Game Director Craig Morrison has been speaking to the folks over at MMORPG.com about all things Anarchy, including the first peak at the new render engine planned for later this year.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

MMORPG.com: What was the rationale behind developing a new engine for a game that launched all the way back in 2001?

Craig Morrison: We still have thousands of new players every week through the free player offer and we realize that while we are very proud of the games art direction, it is starting to look its age compared to modern titles. With so many players still signing up and trying the game every week we felt it would be a missed opportunity if we didn’t bring the engine up to date and little and improve the visuals. We know we have a great game with a lot of depth so in doing this we hope we can also attract people with a modern looking engine.

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.

You can read the rest of the interview here.

You can download the teaser video here.