f13.net

So the storyline has heated up big-time this month; the Civil War continues full speed (There were factional PvP battles last month with some limited but permanent server divergence), the Island of Doom has risen from beneath the waves, and Grael (http://images.warcry.com/image.php?id=79405), the Black Spear of the Kemeroi, is rampaging across the landscape and owning everyone.  Really, really fun.

Oh, and the last of their changes to streamlining the newbie experience went live this month.

Those of you who played back when Bael'Zharon roamed the land may remember the waters going red with blood...  Well, with Grael, there's been this giant cloud of shadow emanating out from his Island and slowly choking out the sky.  Very Low-res screenshots here, but this should give you a decent idea: Pic1 (http://ac.warcry.com/scripts/images/view_image.phtml?id=79321&site=5) Pic2 (http://ac.warcry.com/scripts/images/view_image.phtml?id=79322&site=5)

Anyone else playing at the moment, or considering coming back?  There's literally tons of new stuff.

You know i hate to be a snobby graphics whore but as much fun as i had on Harvestgain and Darktide i'd only return if they upgraded to a modern engine. Which, you know, probably would have made AC2 a success...

For what it's worth, they did really upgrade the quality of the textures with the expansion pack; it's harder to see in screenshots because almost nobody runs the game in the highest graphics mode, though - if we were graphics whores, we probably wouldn't be playing AC. :)  All I can say is that if you go ingame, it really does look a lot better than it used to; the upgrade to the trees, especially, was really needed.  Still not a modern graphics engine, but hey.

(http://www.thejackcat.com/AC/Pets/undead/undead_zixki.JPG)(http://www.thejackcat.com/AC/Hobbies/Quests/Queen/abbess.JPG)(http://www.thejackcat.com/AC/Pets/olthoi/olthoilancer.JPG)(http://www.thejackcat.com/AC/Pets/olthoi/olthoi_ancientqueen.JPG)

To some extent, though, what you want and good gameplay are mutually exclusive; fighting 30 monsters at once or having pretty good twitch-based gameplay is hard to do with an AC2-like graphics engine.

Yes.  Though I am sure I will quit after a month.  I still have extremely fond memories of AC!  Darktide, here I come!
Anyone else playing at the moment, or considering coming back?  There's literally tons of new stuff.

I'm on DT, playing in two different allegiances.

My newbie, Sunshiney Day, a level 37 no-magic sword that I'm levelling only via quests and using only quest weapons/gear, no spoiler sites (only ingame clues and rumors), etc. is in an allegiance called Endrin the Mercenary, which is very new-player friendly; lots of lower level folk, and always-on buffbots in case you so desire.

My main, Quink, is in an all-rPK guild (Evil Yeti) that requires you to be level 140+ to get in, good when you just feel like fighting all day.

It's actually a lot easier to find fights on Darktide these days - if you want, I can give you a rundown on the server's current political situation.  I also recommend either of the above guilds for any returning players, particularly Endrin as they're very friendly to new people.

What is the political situation, currently?  I loved the AC lore and am looking forward to jumping back in!

Yikes!  I still have my 2 characters on DT, a level 75 dagger dude and a 63 Swordsman.  Seems I am no longer in Fallen Angel, but am still under my old patron (woot! Scarer rocks).  Hopefully he is still active!  I will probably create a nooblet tonight and relearn the game.



edit. Additional.

A few notes, for anyone reading along who hasn't heard, about the "structure of politics" on DT through the ages:

The "golden age" of DT politics were the almost two years prior to late 2001, when they added in player housing.  With no player housing, guilds had to own their own lifestone; limited portal travel made where you lived important, and limited hunting dungeons meant they were fiercely contested.  Guilds could really hurt one another.

2003 to 2004ish was the low point:  Falling population numbers combined with 10 to 20 times the number of levelling dungeons, an explosion of portal travel options, and protected allegiance housing so that nobody had to fight over towns.  DT seemed more like a ghost town, and nobody owned actual territory because there was no reason to.  Player's defensive capabilities continued to rise, outstripping attack capabilities and making fights interminably long.

More recently:  Things have been centralized a lot.  They converted the four nexus towns (Shoushi, Holtburg, Yaraq, and the Viamont capitol of Sanamar) into true 'hubs', with portals to many other cities and forges that make them a prime place to do crafting.  The end result is that these four towns are actually pretty well populated, and any given time you go there you can probably find yourself in a fight.  They added in new recall options, so fights can escalate pretty quickly.  Since the level cap was extended from 126 to 275 (Though a 126 still stands a decent shot against a 275 in a fight, and in group fights their contributions will be similar), the relatively smaller number of levelling areas/dungeons catering to the new "high level" cap means that levelling spots can be raided once again.  They did a full rebalance of PvP, and it's pretty good now between melees, archers, and mages, so a lot of old DT'ers have been returning and server pops have been rising - DT is now the most popular AC server.


Now if you're talking about guilds:  Rather than one or two 'huge' guilds like Blood and TLS (Khao) of the past that align themselves anti or PK, these days you see many more "band of brothers" PK clans, usually with about 20 active raiders who become very tight-knit.  They're all rPK by definition, though they sometimes form into alliances of two or three clans that shift based on personal feuds.  In any given scenario, rPK does not mean you'll definitely be attacked; it depends on how you act, how you talk, what the odds are.  Guilds you'll see around include Og, Blood, Khao, Get Down, Evil Yeti, Endrin, Underworld Dreams, Templar Knights, Team Zissou, and many more.

It's a lot more anarchic than it used to be (back when there were anti clans that controlled territory); you can't enforce your hegemony over another clan the way you could in the past, though the fights are really good.

For those who have never seen AC PvP before, this video (http://acmovies.phroztnet.org/Fight%20Club.wmv) is a decent intro:  It's mainly a series of mixed 2v2 fights on level ground, held at DT's "fight club" event.  Since combat in AC is generally twitch, it's pretty easy to follow what's going on even if you haven't played the game.  People shoot projectiles at one another that have actual physics, and actual twitch skills are required to dodge; you can vary the delay on your shot, the tracking (either have it try and predict the enemy's movement or launch straight at where he's standing), the point of release, etcetara - in order to trick the other guy.  Projectile combat in AC is often like a game of chicken; you have to put yourself in a vulnerable position in order to dish out damage.

(Oh, and Cheddar, this may or may not have been the case back when you played - melees have two classes of shields now, the usual type that defends against physical attacks, and one with no armor but that gives about a 25% damage reduction from magic attacks.  Archers work similarly; either they can use the normal bows which give a bonus to melee defense, or they can use bows that dampen the impact of magic.  Archers can also now switch between tracking modes on the fly, just as mages can by using bolts or arcs.  I'm not sure when the last time you played was, so I'm not sure how many of these changes are new to you).

In terms of where you'll be fighting, fights happen all over the place these days, but these locations are most common:

Sanamar, Yaraq, Shoushi, Holtburg - the four main cities.  Also, there are a few locations that you access by punching in one of the following commands:

/pkarena
/marketplace

That get a decent amount of fight activity.

Sanctuary and the Tusker Island see a good number of fights as well, as do the new high-level islands (Vissidal Isle and the Island of Doom) and the highest-level towns, Candeth Keep, and Ayan Baqur, in the South dires.

Whew.  That came out a bit long. But anyone who hasn't played AC, I recommend checking out that video as a good intro to how the game's PvP looks and feels.

My advice if you're levelling a newb:  Start out in Sanamar, and do the quests in all 4 starter towns.  That alone will put you to level 20ish and give you a good feel for how things have changed.

When did you stop playing?

Maybe a year ago.  I believe it was around the time that the new expansion came out (like weeks before it did).

Aahh memories.
The guy that originally created Khao on DT (and before that the Khao on SC) was a friend of mine. Good memories of seeing him fight when slidecasting was still possible.

You knew Khao in RL?  Wow, small world.  I used to be a core (I think?) in his allegiance wayyyyyy back when - I remember him as being a family guy, with a little kid in tow?

Oh, and slidecasting is still semi-possible; You just have to end in roughly the same place as where you started. 

Do you happen to know if Evil Yeti is the original player of Yeti?  He also had a wide variety of other characters over the ages (missing link, Yeti X, Dread Yeti (I htink), some of which were sold and at least one that was stolen.  He was a good friend of mine when I played.

He always said that he'd never play another game, so there is a chance it really is him still (lo these 6 years later)

Pretty sure it's him, yeah.  I'll doublecheck next time I see him ingame.

Original Khao is French and was single as long as he played AC1. We met way back in the time when online gaming was confidential through Quake1/QW.

He originally developped a toon on SC (Khao-UA spec) in Psycho Killers. He was perma-PK already.
He then moved to DT where he founded with other members from SC the guild known as The Gimps.

He left when they removed slide-casting from the game and sold his account to an american I believe that made it the head of TLS.
He was a precursor as he had a Life-Crea-Magic Def specced build in a time when you could not spec at will. He got War Magic at something like level 95. That was some intense powerleveling achieved by duoing with a UA melee friend doing only debuffs and finally macroing his way in Aerlinthe dungeons by draining life.

Hardcore!
:)

I know the original, French, Khao too. Actually him and TG tried to play AC2 (as did I) and they quit at basically the exact same time as we (I) did.

Those French dudes are ruthless, at least in online games. I guess it's their time to try to be badasses when they're not protesting and white flag waving in RL.

Is there a trial going for AC1 with the new engine? I might be game. I quit when matty robes went into the game, so I'm uhhh a bit out of practice.

Is there a trial going for AC1 with the new engine? I might be game. I quit when matty robes went into the game, so I'm uhhh a bit out of practice.

It's literally a whole different game between then and now; that's what, month one of release? Heh.

A CD key is 20 bucks (There migh be a promo code that knocks it down to 15? I can try and find that if you're interested), and you get one month free - you get the free month whether you're a new player or returning and just upgrading to Throne of Destiny.

Within the span of a free month, you can generally get a good feel for the game.

A single bit of advice, since given the timespan involved in your absence you're basically a new player:  Play the game the way you like.  If you want to explore into areas that are way too high level for you, do that.  If you want to dungeon crawl, do that.  If you want to hunt, hunt.  But don't think you "need" to do anything, be it grinding, using buffbots, or what have you.  Bringing that paradigm from other games into AC will just make AC into a poor imitation of those games, and you're less likely to enjoy it.

Khao (& his close friends) had an immense knowledge of the game and... lots of free time on their hands.

Yeti was an original JoV member back when we started in AC.  (Ronald McDonald and then Patryn allegiance)  Very cool guy, still talk to him every now and then.

AC was the best PvP game in the history of MMOs, and I sure do miss it.  Do people still use Decal to make the game bearable?  I hated having to keep up with that shit after every patch.  If the game can be played without all the Decal crap then I would consider coming back for a little nostalgia.

Actually he was with HoS at first - that's where I met him - then he got fed up with the anti politics and went to the darkside and JoV.  I was in both with him at different points.

Which WTF Man are you, PD? I must have known you at some point.  I was Uranium when I was in JoV.

Is melee still worthless in AC? Do you still have to have either Item or Life magic not to have a totally gimped character?

AC was my first true MMO love, and probably the one I have gone back to the most often. I played in beta, and quit around the time the one major town got turned into a crater and there were these big crystal things hanging over the other towns. I was quite the MMO newb back in my AC days so I never raided or anything like that. (to my knowledge AC didn't even have raiding at that time.)

Man, just talking about AC makes me feel nostalgic.

I'm Joe.  And yeah, I remember you.  Forgot about the whole HoS thing, he was with us for a very long time though.

God, www.wtfman.com.  I love(d) that site.  I still foolishly check it once a week with great hopes for new updates.  Heh.

I hate my current schedule.  Even if I met up with some f13 people in game I will NEVER be able to keep up.  I suxx0rs.

Like you'd play for more than a week before being distracted by something else. Maybe a go at Meridian 59?

Decal is no longer necessary whatsoever.

I remember JoV/Patryn; I think you guys were temporarily allied with my old clan, House of Chaos (AKA Xai/Aerious/Liquid X) back during the Kara Wars.

To give you an idea of why Decal is no longer necessary:

-All self buffs now cast with the speed of level 1 casting, and last for an hour.

-For item buffs, you now target yourself and it casts on everything you own.  Cast Impen once on yourself, and it'll buff every single thing you're wearing with it.

So, buffing now takes about a minute by hand and lasts an hour.

I do both the high-end PvP and play my noob, and I haven't run Decal in 2 or 3 years.


Also, on a side note, good to see old AC'ers popping in. :)  I was a huge WTFman fan back in the day.

Melee is arguably the best class for PvP.  Balance is actually really good now (Yes, archers too), though playing a mage well takes more skill than playing a melee well and playing a good mage is a bit more situational and touchy.

You can run a no-magic melee just fine (I'm doing it right now in fact on my newbie), though I'd recommend picking up item magic for portal spells at the very least, assuming you're going to PvP.  Otherwise, portal travel is ubiquitous enough that you'll be fine even without.

AC has some big boss battles these days, but not exactly "Raiding" as you'd think of in the traditional sense.


Levels aren't a huge deal for most things these days; after all, the most frequent battlegrounds are the starter towns, which there's no level cap on.  Powerlevelling has been somewhat expedited, though; if people are higher level than you, by spending cash at the casinos and elsewhere they can get you collector turn-ins that will power up your newb rather quickly.

Also, they've completely changed how XP passup works; chains are much less viable since XP passup drops off a cliff after what you pass up to your patron, but you pass up a much greater percentage of XP to your patron than you used to; 50-90%ish.  If you know you'll be playing less, have someone who intends to be playing more swear to you at the outset, and you should stay relatively close to him in levels.

(They also entirely decoupled the Leadership and Loyalty skills from the Self stat as it used to be, so one isn't biased towards being a mage if they're expecting a lot of passup)

I fired it up Tuesday night but I've been real busy this week and I've not got a chance to even turn on my game PC again. I made Nijasan on DT, but I totally forgot how char creation worked so I just made a default "swashbuckler" template, which gives me item magic. Although I'll never be able to learn Life magic. I think.

I might have time to newb around tonight. I didn't even finish the tutorial before I had to log on Tues.

I don't think I can handle AC1 anymore. The movement is real clunky. I don't mind the graphics but the keybinds are very limited. Even if you bind mousewheel to zoom the camera in and out - it doesn't work. No right click and drag to control from 3rd person. Just real awkward after all these years.

Graphics are fine, but it's just so painful to use 90% keyboard 10% mouse to control my dude.

To be fair, there's a reason for this - the gameplay (especially once the projectiles start flying) is more akin to CounterStrike than a traditional MMO in that it requires a large degree of keyboard movement.  Playing AC1 with a primarily mouselook setup, even if it were implemented as efficiently as you hope, would make it very difficult to fight much of anything beyond the newbie levels or the pure melee monsters.  You have to be sliding, dodging, weaving, and using the sidestep keys religiously, combining sidestep keys with the opposite direction rotation keys to arc your movement to dodge projectiles.  Given the variety of ways things can be shot at you (multi-directional volleys, PBAOE's, walls of shot, bolts that attempt to predict your movement, faster arcing shots that aim at your current location rather than predicting, so you can't just always fool the movement prediction by sidestepping back and forth like a madman), dodging them with third-person control would be next to impossible.  And that's just PvE; PvP'ing with mouselook would be even tougher.

If it ain't your thing, it ain't your thing - but it's essentially mandated by the gameplay that you're focused on keyboard control (which does become second nature after a bit).  What mouse-control features do exist are primarily utilized by disabled players so that they can still partake of the game at some level.

Well, I was doing mouse-based circle strafing and that sort of thing before AC was even thought. It's amazing that they've got such limited keybinds.

I watched that wacky pvp video and all that shit is manageable with the mouse. The basics in AC2 were the same with projectiles being dodgeable and so forth, again, mouse is fine there.

It just feels clunky and painful to me.

Wow, huge live events went off today.  Grael's shadow forces started attacking Asheron's Island, opening up shadow mouths into the island that we have to shut down (new multi-part quest).  Good times.

NerfusBuffus (a great piece of coding IMO) is no longer necessary.

What about:
- loot identification/detection (BanditSight)
- automated salvage (Ust or something like that)

?

Bandit Sight is helpful if you're really huge into checking all your loot for majors, but that's a pretty minor part of the game.  Easier to just sell everything for MMD notes and trade those for majors.  If I were a grind-hunter, I could see wanting to use Bandit Sight... but if I were a grind hunter, I could see wanting to play a game other than AC ;p

Salvaging itself is pretty simple.  Anything you don't want salvaged, you just put leather on it so it's "Retained" and you never have to worry about accidentally using it.  Then, if you have an unfinished bag of ivory or whatever in your salvage bar, and drag your pack to the salvage bar, it'll dump only the ivory stuff in.

If you're very loot-focused, you may still want Decal.  But they're far from necessary for the average player.

Sounds interesting. How is melee balanced within itself? Back in the day, hand to hand or dagger was infinitely preferable to swords. You did more damage and it costs less skill point investment as well. (If memory serves it was due to how the races were setup. ) Is this still pretty true?

It's now fully arrayed, from most skill credit cost (Sword) to least (Dagger and staff), in a coherent order.  The more skill credits it costs, the better it is.  Sword is the best.  Dagger/Staff, when all's said and done, works out to between 66% and 75% of sword's damage.

(Thrown Weapons doesn't suck anymore, either, for what that's worth).

Dagger and Thrown weapons make very good "crossover" skills; Dagger's damage mod is Coord rather than Strength, so it works well with archers, whereas Thrown Weapons takes advantage of Strength as its damage mod and is the only ranged form of attack that uses shields, so it's good for melees.

Yes, but is Thrown Weapons Mastery VII still known as "The Wrong Spell" ?

Yes indeed.

For those who're curious:  Thrown Weapons currently has two real modes of attack (Aside from the old "tossing dinner plates and snowballs" approach which is more for shits and giggles than anything else) - Atlatl, and Spikes.

Atlatl is an equippable weapon that flings atlatl darts, works about like a crossbow with similar damage output.  You can buff it, and the damage output and operating procedure is similar to other ranged attacks.

Spikes are crafted throwing darts that do about 75% of the damage of an atlatl, but have no launcher:  You just equip 'em and toss 'em.  The advantage to spikes is that in exchange for the lowered DoT, you can weild a shield while you throw them.

Thrown Weapons isn't quite as good for damage as bow or XBow, but it does give you some serious versatility and works well on a melee character.  I've trained it on my sword, just searching for a good atlatl to work with.

The thing I remember was swords did more damage on paper, but because of faster attack rates as well as racial bonuses dagger and unarmed users actually totally outdamaged sword users.

This was addressed awhile ago.  More skill points = more damage output.  There are benefits to taking a lesser weapon, as stated by Tele, but Turbine has always impressed me with their balance responses.

*twitch* I must stay away from AC....

I logged into AC today, did a couple quests... but the majority of my time ingame today, I spent it in the library.  I had entirely forgotten that the three capital cities had libraries of the lore of their respective cultures.  I read and read and read...  I also found something I had entirely forgotten about: In AC's first year, they ran a fanfiction contest, and the best 9 stories became official lore for sale in the capitol libraries.

Without really intending to, today I logged into a MMO to read books.  Yay for Asheron's Call.

Finally got around to really playing AC.  I had a good time; only slowdown was when a HUGE battle started early in the evening near Holt, and was still raging on hours later.  I need to find a decent monarchy to swear into.  I hit level 12- I have higher level characters on the server still but am not comfortable enough to log them in until I relearn more of the game.  Open PvP is pretty rad, even for a little fish! (I made 200k+ just looting random dead people).

The learning curve is pretty steep.  It is hard for me to recommend this game to the people around here, but I will echo Tele's sentiments about it being pretty damn fun!

I began as a swordsman, but will probably switch to a mage noob soon.  The noob armor the give now rocks; if anyone here decides to play on DT make sure and KEEP your armor!

edit for clarity.

They are offering $10 for the purchase of the game electronically.  It will be $9.99 until September 30.

http://ac.turbine.com/?page_id=476

Wish I had read the August announcements before purchasing the expansion/game!

Ok, ok, I give up. I'm in MMORPG withdraw here. So melee is cool? Any starting hints? I swear I played this game 97 years ago on one of my "I'm fed up with EQ fits" . It didnt overly impress me then. But, I'll give it a shot. You guys keep talking Ok? 

Melee is cool.  Remember a few things, though.

1.  Racial abilities.  Gharundim start with staff, Aluvian with Dagger, and Sho start with Unarmed fighting.
2.  All weapons use strength to calculate damage bonus, EXCEPT Dagger (uses coordination) and UA (uses Strength + UA skill).
3.  Specialize your weapon and melee Defense!  Do not specialize healing. 
4.  Depending on wether you play on Darktide or the non-PvP servers can make a big difference on your template.
5.  Do not turn the noob plate armor back to the NPC, ESPECIALLY on DT.  It is pure LOVE.

First, Thanks Ched. You saved me 10 smackers. cheap enough but I ordered the box so I've got a few days. So, reading your post do I want to start Gharundim? Or does it not matter so much as I just need to know how to advance. Can you guys point me at a decent forum? I could amuse myself trying to gleen some info out if possible.

Please add gleen to the spell checker. K by thks

One thing I forgot to add:  The more skill points invested into a melee skill = more potential damage.

Well, holy shit.  Asheron's Call is going to be getting pets. (http://ac.turbine.com/?page_id=476)  At some point, I'll also add a lot to Cheddar's advice for new players.

It's probably not in the spell checker because you spelled it wrong.

It's "glean".

Subtle humor is unfair to some.  It took me a second to get it, but the "k by" part clued me in.

Of course, maybe he really did misspell it and I'm just looking wayyy too hard into that.

Anyhoo, I have a brief respite from work, so some comments:


Start any race you like.  There's really very little difference; they might just provide you with a bit of extra versatility.  Character creation is good, in that it gives you the full formulas and effects of everything you do (In other words, if you start with high strength, you know exactly what skills will be benefitted by that strength and exactly how much).

Random thoughts:  If you're planning to be an archer, you might be best served as an Aluvian, since they get the Dagger skill for free, which uses Coordination just like Bow/XBow.  If you're going to be a mage, you might best like Sho, since they get Unarmed Combat for free, which doesn't base its damage off of Strength or Coordination as other weapons do.  Gharu'ndim have an edge in trading and crafting, since they get a free tinkering skill; Viamontians are sllightly better as vassals since they have naturally specialized Loyalty, meaning that odds are they'll pass up more free XP to their patrons.

Bottom line: All of the above are very minor considerations.  They will not make or break your enjoyment of the game, only serve to broaden you out a little. This is very different from some games where your choice of race is part of maximizing your killing power.  It's only worth caring about if you're the type that naturally wants to micro-analyze all those choices.


Assuming you want to play melee, pick whichever race and skills fit how you imagine your character.  The Gharu'ndim are crafty and mercantile, the Sho are contemplative and zen, the Aluvians are crude and hardy, the Viamont are imperialist conquistador types.  Sword technically has the highest damage output, but every melee skill kills things perfectly well; feel free to go for spear or mace or staff or dagger if they capture your fancy, and don't worry that you'll "fail" at character creation.  If you don't feel like taking magic skills, don't worry about them.  If you feel like exploring, take lockpick; there are locked doors and chests and passageways all over the place.  Sometimes you need a lockpicker to get through them, other times a nearby monster or another branch of the quest might provide you with the key, but lockpicking skill provides a shortcut.  You might find items on monsters which would be useless to most people, but that you can turn into something valuable (a key to a locked treasure chest, for instance) with your lockpicking expertise.

Tradeskills are very different than other games.

Fletching is all about arrow-making of all types.  If you're going for a ranged attack, you want fletching, hopefully sooner rather than later.  It'll make life much much simpler.

Alchemy is useful for a number of different things.  Everything from completing certain quests to crafting health and protection potions/gems for yourself to imbuing fletched arrows with elemental effects.

The tinkering skills are all about improving the items you find in the loot system.

Cooking can make some of the best health/stamina/mana restoration 'foods' around - but it's also got a very large 'fun' component to it.  There are literally hundreds (if not a thousand+) of food items that you can create by combining different ingredients, spices, etcetera.  Cooks can also melt down certain plants you may find growing on the landscape in order to turn them into dyes for coloring armor and other items.


Keep it until you get better stuff, sure.  (One of the first quests you'll find ingame are the Scarlet Red Letters and Lucky Gold Letters that drop off drudges in low level areas - those quests will give you armor upgrades, among other things - you'll also get good armor off of monsters)  But once you get better stuff, turning it back in will get you some salvage that you can use to improve your newer gear.



Oh, and one final note: Do not fear death.  Especially at the low levels, the death penalty is minimal.  Death is not unimportant, but the game is designed such that you can have fun trying things that may fail without worrying too much about the consequences.

Try naked cliff jumping off a gigantic mountain.  See what happens if you run into that castle full of angry skeletons by yourself.  Take a portal to the Direlands, see if you can sneak by the monsters that can stomp you like a bug, and visit some of the high-level towns before your time.

You'll meet some people who will try to herd you into a very narrow playstyle; "At your level, you should be hunting at X.  You should be using gear Y with character template Z.  Here, do what I say and you'll be level 100 in a week."  Ignore those people.

Don't spend any time worrying that you're "playing the game wrong", and you're more likely to get the most out of it. :)

I completely disagree, especially if one starts on DT.  There are times you will get drunk/stoned/tired and end up dying a billion times.  At these times this armor is pure love.  Hell its pure level anyhow.  No drop armor, with decent AL, that has some buffage on it??? 

Its rad.  Keep it.

I'm on DT too.  The Society/Explorer armor is essentially no-drop as well - which is why it makes a bit of a superior replacement for the Pathwarden armor.

I agree, though, the Pathwarden armor is r0x.

Updates!

Pets were demoed at the Penny Arcade Expo.  They follow you around and do pet-like things.

AC may be seeing its first new minigame in two years or so (currently there's Chess and Fishing) - Dereth Hold 'Em.  It's Andy Caltado's pet project.

Their selling of online CD keys through Direct2Drive is netting them 300 purchases a week.  Not bad considering the game's age.

I am having a blast.  DT is NOT for anyone around here though.

I'm having withdrawals.  In Korea right now, no laptop.  One more week, and I'll be in Japan, and back on DT.

I met a good group of guys.  Basically I play as normal in the evening, and stand around our little place during the day.  Auto Fellow + level 220+ patron = 5+ levels everyday while I am AFK.  Things on DT are a LOT harsher now.  Every major portal is camped (it seems) by looting asshats; all the main dungeons are guarded as well.  Before, as a level 80 something, I was at least able to survive via my wits and skills.  Now I can get away 10% of the time.  Hell, some fuckers chased me for 45 minutes last night.  Thanks to Decal, he always knew which portals I went into and what direction I was travelling. 

Harsh, harsh, harsh existance.  As handy as decal is I strongly believe they need a solution to kill it.

From what I hear, the new quests that just opened up last night to finally defeat Grael's three aspects are some of the best ever added into the game.  Falling rock traps, puzzles where you have to use your head as well as fight, and apparently Grael sets the whole damn place on fire when you fight him.

I really, REALLY want to get ingame.

Next month, the first pets go into the game.

Also, ninjas.

It. Was. Rad.  Course I died, but throughout the entire night (I was playing the entire 6 hours+ of the event) shit happened everywhere.  I gotta say, AC is winning my heart over. 

That right there is enough to get me to re-subscribe.

Hey, getting around bans.  Good show.

Huh?

"Yay" shouldn't exist.

I was in an AD&D tournament once back in the 80s, the singer from my band was also in. He played a thief and I played a mage/thief. We basically skulked around avoiding combat and stealing treasure, 'forgetting' to warn the others of traps, etc. The DM sent magic invisible ninjas against us, which got him disqualified from the tournament. Good times.

Nerdiest post I've ever seen.

Unless your name is Alex and the singer's name is Geddy.

We formed our band as an art project.  :evil:

What exactly is the objective in an AD&D tournament? o_O

I cancelled my subscription to AC1 a while back, but still keep hoping something draws me back in.  The reason I left was that the server seemed empty.  Have the numbers changed much in the last 6 months to year?

Darktide ALWAYS has something going on.  Key is to get in with a good clan that does stuff.  Pocket communities and all that.

I usually don't PVP, any news on the other servers (especially Solclaim)?

From what I understand all the servers have had increased populations in the last 6 months.  Main issue is that everyone will be 100+, thus you will need to invest some time or find a decent sized monarchy to get good interaction. 

FYI, getting 100+ is pretty damn easy on non-PvP servers these days.  I have considered moving to a non-PvP server; I love AC but am having issues finding people to play with on DT.  Everyone is on the treadmill so they can compete with higher level clans :(

Know what?  Fuck it, I am gonna roll a toon on Solclaim. 

Did you roll a toon on Solclaim?  If so, how is it there now?

Its good.  I am in a rough and tumble guild, where leet speak is okey dokey, but otherwise its well.  I enjoy the playerbase on SC much better then on DT (DT used to have a decent population of good people, whom are all GONE).  I have mostly been focusing on building a character which was similiar to my DT guy; well I achieved that this week.

I am probably going to start questing heavily here shortly.  Ironically, due to no open PvP, I keep wanting to powerlevel and ignore most everything else.  On DT most the good areas were taken, and I was constantly doing quests for personal enjoyment (due to no super method for the XP).  One big thing I miss is the sense of "OH SHIT ANOTHER PLAYER" fear I got on DT; this is balanced out by the lack of dying constantly for no reason and even having people chase me for 45 minutes JUST IN CASE I HAD A RARE ON ME. 

IMO the level cap changed DT as it was.  I am sticking with SC, and will continue to dabble in DDO for the next week until I decide wether its worth investing more time in.


edit.  I dunno.  The more I think about the more I realize COH would probably be a better choice for me.  I am pondering cancelling my subs and rescribing to COH.  Been back in AC 6 months, and despite repeated attempts, I could not get my RL buddies into it. 

You should play EVE.  People chase you and destroy your ship for no reason other than to see you explode.  Whining in local chat is just gravy.

The game never ceases to make me smile.  The new story arc is heating up -- for the first time in the game's history, players are in the process of opening up a portal to another world, Bur, to try and figure out who or what has kidnapped Asheron.  A few servers have opened it already, and the reaction so far has been really positive.  Bur has no new shinies to collect, but lots of interesting stuff to do.

The game continues, blessedly, to screw with people who run through unthinkingly applying 'game logic' to everything -- "If it's a mob kill it, if it's treasure loot it, if it's an item use it".

A quest came out a few months ago where you could shortcut through the nasty part by sacrificing your blood on an altar to the Dark Gods of Bur.  Savvy players who've collected the ingame lore knew this was bad news; and lo and behold, apparently on the world of Bur, characters who've sacrificed to the Dark Gods are seeing unintended consequences that are just now starting to play out.  Naturally there's been some whining about "But how were we supposed to know!!111", but this has been one of AC's unique and consistent themes since release -- in some cases the game has even presented players with decisions whose ramifications haven't fully manifested until years later.  Good to see an MMO where knowledge of the lore still matters.

Good news. Vanguard's a joke (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=9013.msg266873#msg266873) but Asheron's Call is da bomb.
Thanks for sharing.

Correct.

Do you see anything particularly wrong with this formulation?  I mean, "da bomb" is going a bit far, "clearly superior in all but graphical terms to the current crop of MMOs" works fine.

This formulation only applies to Ultima Online.

UO has its charms, but point and click movement in an essentially 2D world is too limiting for me.

I never could get into Asheron's Call.  The gameplay mechanic was much too simplistic.   High/Low/Medium attacks and attack speed with no apparent difference other than certain mobs weren't vulnerable at certain swings.  So here my character is, dumb enough to swing 'low' at a bat flying 'high' because I told it to.  Whee.

In all fairness, Asheron's Call has changed considerably from release, so my critiques are levied at an ancient version of the game that may no longer exist.

In all fairness, Asheron's Call is lagging behind technologically by over 7 years by any game made today, so a comparison isn't fair.

Combat can be somewhat complex, but not in the way you're implying -- in fact, introducing things like hotkeyed abilities, mezzes, roots, stuns, etc. would really clash with the core gameplay.

AC's combat gameplay is better compared to Gauntlet or CounterStrike than EverQuest (The PvP especially, where there's no such thing as a rock-paper-scissors class heirarchy).  All projectiles are physically dodgeable; that is, if an arrow or a firebolt is coming at you, you can run behind a tree to dodge it.  For their part, archers and mages can both switch on the fly between firing their shots aiming exactly at where you are right now, or utilizing predictive movement to lead the target.  Running and jumping are much more 'free' than in other MMOs, and if you hop on a platform to get away from a melee mob nipping at you, that's strategy - not an exploit.

The difference between a mage and a melee in AC is about like the difference between a guy with a Colt and a guy with a Shotgun in CS; they're different at the tactical level, but they're variations on the same theme.  For the most part they can use the same armor, and have similar survivability and DPS output, though one or the other may happen to have an advantage in any given scenario.  This is why I make the comparison above to classes in Gauntlet.

Swinging at one monster over and over as they swing back at you isn't terribly exciting, true - so you put yourself in situations where you're fighting 10 monsters at once, some of them are getting behind you and thus hitting you behind your shield, some of them are shooting magic or projectiles at you that are hard to dodge in the thick of combat, you have options at your disposal like potions, healing, gems that will dispel negative enchantments, etcetera.  Crawling through a tough olthoi dungeon this past week on my newbie, a group spawned on top of me and I ended up fighting literally 30 olthoi at once, a crowd so thick that it filled most of my radar and only 15-20 or so could hit me at a time (collision detection, they can't stack).  Lived to tell about it, but only barely, but trying to keep my back against the wall when they kept wedging in there and getting behind my shield was a challenge.  Doing quests above my level range means that a few fireballs can kill me, and so using my environment effectively to dodge those is a challenge.

You could go through the game's levels half-asleep, autoattacking one foozle at a time until it dies.  You could hit max level that way, get the best gear that way, and by any "objective" measure of your character's spreadsheet you'd be just as "successful" as anyone else.  But that profoundly unambitious route will cause you miss out on most of the game's interesting gameplay.