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

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.

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*

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.

When I’m farming Rahz Inkur with a 6 man group, I’m happy when I break 10 FPS in combat. Double digits, amen! When I’m at the lowest of settings, I shouldn’t be worried about being able to hit the next ability in a chain every 2 seconds because of a horrible frame rate. I’m also enjoying the Flavor of the Month in Vanguard (also known as playing the most overpowered class), which as you may have heard is the Cleric. My guild mates and I decided to roll up a ton of Clerics, each choosing a different affinity (which is like picking a domain in D&D). We’re currently around level 30, and I’m sure glad that other people in the group can heal, because I know I can’t handle it every time. I picked Preservation, which is themed as defensive (at level 40 they even have Divine Arbitration, er, called Balance in VG, which may be the sole reason why I picked Preservation). Everyone in the group can heal, but I’m known for being on the ball when playing MMOs (yes yes, “the” reliable player, gee-wiz). So when we’re in a tough bind, or as tough as a bind as a group of Clerics can get in, I’m one of the primary healers. I’ll be frank; healing with all the performance issues is not a fun job. I love the class, and I love the melee damage they put out (though by no means should they be doing that much, see my post at Silky Venom on my most recent solo accomplishment), but its hell on earth! I can be in the Khal bank, looking down by the banker and be at 12 FPS. 12 flippin’ frames per second, looking down, lowest settings, in a small room, with maybe 2-3 other people (if that depending on the time of day).

On Thursday my guild decided to break in to Stiirhad with about 21 people. Is that place even finished? No, but we thought we could see how far we could go through it for fun’s sake. My machine only crashed once, and that was when I was taking a screenshot (got a few kill shots on good ole Faelor, huzzah). A few people who had high-end machines were crashing left and right, plus lock-ups and horrible FPS (as you can imagine with 21 people on screen). A lot of the players went back to the default UI and had less lag, but it wasn’t a ton of help. We figured that the offensive target’s debuff window (with debuffs and weaknesses) causes a lot of lag trying to update throughout combat. It just brings destruction to any machine, it is ridiculous.

I could continue ranting, but sadly I discuss this exact subject everyday in Ventrilo for countless hours.

I also think I am going to try to pick up the guitar. I played the bass many years ago, so I may just fiddle around on that to get warmed up. In all honesty I just wanna play something. No matter what I do on the computer, I have music going. It doesn’t matter if I am checking e-mail or talking to people on Ventrilo. I need music to be on, I enjoy it too much. And because I do not have the luxery of a MP3 player in my car, I get to cycle through about ~30 CDs in my car.

Blah, time for sleep…

The last week I’ve been taking it easy and taking it slow. Farming some stuff in level 50 areas when I can. But mostly I am figuring out what I want to do with my life. I am trying to finish this concept adventure document to submit to Sigil, but like most of my work I am trying to make it “perfect” and am spending too much time on things that don’t really matter. I suppose that is my weakness. I really need to ship the thing with 98% satisfacted, and not spending months (which I do not have) trying to get 100%. Hrm, would that be good to mention in an interview if I were to ever get one with Sigil? Good question my friends…

Vanguard Rangers is currently picking up traffic again after I spent most of Thursday and Friday updating the database with new code and data by hand. It is so fun! On Monday’s patch there will be some Ranger changes, so I need to hop on to Test and adjust a few things before hand.

You would think being a jobless bum would give you more time, but it doesn’t. Whenever I find myself in a situation I need to peel myself away from the computer, something comes up. It is rediculous!

Hopefully my next post is a little bit more productive and entertaining. Yar!