Set almost 30,000 years in the future, Funcom's Anarchy Online takes place in an age when humanity has reached deep into space to find, explore and colonize huge numbers of worlds spanning the length and breadth of the Milky Way. One of these is Rubi-Ka. A small, rather inhospitable planet in a distant sector of the galaxy, it would be little more than just another insignificant dot on a star map were it not for the fact it holds deposits of notum. This material is both rare and essential in nano-technology. As a result, its discovery many thousands of years ago led the enormous Omni-Tek Corporation to begin terraforming and extraction operations. Since that time, the company has established a city, Omni-1, which is Rubi-Ka's capital, its largest population center and the primary focal point for the authorized export trade.

In many outlying areas, Omni-Tek's control is less than absolute. The challenge comes from rebel clans that have banded together in a somewhat loose alliance, and there is also a third faction regarded as more or less neutral. The interaction among and within these groups plays out in a massively multiplayer game featuring an exceptional range of character customization options including some 80 skills, hundreds of special attacks and thousands of items. After a rocky start in the summer of 2001, it has rebounded very nicely to win countless endorsements from players and the media plus more than a few awards. It has also evolved via the Notum Wars "booster pack", the Shadowlands and Alien Invasion expansions, and innumerable smaller additions and changes. In this series, the team has agreed to tell us about running its thriving persistent state world.