Age of Conan - First Impressions

Woo!! A new MMO just came out and it's supposed to be a "wow killer". well in any case nobody is gonna be killing wow with a game that requires such phat system specs. Just to install the game u need 27gb of free space and at least a 8 series Nvidia or ATI equivelent video card to run the game at a decent frame rate without having to dull it down to a plasticy uglyness.

System specs aside the game looks freakin fantastic on my rig running a 8800gtx. The character models and world textures are very detailed. Theres an amazingly far view distance and even mountains and giant temples in the distance show detailed bump mapping of the structures.

When creating your character, AoC boasts a large a diverse choice of character cusomization where u can design you characters face and body in a similar way to that available in the Sims 2. Along with this you are able to add various different types of body markings and facial features.

Moving on to the meat and potatoes of the game, AoC runs a very unique combat system which i find to be alot more fun and more interactive than that of wow, yet at the same time less complex and a little more mindless. I say this because the system works by the use of combo moves where in order to execute an ability the player must attack in a series of directions ( left, middle or right) in a particular sequence, after the sequence of attacks is complete the character will perform the ability. This new combat system is enjoyable to play with and makes grinding mobs a much more fun experiance. However i cant see this evolving into very many competitive pvp situations, simply because it really does become a spamfest of of combo abilities. Maybe it's due to my class choice but when i encounter another player we jsut stand facing each other chaining combo abilities untill one of us die. In wow pvp, positioning, mana/rage/energy efficiency and control seems to become a much larger factor in combat than it does in AoC. However having said this i have only reached level 24 in AoC while i've played wow for 3 years, i plan on playing AoC to 80 before passing solid judgment on its combat system.

Another issue that really gets me with the game is that the world is not all in one piece. What i mean is, In wow you can run from ashenvale to the barrens then right through the barrens and take an elevator down to thousand needles. If you wanted to you could run from the top end of the eastern kingdoms all the way down to the very bottom, it would take you forever but as you make that run you really feel like theres a world that exists and lives around you and your just a small beinging among many other beings inside the same world. Even to cross continents your character is required get on a boat inorder to travel over seas. It mimics real life and puts a twist on it to make it fun and create a feeling of wonder and thats a feature in an MMO that makes the genre so appealing to me. Unfortunately in AoC the entire world is instanced or zoned into different segments of areas, in order to get to another area you needed to talk to an NPC which would teleport you to the new location. This is all very convenient but it really seems to take the life out of the world. All of a sudden it feels like your just playing a game rather being part of an entirely new world. It's hard to describe but heres a diagram to help you understand my reasoning:



Other than these few things the games launch has been very smooth and i personally have not encounter any game breaking bugs. I've been playing wow for the past 3 years and spending time in Hyboria has has been very refreshing. The innovative combat system makes grinding fun and the games graphics make it a pleasure to sit back and watch my assassin tear out a guys throat. However I still can't see Age of Conan as a real wow killer, but its still has a long way to go we'll just have to wait and see....

E-Peen and You

Why do you really play wow? and what keeps you playing the game for so long?

As I've said before, playing the game in its intended way usually means doing something over and over again in a very repetitive and unenjoyable manner. So why do you play it? what are the rewards from all your hard work and what are you working so hard for?

I've come to understand that the drive to keep going and the apparent "Addiction" to wow comes from this one thing....




E-PEEN!!



Yes, its all about the e-peen. Imagine a wow that was single player, where your guild mates and arena partners were all just NPC's and your opponents in the arena were just computer generated scripted battles. It's still difficult to get your rating to 2100 and its still hard to get Illidan down in BT. All the rewards are the same in the game and you can still own lesser geared characters. My suspicion is that nobody would play this crappy game! cos wtf is the point of wasting all your life on your character and not even be able to brag about it right?!!

The entire game is pretty much based upon being better than the guy standing next to you, you farm those primals for weeks so that you can be better geared than you were before and the grind continues until the end of your days because blizzard keeps putting out more and more stuff for everyone to keep chasing. And if you ever stop chasing! then what! ZOMG!! The dude next to you is gonna be better geared than you in a week and your gonna lose to him in the next duel!! and therefore his E-PEEN is gonna be bigger than yours!

So keep chasing that carrot fellas! you don't want to stunt your e-peens.....

The Grind

Item	Honor Required
Vindicators Ring	15300
Veterans Ring	11934
Vindicators Neck	15300
PVP Trinket	16983
Heavy Cloak	7548
Vindicators Bindings	11794
Vindicators Belt	17850
Vindicators Boots	17850
Gladiator Gloves	16500
Gladiator Shoulders	11250
Gladiator Pants	14500
Gladiator Helm	14500
Gladiator Chest	14500
Total (No weapon/2nd trinket)	185809
Currently que times for Alterac Valley on BG9 are at an average wait time for 1hour and 15mins so only Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm are concidered.
Pugging these BG the average game time for these is approximatley 15 - 20mins long, for further calculations I will assume each game lasts only 15mins and for a win you would get about 167 honor.
If we assume that we will win every game we play and that they last only 15mins each then these are the results we would get.
Number of Winning Games	1112.628743
Total BG Time
Mins	16689.43114
Hours	278.1571856
Days	11.58988273
So if you didn’t eat or sleep and there was zero time in between que's then it will only take you 11 and a half days to get all the honor you need, well that’s not actualy true.. Because you will still need to grind up and extra 27,000 more honor for a Season 1 arena weapon and if you want a trinket in your 2nd trinket slot you will still need another 30,000 more honor for the battlemasters trinket. Further more your still only going to be running around in SEASON 1 gear so after all this you will be able to compete in the arenas but still at an unequal level to everyone else. It would seem the only way to play at an even level would be to save your points up this season and maybe you can compete on even ground next season... So enjoy your grinding or go and delete WoW.

What's up with all those greenies??

Why is it that people care so much for the environment? Setting aside theories that predict the end of the world (ie global warming and climate change) what is it about the trees and animals that people care so much about? Whenever some big entrepreneur decides that he wants to build a casino in the middle of the forest or a resort on the coast there is more often than not an uproar of people that protest its development. But really, what do these people lose by the development of a resort in a remote location far away from where they live? If species X goes extinct how does this effect your life and your standard of living?

I ask this because in all honesty i AM one of these annoying greenies, but i don't know why?! No, im not just a greenie because the adds on tv told me that i should be and no i don't like the animals just because they can be all cute and cuddly, but when i hear about the affect on environment due to some kind of anthropogenic effect i still feel that it isn't right. When i hear that an animal might be going extinct i feel like the world has lost something. Why?? i mean it dosen't really change anything, if it helps us to advance as a race then is it a good thing? Aren't the greenies standing in the way of human progression?

All i know, is that every time i learn about the life that exists in our world i am always amazed by it and that i have a strong feeling that killing everything on it probably isn't a great idea. I mean if we did just look at everything in black an white then i would expect the world to be a pretty boring place and we all may as well just be robots.

What the cool kids do

So i went out last Wednesday to a night club called the leederville , now clubbing isn't really my thing but i went along with it cos i was bored at home. Anyhow we rocked up there and met up with a few of my friends mates but really we din know each other too well so after a few simple and shallow conversations we left and din see them again for the rest of the night. After having a look around and finding a good spot to just chill i looked at the all people around me and at the risk of sounding like a jackass, i would now like to talk about what i think these people are really doing here...

Now i'm just an average 21 year old male living in the metro area of Perth, W.A, The only thing that might be different about me to the people i saw around me that night is that i play WOW and im happy to tell anyone about it. The majority of the guys at the club, go to the club in the hope that some sexy babe will walk up to him and tell him she wants to go home with him. I don't have to tell you that this never happens so most of the time the guy is just standing around trying to look cool with his drink in his hand and pretending that hes having the time of his life, when in fact! Hes pretty bored and would probably prefer to be at home playing games on his xbox.

So why do these guys go out every friday or saturday night? Is it because they have awesome fun getting drunk and "chatting up the ladies"? Or maybe it's because they just like to dance? probably not! I can tell you why they go out every weekend... its because "thats what all the cool kids do" yep, they're all just a bunch of POSERS! so yeah, you might tell me im a wow nerd but at least i actually like what i do in my free time! Keep telling yourself that your one of the "cool people", you think your awesome when you turn up at work on monday telling everyone that you got "totally smashed" on the weekend? every monday you go to work and you say the same thing. Let me tell you a secret... NOBODY thinks that your awesome because you stand around in nightclubs PRETENDING to be something your not....

YOUR the ones that need to get a life! So next time, before you make fun us for doing something we enjoy doing, think.... wouldn't YOU prefer to be playing wow too?


Update!! ----> WoW Accomplishments VS RL Accomplishments

When Zombies Attack

So i was wondering around the interwebs today when i stumbled across a forum that was discussing what you would do in the event of a zombie attack. Now i know all you skeptics out there must think this is a stupid notion and would never happen in real life but you didn't think September 11 would happen either! and global warming IS real!! so it cant be that hard to believe that zombie attacks COULD HAPPEN!!

So what would you do when the zombie invasion starts? i suppose most of you might be thinking about getting as many guns and weapons as you can gather and attempt to go somewhere where you think you might be safe. I guess this is a valid strategy, however you may need to consider into your calculations that everyone in those zombie movies also seem to think the same thing and we all know how that turns out....

I guess when considering your weapon of choice, many might suggest a kind of huge machine gun or something but chances are we won't know when the zombie invasion is going to start and it is unlikely that we will be carrying around machine guns while we carry out our daily activities before the start of the invasion. Another thing to consider is how long will the ammo in your gun last? Probably the most common weapons that will be available to us when the zombie invasion beings is blunt objects and commonly found tools around the house like shovels, rackets maybe baseball bats or cricket bats. You wouldn't want to take knives with you or anything because it would probably just get stuck in a zombie and you wouldn't be able to take it out, even if he had a knife in him he'd probably keep hobbling after you anyways. What I would like to suggest is that everyone go learn some kung fu in preparation of the incomming invasion that. Have you seen resident evil? that chic kicks ass! and she always turns out okay in the end rite? so if we all learn kung fu im sure we'd be fine :D

The other thing we need to think about would have to be where we are going to go when it all starts. I guess going to the local shopping mall where you have lots of resources might be a good idea, but then again i guess it would have to depend on what day and what time the invasion begins. If it all starts on a week day during the middle of the day then the shopping centre is going to be packed and anywhere that is packed is a potential hazard in terms of the spread of infection. What we would need to do is go somewhere that is a little more secluded and away from the general population. Somewhere where the zombies are unable to get to us, somewhere far away from major cities and large populations. Probably on a boat somewhere in the middle of the ocean, unfortunately many of us aren't lucky enough to own a boat and even if we were it's probably not capable of accommodating us and our friends and family along with enough food to last us until the invasion is over. It is very likely that we will still need to make it back to land to replenish out supplies, but i guess thats when the kung fu skills will come in handy :D

Lastly I would like to predetermine whether or not we would keep it a secret if we knew we were bitten. Now im not sure how long it will take before you turn into a zombie after you have been bitten but i wanna know if your one of those ppl that will keep it a secret from all the other survivors or will you go and kill yourself for the good of all humanity. Now we all know the logical option will be to kill yourself or sacrifice yourself to help your fellow survivors but when it comes down to it will you really do the right thing?? I would like to hope that i would but when thrown into such a situation, ppl can be very unpredictable things.

Now after having survived the invasion having followed these key points, we would then need to hope that the zombies will eventually starve to death so that we can try and rebuild the world. This would probably involve alot of corpse disposal and if we are lucky enough to still have a government in place to keep order then thats great! but otherwise we could end up with a whole other situation living in a world of anarchy, then what would you do!? All in all this whole situation doesn't really seem to have a happy ending so maybe it would just be better to be give up from the start and save ourselves the trouble...

Urine Tests For The Poor!

So i got my pay slip today, when i opened it i had a look at the tax i've payed over the year and at first i was slightly annoyed that the government would gib me of a few dollars that i could have spent on a new monitor instead. Then i thought about why the government needs it more than me.

You see largest portion of tax money goes to welfare payments these are payments that might go to the people listed below:

widows of war veterans
Old people
people who cant find work
single mothers

List goes on, its basically the people that need abit of help getting on their feet. Unfortunatley we don't live in a perfect world and my tax money also goes to people that i think don't really deserve it.

It is well known within the community that a number of these welfare payments go to people that are just leeching off the government because they don't want to work, these people are affectionately known as "dole bludgers" These are the people that don't do anything for society, they are often found getting drunk in the street or getting high on what ever they can get their hands on. I'm very happy for my tax money to go to the people that really need it but if its going to someone thats gonna use it to damage themselves smoking pot or getting smashed then im not going to be so obliging.

What i would like to suggest is this, why don't we make all welfare people take a urine test before they receive their payments? maybe just one urine test every 1 or 2 months? this wouldn't be expensive for the government to pay for and aside from the minor inconvenienced of pissing into a cup once a month (because your too poor to get your own money) we could separate those that really need the money from those that want to just get high. This might even help people out of their habits, because if they don't sober up then they won't get any money and die!!!

Offcourse with every brilliant idea there are always downsides. One thing i can think of is a bunch of druggies robbing people for money instead. Another thing might be the number of homeless people in the streets might rise because they don't have the money to pay rent since they want their alcohol more. Its a difficult problem to solve, but for now ill have to be satisfied with the fact that i don't earn enough to pay tax anyway :P