So, AoC has been up for a while now and I’m getting more into it. The game has some serious problems with bugs and technical issues, but seeing as Funcom is releasing a patch every working day I’m calm about it, in 3 months it should deliver much more than now and after they add DX10 in late august the game will come in full glory.

The biggest issue we have with the game right now is the fact that after level 55 or so it begins to turn into a grind fest, as there is not enough quests - they raised experience required per level in beta and didn’t have enough time to put the content in, one of many things that fails because of the rush for release date.

I definitely love my Barbarian, it feels good to play a caster killer after years of being a warrior in WoW. The arsenal of abilities they gave to barb is all you will ever need: stuns - checked, knockbacks - checked, CC removal - checked, mini-ranged IWIN button (No escape, the deathcoil of AoC) - checked, AoE manaburn proc with hp regen if a caster somehow survives the stuns - checked, looking awesome with fur cape - checked. The “balance” (in quotes as there is no balance atm, and there is not much of a need for it to be) in AoC is rock-paper-scissors put to extreme, just as much as I can eat casters for a breakfast, there is pretty much nothing I can do against tanks, unless they are retarded and use frenzy stance (pretty much doubles damage taken, makes berserker stance in wow look like a tank mode), in which case it’s still 50:50. Not much of an issue, as I can just run away from their loldps and restealth :P. Assassins might have it easier against tanks at higher levels, since they get toys like soulstrike (next combo deals unholy damage instead of physical), but still solider classes have an upper hand against rogue classes in toe to toe combat, which is expected.

FFA PvP ruleset is awesome, I don’t know how it looks on other servers, but on Fury the “factions” are already starting to shape, most people are not attacking everything they see, but are instead making their kill on sight lists, which eventually evolves into guild vs guild KOS - and the drama goes on!

And so I haven’t logged to WoW for a while, just missed another arena week. I’m thinking about canceling my WoW account, at least until WotLK comes. There is not much WoW has to offer for PvPers at level 70, granted we don’t know what exactly AoC has to offer at 80, but we are occupied as we are still leveling.

Terhix

Update: BTW, this is the feat build I’m planning to have at 80 atm.

So, the early access started yesterday, they delayed it by 4 hours but then it went pretty much smooth. I’ve no idea why Funcom decided to put only 2 FFA PvP servers per region - 15 minutes after the launch there was a 3 minute queue to login to our server (EU Fury), but other than that I’ve no complains on technical site. They just started the very first maintenance (there was a short one today in the morning but it resulted just in one d/c for everybody and servers were up and running) estimated for 2 hours - thus I’ve got the time to write this post ;).

I’ve slept for like 4 hours after playing whole night, I’m not the king of grind and I don’t know what quests to take and how to level the most effective way, but I’m sitting at 24th level atm, which is pretty average for people playing since the first hour of early access. So far I’m very happy about how it turned out, I’ve tried barbarian in closed beta and I’m very happy to see many concerns with the class fixed.

I was expecting a total bloodbath with FFA PvP, and I’ve say that I’m surprised. Sure people are killing each other, a lot, but many times I’ve been on one spot hunting for quest mobs with 3 other people and we somehow didn’t kill each other. Guilds are formed and getting members, some are quite big and already recognizable like RUScorp (pretty much on my KoS list :P). The climate that Funcom has built in the game is perfect, it’s just brilliant, I’m not an expert on the Conan lore, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to look like. There are those little awesome things around, like fatalities, I was afraid (and not only me) about fatalities, since you loose control over your character while doing a fatality, but that’s nothing for the pure awesomeness of chopping someone’s head off, or impaling him with your axe and laughing into his face (literally, the character laughs) while getting 20% damage boost and huge stamina regen that allows you to annihilate everything else that’s still alive`. A simple quote from chat channel really captures what’s going on atm:

Guy1: So, people don’t get PK tagged for senseless killing?
Guy2: Senseless killing = Conan.

No one will be sad if you die, and if you get in somebody’s way, be ready to get annihilated, unless you are better. The problem with sandbox style PvP is that it’s heavily Dependant on the community, much more than controlled PvP like the one in WoW is - there are no factions, it’s players who decide who is your friend and who is your enemy. It has potential, and so far it seems to be a running success, it’s not a WoW killer, it’s something much different - in fact I think it would make a better game if they removed the PvP minigames completely (CTF and team annihilation), been there once so far and I’m not temped to play it again.

Terhix

Good news,
[Medallion of the Alliance] and [Medallion of the Horde] are already available for 40k from the honor vendors. Since we will get 2 week notice on when S4 will start, its still plenty of time to get back to cap, even with daily pvp quest only.

Also, 25 resilience for 40k honor is amazing deal. All in all S1 -> S4 is only +6 Resilience.

SandMan

There is an uproar about people getting banned for 72h with all their arena points and all S3 gear being removed. All I can tell is:

FINALLY!

However, there are stories flowing around forums with people claiming they got banned when they did not win trade, I was sceptic about that at first, but in one long topic on Arena Junkies, one guy pasted an email from Blizzard:

Hello, XXXXXX.

I wanted to give a quick followup on the situation. It seems as if the actions made on your account were in error. We do apologize for this situation, as our intention is to clean up the rampant win trading going on, we did encounter a few mistakes along the way. Unfortunately your team was filtered through association, and was tracked and actioned due to an error in judgement. I apologize for that.

The items removed from your character have been restored and should be in your mailbox. Your points should also be returned as well.

Reply to this email if you have any other questions. I realize you will probably question the status of your friends, but I will take care of them.

Regards,
Vlaynoss
Senior Account Administrator
Blizzard Entertainment
www.worldofwarcraft.com

And to back this up, screen shots:

Time to get paranoid?

Terhix

So, getting my rating high enough to have guaranteed drake and title (2300 - 2320 should let us sleep calm about getting to top 0.5%, which according to arenajunkies calculator is top 63 teams in 2v2 in our battlegroup), with still at least 3 weeks ahead of us before the end of the season, it’s just a grind factor before we get there.

Age of Conan is starting 17th of may with early access programme, allowing people who preordered the game to download the client (d/ling as I type this) for 4.35 euro (or $5 for US player I believe). This is going to give people with preorders HUGE advantage, not because those few days will matter much in the end, but because with much lower population it will be much easier to level up. When the game actually starts and there will be bunch of level 5 guys running around starting zone, with 5 people to 1 monster ratio, FFA PvP servers will be simply unplayble for at least a week, it will be just one huge blood bath. Going ahead with early access me and my guildies are pretty much going to stick with each other, we are not really social people, but running around and questing in group is a good thing to do in enviorment where everybody can kill you everywhere. For the same reason, the ‘full stealth’ (the ones that don’t loose stamina while stealthing) classes (all from the rogue archetype: Assassin, Barbarian and Ranger) will be probably very popular. Heck, it seems that our main group will be 5 assassins, 3 barbarians and one priest of mitra.

I did play for some time in beta, got 17 level or so on my barb. I pretty much like the idea that there is a two-handed fighter considered as a melee dps class (hence the rogue archetype) and not a tank. It pretty much have all the tools I’d like to have - stuns, knock backs, health regens and things like no-escape (ranged weapon throw that disarms you but stuns the target and deals damage) or unstable mind (removes all stuns, roots and slows and gives a short immunity) make a perfect PvP class, stealth is just a cherry on top of the cake. Sure it won’t have the hp or armor (light armor only) of the solider classes, but I guess we can all agree that the “soft” classes aren’t always the ones that die fastest (demo locks or ShS rogues in WoW can be pain in the ass to kill).

I’ll post here how my AoC progress goes, not quitting WoW, I’m playing arenas only atm, so it’s not really time consuming and shouldn’t be a problem to handle those two games at once. I will eventually stick to one game, and I’m not judging AoC untill I play the endgame, at which point of time WotLK will be probably out, so it’s a good idea to stay up to date with WoW. I also expect AoC to be pretty much imbalanced and bugged as funcom rushed for the release (they didn’t have the choice to move the release date like Warhammer), so yeah, I’ve to see what the devs are up to and what directions they take.

Terhix