Before entering the city proper, players have the opportunity to jumpstart new characters in a beginner's area that doles out the first few levels through some basic quests. Once you've reached Jobe, there are gateways into Shadowlands proper, which is where the new content really takes off.

The Shadowlands are divided into about a half dozen distinct regions, each with its own look and a set of unique quests. Funcom's artists have done a great job giving the new regions a distinctive and exotic look without resorting to hackneyed conventions like "lava world" and "ice world" (although these are represented). From the sky to the creatures to the vegetation, these are places brimming with new content, all of it colorful and slightly alien. One criticism you might hear from diehard fans is that it's too "fantasy" oriented, like something you'd see in EverQuest, but it's important to remember that this is a new place separate from Anarchy Online's hard sci-fi; it complements it rather than replaces it.

Have you seen my pants?
There's a lot to see here, which encourages exploration and keeps you occupied while you're walking around -- and Shadowlands will have you burning some serious shoe leather. Some players might be put off by the amount of walking, particularly if they're accustomed to how wide-open and interconnected Anarchy Online's old world has always been. But Shadowlands is designed as a saga, a long-winding hike from the first region of Nascence to the final region of Inferno, with each region somewhere between the size of a massive dungeon and a small world. This progression is just one of the many ways this place is new and different: there's a sense of focus, a tangible goal instead of a vast wide-open world where one place is as good as any other. Shadowlands is a journey with a beginning and an end.