What games I've been playing

Lately I've been feeling really bored out of Everquest 2. The lack of new and meaningfull content, the Prosiebensat stuff, the current state of the game, is making me feel rather ill towards the game.

So what have i decided to try? Well, as most noticed, I've played a lot of MMO's, so i decided to grab my old Age of Conan account, since Funcom was giving away a free month gameplay. I was a bit sceptical, because i only knew the game for like when it first got released, and my memories weren't that great. Not that i had anything bad against the game (even it was bugged like hell), but i didn't got the biggest impressions of it. But more important, was the fact that i had never checked the expansion, Rise of the Godslayer. Well now that I've played it for like 2 weeks, into my free month, i can say I'm really suprised and enjoying it.

First and foremost, for a new and badly geared player as I am on it, the Khitai zones (from the expansion) are proving to be extremely hard and challenging. Then of course, new places to explore, always fun to me. And finally, the AA (Alternate Achievements) system, which is interesting enough but i assume it will get a bit grindy. Well most of the expansion appears to be around grinding AAs and factions, but overall seems well done.

The faction system is composed of several factions, and each 2 factions, one opposes the other. So depending on your class, one has to choose which will bring more benefits to his/her character (mostly gear wise decisions). There are several topics discussing this and also there is this very interesting site, that provides all the info about gear from every faction in game, Aoc>TV.

For the AAs, let me post a picture of it (click to enlarge the image):

On this image, we can see on top, Mastery Expertise and Prowess. This are the 3 types of AAs you can get while playing the game. I know that Mastery comes from questing and killing mobs, i think Epxertise comes mostly from doing dungeons (bosses drop some expertise potions) and Prowess is PVP related. Then if we look closely, you will see the image is split in 3 lines. Blue, red and white (or gray). Blue are AAs equal to every character. Red represents AAs for the archetype (fighter, scout, mage, priest). And the last one is class related. Also on the middle column, the single column, the last 3 AAs from bot to top, represents specific archtype or class skills. Those on the Archtype are very important if you want to do HMs in Khitai zones, so usually those are the first to get. The trick is every AA can also take time to get (much like Eve, training skills), and some can go up to 700 and something hours to be trained. Of course you can get the AAs by getting experience throughout playing, but for instance, those important AAs require 15 Mastery points and 15 Expertise points, and let me tell you, it takes a long time to get it. So if i were you, i would start training those AAs in the middle which usually are the most important. Another important thing is the longer you train a AA the less Mastery/Expertise/Prowess points it requires, so lets say as example, you have trained one of those middle skills for like 200 hours already, so instead of requiring 15 Mastery/Expertise points, it should require around 10 each. So you can find the balance on it, if needed. Another thing, there is no cap on AAs, so eventually the objective is to open all the tree. But it will take long... Trust me. Well i've tried to explain the system, even if not that well explained... hehe

As i said before, the expansion is proving challenging and hard, something that's not normal nowadays. And from what I've heard things have been somewhat nerfed (mostly factions easier to get, and gear cheaper). And that's what I'm starting to feel about most mmo games. Everything is getting way easy to get, and the sense of achieving is being lost to the sense of fast satisfaction. That's why I'm enjoying AoC. It's putting a fight to me, a challenge.

There are however downsides to this game. First and foremost, i need to get 8 GB ram on my pc because sometimes the game keeps accessing my hard drive and it gets somewhat unplayable. Switching zones is also long... Also it's very irritating to get your character stuck on every small detail on game. And finally, crafting system is just horrible, but the good news is that they are revamping. I'm not gonna bother talking about it, it's bad now! And f2p system, is not good, things are really expensive, and the f2p basically are entitled to a big trial till 80, because they can't access Khitai zones. Oh and by the way, game consumes around 30 GB hard drive....

But for the time being, I'm enjoying the game, found myself a nice guild that is helping me exploring the game, we done a few HMs and basically having good fun. If i got any of interested by now, i would recomend giving it a go, it's free and you can always check the game (and i didn't even mention the combat system, which is really great fun for melee classes - should write about that). See you in "a" game!