Nadril

Blue oyster Cult's Godzilla. Texting tone is just a beep.

I want to say Darkfall, but I really think it will be vaporware :(. In all honesty if WAR bombs (which I doubt it will) I think I'll end up going back to Lineage II before anything. e: I posted my Age of Conan review in the offical forums for kicks, because I got like 5 days time left ;p

[hide=]The Conan license has so much potential. A bloody, violent world in which the law doesn't have much of a say on anything. It is the perfect setting for an open ended PvP MMO. However Funcom has destroyed any chances of this. The Combat system is one of the large features in which most fanbois seem to say is the best feature of the game, but it is horrible flawed. For one the current system is slow and clunky for melee classes. It takes upwards of 7-8 seconds to get off top combos for most melee classes, in which time a trash mob is almost dead or a player has managed to crowd control you. The combat system, admittedly, has some great novelty value when you first start off playing and it seems cool to be more of a part of the world. However it wears off fast, and in it's current state can't really be reworked well without a complete overhaul of the system. Casting on the other hand is a standard affair aside from Spellweaving, which is all but a pointless skill that may have a use in one or two raid encounters in which you can be stationary. Healing is done in such a way that there is a very real cap on how much a player can get healed, which means that the game can not scale without an overhaul of the way healers can heal. While the pure HoT system is a very novel idea in practice it doesn't work and actually makes healing easier than most other games. Then you throw in severe item imbalances. How Funcom has allowed gems into the game (still) that allow even a guardian to 1 shot is beyond me. Currently the games PvP involves which player can get their crowd control or attack off first, hardly exciting. Graphically the game looks good, when it works. Even on a powerful rig however textures are constantly missing or half there and even after a couple of loading screens the game ends up looking more like Everquest I then it does a brand new game. The armor sets are very bland and uninspiring for the most part and, while the PvP patch may fix this, most armor in the game is still horrible. The game's content is obviously the main concern. 1-20 is a fairly solid game, although it does lure the players into a false sense of importance in the world through your single player quests on the island. 20-40, on the other hand, is when the game starts to show its flaws. Now to a new player 20-40 isn't bad because, as I stated before, the novelty of the combat system is still there. It still seems exciting, new and fun. However for a player returning to this content you really start to notice how tedious it is. The 20-40 content isn't as bad however due to Funcom trying to make it better first, as to hopefully keep casuals in the game a little longer instead of responding to the core fan base. 40-60 is where the game shines it's true colors. Players are resorted to playing through very little content and have to fill the gap with boring villa repeatable quests or grinding. It's more of the same. The PvP as well in most of these zones is uninspiring, except for Atzal's in which group PvP can be a nice change of pace. 60-80 you are resorted to very few quests, and most of your time is spent looking for a grind group for small area's in which you will mind numbingly AoE in. Unlike other 'grind game's Age of Conan's grind for 60-80 consists of 3 spots, wagon, fort and DM. On a PvE server because of the low instance counts players will spend most of their time in shouting matches, while on PvP servers teams will take turns seeing how well they can gank after a large pull. In which case you do manage to get a solid group be prepared to do something else more entertaining, however. At 80 players can do a few things. For one, they can farm resources. Of course the downside to this is that most crafting professions are completely useless except for armorcrafting and (to a lesser extent) weaponsmithing. You can help build a city but the only use of them currently is to let crafters build next tier materials. That doesn't matter, however, because a level 70 or 75 crafted set will do just fine as the only stats that matter are +dmg gems. Players can also get involved in PvP, which is either waiting hours for a minigame or trying to PvP in Khesh. Khesh PvP is esentially just a larger version of spawn camping, as that is what most of the PvP falls down into. Even then the only place to PvP really is Khesh, unless you want to simply gank lowbies. Finally you can raid! However Funcom doesn't mention to tell you that most raiding content is bugged, and the content that is there and working is so easy it makes World of Warcraft kara raiding look like complex physics. Bosses have no real dynamics other then "do damage until it dies" and are bland. Of course coupled with crippling memory leak issues and crashes the largest challenge is having all of the people in your raid's game not **** up at an important time. Of course there is the option of an alt, except for that you have to go through all of the games content to level -- unlike other games in which you can usually skip some quests here and there and just do them on an alt. Stability is an obvious issue which I don't think I need to go into here. While there may be very few players out there somehow running the game without much problem the bulk majority of us (even on powerful computers that can run anything else) have numerous problems. From memory leaks, textures missing, gray map bug and crippling server lag the game becomes downright unplayable at times. It was commonly heard in my guilds vent while playing "brb need to restart game crashed". This is unacceptable in an MMO these days. My biggest problem with Age of Conan, however, is the fact that it just lacks even any resemblance of polish and feels more like an alpha of a game then a retail product. Skill descriptions are either misleading or simply don't state anything important at all. Numerous feats over all classes don't work at all, and haven't worked for over 3 months since release. Content that should have been tested hasn't been tested at all. City siege battles are laggy and downright unfun, not to mention incredibly buggy. There is so many missing features in the game, such as the PvP levels, drunken brawling, DX10, actual content higher up, ect. The game looks like it took a year to make, not 5. Yes the graphical engine is nice and all (if the art team can get out better gear) but the actual content behind it is something one would expect in a small expansion pack -- not a full fledged game! But, what about the future you say? Well the PvP patch is "on the horizon" (as is everything else... ahem :/) and some think it'll bring life back into the game. However the patch is flawed for several reasons. From a post on massively.com by me a while ago: "The problem with the "PvP patch" and their fugative system is this: The risk versus reward is not balanced. Look at any other game that users a similar system. In Lineage II players will flag when they kill someone, but when another player dies they have a small chance to drop an item but also lose a substantial amount of XP. The system of flagging in that game is needed to prevent ganking on a mass level, thus an equal risk versus reward. In Ultima Online when players died they would drop all they owned. Because of this they NEEDED to make players flag or else high levels could just farm lowbies without much fear. Again it was very much an equal risk vs a reward, if you went red you were at risk but also could just kill whatever you wanted (well, try). However Age of Conan is different. In it the only thing you will lose when you die is a small amount of PvP experience and perhaps a little time lost having to run back. The problem is that the game is not made for this kind of system for numerous reasons: 1) Risk vs reward. People have no real reason to even attempt murdering someone except for saying "hey, I'm red". You get the same PvP XP and the player loses nothing special. 2) Class balance. This is a horrible problem, due to the fact that so many classes can (and will) 1 shot others. The game these days is so based off of who gets the first hit that there will no doubt being players either forced to wait, and get hit first, or risk being a murderer. Now yes if you fight those your level (and an entire 2 bellow you :/) then it won't be a problem, but lets be honest here: A person TEN levels lower can still be a threat if they are a high DPS class and you are squishy. 3) Murderers have no where to go. There is no "thieves den" and there is no castles they can go to to stock up on supplies. Cities in the game are pretty useless, but even so it'll be difficult getting to them with guards attacking you on sight. These are the main three reasons why, but honestly the main reason is just the risk vs reward. Carebears can shout all they want that the system is "fair" and that people who PvP should be punishied. However players should only get punished in a game if they have SET BACK THE OTHER PLAYER severly. It's like arresting a guy for making someone wait a couple of more minutes in line because he was fumbling with change -- yeah, it's annoying but it isn't hurting you." The other problems is that when they patch they break more than they fix. Numerous exploits have been thrown into the game because of poor testing and then they stay bugged until a future patch date (instead of a hotfix). The extra content sounds nice and all too, but in all honesty a lot of the problems in Age of Conan are with the base game and not the lack of it.[/hide] "New" Age of Conan review.

I should do that for Age of Conan, except it would be half of a bull poo. I'm only adding games I've had experience in or others have. WAR was the exception just because it is almost in open beta (which I'll be in).

Judas Priest's Screaming for Vengeance album. Trying to listen to more full albums other then songs ;D.

Heloween's Walls of Jericho album.

First 3 BT and first 4 MH a monkey could do >_>. (well 25 monkeys)

System Shock 2, a better game that Bioshock got inspiration from.

It says transpot because I want it too :D. Seriously though it isn't a typo, I just thought it sounded cooler. Meh it still fits with the theme. :)

Umm... looks like an abstract to be. What am I missing? :wall: It's a high way, and the thing on the left is a car. It is very abstract, yeah, but you can still tell just fine.

yay, I actually managed to complete something for here.

Therion- The way :lol: And [bleep], Beyond Sanctorium is such an incredible album period.

The way is such an awesome song. :thumbsup:

How can a band die if every song sounds the same anyways? So what if the only song a person can name is TTFAF, it sounds the same as the rest of them so it doesn't matter.

Well, *ahem*, you don't have to buy photoshop :P. There are a lot of GIMP tutorials out there. Some people in the Gallery use it too, including Thruitall.

I just tried and it seems like that is true.

I don't mind some power metal if you just want something cheesy and kinda fun to listen to. Although some are just terrible. Dark Moor is good; they're about the only power metal band that I can get my head around now, along with some 80s speed metal. I'd rather just listen to Iron Maiden. (I'm pretty impressed with Somewhere in Time) I think Helloween and Blind Guardian are pretty fun to listen to. Although, then again, both of them really have some solid older material. I also do enjoy Blind Guardians later (power metal) albums unlike some it seems. :P Stuff like Hammerfall though... man, that [cabbage] is too cheesy.

Holy [cabbage], someone else is listening to Jesu here? :thumbsup: One of my favorite bands. I've had that EP for some time but I only got around to listening to it a couple of days ago. I'm very impressed. Yeah it's a great EP, not filler like some bands. Jesu- Wolves Who are they Are they a threat to our beliefs So we descend upon them Just like vengeful wolves Bitter daylight Hangs above us with the rain What is this that tells you I am right or wrong I'm not saying...

I don't mind some power metal if you just want something cheesy and kinda fun to listen to. Although some are just terrible.

Holy [cabbage], someone else is listening to Jesu here? :thumbsup: One of my favorite bands. Jesu- Star This song really sounds like it's just ironic, really up beat but you can just tell they don't actually mean it by the lyrics. If I could just ignore it... If I could just forget it... If I could just ignore it; Like you do, like you. If I could just forget it; Like you do, like you. You're gonna' be star. All the dreams you are. You're gonna' go so far; Like you do, like you. It won't be so hard; Not for you, not you. It won't be so hard; Not for you, not you. (x8) you..you...you...you...you...

Heh, we're looking to have a pretty solid group so far so additions would be great. In all honesty when most of us are on we'll probably just level through RvR. A guild though... man. I can't think of [cabbage] :D.

4chan is dumb. That would have been the point. :)

Vector Uses mathematic principles to create curves and lines which can be coloured etc. Is infinitely scalable, you can zoom in 6000% with no quality loss. Bitmap programs would just show the pixels it consists of. From the Gallery Dictionary. Just throwing in but vectors are impossible to create in photoshop, you need to use a program like Illustrator.

So, I'm trying to think up of a guild name for WAR. Unlike AoC since the end game is all about RvR we can focus as a small core guild just fine. We may join an alliance but I want us to be known. I'm just having trouble with a good name. Obviously I'm not going to do our joke guild name (which would have something to do with R Kelly.) but I don't want it to be some cheesy [cabbage] like [mayhem]. Any ideas? It's going to be destruction. Oh, and we'll be on an "Open rvr" realm as well. (PvP everywhere, although people in other tiers can't gank those in lower tiers). And as far as TIF people go I wouldn't mind inviting people but I just want to say that we're pretty hardcore PvPers. Not that we don't play a lot, just that we have a really high standard for those we PvP with. :thumbup:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/arc ... es_and.php Posted by Camille Dodero at 2:28 AM, August 11, 2008 :lol: