Well AOC has been fun. However Funcom missed the mark releasing a PvP centric game that had no point to its PvP. Funcom still struggles to implement its PvP patch. War appears to have the Realm v Realm element well designed and implemented. Which is the benefit of being the company that pioneered alot of the first gen RvR. As much as I cursed the game in my last post, Im going were the friends/guild is going and thats WAR

I know, this is getting a little bit obsessive in that I keep posting decapitation shots. Ok this is the last one, unless I get a better one. Here is the money shot as I call it, my sword cutting through the neck and taking the head off, the massive amounts of blood and the then the corpse without arms and a head. Even notice the shield laying next to the corpse.

Here is an additional screeny for today as I managed to capture my fine axe taking the head of a victim. You may notice she no longer has any arms either, they came off before the head

Today's screen shots are of the guild I am in and us raiding some of the dungeon instances. One thing I have to say I am really impressed with is the implementation of horses in AOC. They handle like you would think a horse will and they provide a travel boost that is well worth the gold investment.

My character hit level 57 last night and is still powering along. For the casual gamer AOC is friendly from a leveling perspective. Some levels can be a grind if you don't have a guild or your not interested in pick up groups to complete the group quests that are available as you level. If you dont mind grouping or are in a guild then leveling can be a breeze. The only issue in leveling to fast is that at 80 there's not a lot to do currently. Funcom are fleshing out the upper end of the game and therefore those that have powerleveled can either level another character or on the PVP servers go and grief lower levels than them.

Personally I am enjoying the game and think by the time I hit 80, Funcom will have addressed some of the concerns. The game is still only two months old since release. Yet if you read the Funcom forums you can get a glimpse into the truly mentally challenged in life. The general forum has at least 30 percent of posts complaining Funcom have removed boobies and the ability for more hard core adult themes. It really is a sad reflection when that's your biggest complaint.

This weeks screen shots capture the "M" rating in Age of Conan. The first couple of shots are of people being decapitated by my axe. The fatalities sequences in AOC are very entertaining. I have one where I cut the victims arms off and then their head.

The last three screen shots are of myself and two guild mates as we did a 6-8man instance with the three of us. Also considering I was apprenticed up for this little killing spree, it was a good effort as we managed to kill all three bosses.

I am currently in the process of switching hosting providers due to the extreme lack of professionalism with my old provider. As you may have noticed the site was down for three days. The response I got from the hosting provider was these things are complex and therefore take time to resolve. Well if you can't keep a web server up and think that its a complex task then maybe you should not be in the hosting business.

So those looking for hosting, my advice is stay away from these guys as they are flat out spelling the words web hosting let alone provide it five nines.

The podcasts are currently still being moved and therefore if you click a link to listen to a podcast, it will error. This will be resolved over the next 24 hours.

Cheers
Shane

When I started AOC I thought the game client was excellent and I couldn’t understand all the problems people kept complaining about. Now that Im in my mid 50’s I have an appreciation of the problems people are complaining about. So for the last week or so my client experience has deteriorated to the point I can understand why the less technically savvy would quit the game in disgust.

Until I was finally forced to deal with the issue, my client was crashing nearly hourly. If I zoned more than five times, it would crash or I would restart the client so it didn’t crash. However speaking in guild chat a few of the guys mentioned this wasn’t their experience and that they only have the occasional crash and the odd memory allocation crash.

The other big problem was and is the cause to my previous post was that after a crash the bloody client could decide it needed to download anywhere from 1 meg to 1 gig of files. This can happen extremely randomly and is the source of much angst and gnashing of teeth. However there is a solution and those prepared to take the time the majority of problems I have found can be resolved.

Today I was playing AOC happily enough. I logged off to do some other things and when I returned I get an error with the client loading. The fix for that error is this:

Not much of an update today as I spent the weekend in Noosa and away from a PC, so I didn't get any AOC in since last Friday morning.

Siege PVP in AOC is a big part of the end game and heres another video showing the potential of this. I suggest you click the download button just under the video and copy it locally for better quality.

http://files.filefront.com/Vae+Victus+2nd+Siegempg/;10869271;/fileinfo.html

Funcom are also putting up a test server and it looks like reducing there patching policy from 2 a week to who knows what. They didn't patch last night when they normally do and they have not said when the next patch is.

I see alot of complaints starting to build up with alot of players making level 80 and not having a lot to do. It sucks when you power level through the game and then wonder why theres nothing left to do. I gather Funcom are madly working on content for the end of the level curve due to the fact that leveling is not that hard even for none power gamers. Shit even Im level 43 and I've been playing for about 3 weeks.

Anyway, time for work, expect more updates this week as I try and hit the upper levels so that I can participate in guild raids and PVP events.

As the title suggests in todays screen shot update we have some boobies and lots of blood and gore. Nothing like playing an "M" rated game. I also managed to hit level 40 last night before the server update, which allowed me to purchase a horse. Level 40 puts me halfway to the end game which is the reason I'm am playing. For siege PVP and generally PVP battles over zones.

Looks like Funcom patched in some bugs with last nights updates as the servers went down at 9pm last night our time and they are currently still down 08:30am the next day. They are the joys you get when you play a MMORPG that is less than 6 months old. I have also noticed some more annoying bugs that are starting to show up as I progress through the levels. One very annoying bug is when you try and sell things on the auction house, they don't sell so you decide to sell them to a vendor just to make some coin anyway. Well vendors wont buy things that have been on the auction house. Its like the vendors are snubbing your business for not selling to them first. My understanding is that king Conan has sent word to the merchants union that they better fix the issue or it will be off with their heads.

Anyway heres the screen shots for today.

Part of enjoying Age of Conan is playing with friends. So I recently joined a guild called The Kelly Gang which was a little ironic considering when Oceania came up I started a guild on that shard called The Kelly Gang. Anyway one of the features of Age of Conan is the apprentice capabilities. What this allows is you to adventure with friends that are several levels above you.

One person takes you on as an apprentice and you get a temp level boost to one level below your master. This is a stats boost only which means you earn experience at the rate the group earns at and you don't draw all the agro. Other games give an XP penalty when you try and power level with higher level players, AOC actually have addressed this issue and even made it fun.

So todays screen shots are of me being power leveled with two members of my new found guild mates. Notice in a couple of them I'm level 36 and then I'm level 50.

The series of screen shots are from Age of Conan found in the guild I have joined. I have permission to use them here as they are in the private forum for the guild.

In my last post I mentioned I was making some mods to the site so that I could post screen shots without having to load a new page. I had some issues with Firefox and they have since been fixed.
So my plan is to try and do daily updates with at least some screen shots of what is a stunning looking game. I recently changed my video options to max out the video settings and I switched to a AOC UI Mod called Mirage.

The second part of the new update is being able to group images together and view them like a gallery. So these next couple should work in this fashion.

While the AOC servers are down and being patched, I decided to update the code behind this site and make a quick modification.

Heres a good video I saw on the potential of the end game for AOC.

http://www.afraidyet.net/forums/showthread.php?t=46388

So far I have to say I am enjoying AOC a lot and think it has some real potential. The down side is I saw how Funcom handled Anarchy Online and that leaves a shadow over this game for the long haul.

In the meantime I am having a blast. I'm playing on a free for all PVP server which is the way I like it. Sure you get your share of wankers that can't compete with players at there own level and need to be a cyber bull. However the worlds big enough that if you encounter one of these digital fools you can either get help, leave the area and do some other quests or just stand there and offer no insults or challenge, there tiny brains eventually get bored and they will seek someone who bites and sends them tells complaining.

The PvP in AOC has a lot of potential and if you see this video you can appreciate that button mashing has an art form and its more than hit combo and wait. Those that say its purely button mashing truly have no clue and most likely return to UO as the only game they ever where any good at.

So the day has dawned and I have closed my accounts for the last time. UO on Oceania is dieing a slow and painful death and I no longer wish to be a part of it.

I maybe moving to the US next year to work for Cisco in San Francisco and if that pans out I may reopen my accounts. However I have started playing Age of Conan on a PVP free for all server and am loving it so far.

I have been ganked a number of times and truly feel like the old days of UO when reds used to hang out just on the edges of town and gank anyone that stepped outside. Funcom have some issues to sort out, however Ill make another post soon about my take on the game so far.