Funcom censoring

Yesterday i started a topic on the official forums about zerging on this server, which was filled with (constructive) criticism towards Anatolian Hun Empire and The Empire (since i am biased). This topic was removed without any notification, which i think is outrageous! What happened to freedom of speech?

Oh yea, the blog will not be updated for a week or so now, as im going on vacation to Austria i the next week.

If you can't win, do like Argonauts and HUN!

Ever since the patch PvP has become much more versitile and fun. Some people have moved from Keshetta to Thunder River and Border Kingdoms which makes for way better PvP, ie larger areas to move about in.

The Keshetta drama remains the same though, and im always amazed on how fucking worthless Argonauts and Anatolian Hun Empire are at PvP. Last night, about 20 Argo/HUN's camped 5 Nova's on the resspad. This was after the 5 man Nova team obliterated the 10 man Argo/HUN team who fought eachother, prior to the moment they realized how much they sucked so they doubled in size (and decreased even more in their PvP-skills). So there they were camping us at the resspad, and as soon as we changed instance, they followed.

Is this FUN PvP??? I cannot for the love of god understand WHY people are such cowards, unable to face people in true PvP, but has to resort to resskilling and guardhugging (which is very common in Argo/HUN).

Necromancers remains the same...

...more or less, but as other classes has gotten a major boost (conqs are damn good now) the balance is better.

After PvP-ing as a necro for a few hours i realized:

- Spellweaving from start doesn't matter much.
- The LoS check of GoD doesnt matter in 1 vs 1, and hardly in minigames either (on actual results)

However, rumours are that all the dot-damage has been lowered. Yet, it remains only a rumour.

Necromancers are fixed

Today the new patch was implemented (or still is), where necros supposedly are fixed:

"Necromancers should no longer automatically receive the Spellweaving buff window upon entering Spellweaving state. Necromancers now have the same chance to receive the Spellweaving buff window as all other Spellweaving classes."

This means that we no longer can get Death God (100% crit chance) instantly, as it has been corrected. Even though this is a correction of faulty programming, it will have a major impact on the necro-PvP.

I would guess that GoD now also has a LoS-check, even though it wasn't in the patchnotes.

All in all, this will make necros more fun and challenging to play, cause let's be honest - necromancer is/was the AoC ezmode class.

S C U M, not SCUM

When Funcom banned the word "scum" out of the AoC dictionary, something seemed to happen to the guild. From being the most fearless and original, quirky (i could go on and on) guild on the server, who completly owned everyone in PvP, they have become a guild like everyone else. They're PvP-skills are mediocre, and the "edge" which they had over all other guilds is long gone.

This, of course, has mostly to do with the fact that other guilds has become better, and S C U M has stopped evolving.

We need more drama on this server! Who will take S C U M:s place?

People are returning!

Seems like alot of people are returning to AoC! Maybe it's because Darkfall sucks hairy man-ass or maybe it's because Funcom are shaping this game up (slow and steady).

It was fun to see Aziraal running about, and even funnier to see that Deranja is back, which of course opens up a whole new scene of drama :).

BRC Wing 3 open on Test Live!

Finally!

Funcom has opened up BRC wing 3 on Test Live, and not a day too early either... This is of course great news for any player interested in the relativly small amount of end-game content AoC has to offer.

However, shouldn't they have fixed Wing 2 before they opened up Wing 3? There are still several bugs in Wing 2 that needs to be fixed, as the dungeon crawl is a major timesink for many guilds due to this bugs (Ahazu-Zagam specificly). And it also seems you need items from the 2 end-bosses in each wing, Sabazios and Chatha. Last i heard Chatha was bugged and pretty hard to kill... But i might be wrong about this.

Anyway, knowing Funcom, we probably wont see Wing 3 on the live servers before the summer...

A thing i ponder about though is; what will the loot be like in Wing 3?

Nice PvP event in Noble District

With the intention of trying out some new PvP-grounds, NK challenged Sanguis Attexo and Condemned yesterday, in an RP event in Noble District.

RP-wise, NK was holding Conan prisoner in his castle. SA/Condemned played Royalists witht he objective to free him.

We had some really nice fights on the Conan bridge, which was a nice change from the Keshetta chaos. No guards, no place to hide!

Oh yeah, SA/Condemned won over NK 4 out of 4 times. We were lagging, people were wrongly specced, a few people had there period, and excuses are like assholes, everyone has one, mostly full of crap.

Before the fight


NK mocking the royalists


Amazing syncronized bow!


Riding together out of Noble District

Class imbalance and chaos theory

Everyone who has played this game more than one week knows that a major problem is the class imbalance, as it mainly ruins PvP.

Balancing the classes is the greatest challenge for any MMORPG, and usually it takes years before perfection is reached (im not a fanboi of Funcom, bear with me). For example, a class in WAR was so overpowered in the beta (i forgot witch one, Chaos Knight?) that they simply removed it instead of balancing it out.

Class balance is much like chaos theory, as if you change one small coefficient for one class, it usually impacts the entire game (as chaos theory states that picking up a flower on one side of the world, could mean the end of a species on the other side of the world. Like the movie Butterfly Effect).
Lets say for instance, that FC would nerf Necromancers frost-damage, from 100% to 80%. That would affect all classes differently, as some classes has cold-resist buffs and so on. FC would then have to tweak the cold reststance of some classes, while some classes would have their cold-resistance reduced. This would of course cause a ton of other problems that will affect even more classes and the wheel imbalance is in motion.

Let's take WoW for example. In the dawn of the WoW-era, class imbalancing was of course a problem. But as WoW managed to have their playerbase more or less intact during this development period (whioch of course had much to do with that fact that there wasn't many MMO's around when WoW started up), they managed to pull it off well and today it's the worlds largest MMO/computer game.

So to sum it up, class balancing is indeed complicated, but once perfected it's a major success-factor for a MMORPG.

The Conan image capture contest!

Below are five images from the Conan-movies. Write your best caption for every image in 1-2 sentences , either as a dialauge or thoughts of Conan himself. Example:


You told me this I-Phone supported 3-G!

In your comment, you will write one caption for each picture (1-5). You will also provide your ingame name.


The winner gets 5 gold from me. The contest ends in the middle of february, and i will decide who wins! Creativity, wackyness and some connection to the Aquilonian playerbase are major pluses!

Number 1:

Lady: I in peed in that. Conan: Kinky - Tsuniko
"Indeed, milady, yet the subjectivity of emotional prejudices cannot in itself be deemed..." - Quadronus/Istaira

Number 2:

Stupid motherfucking bear shamans - Tsuniko
Proposed new emote: Happy cimmerian. - Quadronus/Istaira

Number 3

When conan tried to get in touch with his feminine side - Tsuniko
Janet! Doctor Scott! Janet! Brad! Rocky! Ugh! - Quadronus/Istaira

Number 4

Not the face! *chomp* - Tsuniko
Living food diet, cimmerian style - Quadronus/Istaira

Number 5

"NOBODY TOUCHES MY LOINCLOTH AND LIVES" - Tsuniko
This is my sword. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My sword is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Also, seems to be made out of latex. - Quadronus/Istaira

WARZONE!

Wow, i haven't been online for a few weeks, and when i finally get to log on (in Keshetta of course) i see an seemingly endless amount of people fighting eachother. There we bodies everywhere, and one tombstone withing every meter. Necros were Grip-of-Deathing, Barbarians ran around in a bloodcrazed frenzy stunkilling everything in their way, the bear shamen seemed invunerable, the guardians fought side by side with assassins and the DT:s sat watching everything, wondering how their class became so neglected.

A whole new concept of lag introduced itself; cast a spell - lagfreeze - bam you're dead. I got a pretty good computer, and i have never experienced this before. I FEAR the DX10 patch, will put a dent in my wallet if i want to keep this game running.

Other than that, it's all the same. SCUM is still SCUM (even though they spelled it out like S C U M now with spaces, cool!) and the Empire are still the Empire (however now recogniceble, as all Empire guilds have the "Empire" tag next to their guildname.