Now that the Standard Edition Headstart WAR servers are up, I'm ready to introduce you to the character which will likely be my main for WAR. Meet Skereye:

So far Skereye is plainly dressed in the starting gear, since he's only Rank 2 (level 2, I'm still twitching at Mythic's jargon). I'll keep posting as I progress, but if you really want to track me, you can use Mythic's armory-style feature: Skereye character info.

As a side note, I've noticed that Mythic's web features sort characters numerically. I know it's not an accurate representation of WAR's population, but it does seem to indicate per server character creations. For instance it seems my choice of server (Monolith) already has a fair sized population within its first hour, as my character indicates being #1174.

I hit Rank 20 with Skereye this past weekend. Here's a quick video showing a small taste of Squig Herder soloing combat, plus a pleasant ride down the beach on my new mount.

I'm fairly happy with the Squig Herder class. The charm of the Gobbo (Goblin) makes up for the numerous pet-related bugs and design limitations (how is having only one squig at a time "herding"?). There's also the sheer joy of spraying arrows. =)

Okay he's not really extraordinary yet, he's only Rank 5, but here's Bester my Magus. He's an alt for now, but possibly a contender versus my Squig Herder.

I hadn't planned on detailing this character for you until I've played him further, but a friend requested some caster video clips so a quick Fraps of Bester seemed the easiest way to provide that.

Here is Bester just floating about on his disc so you can see the dark and scarred environment of the Chaos starting areas. He never leaves the damned disc and at higher levels his AoE attacks will come from it:

And here's a bit of basic Magus combat with Bester. His attacks are, as you can see, rather colourful (although personally I'd prefer some classic fireballs ala the Bright Wizards):

Yes I named him in homage to Alfred Bester (the writer, although the Babylon 5 character was pretty cool too).

Funcom has posted their character naming policy (within their Rules of Conduct):

This doesn't surprise me really, Funcom seems to put a lot more RPG into their MMORPG than most of their competitors. I appreciate that these rules apply to all servers and not just the RP ones, although who knows whether they'll follow up on them or not.

When I see a player run across my screen with a name like "Ipwnnoobs", "robotninja", "lolsmiter" or "myfunpaly" my immediate thought is this person cares little for the game and the other players within it. I don't mind a ribald sense of humour, I've tried clever names myself now and then, plus some nicknames that stretch it a bit. But have a little imagination and try to fit into the world by not using a sentence or otherwise throwaway name.

Immersion and story are a big part of any RPG game, whether you intend to actually roleplay or not. Silly names that don't fit into that may be a relatively minor way to tear things down, but if you're starting out with something destructive... well it's a poor precedent for the rest of the time (usually significant time too) you'll spend in the game.

This is what happens when you name your character "Sorry". I seem to collect a bunch of tells (in this case offline ones) from a variety of players that forgot to include the name of the player they were sending to. GMs are not immune to this either it seems.

Insert the word Sorry in front of each line to complete the sentence. =)

While poking around the files from the Age of Conan early access install (I was looking for music to play), I noticed files for the random character-naming suggestions. This reminded me that I should start coming up with names for my characters.

As both a writer and an avid MMORPG player, I highly recommend The Writer's Digest: Character Naming Sourcebook. I've had it sitting on my desk for years and recently purchased the second edition.

Names are sorted by racial / language categories, which makes it perfect for choosing a character name for Age of Conan. You can generally cross-reference the names this way:

• Cimmerian = Celtic. Scottish, Gaelic and perhaps Norse would do as well.
• Aquilonian = Roman (Latin), Greek. It's a big empire, much like Romans, so you can go with most any latin-based names or areas that empire covered, which includes Spanish, German, French, etc..
• Stygian = Egyptian. Persian works too.

Names in the book are also listed along with variations and a basic definition source. For instance Conan is a celtic name with many variations that means "dark-haired wise man". Don't expect to use that name of course, Funcom has already reserved it. =)

This is the first full demo of a female character model that I've seen so far for Age of Conan.

Note: NSFW link, Age of Conan does include topless nudity at this point, although personally I doubt that will get past the censors on release because they are going for an M rating. North America ratings boards in particular are likely to balk at bare breasts in a game that also includes decapitations. Expect the boobies to get covered up by March.

(Edit: Looks like that Google Video has been nixed by the anti-nudity police, you can try watching the video at Stage6 instead)

I'm more impressed with how the armour sets look on their female models than I thought I would be. It's more realistic than WoW or CoH, but still strongly stylized with striking differences between the Greco, Roman and Persian-like gear. I especially love the Persian set complete with transparent veil. Also I'm imagining how this character might look in different classes (the one shown is Guardian I believe), such as Bear Shaman or Assassin.

I've already shown this video to Sakkara and Sarath and they both loved it. There's a nice balance on this character's appearance between "pretty" and "amazon". She certainly looks like she could handle her own in both an epic fight and a medieval ballroom.

Of course, we're told that the character's appearance will be very customizable on body shape as well as hairstyles, facial features, etc..