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).

Thanks to Donna for pointing this out to me. For a review made for comedic effect, it's fairly thorough. Some of it is bang-on:

I laughed, I cried, I reposted it here. =)

Oh and I admit, I do secretly dream of living inside a Boris Vallejo painting.

(Note: their video server seems a bit slow to get started, but if you're an Age of Conan player, wait for it. It's worth it, trust me).

The animations are truly why I love playing a Polearm Guardian.

Here's a video tribute to Guard V:

The Guard combos have always had an extra flare as they're triggered, mostly with an overhead spin, but Funcom saved the best for last and gave the final rank of Guard an almost nunchuck-like maneuver: a spin across the back.

It's a long combo, which makes it hard to pull off with mobs that stun, but when successful it's spectacular.

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 (Left Hand Path on Wiccana) constructed our Keep last night. It's the first building for our PvE Guild City and the prereq for most of the other construction later to come.

One thing that has stuck me is the sheer size of the Keep and our surrounding plot of land within an even larger zone. The scale of the thing is astonishing.

Some things to note:

• Buildings cannot be placed just anywhere, there are pre-determined lots, although you can choose "Thieves Guild on this lot, Armorsmith Shop over there" etc..
• There are three city areas within our zone map. As more guilds book their plots the zone is instanced. Right now, Funcom is restricting travel between these guild city instances probably to give players a chance to build first. So no visitors to our guild city yet.
• The guild city zones are actually shared between city building and resource collecting, which is very convenient and lends for some busy activity nearby.
• These are PvE zones, even on a PvP server the buildings cannot be damaged. PvP Battlekeeps will be in a corresponding PvP zone and take a much larger effort to construct.

I love this stuff. It has a lot to do with Age of Conan being my MMORPG of choice. I'm helping construct a city in a world that's enthralled me.

I hit level 40 over the weekend and here's my initial ride on my War Mammoth:

As you can see, it's slow as molasses, not what you'd call a 'travel' mount. It moves at the same speed as walking.

Funcom has been clever to avoid jealousy over the limited pre-order mounts, while still retaining a small amount of actual usefulness as a battering ram for Sieges. It's been labelled a 'PvP mount', but in general usage PvP it's more of a bane than a boon, its turning radius is slower than its walk. The mount's attacks are fun to watch though. I'm hoping it can be trained later for some extra features, maybe a charge of some sort or better attacks.

It does look and sound good. A great trophy item. I'll be getting a horse later for actual travel.