After going thoroughly through all the forums I thought it would be helpful if I wrote a post here, out of character so to speak, just to let you people know what is happening with the story and how we are planning to tell it in the forseeable future.
Firstly have to say that stepping in Ragnars footsteps here is not an easy task. The world of Anarchy Online is like a room with thousand corners and when creating its story one has to check each and every one to let it all hang together.
Some of you seem to be worried about us here at Funcom dropping the story, not really caring about player’s actions or wishes when it comes to how the story develops and that everything concerning the future on Rubi-Ka is set in stone. Nothing is further from the truth.
When I started working on the story for AO, the first thing I did was to prepare the physical introduction of actors in the game world, groups of NPC’s representing different story Clans, Omni departments and free agents like Ian Warr’s gang of mercenaries etc. Already some of these are in the game and a lot more is to follow. These story organizations will be the main actors in and set the stage for events and the development of the AO story in general.
It is quite obvious that we need a patch to get these groups (new NPC's, uniforms, items, signs, offices, quests etc.) out to the live servers and the plan is to introduce a couple at the time like we have started doing. Some of these organizations, or factions, are peaceful; others will be demanding their space, like The Sentinels.
Even though the story Clans and Departments are not open for players to join them, it is not thereby said that they will not have to adapt to what players do and say, just like players will be forced to take into account the different policies these groups enforce. Player organizations together with NPC organizations are all a part of and create the Rubi-Ka community.
As well as introducing new factions, the ones already on the arena will be reformed to adapt to what is happening on Rubi-Ka. Just remember; those are run by NPC's with their own ambitions and agendas and they will not necessarily react in the way you would expect them to.
At the moment the story is developing on several different plains. Firstly it is the long term story, secondly the story leading into and through the Shadowlands and thirdly the day to day development on Rubi-Ka. The last one being developed jointly by you the players and us; the story team here at Funcom.
Player actions, events and web material are an ongoing element in the development of the story. Meanwhile we here in the story team observe how the Notum Wars rage, what people write on the boards and we play the game most every day to get feedback from the average player. From all that, we gather the information we need to prepare our portion of the short term storytelling for the next patch, make the items, nanos, change locations in the world and create NPC’s and their dialogues.
Oh! And one last thing; The interesting thing about coming to new and strange places is usually not to actually see the sights, but rather not to know what you are going to experience, never knowing what is behind the next corner.
May you live in interesting times