Bye-Bye Age of Conan

Well, AOC has fallen out of favor, now. I decided to cancel my subscription. While I think it is a beautiful game with a cool combat system, there are a few things that have killed it for me:

1. The PVP system is unbalanced in my opinion. Some of the classes are far too powerful (Priest of Mitra). The fact that a level 80 suffers no side-effects from killing a 20 is a bit annoying, too. I guess FunCom is going to address these, but whatever… still frustrated me enough to make this list.
2. AOC has far too many load screens for my liking. I have grown used to a “seemless” world where area transitions are automatic. Also, each zone is instanced and I have found that when I try and team up with other players that sometimes we’re not always in the same instance. This forces all the players to have to “find” each other by either exiting the instance or switching instances near a spawn point.
3. Travel in the game is “too realistic.” Some people might like this, but when travel takes a lot of my play time then it becomes a chore and chores are… not fun… as a game should be.
4. The items in AOC are not terribly remarkable in my opinion. There are so many stats to compare, for one, and then having stats measured in increments of .1 (tenths) or even .01 (hundredths) deviates too much from Pen and Paper for me (whole numbers only, please!). The rendering of these items in the inventory is pretty atrocious, too.

So with all that being said, it’s time I bid Age of Conan farewell. My plan is to dedicate more time to personal projects and home improvements anyway. I don’t need a large black hole gobbling up all my free time

What’s New?

As you all may have noticed, I haven’t had a whole lot to write about lately. I’ve been trying to keep myself busy with Age of Conan, movies, work, and exercise.

This last weekend was the birthday of one of my best friends, Chris Brown. He turned a ripe, ol’ 35 years old! Woo hoo! Hard to believe we’re only a few years away from 40, now. Crazy! We went to the Outback as a group for dinner and otherwise had a good time.

Age of Conan: It is a very stunning game in terms of graphics and game mechanics, but oh man, the PVP is brutal. When you venture out to your training grounds as a newbie, you have to keep one eye on the monsters, and the other for cloaked players who are there to kill you for no readily apparent reason. It’s still a fun game, but it can be frustrating when you get ganked repeatedly by groups of players well above your level.

There is not much else to report right now, but I wanted to say thanks and hello, again, to all my friends and family!

Out With the Bad

I have decided to purge my blogs of all the negative stuff. There isn’t anything I can do to change the bad stuff in my life, so I will try and focus on the positive stuff. I still have my family (… sort of) and I still have my friends and that will not change.

I am trying out a new MMORPG: Age of Conan. I was curious to see if it could be a serious contender to take on World of Warcraft and so far my impressions are good. I don’t know if it will de-thrown WoW just yet, but with some polishing it could be strong competition (while the game is pretty and the game content is good, the UI is a bit clunky).