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. =)

I've been leveling at a steady pace and I think I detect some cries of alarm from guildmates seeking to catch up. It hasn't seemed rushed, I try to hold myself back, but my Polearm Guardian is too much fun dammit.

Kheshatta is the level 80 zone in this game and I have to admit in my first visit I was underwhelmed. Perhaps I've yet to find the hidden gems in the zone, so I'll withhold any deep criticism, who knows with first impressions right? Desert landscapes don't appeal to me on the surface.

Atzel's Approach on the other hand, has proven a surprising alternative. I expected to be moving on by now but it goes all the way from 60-75. It's cleverly laid out, whomever the zone designer was he has my deep respect because Atzel's Approach has layers. Like onions, or better yet a layered cake. Oh yes, my analogies suck.

I just wrote a poetic description of the place that was borderline brilliant, but I nuked it for sake of explorer spoilers. =P   Discover the zone on your own terms, because this good stuff is too far and between in these games.

I love Thunder River, the esthetics of this zone really appeal to me. Rushing water and the spray from waterfalls. The lore is great too, most of the quests relate to a couple of central themes to this zone. For my character in an RP sense, I'd also planned months ahead that he'd be from the Pictish border and this is basically it.

Do watch the video, you'll see what I mean on the visuals:

I'm also loving the overall experience at level 60. For my character at least, the new abilities I obtained were just enough push to make me feel powerful enough again, handling multiple mobs several levels above me.

I've heard it said elsewhere and I'll repeat it here: Each class at some point has an awesome feeling of almost being overpowered. The game isn't too easy, it's just the many moments of "OMG did I just do that?" and I'm not just talking about the death animations. For me, it's surviving a swarm of mobs all at once, where I was sure I was about to die but pulled it through with a sliver of health. Yes that's happened in other games, but it's never been quite so satisfying.

The entire game and combat system is 'Overpowered'. I know I'm gushing, but it's just too much damn fun at this point.

I dinged 60 recently. I wasn't supposed to be leveling my Guardian much this past week, but dammit I'm just having too much fun with my polearms.

I bought my a horse a bit late, partially because all of my coin had been put into our city constructions, but also because the horses seemed rather slow. In a recent patch Funcom boosted their speed significantly, as you can see in this video it's plenty zippy:

I'm thrilled once again with Funcom's animations, which for an MMO are top-notch (Assassin's Creed horse action was better, but that's comparing apples and oranges since there's nothing much you can do with the horses in that game). This video doesn't demonstrate it at all, but if you use the movement keys to turn your horse it will angle into the turns, it would be nice if they applied that to mouse movements as well.

Note the lovely cloak of dead beaver pelts I'm wearing. =)

My guild has declared this an "Alt Weekend" as a way for some of to avoid outleveling the rest of our guild. The idea came from coincidental AFK vacations for several of our key guild members (happy fishing trip Nelg!), so the rest of us are either going to catch up to them, or play alts.

Mainly it's an effort to balance our guild's levels, although there's also some encouragement to just try other classes. Our melee players seem to be concentrating on the complete opposite: the supposedly 'pure casting' Demonologist, to the point that we've also referred to this as Demonologist Week.

Here's Ignatos, my Demo alt, throwing fire into the face of an enemy:

There are some inherent difficulties with AoC's Apprentice (Sidekick-like) feature. So far, Apprentice has been a bit buggy and Funcom has specifically limited the usefulness, they can't seem to decide if they want players of disparate levels to team up, or whether they want to force lower levels out of higher level content. For instance, an Apprenticed player still aggros as if they were their standard level, so taking them into Cistern / Main System is very messy.

It's still much better than most games for playing with your buddies, but it's not as easy to do as say-- City of Heroes.

As an aside, I'm finding it exceptionally easy and fast to level 1-20 now that I'm familiar with Tortage.

I hit level 50 last night.

I'm starting to fill my character's shoes well, figuratively and literally (nice boots!), because at this point I think I can finally say I've got a groove on the nature of my class. Or at least my class with a Polearm spec.

Here are some mish-mashed level 50 ponderings / rants:

• Mob AI is becoming significantly challenging at 50: Mobs with fear, stun and cower effects. Mobs that shout for adds. Mobs that heal themselves. Mobs that run and grab some more buddies. It's getting significantly more difficult to solo, but I like it.
• Gathering resources is almost too easy (more on this soonish), but it's certainly more fun than in other recent games.
• Polearm reach combined with collision detection makes for an awesome combination. It's insanely satisfying to handily manage 5 mobs plus adds.
• Polearm Guardians suffer from a lack of weapon choices. I find myself not able to choose a weapon based upon appearances, but have to settle for one of the two common choices at this level if I want anything suitable for actually killing stuff with a reasonable DPS. Compared to the wide selection of swords, I'm feeling stiffed in this area.
• Funcom's official Guardian forums are dominated by players with assumptions from other games. This is especially true for those who rushed to 80 and are firmly carrying their assumptions into AoC's raiding. Sword & board to me equates to sword & bored. I'll be sticking with my polearm and milking the most out of it.
• The gear is great in appearance overall, kudos to Funcom's art department. But the itemization generally stinks, I finally reach level 50 and all of the gear is just a colour change from the same models I've been looting since 30. Apparently there are some unique items (like my boots) from group dungeon bosses, but that means all of the soloable gear is just the same.
• Funcom's solution to the itemization problem is they plan to add more of the unique stuff onto the loot tables for soloable outdoor bosses. But we don't just need more unique stuff, we need better ordinary choices. One common model with just colour and minor detail variations for 30+ levels doesn't cut it.
• I hate capes. I wish they hadn't put stats on capes, either that or let us hide them. I'm wearing a more subdued cape with lower stats rather than my 'Superman' red cape from the Sanctum quests.
• I want bigger bags.

Level 50 feels like a good time to reflect. My complaints feel pretty minor and I'm not the least bit bored of the game.

The combos, the finishing move animations, and just the high quality animation overall-- I would be hard pressed to return to any MMORPG without these features, AoC has thoroughly spoiled me with the combat.

I just ragged on microblogging and its inevitable digression into minute and unnecessary details, which I do realize makes me a bit of a hypocrite, especially considering the following:

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I'm thinking about blogging my experiences in Age of Conan, while I roleplay my way up the levels, complete with screenshots and the occasional video post.

It's been a long time since I'd roleplayed, but that's the plan for our guild in Age of Conan, on an RP-PvP server. I don't plan to get heavy-duty, I won't be having any roleplayed weddings or deep story multi-act scripts, but basic world immersion and a few scenarios appeal to me:

• Mysterious Guild undertones. Our guild is planning almost an ARG-like puzzle buried within the guild's own little rituals and whatnot.
• Bandits that waylay travellers on the roads. After encountering it back in Ultima Online (I ran into road tolls all the time, I wouldn't go that far), I've always wanted to repeat the experience, only as a bandit and not a victim. ;)
• I want to get into my character. Immersion is good and I find it difficult within Azeroth, where pop-culture references overwhelm much of the lore. Mind you, there will be some reference's in Funcom's version of Hyboria, I'm expecting a bit of Lovecraftian overlap, but that kind of flavour just adds to my joy.

We'll see if I can keep it up though. I did try to keep screenshot progress of my original leveling in WoW (in cheesy shots with my character waving to the camera), but I never uploaded those shots in a timely fashion.