It was a long and occassionally tedious journey, but I finally hit level 80 in Age of Conan. Having seen the entire game from level 1 through 80 there were definitely a lot of things done wrong but there were some things they got right as well. Overall, my single player experience with the game was pretty “blah” and I would strongly suggest anyone who picks up this game to try and find a good guild. The end game is woefully lacking in content and without a guild to run instances with you’ll find yourself grinding Villa’s over and over and over and over again because you simply have no other quests to do and that’s the best source of XP. Without my guild, which now has it’s own website, I’m not sure I would have had the patience to even make it to level 80.

Sadly, I will be leaving the guild behind once my subscription runs out in a few more days. They are a great bunch and if anyone wants to pick this game up, join the Thog server and look them up. They’re well on their way to having a tier 2 city and they run instances pretty regularly. I want to thank them for all the fun and experiences I never would have had without them. Who knows, maybe I’ll see some of them around once Wrath of the Lich King comes out.

I’m tempted to write a long review detailing all the things I liked and disliked, but to truly cover 80 levels would take hours to write and, the fact is, anyone who wanted to play this game already has. Not to mention the dozens of other reviews that would point out the exact same things. I would have liked things to have turned out differently for this game. I was excited by a lot of the features when it first came out but most of them never made it into the game. I’m still hopefully that Funcom will be able to turn things around and the last patch they put out was a step in the right direction. Unfortunately for them, I think the only thing they can hope to do at this point is to try and keep more people from leaving. With other MMOs on the horizon, the recent release of Warhammer and the behemoth that is World of Warcraft, there’s simply no way you can have a substandard game at launch and have any hope of competing.

To keep me busy until Wrath of the Lich King comes out, I’ve acquired Gears of War 2. I’ve been playing it co-op with a friend and, it’s just as good as the first one. How can any game where your character says “Look Ma, no face!” after turning some locust’s head into paste not be awesome! We’re almost done with Act 3 and my only beef with the game so far as that my friend hasn’t bought a stupid communicator yet!

Before I leave Age of Conan behind forever, I leave you with one last thing… because I can:

Not only have I returned to Age of Conan, I seem to have returned with a vengeance. The title of this post is actually the name of my new guild. The picture to the left is us just inside the entrance to the Onyx Chambers.

I didn’t set out to join it a guild, I just sort of fell into it. I was running quests in Aztel’s Approach when a group of players ran up. They saw me killing some mobs and I got an invite. I figure they were probably here for the same reason so I joined. A few hours later, after completing several quests that would have been much harder to complete alone, and after having quite a bit of fun, one of the group members asked me why I hadn’t joined a guild.

The fact is, the reason I hadn’t joined a guild before is because this was actually the first group that I can remember actually joining. Not only that, but the guys in the group seemed pretty cool and seemed to know how to play their characters. Both of which seem pretty hard to come by these days. I’m not one to join a guild on a random invite, nor do I care enough to do my research and seek one out. I prefer to just play the game and if I meet some cool people and they want me to join, then absolutely, I’m in. Needless to say there’s a reason why most of my characters, in just about every game, have remained unguilded. So, when I got the invite, I figured this group was worth giving a chance.

I’m glad I did! I’ve already seen two instances that I would never have even had the chance to see, if not for these guys. Sunday evening we ran through the Thunder River Prison. Sure we died a few times, but lots of fun was had by all. Then, last night, they let me tag along of the Onyx Chambers. Keep in mind, when I joined back up I was only level 62. As of last night, I was level 66, but they still let me tag along for the run through Onyx Chambers, apprenticed, of course! Despite all the issues that still exist in the game, I’m having a lot of fun thanks to the Defender’s of Grayskull. Plus, I like the name… I was a huge fan of He-Man when I was a kid.

I should also point out that the one thing I have noticed that’s really improved about the game is it’s stability. After all of the hours playing since Friday night, the game has only “sort of” crashed once. I say sort of because the game was still running but the graphics were cutting in and out forcing me to reboot. This is a HUGE improvement from a couple of months ago when the game would regularly hard lock my computer forcing a hard reset; or the crazy graphic corruptions I would get soon before it happened (as evidenced by the screenshot on the right). I have no doubt that those problems have been exacerbated by the fact that I’m running Vista 64 Ultimate. I despise Vista and I fully plan to go back to XP once I stop playing Age of Conan in favor of Wrath of the Lich King. I may not be there on day one, but I know myself well enough that I’ll be unable to resist the call of Wow.

It was bound to happen, last night I reactivated my subscription to Age of Conan. I’ve been having the undeniable urge to MMO lately, however it was actually WoW that was calling me back, not AoC. I just can’t bring myself to play another MMO while I still have one where I have yet to reach max level. Of course, that didn’t stop me from quitting Dungeons and Dragons Online, but I Digress.

In celebration of my return I bring you 5 clips from the show The Big Bang Theory. I’ve never watched this show but they apparently had an episode featuring Age of Conan. Some of the clips are pretty funny but I think they take the whole “geek” thing a little too far. Anyways, without further ado:

• Sheldor the Conqueror
• Dragon Fodder
• Queen Penelope
• Chosen by Science

As for my initial impressions of the game having returned after 2 1/2 months… If possible it seems even more buggy than when I left. Treasure chests don’t open any more, performance seems a little worse, and the lag spikes have increased dramatically. Death by lag is never fun. I was hoping Funcom would have gotten their shit together by now, at least somewhat… I plan to stay this time until I hit level 80, but if things haven’t improved by then, which I highly doubt at this point, I’m gone for good. But with Warhammer Online already out and Wrath of the Lich King and Gears of War 2 coming soon, not to mention several cool games I’m probably forgetting, there’ll be plenty of places to go.

So, as I mentioned previously, my last blog dealt with keeping an in-character journal of my adventures in World of Warcraft. Well, when I initially thought up this idea it was going to be for my Age of Conan character. Of course, I’m not always a very patient person and I couldn’t wait to give the idea a try. One thing led to another and…

Which brings me to the point of this post: the background I wrote up for my “eventually to be” Age of Conan character. This was before I knew that every character in the game would have the exact same background story by default. Nevertheless I liked the idea so I’m going to go ahead and post it here, hopefully you’ll get some enjoyment out of it.

I wasn’t born a slave. In fact, I wasn’t born much of anything. I was found in the woods as a baby by a powerful mage named Laikun. Luck was surely with me as he turned out to be a kind man. Of my real parents I know nothing. Much to Laikun’s dismay, he found that had no skill when it came to magic so when I was old enough to hold a dagger I began training in the art of fighting. I excelled. Swords, maces, hand-to-hand, I was a natural. By the I was became a young woman I was besting most of my instructors.

Shortly after I turned 14, Laikun was killed trying to defeat a powerful necromancer who was bent on populating the world with undead. While he managed to kill the necromancer he had to sacrifice himself to do it. With the only family I had ever known gone I was forced to fend for myself.

I managed to scrape by for the next year or or so by challenging anyone who would fight me for money. Very few people took me seriously though, even after word got out that I was undefeated. Just as it seemed things were starting to turn around things took a turn for the worst.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been attacked. There were always those men with no morals or those that had a little too much to drink that thought they could take advantage of a young woman walking the streets alone. They all ended up going home unsatisfied and bleeding, if they went home at all. But this time, it was different, these men were prepared for a fight. There were 6 of them that I could see and they were all well armed. I managed to hold them off for a bit but against a half-dozen experienced warriors it was only a matter of time. The last thing I remember is being struck in the base of the skull by one of their sword pommels, then darkness.

When I awoke I was the property of a local slaver. My hands a feet were bound and tied together with chains. They had cleaned me up, put me in some slinky dress and dragged me onto the auction block. At first the crowd was silent but within moments the bidding started with numbers getting so high I ceased to believe it was sums of money they were shouting. I was finally sold to some Stygian merchant for a hefty sum. As I was handed over to my new “owner” I heard the slaver tell him to be extremely careful as I was “feisty”. I’d always heard this could happen when beautiful women were found alone but I never thought I’d be one of them. I always played down my looks as much as possible and with my fighting skills… It was a lesson in carelessness I would not need repeated.

I didn’t like the idea of being anyone’s property but I was treated well. I had plenty of good food to eat, clean water and clothes. In exchange all I had to do was learn to dance. All the combat training had given me a grace that few of the other dancer’s could match. Perhaps it was what had originally caught the slave master’s eye. Regardless it didn’t take long and, to be honest, it was nice to be taken care of for a change. This lasted a couple of years until that fateful day on the ship…

Anyone who’s played the game knows what happens next. Reading this again kind of makes me wish the game had lived up to the hype. As it is I got noticed that my subscription ran out this morning so I’m going to take at least a couple of weeks off. I’ll be watching intently to see what the patch notes are like and I have no doubt I’ll be back. I hit level 62 last night and I want to at least get to 80 before I call it quits for good. In the meantime I have 14 free days on my old EvE account so that will keep me busy.

Not only that but Soul Calibur IV comes out tomorrow! I was a huge fan of the second one. At one of my old jobs me and some of the other guys would get together every break and play as many rounds as we could. This went on for about a year and a half and it never got old. I kind of miss it and being that IV has online-multiplayer you can bet this is on my “Must Buy” list!