Dreamworld engine - Impact on the Live Servers

So far it will be a personal impression on the new engine, having tested it yesterday during the evening in the BloodRavine map, on the T3 instance and roaming around some zones of the world.
What to say? Some bugs are expectable for this release, given its importance and size, a patch of 1.1GB it's indeed a great work, but on the overall I'm firmly convinced it has been really a smooth release.
First loading time have been a bit long, but I was downloading resources in background so it's quite normal, but after that, after some time spent in the zones i notice faster loading times, better and more polished graphic and better performances, my regret is that I had no time to test the water effects, nor to see them.
The game is smoother, movements are really fluid even though I noticed a generalized slowness in the run speed, apparently we are all slower than we were used to be before. I've heard of some bugs related to the Jhebbal Sag maps about Necros being unable to kill their pets, having them plymorphed in some kind of E.T.'s coming from some extradimensional space, but beside this bugs I really guess FunCom did a good job this time.
Ok let's admit it, it may not be exactly what the game was needing but, so far, it's a demonstration that if they are willing to put serious efforts in an activity they are capable of doing a good work.

HoXes do not despair, even if it is not mentioned in the patch notes (or at least it wasn't when I last checked) our fix at the Phoenix Cloak animation has been introduced, now we have finally an animation more in line with the bubbles of all the other bubble-user classes(animation only though).
Sadly, our old bugs are still all there, I lost all my hairs yesterday after using my mighty and strong demon form, I don't know if you may know the fictional character "Stewie" from a Matt Groening's cartoon "The Griffins", but if you know him, well.. I felt right like him, bald and sarcastic noob, not able to keep a sword right on my hands!
In fact, my dear HoX fellows be aware that we are all capable of using our swords without the need to have it right on the hands, we are able to make them levitate or to keep them on our back and landing damages like we were using them!
The Bug of Xotli we are, and the Force is weak in us!
On this subject I believe that mental powers are really the new horizon of the HoX, would be nice to have us morphed in some kind of weaponless class like the "Black Hand of Set" from the "Hour of the Dragon" novel, dealing insane damages only using our accursed hands...
But that's a digression on other arguments which are not the focus of this small post.

This new release also added some kind of Exchange Rate System based on Veteran Points.
Some usefull informations:
5 Veteran Tokens are worth 100 Imperial Insignas;
5 Veteran Tokens are worth 15 Marks of Acclaim;
35 Veteran Tokens are worth 100 Marks of Acclaim;
These are just some examples of the bartering for kithai reputation items.
My opinion on this it's that it is a good move, many will have the chance to see their endless grind lessened by this addiction and it will probably also encourage people to subscribe for more time because veteran tokens can be earned only through subscriptions.
A new Conan Movie is incoming, my impression is that FunCom is trying to consolidate its playerbase reading themselves to expand it in the near future making use of the Advertising for the new film.
As a medium term player I really hope this move will succeed, for we need more heads on AoC, but they will have to look deeply on some game aspects which are in serious need of attention, especially after the announcement of new PvP reserved ruleset coming on TestLive hopefully in may.

Now I've got to leave you, I need to deeply reflect on my choice between wolf and tiger mount, please stay tuned if you've liked the posts, and don't be afraid to leave comments, suggestions, requests!!!

Remember to sacrifice skulls to Xotli, it's alway a good thing to please our good, hopefully better times will come!

'Till the next time!

Arcalimon