I've yet to upload screenshots of my plains experience. Found a hill I wanted to get up but there were too many durn Yeti. Unbelievable amounts of Yeti. Deciding to go another way, I headed across the plains and found an abandoned camp with a gong. I rang the gong. Didn't seem like a good idea but my toon looks so good I just can't tell her no. Stupid girl. Two Hyperborean warriors ported in and kicked her pretty little rear before she could even get a good combo off.

Forgot to mention a couple of things that I found over the weekend. I enjoyed running from a Yeti who spotted me and caused me to de-cloak. He was level 41, me 17, so I ran and jumped off the mini-cliff into the river that was going by. Phew, saved by a lack of inhibitions. It was fun when I realized I might get to the river before I was killed and that escape was within my reach.

Inventory overflow. I completed the bat demon quest but my inventory was full so I couldn't turn it in. Except I could, I just couldn't get the loot or xp. Then lady Zan (possibly a trucker) told me of the inventory overflow. Cleaned out my inv of some things, claimed my loot and BAM, xp. Good xp, left me 3 points away from level 17.

I also love the Fresh Kills concept. I know EQ2 has vitality which is nice, but fresh kills combined with AoC's better levelling curve (better IMO) is just delicious. Also nice? The chat ui. I love all the options available when I right click. This is so much nicer than SOE's version (SWG and EQ2). EQ2 does have a great guild managment system though, so I'm hoping AoC matches their chat quality in the guild system as well.

*Update* played with MrBubble again last night. Will post tonight and upload screenshots.

Screenshots from this weekend

Amandara_picture003
Originally uploaded by RHTblog

Here are some screenshots from this weekend. You may notice some weird issues due to the age of my system.

Oh, and you may notice MrBubble from YaMB in one of them.

AoC Update

Ymir's pass is out and the new patch requires an update to DirectX. The link they provide didn't work for me (first you have to jump through hoops, then it fails to install). This link works (thanks forum poster aocmmo). Logged in to get some of my 20 Fresh Kills for the day. Needed about 4 to hit level 10 (in Archeron (sp?) ruins). Woot!

I should also add that even though I have an old pc (P4 3.4Ghz, 2Gb ram, ATI X800XT) and AoC is only getting between 12 and 20 fps, I've seldom noticed any hitching or fps problems. Compare that with SWG or EQ2 on my Macbook Pro (bootcamp, Core Duo 1.8Ghz, 1.5gb ram, ATI X1600) and it's impressive/ridiculous. If only the MBP had 30gb worth of HD space for bootcamp. My Thanksgiving week off (woot!) would be able to be filled w/ awesome AoC, but instead will be web surfing, maybe some SWG or EQ2, and other things not involving a PC. I've got a book I need to plow through anyways I guess.

Also, Metaplace's build mode looks way too intensive for someone as lazy as I. We'll see how that goes.

And in semi-related note-ish-ness (to the AoC topic), I love the commentary to Conan The Barbarian. You can't beat Arnold's observations. "Ha, I just hit that guy." Wow. Granted, they're not all like that, but 30-40% are. I do appreciate the commentary in general though (but I'm a fan of movie commentaries with directors and actors).

Age of Conan

So all those concerns about Age of Conan not playing on my shuttle pc because a)it has an ATI X800XL (not exactly the latest and greatest) and b) DirectX thinks my card has no video ram (corroborated by EQ2 and SWG being kind of doggish). Oh yeah, and it's got a P4 (dual core but not a core 2 duo like the pimps have). Well, all those concerns were for naught, at least so far. Only have about 45 minutes in but it was smooth enough I didn't think about it. Not bad for 1680x1050 on a 4gen? old card. Guess I'll have to start taking screen shots to compare to people who are actually able to run it in high-res, and find out how to tell how many fps I'm getting. 

On a side note, Conan the Destroyer Collectors Edition doesn't scale up to 1080p like most dvds do. Don't recall having this problem last night w/ the Barbarian. Maybe it will just be the intro part. Laters.