Anarchy Online Graphics Engine Q&A

MMORPG.com was able to track down Anarchy Online game director Craig Morrison for a brief Q&A about the company's plans to roll out a new graphics engine for the MMORPG later this year.
MMORPG.com: How long have you been working on this new engine?

Craig Morrison: We have been working on the engine for some time in terms of research and preliminary work, probably close to a year already (as we have to also focus on the live product as well), but we are now in full production with it and dedicated resource assigned to it.

MMORPG.com: Do you have a timeframe for release?

Craig Morrison: We are currently close to what we think is a good alpha version internally and our QA teams will soon be going over it. This version is feature complete as it were, but without the gfx effects incorporated, as all of the effects in the game need to be converted to work in the new engine. That is the next phase of development that we hope to complete over the coming months. We haven't set a firm release window yet as with an update like this a lot of testing is required. We hope to start comprehensive beta testing sometime in the late summer and then we will assess when we might look to release it to our live servers. The team is definitely aiming for later this year.

There's also a video showing off the new engine, in case you're interested.