Expansions
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The Notum Wars
Anarchy Online received its first major upgrade, labeled a "booster pack", by Funcom in late November 2002. This expansion introduced one of the major components of the game's PvP system, the towers. In this expansion, players and their organizations (AO's name for player guilds) became capable of building towers on specific land areas across Rubi-Ka, for the purposes of mining notum. These towers included a central controller and a vast array of defensive towers, which typically conferred bonuses to individual players or their organizations, or which conferred penalties on invading players. These towers would regularly become open to attack by players of the opposing factions, who, after successfully destroying the towers of their enemy, could claim the land as their own.

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The Shadowlands
Perhaps the most well received of Anarchy Online's expansions, the Shadowlands presented a tremendous new world, collectively called the Shadowlands, which is the last remnant of the world Rubi-Ka was before it was wrenched apart by a dimension-breaking cataclysm in ages past. Enriched in notum, this diverse world is inhabited by vestiges of the ancient races that lived on Rubi-Ka, called the Redeemed and the Unredeemed, as well as a giant, world-reaching computer, named Ergo, who recognizes humans as descendants of the past and whose motives in propelling players through the Shadowlands are ambiguous at best.

Released in September of 2003, the Shadowlands expansion was very well received critically, though there were concerns that it had too strong a fantasy bent to mesh completely with the AO universe. In addition to the tremendous world the expansion added, it also introduced significant changes, improvements, and additions, to virtually every aspect of the game, from music, to character development, to interface, enough that some players considered it a wholly different game than the earlier versions of AO.

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Alien Invasion
Building on the storyline introduced in The Shadowlands, Alien Invasion was the next major expansion to the Anarchy Online game. This expansion introduced player-built cities, new social interactions, including clothing, and, most significantly, a new threat to the world of Rubi-Ka, in the form of an alien race that has suffered tremendous pain and death because of human interference in the Shadowlands. It was released in September, 2004.

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Lost Eden
Lost Eden is the working title for the upcoming expansion pack, and is expected to be released in 2006. This expansion will focus on PvP elements and is expected to add a variety of new features, including: player-controlled battlemechs, orbiting space stations that players can vie to control, and artillery fired from orbital cannons.

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Other Notes
The background of the game is described in greater detail in the book Prophet Without Honor: Anarchy Online Book 1, by Norwegian author Ragnar Tørnquist. A detailed timeline of events, from the discovery of Rubi-Ka until 29479, is available at the official Rubi-Ka Timeline page.

The original game, without any of the expansions, is part of a special promotion in which new players can register an account and download the core game free of charge, with all monthly fees waived until January 15, 2007. Players wishing to use the content available in any of the three expansions would need to purchase those expansion packs, after which monthly subscription fees would begin to be charged. It is possible to upgrade a free account to a paid one and at the same time purchase the first three expansions at a reduced package price.