I’d Rather Be Wowing!

Another weekend filled with WoW and Conan.

Some new accomplishments in WoW

1. Tanking heroic bot. I could never skipped daily heroic bot. 7 badges for an hour and a half worth of run is just way too good to pass up. This is the 2nd time Val tanked the place in heroic (3rd time of heroic in general). Nothing good dropped from it though.

2. First time in Mag Ter heroic. As mentioned before, getting a group as a shadow priest to Mag Ter is almost impossible. Our guild’s tank absolutely loathes that place, so guild run is impossible either. It happened that a friend asked E to come as dps. Too bad the Timbal trinket didn’t drop Instead, E got Vial of the Sunwell instead. It’s the trinket that our holy pally has been wanting.

3. Fist time one-shooting Gruul and stepped foot in Mag. We failed miserably in Mag though since in the group’s composition, we only had one warlock.

Some rants and wishes

1. I just wish that once, just once, we can have our 25 raid without anybody caused some drama, or whined, and being mad. Is that really too much to ask? The game is supposed to be fun.

2. After playing Conan and WoW almost interchangeably, I’ve come to wanting certain features of Conan to be implemented in WoW (the other way around is also true, but there are just way too many of them )

• Conan comes with an additional bar called Stamina, in addition to Health and Mana. Stamina allows you to execute combos. But more importantly (at least for me), it allows you to sprint. Sprinting depletes your stamina. And you hold shift to sprint. Whenever I played WoW after palying Conan, I always, by reflex, try to hold my shift, only realizing that my character doesn’t move any faster.
• Another neat thing of Conan is the ability called Resting. Resting allows you to replenish your health, stam, and mana. It’s like a free (and non space-hogging) version of mana biscuit.
• Collecting/gathering/transporting quests in WoW are annoying just because of the amount of bag space that the items take (Lem is currently in Un’Goro which quests items took more than 14 slot bag space). While I definitely do not wish to have the bag space mechanism that Conan has, I can appreciate how in Conan the quests items are placed in different “place” and weren’t counted toward my character’s bag space.

I haven’t been playing much of WoW recently, only showing up for raids, and neglecting my dailies even though I need some money to support recent gemmings for Val and to buy Belt of Blasting (priced around 1500 on bid and 1800 on buy out). The lure of Age of Conan (AoC) got to me because I want to play something with a new story, instead of repetitious things. Before I realized, I’ve played Conan more than WoW this week

It’s unfair to judge an MMO game from a little playing time, so these are more of my personal impressions than anything else. So far I’ve leveled a Herald of Xotli (HoX) to level 21, and currently I’m leveling Priest of Mitra, PoM, (lvl 8 ) along with Corro’s ranger. Regardless of the “race” that you picked, you start off at the same area. Each type of class (HoX, for example, is a type of mage class) has its own beginning story line. Once you have completed that story line, approximately when you hit 20, you will be ported to the city corresponding to your race. I like the story line so far, but I found leveling multiple characters a chore because the lack of diversity at the beginning. Since I haven’t questing in the new area yet, I couldn’t say much about leveling at higher levels.

The combat system of Conan is much more interactive, at least if you play a melee or melee/caster class. For example, HoXis a mage class but has many abilities that are very reliant on close-up combo. It is a very fun and involving class to play. On the other hand, Priest of Mitra (PoM) is a pure caster class, so far. I found myself casting the same thing over and over again. Not so much fun.

The world of Conan has been boasted to be marvelous, but truthfully, they are not really my taste. I like colorful fantasy world like WoW or Ragnarok Online more, but that’s nothing against Conan itself. The graphic itself is magnificent, I went giddy just to see the waters and its reflection. However, the world design left me with much to desire. One city is actually multiple “instances”, even if you’re in the same city - at the same server - as your friend, you may not actually “be” in the same city. This leaves me frustrated as to group up with your friend, you have to go to one of the dungeons, which also are actually multiple of “instances”. There are too many instances in here, which I found rather annoying. Also, the amount of loading on every single zone is just too much for me, especially on my not state of the art computer.

There are still many bugs in the game, but it’s common on a new MMO game. I am annoyed with them, but can tolerate most of them. It is very different to play a game at its “infancy” state compared to one that is mature like WoW. To begin with, there’s not much resources available in AoC, in case you got confused, etc. The best resource so far is the general chat. It is both challenging and frustrating.