f13.net

Even as an old school AoC fanboy, I expected a hell day today.

Somehow, their billing system is keeping up...lag is not a factor...the game is playable and fun (at this point)...

I must say I'm a little shocked right now.

Huge success, incredibly surprising.

Indeed, it's hard to overstate my satisfaction with the launch so far, doesn't feel like launch day.

Getting up TO launchday was a mess, but pretty good overall.

The Good:

Rock solid client. I haven't had a single crash or hiccup in the game in 12 hours of play.

Rock solid servers. Have had a steady green ping except for one very brief episode that was probably net-related. No disconnects or queues.

Graphics are prettay. Buh bye cartoonsville. Caster effects are cool.

Gameplay is fun. It's diku but I like the combo system, it's like a little minigame each combat.

The storyline is top-notch.

The Bad:

Inconsistent performance. I have a quadcore CPU with an 8600 GT and 3 gigs RAM and I can barely get 30 FPS on low. Other people with similar setups are claiming 40 FPS on high. *shrug*

Poor communication by Funcom. No one knew when launch was scheduled. People were quoting Gamestop e-mails FFS... a community weenie could have handled the shitstorm in 2 minutes.

Some launch glitches, I got stuck in a wall and was luckily able to drown myself. No hearthing in Tortage sucks, especially with all the White Sands runs.

Itemization has a much weaker impact for low level melee than most games it seems. My conqueror is able to fight just as well naked with weapons as without his gear. Might be a good thing at level 80 so that gear doesn't totally dominate but the "ooh shiny" factor suffers when you know it doesnt really matter. I'm only up to level 12 so this may change, ymmv

You can hearth in Tortage. What do you mean you can't?

Yea, I have an 8600GTS and an Q9450 with 2GB Ram in Vista32, getting 60FPS with some on high and some on medium when inside and 30-40 outside.

Damn it I'm starting to get excited about this. I'm a sucker for Conan and I liked AO far more than most.

Quick somebody say it sucks!

My hearth spell is grayed out. I think you need to be level 20 before you can use it?

You're doing it wrong?

ShenMolo and I were hearthing all day long. In fact, prior to 20, the length of time between hearths is like half afaik.

Yeah I just tried and was able to do it. I tried hearthing when I was stuck and it didnt do anything. Might've been because I was swimming.

Can't hearth while swimming because of having to open a portal in the ground to Hell's Subway where Gordon Ramsey makes you a Spicy Italian and send you on your way.

Outside of a random bug with ATI cards that made the game completely unplayable for a few hours... this launch seems to be very good indeed.  And, I have to say that it scales nicely, because I baaarely meet the min reqs and it runs smooth.  I am running it on low settings, but still looks good enough for me and plays well.  As launches go this is one of the best I have seen.  Of course I did not get high enough to level into the zone-that-never-lets-go, whatever that was.  If they don't fix that quick it could mean some unhappy customers.

The zone that never lets go? Reference/Source?

Anyway, as for what Nija said, I'm in the late 30s and have quests for areas from 40-45 already. I've done about 200 quests with no end in sight. It's pretty ridiculous. I've done absolutely zero grinding unless you count mapping out resource nodes as grinding - which I don't. I've always loved exploration, particularly in worlds as handcrafted as this one. Anyway, yea, launch was fucking awesome, imo. They might've had downtime, but actual server crashes or client issues were nonexistant.

There's a warning in the patcher to stay away from Lacheish Plains. Dunno if that's what Vinadil is referring to.

Yea, I saw that but the Lacheish Plains is also where all of the sploiting was going on. I'm fairly sure they're fucking with it to fuck with people who are fucking with them. Which is a fine solution IMO as it's a pretty barren zone other than being somewhere you run across to finish a handful of quests and get a few more. That said, they're moderately low level quests that dish out 10,000 experience which is pretty unheard of around level 22-23 and all it takes is a shitload of walking (a shitload being 15 minutes worth if you pace your sprinting).

Also, are you playing the game Trippy?

You might try installing Nvidia's 175 beta drivers.  During the end of closed beta, each new beta driver seemed to increase performance in AoC by a lot (had a lot of people thinking they were tweaking the drivers specifically for the game but who knows).  That might be the difference.

I can honestly say news of a basiclly error free launch from Funcom of all people is icredibly surprising, especially considering teh Open beta appeared to be something of a fiasco.

*sigh* Based on what you rose color glasses jerks are saying, i'll bite and will pick up a copy.

The inconsistency is more than likely due to us all having different monitors. Hell, I'm sure I could run the game decently with my dinky 7300gt IF my screen wasn't 24".  :cry:

After I download the bazillionth patch, yeah.

Well there goes my entertainment. A solid launch? From Funcom?! Son of a...

Guess I'll have to pick this freakin game up, then.

It was the plains I was talking about... and my only info was a couple of guildies who got stuck and the warning on the front page.  All in all this launch and the gameplay itself has been good enough to convince quite a number of fence sitters (me included) to grab a copy.  Even after as many MMOs as I have run through, I find myself just enjoying the journey here, playing the game to see it unfold rather than just racing to some sort of "end game" experience.  If the rest of the game is as good as the newb experience then, well then bravo Funcom for a job well done.

I thought the game was still in beta! O_O

The game seemed to launch okay.  There weren't the expected Funcom problems and I didn't hear of computers that spontaneously combusted or anything.  There were few problems in the game but loads of issues for people outside the game.  Funcom just doesn't handle their business well.  They don't communicate at all, for the most part.  The whole EA thing was a mess.  Not having a grace period for preorders is beyond stupid.  If I hadn't been in the EA, I wouldn't be playing right now although I've ordered the game.  That's just not right.

One good thing... people are starting to make mods.  Mirage has wee one out already and I'm sure there will be more coming... hopefully fast and furious.  This UI is horrible, horrible, horrible.  I hate how it's set up and it makes me cranky.

It's been the worst launch I've ever been in.  Or not been in.  Fucking pre-order early access that doesn't give access coupled with idiocy on both Funcom's and Best Buy's behalf.  Support behind a registered users only forum?  Brilliant.

It's great that it was technically competant, but providing the service side of things is important, too.

It's hard to blame a developer for a retailer fuckup. This isn't in defense of Funcom as we walked into EBGames, bought another copy, and DannyBStyle was playing within 10 minutes of doing that. Installed from the disks in my set, in fact. As the key isn't tied to the client, just the log in name. There will be salty tears in heaven before Funcom apologizes for not making more than 880k boxes available on day 1. In other words, blame the retailer and only the retailer.

I got stuck there but logged in this morning and managed to hearth out.  The exploit was in the zone leading to it, field of the dead, not Lacheish.  Lacheish is just a resource gathering zone.

Ah. That explains it. Weird.

I blame both.  Funcom misled me.  (On more than just the early access being shut off.  Let's not make me do the full write up.)  Best Buy compounded the problem.  Neither was willing to do shit about it.

I had to sort it out.  Yes, being a week late to game isn't the end of the world, it's just an annoyance.


My launch day impressions:  CoX Issue 12 had some great quality of life issues!

AoC launch impression:  misinformation, false advertising, lack of information, retailer screw-ups, more retailer screw-ups, lack of support and lacking support.

The thread asked for impressions.  Mine was I couldn't play because people made a series of screw ups.  It's as valid as "THIS GAME IS THE FUCKING SHIT! :heart:"

Schild what resolution do you play at?  I am at 1680x1050 and I get about 40 frames per second 8800 GTS, Intel Core Duo E6750 and running Windows XP.  I think my setting are set to Medium for now.

1920x1200. I've tweaked the FUCK out of the advanced settings though. My high-res view distance is shit. My shadows of all but off. Specular mapping and parallax mapping are on though. At this very moment I'm getting 64.3 frames per second. Remember though, I have a Q9450 and all 4 cores are at 60% right now. It's a very processor intensive game and seems to utilize them well.

That is impressive. Is WAR going to multi-core compatible?

Note: I'm scoring the launch excluding the retailer issues (two friends were caught in the Best Buy backorder crap, and another had zero issues with EB), and totally skipping the early start access.

I walked into Futureshop and picked up my boxed copy and created my account at work with zero issues. Went home and installed and patched with zero issues (I had another install on primary vista box so I checked with a secondary system) on a remarkably fast patcher download. Logged in quick with no delays and created an account and played all night with zero issues.

After playing for a few hours I can say here are good parts (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13196.msg452290#msg452290) and the bad parts (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13197.msg452300#msg452300).

Overall, good launch imho.

I was really planning on having this game entertain me with a horribly failed launch, but it turns out it is entertaining me by actually being a fun game (so far).  I'm particularly impressed that I'm still having fun post-Tortage.  Arguably more so, in fact.

I was going to say the exact opposite. I'm not seeing over 50-60% CPU load under Vista at 1680x1050 with "medium" detail selected at ~40FPS.

System specs:
Vista Home SP1 64bit
E2180(2.0Ghz) thats OC'd to 2.5Ghz
4GB (PC2-8500)
P35 chipset (GA-P35-DSL)
Samsung T series 500GB SATA HDD (AHCI mode, and the T series is slower then normal 7200rpm)
8800GT 512MB (not OC'd)

Curious, I have access to a q6600 at work that i'll plunk in for "testing".

I have always been, and still am suspicious of Vista. Its has never said to me "I am a gaming OS".

The technical launch was fine.  At least I've enjoyed what the have up to level 14, which is my highest so far.  I do, however, have to militantly agree with Lantyssa about the other side.  Funcom needs to work on their communication, support and business ideas.   Really.  They need support for their support.  If they were your knickers, they'd be around your ankles.  Srsly.

The launch was a pretty good one I think. The biggest problem right now is server ques during prime time.

That's a good problem to have.

Yeah technically the launch was great besides the issue with the zone, but the service side was terrible on Funcom's part.  Thankfully the game is fun and I enjoy the setting thus far and scoring a fatality just feels right.  Especially since you get rewarded for your efforts with a buff and a cool death sequence.  The game is mature and somehow I enjoy that, hopefully the quality holds up all the way to the end.

Heh, I may just have to try this now.

My WoW guild going to DKP has provided me incentive to find other pastures.

If you've got over 2gb of RAM, though, you're pretty much stuck with the x64 version.  Overall, it hasn't been bad for me.  Frankly I just don't get what all the griping is about.

Mostly, it's said to me, "You're to fucking stupid to run this thing unattended, let me verify your every move."

Funcom says "Don't let the reading the forums get you down.". (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=16456)


Kinda defensive yes?  I don't know if he he's never looked at other MMO boards but the AoC ones aren't nearly as critical as others, most people seem happy, for now.

You do realize that you can turn off UAC, don't you?  Voila, problem solved.

Jesus. The forums are a fucking love-fest compared to some other launches. Funcom needs to hire some experienced community people. It seems to be the one aspect of MMO's they haven't grasped yet.

Yes, funcom has the worst community people on the planet and somehow, a moderation team that's even worse than that. Color me flabbergasted. Which is a mix of vomit green and pitch black plaid.

I am not too surprised given their stellar customer support and service...

Being European, they are probably used to more civil forms of discourse than the relatively tame forum howling they are currently the victims of. Therefore they may be more sensitive to criticism than, say, your average Blizzard moderator who has a crosshairs permanently tatooed to his forhead.

EDIT: Although you think they would have learned from the AO launch to have thick skins and tunnel vision.

Delayed one more hour.

Also, I'd rather them be humble and pussy like than ignorant and stupid like most MMOG teams.

Europeans also don't tend to go in for "customer service" in the same way Americans do.  Go to any American store and you'll have somebody asking if they can help you, cashiers being friendly (even if it's forced friendliness), etc.  You don't really get that in European stores.  The clerks tend to be standoffish, and it's just a less friendly vibe.

I think it's lingering remnants of the old guild mentality when shop owners weren't allowed to aggressively out compete each other lest they be tossed from the guild.

Lol, American customer service sucks balls dude.  :ye_gods:

Asia is where it's at. People will serve you up a big mac with a huge smile on their face over there.

They have to, it's part of their job. That's why Smile is on the menu for free.

Ouch, another 2 hour delay.

Not so good to have a 2 hour downtime the day after launch, extended to 5 hours+

I want to change the name of this thread to "Lunch... anyone?"

Given the 'sploits and the Lacheish Plains mess it's not too surprising. The kids home from school have to be irate though.

In just about every (non-grocery) store I can remember ever entering in Norway, I've gotten a "Can I help you with anything?" of some sort - and we're considered amongst the more "standoffish" cultures in Europe. Now, perhaps that's only because I generally look so lost and helpless that they can't find it in their hearts to NOT approach me - but in any case I don't really recognize your description of customer service in European stores (which I guess Norwegian ones are a part of). :P

One thing that I have noticed that might differ between European customers and ones from the USA, though, is that over on your side of the lake there seems to be a lot more attitudes like "As a paying customer, I DEMAND <insert demand>", as if being a paying customer gives one the right to customize the service rendered completely to one's own preferences.  :uhrr:

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the clerks were out and out assholes, but there was a certain amount of aloofness.  This is Germany, also.  I can't speak definitively about every other country.  I will say that the Dutch apparently don't have any sense of humor.  Germans may have a weird sense of humor, but at least they have them.


Damn skippy.   ;D

Customer service in Europe (parts of it atleast, Sweden and Italy are far, far, far apart culturally ;) is often a bit more distanced. Every time I've been in the US, I, as a Swede, has almost felt assaulted by overly helpful clerks. I think it's just different strokes. I kinda like both deals, depending on what kind of store I enter. For normal stores, I kind of like the off-hands style, but you Americans got far better waiters. Atleast in Vegas, Chicago and NY. :-)

My friend gave a funny remark on that, "Yeah, but that's because they want to sell more over there in capitalist country." Well, duh, they're shop clerks. :oh_i_see:

And Germans are, uhm. Special. ;D

On a side note, I'm hoping that Funcom employs some Catholic school nuns or something to moderate the boards. Please to not be having another cesspit like WoW forums, kkthx.

Half my family is from/in Bergen.  They are very stand-offish.  The other half of my family is from/in Italy.  They smother me with affection.  It's confusing.  One is hot, one is cold.  Don't put them in a room together, if you can help it.

You get Jello?

No, a free trip to the loo.

Impressions. I haven't read anything, not even most of what was here. The open beta was totally unplayable for me due to lag, but this is one of the few places I really trust on whether or not it's crashy, so I gave it a try. Huge huge improvement from unplayable to fine in terms of tech. No stuttering and great framerate.

Now impressions of gameplay?

Longest install ever. I thought it had crashed. I think from DVDs it took two hours? Zoiks.

Create an account. Ouch. Apparently accounts at funcom are universal, so my numtini account which I created to play AO in 2003 cannot be validated to play AOC. However, I can't create a numtini account for AOC because I have a Anarchy online account under that name. Tried a few others of my usual usernames and realized I've created quite a few trial and frewbie accounts. I finally find a name that works, but for some reason that I really don't understand, it has figured out that I'm also numtini so I see my numtini AO account from my new AOC account. This is dumb and irritating. Either combine them or separate them.

Got into game. Zoning is 15-30 seconds not two minutes. Yay! Journey to the city was well paced leading item to item. The tutorial stuff makes no sense. It tells me to hold down control to see my shields. I hold down control and nothing happens. Do I need shields? Do I have one? Is there something I'm not doing? I close it. Either way, I follow the quest lines and see critters and kill them (mostly by one shotting with a spell). I see white things, figure they're shields, and I'm rewarded for more damage. Yay me. Hold down control tho, still a big nothing.

Once in the city, there's the inn with my next quest. Very wow-ish on leading you to where you need to go, but oops, it seemed to be warning me not to do the night quest so I guess that I'm too low and go into the city and pick up a few quests. Here's an easy one, a sex worker has been ripped off by her John. They're right around the corner! So I go to get the money back. They see me and I'm dead five seconds later. Oops, can't do those. Not even close. Not even close to close. So much for the pacing. And worse, there doesn't seem to be anything else to do.

I see four orange exclamation points on the map and a countless number of grey exclamation points, but in game I see only one active orange quest NPC. Spent about five minutes looking for the others hoping they would have quests I could do. No such luck, if those orange quest givers are there, they have really good stealth.

Found the merchant NPC though, he told me he was the auction house mail and vendor all in one and I should right click on him. I right clicked on him and he does nothing.

Nothing else I can figure out to do, so I took the night quest. I have to zone twice before there's anything to fight. Loading Please Wait jokes come to mind. Ok I guess that's what I'm supposed to do because once I get to the island, I can actually kill these critters. But during combat, now there are yellow things next to the white things. I have no idea what those are. In a moment of inspiration, I hold down control and there's yellow things around me. Those must be my shields, but I still have absolutely no idea how to use them. I look at the manual, it has something about combos where you hit a skill and then have to follow the arrows it lights up. That sounds, irritating. Like the kind of thing you build a macro so you don't have to do. And I haven't hit any skill buttons so I don't think that's what the yellow jobbies are either.

At that point I was kind of tired and it had made me cranky so I logged out. Combat seems at once both boring (hit a bunch of buttons whack a mole style in response to their flashies) and incomprehensible (mostly because I feel like there has to be more than this). I guess after one night I'm just left with a big feeling that it lacks a lot of polish and doesn't seem to be very much fun.

Just wondering, did you do the quests on the beach?

I was only level 3 or so when I started the night ones and it was fine (no warning though).

The Blacksmith and town guard at the door get you to like 4-5 dont they?

Hmmm, I had no problems finding stuff to do, I thought it was well paced. Just my 2c

Good stuff so far. Learning curve is steep in some areas and easy peasy in others if you've played MMOs. I figure I'll learn it all as I go and so far that's been the case.

Servers have been rock solid for me so far (meaning database lag and the like). Game is playing fine on my machine which is pretty new but hardly top of the line. Haven't crashed yet, but don't have a lot of play time in.

All in all, especially thinking back on AO, I'm completely impressed so far.

They seem to have a master account, then sub-accounts.  The first game created gets the master account name (my AO one as well), or they mitigated AO accounts to the new master account, but then you cannot use that sub-account name for other games.  Which is really silly.

Just received this e-mail which makes me want to stab someone:


Thank you for rubbing it in, Funcom.  Still no drinking cape for me either and I was getting the news letters.  It's almost funny at this point.

Oh well.  My box is in Dallas.  Probably finding a junker of a delivery van to make sure they can drive it off a cliff.  Thankfully it will arrive just in time for me to leave for a friend's wedding that puts me out of town this weekend.

My second impression:  This game shows the full gamut of emotions!  Anger, sadness, resignation, rage, despair, bemusement.  It makes me want to live the life, to take an axe to all who stand in my way, and wanting to hear the lamentations of their executives.

If its any consolation, I'm bound to be up next. My box hasn't even shipped, not slated to ship for another 5 days. I'm probably gonna do what Signe did and drive out to BFE Renton and buy a friggin box. I haven't gotten an email yet, but its bound to show soon.

If it makes you feel better I got a drinking cape code in my email today and I have never touched any of their clients ever and I'm not planning on touching AoC until July.

I'm not sure what qualified me for the thing.

clients?

shit I was a tech/closed tester and never got that frigging Email. Oh well does not matter anyway I guess. However after reading this thread I think I will ride over to Best Buy and see if I can persuade them to match Circuit City's 39.99 deal. Worst it will do is freeze I guess.

EU Launch impressions :

Got my CE, great stuff. Servers down for five hours after launch, so can't say anything yet. Will update with proper feedback.

CB, OB or release?  Or was that a funnay?  I was thinking like, haha Hoax is a hooker but it didn't quite seem obvious.

I get a Drinking Cape as well, apparently as a reward for doing absolutely nothing except having registered to their forums 4 or 5 months ago and posting one troll post this month  :awesome_for_real:

EDIT:  From their own mouths...


long and thrustworthy!!!

It was an additional two hour delay after that. Two new servers were announced, one PvP server. Servers come back up, no sign of new servers. We wait. They remove servers from announcement after saying "they will fix them" and then announce later that servers will not be up until all others are filled. This is the Funcom I was expecting on launch. SoE's buttbuddy in rape.

Now there is massive whine and of course noone wants to roll on a PvP server where there is bunch of highlevel people who got an headstart. Retail = new servers.

Fuck  :uhrr:

More drama : They were supposed to put up one new RP-PVP server. When servers came up it was labeled as RP-PVE (a ruleset that didn't exist). The solution was to just keep it RP-PVE and that was a new ruleset.

Your first mistake was wanting to play on a PVP server.

We are a guild, so no worries. Also we of course do not want to play on an already populated PvP server, getting spawncamped and raped by lvl40-50 players on release date is not my idea of fun. Community going bananas now on EU forums over this, waiting for Funcom to cave in.  :awesome_for_real:

Seriously, lame. I don't know what else to tell you.

Long install for retail but pretty painless with only one patch.  Graphics were meh until I turned on all the bells n whistles and I was like whoa.
I guess I am slow but I've had problems figuring out some things (I still don't know how to do a /who) but I keep getting distracted by the combat.
The combat is very fun and the best in any MMO I've played.  They did a good job reflecting the savage world of Conan here.
The quests are fairly standard but the writing is above average and some of the stories are interesting.  You help out many whores.  Which is nice.

I am still in Tortage but done with the 'oh shiny' part of the game and now I'm a questing machine.  Probably going to be a Alchemist crafter. 

Lessons have been learned here by Funcom.  Make compelling newbie area.  Have smooth launch.  Have whores, blood-letting and boobies.  Mounted combat.  Player towns, I am REALLY looking forward to this.

Seriously, I am really glad for the M rating.  It's a different flavor for MMO's to me and it's appreciated.

There's a quest in the Wild Lands where a city governor wants to throw a party for the townsfolk. He asks you to retrieve three things for him:

1. Wine from Stygia
2. Ale from Cimmeria
3. Whores from Aquilonia  :drill:

I LOL'd

Fired it up last night. Thanks to Nerf and schild for some help in TS.

The only issue I had was that the game would hang at "Reading Contents" once I picked a server and tried to go to Character Creation. I ran the Verify/Repair function from Settings on the file scanning screen and it found 1921 problems. No, I did not make that number up. It re-patched and all was good.

I didn't get very far, but the game is very fun. Someone finally realized that the newbie experience has to be fun and engaging.

the same thing happened to me.

And why is having a different playstyle a mistake?

I rolled on the RP-PVP server and I have had a bunch of good fights so far. As long as you aren't afraid to group up with people, PVP servers are where it's at. Maybe you don't level to 80 as fast but who cares, I'm along for the ride for once.

Hell last night I had a riot taking on two guys repeatedly...I was a 18 ToS... they had a 16 ToS and an 18 ranger. Between my roots, stuns, heals, sprint, pots, I was able to kill one everytime and make it a long ass fight. I caught them both fighting mobs later and AoEed the piss out of them. Just good clean fun there. Might be different once I'm i the real world, but I have friends.. if shit gets too hairy I got a couple friends with way too much time (and levels) that I have the vent info for.

I also have randomly grouped people to take on higher level gankers.... took on a level 21 with like a 13 and 15. Was fun and we owned em.

First Play Impressions:  Combat is fun so far, although I'm still an ultra-noob.  I love that things aren't sanitized for kid friendliness.  I can swim underwater.  The world is beautiful.

My play time has been very limited so far, and I'm thirty minutes from leaving for a few days, but now that I have the game, I like it.

I went to a PVE server as I wanted to relax and enjoy the game and after Eve I couldn't be assed dealing with asshole griefers and idiots (and before people call me a "whiney carebear" or something I racked up 13 billion in kills or something and 2.5 billion in losses before I went totally into covert opting because I couldn't be arsed grinding anymore) The other reason is the members of my EVE guild swapped over, are all american and I cant access their server, which pissed me off royally.

So, with a large part of the reason I bought the game in the first place gone, I said fuck it I'll use the 30 day access I got to bumble about and than I'll leave it unless I actually make some friends (doubtful) or find a guild (even more doubtful)

Game was somewhat fun. Voice acting was pretty good, music was very good, but I felt like I was walking through water a lot of the time. Seemed somewhat unrespponsive to me in other words. Havent really figured out the combat system either, but I'll get back to it monday and see if I can squeese some more fun out of it.

I don't understand what you're saying, SirT.  F13 is on a PvE (Zug) server and there are quite a few playing.  Why wouldn't you just join our guild?  Or am I missing something, which is often the case.

I'm just venting Signe. I'm a European and I bought the game to hamg out with some guys I know who are US (I have trouble sleeping). Unfortunatly I cant join them becasue I'm EU. I have no idea whether Zug is EU or US but I suspect US. And as for joining F13, I'm a bit burned from EVE so I'm a bit leery of hanging with people. Also I'm actually a fairly shy person, and I dont really see myself as part of the community here other than the fact I recently started posting some rather inane posts fairly recently, so I dont think I would fit in. My own issues I know.

Short version, I'll be quiet now.

I bought AoC off the shelf yesterday, went home and installed/patched it on a freshly defragged drive (SATA 1, Win XP SP2, E6300, 2G RAM, 8800 GTS 320Mb on shitty 4x PCI-E mobo). It runs like a dream - no problems whatsoever, other than occasional confusion with a quest. I was thinking it would be a heavy client that wouldn't appreciate alt-tabbing in and out, but it behaved well like WoW when I did that.

I tend to keep up with the latest drivers from http://downloads.guru3d.com but I've fallen behind a bit lately, video driver is 174.74. If you have problems, I'd suggest trying the most recent driver you can find on Guru3D - check their forums first to see if people are liking the driver.

Well if you really wanna join some peeps you know (no need to join the guild, but there are like 40 of us on Zug) I think someone else mentioned you can change a setting on one of the INI files to get access to the US servers. But then, you could also join your old guild if you did that!

We like Europeans!  I even keep one at home!

Question: If I just wanted to hang with you guys on Teamspeak would that be ok?

Weird, but OK. :_;