Working As Intended

That’s right, I am alive! Life has been extremely busy lately, and I apologize for not updating!

I have a fair share of posting to do in the coming days, with some interesting stories to tell (as opposed to uninteresting stories). Between my I’m Moving blog post, I managed to do a couple significant things in my gaming life. I played World of Warcraft seriously for the first time, rushing to 70 in a few weeks, raiding, and ultimately quitting the game. I also got my EverCrack, I mean EverQuest addiction back in full swing and am raiding with my former guild Fire and Fury (Firiona Vie, role-playing server)!

So please look forward to some MMO story telling! I’m just trying to hammer out the posts so I don’t look like a total fool.

Safe journeys!

- Faelor

I’m going to be moving out of my apartment! I’m hoping once the move is finished and I have internet access, I’ll be writing more. Life has been busy trying to update all of Forest Stalker, my guild’s site and other projects I have under my belt. So stay tuned!

About two weeks ago I logged in to my guild’s Ventrilo server to see what everyone was up to, nothing special. I found out that a handful of my guild mates had downloaded the 10 day trial of Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO), and were enjoying it a lot. For those that are unfamiliar with Halcyon Affinity (HA), we’re categorized as a “hardcore raiding” guild. To give you an idea on how crazy we are, we rushed to level 50 in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and had the first full raid-ready squad, consisting of 24 level 50 individuals. We also had other accomplishments such as finding the most quests, NPC discoveries and first max level in adventuring, crafting and diplomacy.

My trial is now over, but those 10 days were some of the best days of my MMO career in 2007. It has the MMO aspect, where I can adventure for as long as I want with friends while combining the classic Dungeons & Dragons paper and pen rules. D&D is known for being a slow game, being turn based and rolling your favorite set of dice. DDO flips this around, keeping many of the paper and pencil rules while keeping everyone on their toes with the fast action game play. In most dungeons, if you run forward without looking around you are going to die from a trap, no questions asked. You may be tough stuff in your typical MMO, but in DDO a blade the size of a cow swinging down at your character is going to in fact kill you (or make your barbarian pal fall to their knees). You need to keep your eyes peeled (along with having the proper skills, such as Spot in this scenario) while being quick on your feet. Mobs are not dumb, they are going to try and find their buddies and obtain flank. They’ll do just about anything to get that +2 attack bonus!

All in all, while I do not plan on continuing my DDO subscription (or start it, technically) at this current moment in time, I do suggest checking the game out since it has had time to fix many bugs and spread the polish love. Though I currently am investing time and energy in another MMO, a healthy handful of my guild mates are continuing their adventures until Age of Conan beta begins. Yes, these so called “hardcore” players are spending their free time rolling virtual dice and telling epic tales in the taverns of Eberron. Do you really think they’re going to quit when there are dragons to slay at the level cap (currently 14)? Everyone has some sort of goal or mark they want to reach in a game, and I think being able to say you slayed a dragon in Dungeons and DRAGONS is a pretty good one.

I warn ye, the people who are going to have the “mostest” fun in this game are people who play the game like a D&D session. That means playing with 4-6 people you know, whom like D&D/Fantasy games, and have voice chat. Because typing “Are there any girls in the tavern?!” isn’t going to have the same effect as shouting it with a smile on your face.

That’s right. My site Vanguard Rangers, once an affiliate of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, has expanded its horizons. Now being hosted by the UberGuilds Network (yes, the folks that host the Fire of Heaven message boards), the can only grow. It’ll cover a handful of games that have Ranger (or Ranger-like) classes. Currently I’ve added Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures to the roster, with more coming soon depending on how large their existing communities are. I’d love to have a section for EverQuest (yes, the first one that got many of us addicted), but there is an already existing Ranger community that is doing quite well (that I actually visit on a near daily basis). No need to step on toes, not yet at least.

The transfer was fairly simple compared to some horror stories I’ve heard of (Traldan’s VGTact going from phpBB to vBulletin rings a bell). I’ve spent about the last two days cleaning out the database and reconstructing the site. It wasn’t the hardest task in the world, but it took a lot of focus and time. What do you know, two things I lack the most!

So there you have it, a small update from me. Now I need to get back to work on two other websites I’m helping design! *sigh*

Through the wonderful world of the blogosphere (I’ll use that word as much as possible thank you very much) I saw an extremely interesting post by Cuppycake at Cuppytalk. It seems Funcom has secured an additional $30 million USD for their their upcoming MMO Age of Conan. As seen here:

Additional funding fuels Funcom’s ‘Age of Conan’ launch - Durham, USA– June 27th, 2007– On the back of significantly growing external and internal expectations related to‘Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures’ — Funcom’s highly anticipated Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) — Funcom yesterday completed a private placement and through this received additional funding of approximately 30 million USD.

“We’re expecting the launch of‘Age of Conan’ to create significant waves in the MMO gamespace,” says Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas.“With the secured additional funding Funcom is in an even better position to make the launch of the game a success. This commitment from the financial market is reflecting the great promise and expectations for‘Age of Conan’.”

‘Age of Conan’ is progressing according to plan towards the announced launch date of 30th October 2007. The game has recently received strong early sales indications from partners and retail channels both in the U.S. and in Europe and press and gamer expectations for‘Age of Conan’ continue to grow strongly. To ensure an optimal launch of’Age of Conan’, Funcom and its key partners has through this round of funding strengthened Funcom’s marketing and operational capacity prior to launch.

Funcom has furthermore decided to enter the casual MMO segment and is currently evaluating several possible expansion opportunities. As some of these opportunities may involve near term acquisitions, Funcom would also benefit from an increased strategic flexibility.

‘Age of Conan’ is consistently listed as one of the most anticipated PC games of 2007, and won ‘Best MMO of E3′ awards from IGN, GameSpot, GameSpy and Yahoo. ‘Age of Conan’ is a key title in Microsoft’s Games for Windows line-up, as well as being a showcase DirectX 10 title for nVidia. More information about the game can be found online at www.ageofconan.com.

If they news doesn’t get people pumped for what Age of Conan has in store I really don’t know what will. While I don’t necessarily agree with it I’m sure as the release data approaches, the term “WoW Killer” will be thrown around more and more.

First of I’d like to apologize for not updating recently. I’m currently trying to make a buck and enjoy the summertime at the same time. As many of you know, that is not an easy task. I’m helping VanguardDreadKnight.com build their ability database and a few other things, which is great since I’ve known the Xaices (owner of the site and Dread Knight class lead for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes) for some time now.

Now for some news! Age Of Conan’s website has posted a link to an interview between Erling Ellingsten, Product Manager at Funcom and GameTribes.tv that is well worth a look. It doesn’t have a mountain of new information, but if you haven’t looked in to AOC deeply before this is the video for you.

Erling Ellingsen, Product Manager at Funcom, grabbed his webcamera and had a long-distance chat with GameTribes.tv. Check it out!

GameTribes.tv is an Italian web-tv site covering computer and console gaming. Recently they sat down with Product Manager at Funcom, Erling Ellingsen, to have a talk about Age of Conan. Thanks to the precious gifts of technology, it all happened via a webcam and Internet telephony.

The video interview is in English but is also subtitled in Italian

Check out the video interview here.

Needless to say, Age of Conan has a firm grasp on my attention at the moment. After Vanguard: Saga of Heroes being released, I’m not going to fall in love with the game before its release, but denying its potential would be foolish. They’re adding some real unique combat mechanics to the MMO genre, but I pray it doesn’t become a twitch-fest where people start complaining about their hands after a few hours of playing. I’m also wondering how much DirectX 10 is going to effect the game, on both the game play and immersion levels.

Here is a small tidbit of a conversation I had with my MMO partner in crime, Todd:

FAELOR: Awesome news on the Official Vanguard site! Check it out!
TODD: F***IN NICE
FAELOR: YEAH, THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT!

Seriously, what the hell? I understand SOE is owned by Sony Pictures but this is not helping a dying game. It is like they’re killing it off, which is just ridiculous since they picked it up for a steal apparently.

Anyways, this is just just a short blurb I had to get off my chest.

As you can see in my lovely update on my guild’s website (Halcyon Affinity), we found a lil ole dragon all the way at the bottom of Stiirhad, a tier 3 raid area. For those that don’t know, Stiirhad isn’t even suppose to raid-ready for another two months (don’t quote me on that, quote Dave Gilbertson of Sigil Games Online). Even if you don’t dig Vanguard, you gotta give Sigil a round of applause for making a fantastic looking dragon model.

Recently I was promoted to officer in my guild (Halcyon Affinity). And like my Uncle Ben use to tell me, “With a great guild tag, comes great responsibility”. So I’m going to be in charge of quite a few things, including front page updates. While I wouldn’t call it truly news-worthy, I put up a post about how we invaded Mount Stiirhad (a tier 3 raid area). If you’re going to check out the update, make sure you check out the pictures we have of inside Stiirhad. While the quality of the pictures are not that great, the area itself looks really, really amazing. So yeah, here is the update. Enjoy!