After another exam at the university and my regular job end i'm in attempt to move out.
I'm enjoying the experience of rage with another toon, in the end I decided not to replicate my HoX there because I wanted to try something new and I started a guard (given that I already have a DT, Conq, BS, Sin and Barb) and I'm trying to get myself home with my head on my neck everyday.
It's a good experience just because everything it's much more dangerous, with fights everywhere, without rules, if you want to kill and have a real challenge at even getting out a zone then try the new ruleset.
But I've got to say that this is really nothing new, it's just a different shape of something we already done and that we are trying to redo, my plan is to stop at level 59 for a while to do some pvp and then see if I'll have the will to go up to level 80.
Also, the pre-order of Star Wars is out and I'm really eager to see how this game will look like.
But for the moment i'm just going to enjoy some weeks of relax, sea, sun, interesting cities and friends!
So guys, have fun, enjoy the holiday and always remember to dedicate some skulls to our god!
See you all at the 2nd half of august, hopefully with the chance to open up a small forum to discuss and reunite our scattered community.
A group of friends i've been part of once said "Together we stand, divided we fall" and this is true, especially when it comes down to the Herald of Xotli.
One last hint: Keep your eyes open as rumors say that the combo animation revamp is approaching and this could probably be a great change for us!
Let's wait and see.
Enjoy the summer and have fun guys!
See you on the 2nd half of August!
Sincerely,
Arcalimon
Welcome to the Temple of Xotli a blog for the Herald of Xotli Class of Age of Conan.
Friday, 22 July 2011
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Player versus Player - Collection of thoughts
It's fundamental to be clear, if I'd have to define myself as a player I would say without any doubt that I'm 75% into PvP and the remaining into PvE, it's a choice I prefere a human versus human competition against a human versus server competition, it gives me much more satisfaction.
Even though I can define me a more or less professional PvPers always looking at improving, experimenting, playing every class I can to have a larger view on the field being able to react fast I'm not the kind of person that is encouraging the "elitaristic war" of PvErs agains PvPers, but I understand why it comes out.
It's undeniable that, when in a MMO PvE and PvP have their source in the very same skillset, feat and whatever there will always be a conflict, any modify applied to a class X at a time Y will affect the PvE side in a way and the PvP side in another, some examples are the Assassins, the Ranger and the Guardians.
Blaming a player in a moment of frustration may happen, what we should keep in mind is that there's a lot of players who remained faithful to their class even when it was not that performing that well, i'm referring to Sins which suffered from a lot of issues in the past, so why should we blame them for being now in a so called OP Status?
True thing is that there's also a lot of re-rollers, but hey, the game allows this, so why should we surprised if one re-rolls on a class that is performing better than his own?
It's the human nature guys, human beings are always aiming to competition, and to compete properly you've got to have the proper tool to do that.
In a MMO it is translated into having a good class, today it's the sin/ranger/guard, tomorrow it will be Necro/Demo/PoM, in a year it will be ToS/Conq or HoX... err no screw the HoX :)
What I mean is, it's a game true, but we all want to be competitive, starting from this then it comes to personal choices, I decided to roll pretty much every class in the game to have a larger overview, to know more also to have more choices, but my focus still remains on the Herald of Xotli, for it is the class I picked at day 1, the class I like(d) and love(d), I'm still willing to put an effort in being a good HoX especially when I realize that with an undergeared pvp 3 barbarian I'm much more performing than on my PvP 6 geared HoX.
It's a matter of pride and honor.
But the PvP is a strange entity.
In Age of Conan what I'd the chance to see is that it is based on Gear Supremacy, Perk Supremacy and Number Supremacy, only far after those 3 comes the Skill Supremacy.
If you are skilled you won't stand a chance against a player less skilled than you but with superior gear, simple as that.
Age of Conan at the very beginning was used to be a skill based (based on what I recall) game, equip was obviously a boost, but you still had a chance if you'd been a good player.
Now that's not the case anymore, so I'm asking myself why?
There could be many reasons to this.
I'm quite confident to say that Shrines of Bori were the first unbalancing factor in this game, came immediately after a revamp of the PvP levels and a new itemization which were not that bad after all.
I say so because I can't understand how mining resources nodes can be defined as a PvP activity, especially because the behaviour about Bori is well known: One guild steamroll the map, occupies it for the whole day and has its member up to PvP level 10 in a "heartbeat" and who the hell cares if those pvp 10 are noobs? with their gear anyone below pvp 5 will not have a single chance against them even if they know perfectly their class, even if they are perfectly aware of strenghts and weakness of their enemy, they simply can't fill the gear gap.
Recently issued polls showed how roughly 92% of the community refused Bori, demanded a change in regular server and begged the Devs to not have it as an option in the upcoming Blood and Glory ruleset, it should mean something, 92% guys, it's a reallly high percentage.
Sieges are another dreadful chapter.
Siege content could be the real engine of the PvP, it SHOULD HAVE BEEN the engine, the soul, the deep reason of pvping.
World conflict to own a Battlekeep, huge efforts to build it in terms of material, huge efforts in terms of sacrifice to maintain it against the enemies storming the walls.
But...
Compared with minigames a siege gives nothing in terms of PvP xp and reward;
Compared with Shrines of Bori it gives even less;
So why should one bother about sieging at all?
For fun you could answer.
True, you got a point. Unfortunately there are a lot of issues which are removing the fun factor from the siege activity, some have been mentioned above, other are purely technical.
It's not possible, not understandable and not acceptable that after 3 years from the release with a top maching and an ADSL connection a player, a customer is not able to perform properly in a siege, at low settings, with everything disabled.
It's not possible, not understandable and not acceptable that after 3 years from release, with a top machine and an ADSL connection a player is not able to cast an instant spell, to perform a combo without having to wait 5 seconds from the moment he casts the spell/combo till the moment he notices the animation on the screen.
Playing a 48vs48 content having the whole raid stuck in huge red lag spikes it's impossible, it's not fun, it prevents you from doing anything it DESTROYES any effort you made to build up the keep, it does not allow you to defend what you got and build with sacrifice.
If you are lucky the siege will crash. The only chance of salvation.
But we can't blame only the SH mistakes.
The Community playes a bigger role in this.
Gankers, leavers, afkers, k/d whores, big-egos, flame wars, QQ, whines, complains, add whatever you want here.
The class X is OP OMG!!!!! NERF NERF NERF!
The class Y is UP! OMFG YA NOOBS WE NEED LOVZOR"
Yes I'm part of this as well and I regret this.
I stopped posting anything openly flame-baiting on the forums since a month or so, I'm much more focused on finding a way to perform despite any possible issue.
This is a plea to you all fellow PvPers, if the game is what it is, the ONLY WAY we have to keep it enjoyable is to focus on the community, to focus on the way we play.
Let's try to be less selfish, let's try to play more for the sake of playing rather then for the dire need of establishing ourselves as the best overall in the whole universe.
We would all have benefits from this.
See you the next time.
Arcalimon
Even though I can define me a more or less professional PvPers always looking at improving, experimenting, playing every class I can to have a larger view on the field being able to react fast I'm not the kind of person that is encouraging the "elitaristic war" of PvErs agains PvPers, but I understand why it comes out.
It's undeniable that, when in a MMO PvE and PvP have their source in the very same skillset, feat and whatever there will always be a conflict, any modify applied to a class X at a time Y will affect the PvE side in a way and the PvP side in another, some examples are the Assassins, the Ranger and the Guardians.
Blaming a player in a moment of frustration may happen, what we should keep in mind is that there's a lot of players who remained faithful to their class even when it was not that performing that well, i'm referring to Sins which suffered from a lot of issues in the past, so why should we blame them for being now in a so called OP Status?
True thing is that there's also a lot of re-rollers, but hey, the game allows this, so why should we surprised if one re-rolls on a class that is performing better than his own?
It's the human nature guys, human beings are always aiming to competition, and to compete properly you've got to have the proper tool to do that.
In a MMO it is translated into having a good class, today it's the sin/ranger/guard, tomorrow it will be Necro/Demo/PoM, in a year it will be ToS/Conq or HoX... err no screw the HoX :)
What I mean is, it's a game true, but we all want to be competitive, starting from this then it comes to personal choices, I decided to roll pretty much every class in the game to have a larger overview, to know more also to have more choices, but my focus still remains on the Herald of Xotli, for it is the class I picked at day 1, the class I like(d) and love(d), I'm still willing to put an effort in being a good HoX especially when I realize that with an undergeared pvp 3 barbarian I'm much more performing than on my PvP 6 geared HoX.
It's a matter of pride and honor.
But the PvP is a strange entity.
In Age of Conan what I'd the chance to see is that it is based on Gear Supremacy, Perk Supremacy and Number Supremacy, only far after those 3 comes the Skill Supremacy.
If you are skilled you won't stand a chance against a player less skilled than you but with superior gear, simple as that.
Age of Conan at the very beginning was used to be a skill based (based on what I recall) game, equip was obviously a boost, but you still had a chance if you'd been a good player.
Now that's not the case anymore, so I'm asking myself why?
There could be many reasons to this.
I'm quite confident to say that Shrines of Bori were the first unbalancing factor in this game, came immediately after a revamp of the PvP levels and a new itemization which were not that bad after all.
I say so because I can't understand how mining resources nodes can be defined as a PvP activity, especially because the behaviour about Bori is well known: One guild steamroll the map, occupies it for the whole day and has its member up to PvP level 10 in a "heartbeat" and who the hell cares if those pvp 10 are noobs? with their gear anyone below pvp 5 will not have a single chance against them even if they know perfectly their class, even if they are perfectly aware of strenghts and weakness of their enemy, they simply can't fill the gear gap.
Recently issued polls showed how roughly 92% of the community refused Bori, demanded a change in regular server and begged the Devs to not have it as an option in the upcoming Blood and Glory ruleset, it should mean something, 92% guys, it's a reallly high percentage.
Sieges are another dreadful chapter.
Siege content could be the real engine of the PvP, it SHOULD HAVE BEEN the engine, the soul, the deep reason of pvping.
World conflict to own a Battlekeep, huge efforts to build it in terms of material, huge efforts in terms of sacrifice to maintain it against the enemies storming the walls.
But...
Compared with minigames a siege gives nothing in terms of PvP xp and reward;
Compared with Shrines of Bori it gives even less;
So why should one bother about sieging at all?
For fun you could answer.
True, you got a point. Unfortunately there are a lot of issues which are removing the fun factor from the siege activity, some have been mentioned above, other are purely technical.
It's not possible, not understandable and not acceptable that after 3 years from the release with a top maching and an ADSL connection a player, a customer is not able to perform properly in a siege, at low settings, with everything disabled.
It's not possible, not understandable and not acceptable that after 3 years from release, with a top machine and an ADSL connection a player is not able to cast an instant spell, to perform a combo without having to wait 5 seconds from the moment he casts the spell/combo till the moment he notices the animation on the screen.
Playing a 48vs48 content having the whole raid stuck in huge red lag spikes it's impossible, it's not fun, it prevents you from doing anything it DESTROYES any effort you made to build up the keep, it does not allow you to defend what you got and build with sacrifice.
If you are lucky the siege will crash. The only chance of salvation.
But we can't blame only the SH mistakes.
The Community playes a bigger role in this.
Gankers, leavers, afkers, k/d whores, big-egos, flame wars, QQ, whines, complains, add whatever you want here.
The class X is OP OMG!!!!! NERF NERF NERF!
The class Y is UP! OMFG YA NOOBS WE NEED LOVZOR"
Yes I'm part of this as well and I regret this.
I stopped posting anything openly flame-baiting on the forums since a month or so, I'm much more focused on finding a way to perform despite any possible issue.
This is a plea to you all fellow PvPers, if the game is what it is, the ONLY WAY we have to keep it enjoyable is to focus on the community, to focus on the way we play.
Let's try to be less selfish, let's try to play more for the sake of playing rather then for the dire need of establishing ourselves as the best overall in the whole universe.
We would all have benefits from this.
See you the next time.
Arcalimon
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Herald of Xotli - Discussing on Crowd Control
It's about time to write down something on how I would use the Crowd Control now that the new system has been settled.
To summarize the changes from the HoX point of view we can start with these small points:
1) Dread Visage is now 1 second casting time;
2) Word of Command is now 0.5 seconds casting time;
3) Desecrating Essence remained untoched;
4) The innate feat Roots of Hell gives up to 50% resistance to KB (if fully feated) while in demon form;
5) There's a lesser amount of CC around.
The 5 points above should be enough to grant a player an overview on how the Crowd Control works now and how it will affect his own way of using them.
The first thing that becomes clear is that the HoX lost its instant CC, I wrote in the past that CCs like WoC and DV were used mostly for defensive purposes, something like a "oh shit" ability to escape dangerous situation, that is obviously not the same anymore, even though the first impression on it made me scream about the nerf I have to be honest that it was not so if you try to watch it in the greater picture.
The modifies to our CC are now forcing us to play our class more tactically, we have to time properly our CC and we absolutely need to be able to prevent what our opponent will do, movement and positionin is now even more important than it was before and the line between a good HoX and a not good HoX is now even more defined.
If you are able to prevent and react properly you'll survive, else you're dead meat.
Simple as that.
More in detail:
WoC: I'm not using it only to escape anymore. I can't cast it instantly but it's a great tool to be effectively supporting especially when trying to help the flag carrier, in a minigame played yesterday I managed to get our flag carrier out of troubles a couple of time by simply rooting down the chasers with WoC and interrupting their casts and combos with Hellfire breath. I'm alse re-evaluating the role of WoC as a backup CC for when I stun a target, I'm perfectly aware that the stun can be easily removed especially in early stages of a fight, but the process takes at least 1 second and I'm managing to apply the root before my enemy is removing the stun gaining in this way enough time to either land a buffed ToX or to retreat waiting for a better moment to shot it.
DV: This was the ultimate "I need to save my back" cc for the HoX, it isn't so anymore, but even in this case I found it usefull for supporting the team, especially in this new Furian reality I'm noticing that it's really common to have 3 enemies on you trying to burn you down and it's in this case that I use my DV to buy some time for me or my ally to run out, maybe also using WoC as a backup if I believe I've got enough time to stay and cast it (it means more than 60% of my hp).
What comes out from this small analisys is that now the HoX has less "selfish" tools (and that's bad) but has on the other hand of the deal more "teamplay" tools which is not a bad thing after all, it's true that we are maybe a bit forced to play that way, but in the long run it will turn out to be a good thing creating some kind of "mutual aid" behaviour in minigame, and it's always nice to see a guy standing between you and your death just because you saved his back before.
I'm enjoying my "new" role of supporter, and especially in crowded fight when healers and flag carriers are the main focused targets my root or fear or stun can often change the tide of the fight.
It's all about making the habit to this new style, I wouldn't dislike a bit more of survival, but while I wait for it, at least now I can try to find a new "reason" for my class, and a new role I may like to play.
I hope you enjoyed the read.
Take care.
Arcalimon
To summarize the changes from the HoX point of view we can start with these small points:
1) Dread Visage is now 1 second casting time;
2) Word of Command is now 0.5 seconds casting time;
3) Desecrating Essence remained untoched;
4) The innate feat Roots of Hell gives up to 50% resistance to KB (if fully feated) while in demon form;
5) There's a lesser amount of CC around.
The 5 points above should be enough to grant a player an overview on how the Crowd Control works now and how it will affect his own way of using them.
The first thing that becomes clear is that the HoX lost its instant CC, I wrote in the past that CCs like WoC and DV were used mostly for defensive purposes, something like a "oh shit" ability to escape dangerous situation, that is obviously not the same anymore, even though the first impression on it made me scream about the nerf I have to be honest that it was not so if you try to watch it in the greater picture.
The modifies to our CC are now forcing us to play our class more tactically, we have to time properly our CC and we absolutely need to be able to prevent what our opponent will do, movement and positionin is now even more important than it was before and the line between a good HoX and a not good HoX is now even more defined.
If you are able to prevent and react properly you'll survive, else you're dead meat.
Simple as that.
More in detail:
WoC: I'm not using it only to escape anymore. I can't cast it instantly but it's a great tool to be effectively supporting especially when trying to help the flag carrier, in a minigame played yesterday I managed to get our flag carrier out of troubles a couple of time by simply rooting down the chasers with WoC and interrupting their casts and combos with Hellfire breath. I'm alse re-evaluating the role of WoC as a backup CC for when I stun a target, I'm perfectly aware that the stun can be easily removed especially in early stages of a fight, but the process takes at least 1 second and I'm managing to apply the root before my enemy is removing the stun gaining in this way enough time to either land a buffed ToX or to retreat waiting for a better moment to shot it.
DV: This was the ultimate "I need to save my back" cc for the HoX, it isn't so anymore, but even in this case I found it usefull for supporting the team, especially in this new Furian reality I'm noticing that it's really common to have 3 enemies on you trying to burn you down and it's in this case that I use my DV to buy some time for me or my ally to run out, maybe also using WoC as a backup if I believe I've got enough time to stay and cast it (it means more than 60% of my hp).
What comes out from this small analisys is that now the HoX has less "selfish" tools (and that's bad) but has on the other hand of the deal more "teamplay" tools which is not a bad thing after all, it's true that we are maybe a bit forced to play that way, but in the long run it will turn out to be a good thing creating some kind of "mutual aid" behaviour in minigame, and it's always nice to see a guy standing between you and your death just because you saved his back before.
I'm enjoying my "new" role of supporter, and especially in crowded fight when healers and flag carriers are the main focused targets my root or fear or stun can often change the tide of the fight.
It's all about making the habit to this new style, I wouldn't dislike a bit more of survival, but while I wait for it, at least now I can try to find a new "reason" for my class, and a new role I may like to play.
I hope you enjoyed the read.
Take care.
Arcalimon
Monday, 6 June 2011
Fury: New dimension of life
So we've been through the server merge.
The new experience within the new PvP server Fury has begun and after a week of play I can try to summarize my impressions on it.
First thing to be said is that finally we have a living server, vibrating server, a lot of stuff is going on and especially on the PvP side the things have improved a lot in terms of frequency and numbers.
Minigames are starting at the speed of light and it's now normal to be able to run 3-4 or even 5 JS in a day if one has the stomach to do that, 40 minutes of minigame are quite a lot, but yet, you have the chance to choose to play it or not to play it. Back at Aquilonian's days have you missed a JS you couldn't be sure that you'd had another chance to play it within the day.
I've had the chance to see also the old Keshatta Zerg activity back on track, with around 20-30 players taking out the doubts and fighting bad in there, nice activity after years of Empty Kesh in which the only activity was some rare duel going on the duel area, downside of it is that the "Duel area" has become again the hunting ground for gankers, but this should have been expected.
Fury is traditionally a full PvP server, without the RP tag that Aquilonia had, so far I think there have never been a duel area in there, not officially at least.
About my experience the feelings are mixed, I'm absolutely happy to have the chance to spend 4 hours doing minigame without a break, being able to enter a map as soon as I'm out from the one I was playing in, but I have to admit I'm a bit concerned about the "quality" of the experience.
Regardless of the map, you'll end up in a minigame in which killing the enemy is far more important than actually winning the minigame, people is leaving as soon as the group composition does not match whit one's personal tastes, and it's absolutely normal to have 4 guys chasing and hunting you down even at your resspad, which is utterly annoying.
I've been through a devastating siege experience, my guild has been attacked and in a 48vs48 siege at prime time 20:00 CET the lag was so bad that I was not able to even cast Hellfire Breath.
Obviously with this situation it took 30 minutes to the attackers to burn the keep down, catapults and trebuchet will keep on shooting regardless of lag.
The impact has not been easy, I was used to play at the much slower rate of Aquilonia, but I adapted quite soon to the new speedy game in Fury, I'm enjoying the experience so far, I'd wish I could siege properly, but at the next attempt if the lag remains that bad I guess I will call it and close my sieging experience, untill when FunCom will do something to make siege finally enjoyable.
They've got a full PvP server with guilds willing to actively siege, it's a shame they can't do it properly.
Catch you around soon.
Arcalimon
The new experience within the new PvP server Fury has begun and after a week of play I can try to summarize my impressions on it.
First thing to be said is that finally we have a living server, vibrating server, a lot of stuff is going on and especially on the PvP side the things have improved a lot in terms of frequency and numbers.
Minigames are starting at the speed of light and it's now normal to be able to run 3-4 or even 5 JS in a day if one has the stomach to do that, 40 minutes of minigame are quite a lot, but yet, you have the chance to choose to play it or not to play it. Back at Aquilonian's days have you missed a JS you couldn't be sure that you'd had another chance to play it within the day.
I've had the chance to see also the old Keshatta Zerg activity back on track, with around 20-30 players taking out the doubts and fighting bad in there, nice activity after years of Empty Kesh in which the only activity was some rare duel going on the duel area, downside of it is that the "Duel area" has become again the hunting ground for gankers, but this should have been expected.
Fury is traditionally a full PvP server, without the RP tag that Aquilonia had, so far I think there have never been a duel area in there, not officially at least.
About my experience the feelings are mixed, I'm absolutely happy to have the chance to spend 4 hours doing minigame without a break, being able to enter a map as soon as I'm out from the one I was playing in, but I have to admit I'm a bit concerned about the "quality" of the experience.
Regardless of the map, you'll end up in a minigame in which killing the enemy is far more important than actually winning the minigame, people is leaving as soon as the group composition does not match whit one's personal tastes, and it's absolutely normal to have 4 guys chasing and hunting you down even at your resspad, which is utterly annoying.
I've been through a devastating siege experience, my guild has been attacked and in a 48vs48 siege at prime time 20:00 CET the lag was so bad that I was not able to even cast Hellfire Breath.
Obviously with this situation it took 30 minutes to the attackers to burn the keep down, catapults and trebuchet will keep on shooting regardless of lag.
The impact has not been easy, I was used to play at the much slower rate of Aquilonia, but I adapted quite soon to the new speedy game in Fury, I'm enjoying the experience so far, I'd wish I could siege properly, but at the next attempt if the lag remains that bad I guess I will call it and close my sieging experience, untill when FunCom will do something to make siege finally enjoyable.
They've got a full PvP server with guilds willing to actively siege, it's a shame they can't do it properly.
Catch you around soon.
Arcalimon
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Age of Conan: Unrated and Server Merge
Hi fellow HoXes.
A lot has been announced lately, lot of stuff that will change the future of this game and that hopefully will allow us to enjoy it a lot more thanks to a wider player base.
The Savage Coast of Turan will be an add-pack that will be released at fall 2011, it will allow players to access the zones that are related to the film which will come out in the theaters during the summer (August 2011 afaik), it will bring new contents for both solo playing in terms of ACG instances as well as group and raid instances, new armors and I dare to say also probably new factions to deal with.
This has been the first announcement made by FunCom and although I think it's good to know they'll release stuff I'm disappointed. There's lack of PvP content and still no word about the B&G ruleset that was announced for May and after postponed to a more generic "Summer". Also, B&G won't be a solution, we don't know how they will handle the character progress, the AA gain, how they'll prevent the Bori farming and how they will allow players to make us of PvE content without guards, allowing then gankers to stay there and kill you over and over and over.
If it has to be a real PvP Hardcore server, every single PvE component of it should be removed (PvE AA as well I dare to say) unfortunately it won't be so, cause as it has been said already "Core System won't be modified".
The second huge announcement is the Age of Conan:Unrated.
What the hell is it? Simple, Age of Conan is going Free 2 Play on a hybrid model, which means that starting from this summer, all the customers with an active subscription (or with ROTG) will be considered premium members, having access to the full content of the game, new players will be able to play the early parts of the game for free with:
1) Limitation on Class, only 4 classes out of 12 will be available;
2) Limitation on instance content, major raid won't be allowed.
A store will be created in which you would be able to buy armor (good but not at pair level with raid armor apparently), special passes to allow you to join instances as a F2P member and whatsoever.
No word has bee given about how and if the PvP will be affected by restrictions too.
Related to this announcement there's a close up activity, on June the 1st at 09:00 GMT all the European server will be taken down for a merge.
All the PvE server will be merged into 1 server and all the PvP server will be merged into 1 server, they will activate 1 free transfer to move to the other ruleset so PvE --> PvP and vice-versa for the lenght of 30 days.
Last but not least FunCom declared that next on the schedule there's the beginning of the works for the server optimization and the introduction of the cross-server functionality which will probably affect also the minigame mechanics, a good new.
There has been also a shy announcement about possible tweaks and fixes to the classes ingame.
There's a lot of stuff to read and verify, and my intention was just to give you a quick overview, for there will be really a lot of stuff on the horizon.
As usual I reccomend you to go and give a check at the official forums and at the site www.ageofconan.com for further details on the matter.
So stay tuned.
Special Mention:
I'd like to say Goodbye to Aquilonia, it has been my first and only server and I'm going to "leave" it only because of the merge.
It has been a lot of fun to be there, I saw many guilds come and Go, but everyting comes to an end at last.
So... See you AQ server, it has been a pleasure!
Arcalimon
A lot has been announced lately, lot of stuff that will change the future of this game and that hopefully will allow us to enjoy it a lot more thanks to a wider player base.
The Savage Coast of Turan will be an add-pack that will be released at fall 2011, it will allow players to access the zones that are related to the film which will come out in the theaters during the summer (August 2011 afaik), it will bring new contents for both solo playing in terms of ACG instances as well as group and raid instances, new armors and I dare to say also probably new factions to deal with.
This has been the first announcement made by FunCom and although I think it's good to know they'll release stuff I'm disappointed. There's lack of PvP content and still no word about the B&G ruleset that was announced for May and after postponed to a more generic "Summer". Also, B&G won't be a solution, we don't know how they will handle the character progress, the AA gain, how they'll prevent the Bori farming and how they will allow players to make us of PvE content without guards, allowing then gankers to stay there and kill you over and over and over.
If it has to be a real PvP Hardcore server, every single PvE component of it should be removed (PvE AA as well I dare to say) unfortunately it won't be so, cause as it has been said already "Core System won't be modified".
The second huge announcement is the Age of Conan:Unrated.
What the hell is it? Simple, Age of Conan is going Free 2 Play on a hybrid model, which means that starting from this summer, all the customers with an active subscription (or with ROTG) will be considered premium members, having access to the full content of the game, new players will be able to play the early parts of the game for free with:
1) Limitation on Class, only 4 classes out of 12 will be available;
2) Limitation on instance content, major raid won't be allowed.
A store will be created in which you would be able to buy armor (good but not at pair level with raid armor apparently), special passes to allow you to join instances as a F2P member and whatsoever.
No word has bee given about how and if the PvP will be affected by restrictions too.
Related to this announcement there's a close up activity, on June the 1st at 09:00 GMT all the European server will be taken down for a merge.
All the PvE server will be merged into 1 server and all the PvP server will be merged into 1 server, they will activate 1 free transfer to move to the other ruleset so PvE --> PvP and vice-versa for the lenght of 30 days.
Last but not least FunCom declared that next on the schedule there's the beginning of the works for the server optimization and the introduction of the cross-server functionality which will probably affect also the minigame mechanics, a good new.
There has been also a shy announcement about possible tweaks and fixes to the classes ingame.
There's a lot of stuff to read and verify, and my intention was just to give you a quick overview, for there will be really a lot of stuff on the horizon.
As usual I reccomend you to go and give a check at the official forums and at the site www.ageofconan.com for further details on the matter.
So stay tuned.
Special Mention:
I'd like to say Goodbye to Aquilonia, it has been my first and only server and I'm going to "leave" it only because of the merge.
It has been a lot of fun to be there, I saw many guilds come and Go, but everyting comes to an end at last.
So... See you AQ server, it has been a pleasure!
Arcalimon
Friday, 20 May 2011
Technical Notes: RAM usage for 64 bit OS
Hi guys,
wanna share my experience and hopefully it will be usefull for some of you out there.
Tech world is a Jungle and finding a config which suits perfectly with all your needs is not always easy, and most often we can't expect top performances on everything we are running on our machines, being it due to bottle-necks on user end side or for programming failures on the Software side.
The last case is clearly the case of Age of Conan, everyone who plays that game is perfectly aware of it's issues managing a multicore CPU as well as its insane requirements in terms of RAM memory.
Many 64bit OS users with an average ov 4GB of RAM DDR3 may have noticed how the RAM usage (I was using G15 performance screen) can be established pretty much always in a range between 95-98%, which obviously take out all the memory available on a PC (and 99% of the products out on the market are running absolutely fine with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, just to let you know) making you pretty much difficult to do anything.
This leads to some issues in game, which are often masked as lag spikes with really huge pings (around 4.5k ms), I discovered that this is not real lag but it's strictly linked to the RAM usage, there are some posts talking about it on the official forums, but spreading the word it's not a bad thing at all so I will describe the symptoms I had and the really easy solution I found to solve them.
First of all my rig:
Mobo: Asus p7p55d LE
CPU: Intel i5-750 OC 3.2GHZ
RAM: 4GB Kingston DDR3 1333Mhz
GPU: GeForce GTX 570
HD: Maxtor 7600rpm (500gb) and another Maxtor regular rpm 250gb roughly
Cooler: Noctua Tower
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
With this rig, I've always been able to enjoy the game, there were sometimes some mini freezes while loading textures, loading time were average but with huge spikes in terms of time when it comes down to loading heavy zones like Paikang, Chosain or Northern Grasslands.
The most common issues i found were a heavy rubberbanding, average lag on 150-250ms (yellow), npcs loading while I was walking in a zone with consequent freeze on the screen, alt-tab crashing, game crashes.
Although I managed to play the game like this for almost a year at some point I grew tired of this and I started to verify what was my machine doing when a freeze was occurring, so I deactivate my antivirus and any background running application and I noticed to important things:
1) My HD led was always active, like there was a swapping during the read of information;
2) My RAM usage was always at 95%, regardless of any other side activity of the machine;
3) The trend on the RAM usage was always increasing.
I was damn sure though that the issue was on my HD, so I did a deep clean of it, uninstalled obsolete stuff, launched a complete cycle of cleaning for apps and win register with "CC Cleaner", made a great scanning with "AD Aware" and finally made a deep and long (5-6 hours) cycle of defrag with "My Defrag".
After that I launched the game again with 50% of my HD space free and optimized.
The situation was a bit better, but after a couple of hours the problems came back in all their might. At that point it was clear that it was not a HD related issue, I had the suspect but I wanted to be sure.
So I went to my PC shop I bought other 4GB of DDR3 RAM and I installed it on my pc.
Result?
Yesterday I did a full siege in full graphical setting with 4 application running on background without having my fps down 40, without a single lag spike, I can safely alt tab without crashing, my loading time decreased from 3 minutes to pretty much immediately regardless of which zone i'm loading, NPC are all loaded as soon as i'm out of loading screen and my HD can finally rest a bit more without being stressed.
So far fellow players, if you do not mind spending money in a 4GB more of RAM and you like me really want to play AoC having top performance, with 30€ you can solve all your issues installing a new RAM block.
Some side notes: That was my case and those were my signals that there was something not working, if you find that you have similar issues and your rig is similar to mine, and you know for sure your connection cannot be accused of anything, well this may be the solution, I cannot of course guarrantee that you will solve everything with this, but in my opinion it is worth a try.
IMPORTANT: If you are a 32bit OS user, do not buy other RAM! 32 bit OS will accept only 4gb of ram regardless of how many ram you phisically have installed on your machine, so before wasting your money take your time to read through the InternetZ to verify if your PC can sustain this new memory and if you meet the requirements.
Hopefully this will help :)
See ya!
Arcalimon
wanna share my experience and hopefully it will be usefull for some of you out there.
Tech world is a Jungle and finding a config which suits perfectly with all your needs is not always easy, and most often we can't expect top performances on everything we are running on our machines, being it due to bottle-necks on user end side or for programming failures on the Software side.
The last case is clearly the case of Age of Conan, everyone who plays that game is perfectly aware of it's issues managing a multicore CPU as well as its insane requirements in terms of RAM memory.
Many 64bit OS users with an average ov 4GB of RAM DDR3 may have noticed how the RAM usage (I was using G15 performance screen) can be established pretty much always in a range between 95-98%, which obviously take out all the memory available on a PC (and 99% of the products out on the market are running absolutely fine with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, just to let you know) making you pretty much difficult to do anything.
This leads to some issues in game, which are often masked as lag spikes with really huge pings (around 4.5k ms), I discovered that this is not real lag but it's strictly linked to the RAM usage, there are some posts talking about it on the official forums, but spreading the word it's not a bad thing at all so I will describe the symptoms I had and the really easy solution I found to solve them.
First of all my rig:
Mobo: Asus p7p55d LE
CPU: Intel i5-750 OC 3.2GHZ
RAM: 4GB Kingston DDR3 1333Mhz
GPU: GeForce GTX 570
HD: Maxtor 7600rpm (500gb) and another Maxtor regular rpm 250gb roughly
Cooler: Noctua Tower
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
With this rig, I've always been able to enjoy the game, there were sometimes some mini freezes while loading textures, loading time were average but with huge spikes in terms of time when it comes down to loading heavy zones like Paikang, Chosain or Northern Grasslands.
The most common issues i found were a heavy rubberbanding, average lag on 150-250ms (yellow), npcs loading while I was walking in a zone with consequent freeze on the screen, alt-tab crashing, game crashes.
Although I managed to play the game like this for almost a year at some point I grew tired of this and I started to verify what was my machine doing when a freeze was occurring, so I deactivate my antivirus and any background running application and I noticed to important things:
1) My HD led was always active, like there was a swapping during the read of information;
2) My RAM usage was always at 95%, regardless of any other side activity of the machine;
3) The trend on the RAM usage was always increasing.
I was damn sure though that the issue was on my HD, so I did a deep clean of it, uninstalled obsolete stuff, launched a complete cycle of cleaning for apps and win register with "CC Cleaner", made a great scanning with "AD Aware" and finally made a deep and long (5-6 hours) cycle of defrag with "My Defrag".
After that I launched the game again with 50% of my HD space free and optimized.
The situation was a bit better, but after a couple of hours the problems came back in all their might. At that point it was clear that it was not a HD related issue, I had the suspect but I wanted to be sure.
So I went to my PC shop I bought other 4GB of DDR3 RAM and I installed it on my pc.
Result?
Yesterday I did a full siege in full graphical setting with 4 application running on background without having my fps down 40, without a single lag spike, I can safely alt tab without crashing, my loading time decreased from 3 minutes to pretty much immediately regardless of which zone i'm loading, NPC are all loaded as soon as i'm out of loading screen and my HD can finally rest a bit more without being stressed.
So far fellow players, if you do not mind spending money in a 4GB more of RAM and you like me really want to play AoC having top performance, with 30€ you can solve all your issues installing a new RAM block.
Some side notes: That was my case and those were my signals that there was something not working, if you find that you have similar issues and your rig is similar to mine, and you know for sure your connection cannot be accused of anything, well this may be the solution, I cannot of course guarrantee that you will solve everything with this, but in my opinion it is worth a try.
IMPORTANT: If you are a 32bit OS user, do not buy other RAM! 32 bit OS will accept only 4gb of ram regardless of how many ram you phisically have installed on your machine, so before wasting your money take your time to read through the InternetZ to verify if your PC can sustain this new memory and if you meet the requirements.
Hopefully this will help :)
See ya!
Arcalimon
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Herald of Xotli: PvP after the 2.2 patch
Greetings everyone.
I've been slacking a bit on this blog lately (Slith will enjoy this statement) essentially because I wanted to test out the PvE side of life with my alternate toons and to see how much smoother was the faction progression.
But I've also invested some time in PvP with my HoX trying to draw a line and compare how much the gameplay on the overall changed, and for good from my point of view.
I've been in some minigames mostly Hallowed Vaults and Lost Temple with my beloved HoX and I have to admit I had a lot of fun. Yesterday I ended up in a minigame full of rogues (melee ones) and I was already feeling the pain, my last memory of minigames with this setup was limited to a Stun - Dead - Ress behaviour without any real chance to do something concrete, beside rare exceptions when I managed to found a small hole to unleash the flames of Xotli.
It was the heaven of the CC-lock and of the huge damage spikes from sins, it was really hard for an HoX to survive enough to call it fun regardless of the deaths, in fact spending 10 minutes just clicking on the "Resurrect" button can hardly be defined as fun or challengin, it's rather frustrating and annoying.
Back on the trial, I was so expecting another devastating experience, but I came out from that mini with a big surprise. I've been able to move, without being thrown all over the place and raped by the first shade that approached me, mostly due to the new CC mechanics, I was able to move around and I was able to time correctly my HFB to interrupt dangerous moves from my enemies which could have been the cause of my death.
Admittedly after a month of non-pvp activity my result was not so shining, but again I think that once I'll remove some rust from my wheels it will be even more fun.
You know, for the first time in a minigame against sins and barbarians I've been able not only to play, but also to be a real support for my group, carrying the flag, protecting the healer (they don't need it so often and being dead does not help when they really need) or simply slowing down those who were chasing at our flag carrier.
Let me be clear, if caught in the wrong place and affected by a CC the HoX will still die in pain, and it is still most susceptible to it than most other classes, but the situation really changed and even though I still believe the HoX suffers from a weaker base than others in the game, its status has been improved indirectly by the new CC mechanics and received a small direct boost from the changes at HFB.
I'm sticking around with a Poss/Gen build still which is highly reccomended for a "pew-pew" tactic, but I'm slowly building the idea to develope a new kind of hybrid build removing some points from the general to add them in the Avatar Tree.
It's all under test though I don't expect it to work properly nor to convince me to switch to it anytime soon :)
Generally speaking about AoC apparently the new zones that will be released in game are Turan and another Arashadir-something (can't recall the exact name), rumors confirmed by the "Search for Zone" feature in game which shows Turan in the list, also Silirrion said on Twitter that we should expect something on the level of announcement in this week or next week when the 3 years of AoC Birthday will fall (a lot of speculation about the date though so I'm officially confused).
Also there will be soon enough new content to test on the Test Live server as well as the announced set up of the Blood&Glory ruleset which should be released during the summer.
Busy times are ahead indeed, let's just see what the future will bring :)
Stay tuned!
Arcalimon
I've been slacking a bit on this blog lately (Slith will enjoy this statement) essentially because I wanted to test out the PvE side of life with my alternate toons and to see how much smoother was the faction progression.
But I've also invested some time in PvP with my HoX trying to draw a line and compare how much the gameplay on the overall changed, and for good from my point of view.
I've been in some minigames mostly Hallowed Vaults and Lost Temple with my beloved HoX and I have to admit I had a lot of fun. Yesterday I ended up in a minigame full of rogues (melee ones) and I was already feeling the pain, my last memory of minigames with this setup was limited to a Stun - Dead - Ress behaviour without any real chance to do something concrete, beside rare exceptions when I managed to found a small hole to unleash the flames of Xotli.
It was the heaven of the CC-lock and of the huge damage spikes from sins, it was really hard for an HoX to survive enough to call it fun regardless of the deaths, in fact spending 10 minutes just clicking on the "Resurrect" button can hardly be defined as fun or challengin, it's rather frustrating and annoying.
Back on the trial, I was so expecting another devastating experience, but I came out from that mini with a big surprise. I've been able to move, without being thrown all over the place and raped by the first shade that approached me, mostly due to the new CC mechanics, I was able to move around and I was able to time correctly my HFB to interrupt dangerous moves from my enemies which could have been the cause of my death.
Admittedly after a month of non-pvp activity my result was not so shining, but again I think that once I'll remove some rust from my wheels it will be even more fun.
You know, for the first time in a minigame against sins and barbarians I've been able not only to play, but also to be a real support for my group, carrying the flag, protecting the healer (they don't need it so often and being dead does not help when they really need) or simply slowing down those who were chasing at our flag carrier.
Let me be clear, if caught in the wrong place and affected by a CC the HoX will still die in pain, and it is still most susceptible to it than most other classes, but the situation really changed and even though I still believe the HoX suffers from a weaker base than others in the game, its status has been improved indirectly by the new CC mechanics and received a small direct boost from the changes at HFB.
I'm sticking around with a Poss/Gen build still which is highly reccomended for a "pew-pew" tactic, but I'm slowly building the idea to develope a new kind of hybrid build removing some points from the general to add them in the Avatar Tree.
It's all under test though I don't expect it to work properly nor to convince me to switch to it anytime soon :)
Generally speaking about AoC apparently the new zones that will be released in game are Turan and another Arashadir-something (can't recall the exact name), rumors confirmed by the "Search for Zone" feature in game which shows Turan in the list, also Silirrion said on Twitter that we should expect something on the level of announcement in this week or next week when the 3 years of AoC Birthday will fall (a lot of speculation about the date though so I'm officially confused).
Also there will be soon enough new content to test on the Test Live server as well as the announced set up of the Blood&Glory ruleset which should be released during the summer.
Busy times are ahead indeed, let's just see what the future will bring :)
Stay tuned!
Arcalimon
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)