Ooooh, the NDA has been lifted and now I can talk about Asheron's Call 2. Today the world is PK everywhere as long as you're in a faction so I of course had to try it out. Unfortunately, it was like playing on Darktide on AC1 except it was laggier and buggier. But people just basically camp the lifestones and portals. Oh, and the admins were helpin' kill people too grrrr. Lame. I did manage to get my PK rating up to 29 at one point cuz I killed a shadow faction person who was a level above me thanks to the really bad balance of bow-vs melee, ie I can whack peeps with my bow from edge of radar but meleers/magic users have to get pretty close to be in range to whack me back muhahaha. That'll probably change by retail though, too bad though I kinda like it, reminds me of those long-range drain spells in AC1 beta where ya could stand on a mountain top and drain monsters in a dungeon below from edge of radar. I gained lotsa levels that way!

Anyway, as for how AC2 is, well, so far I am not impressed. I hope they fix some of the major bugs and balance issues ASAP cuz the game is slated to be out in November hahaha. I'll believe it when I see it. The only thing I do like about it is when ya die (even PK) you don't lose any of your stuff. Of course, that greatly lowers the challenge factor since death is pretty meaningless and PK even more so, I mean without ph4+ l3wTz what's the point of PK? You do get vitae though, similar to AC1, but it seems easier to work off.

The craft system would be nice if it wasn't so expensive past the first tier and you could actually make stuff better than the stuff you get off monsters, but right now, you gotta kill level 15+ monsters to get loot with attributes high enough to make armor and weapons for a level 7 character, how lame is that? You can mine raw materials, though, but it costs a lot of gold to do, and how do you get gold? You kill stuff and transmute the loot into gold. How much gold is loot worth? Well, at under level 10 creatures, most items are worth about 1 gold. So you get 100 items, transmute them and get ONE try to purify raw materials to make them high enough quality to make tier 2 weapons/armor. Uhm ... yeah k. And the craft system has no snack foods to make! WTF? What is the point of crafting if you can't make food? <grin>

As for combat, well, it's ok, it's way unbalanced, humans r3wLz cuz they have bow, which is too powerful I think. Well, at low levels anyway, once ya get up there the special skills don't seem to work that well except Point Blank which r0xx0rz. The monster levels are outta whack too, level 5 reedshark runts will rip yer uhm ... little avatar apart with their special "I can attack you even after I'm dead" skill. Ok, maybe it's a bug, but nothin' like killin' a runt, then as you're looting its corpse you get hit with 1 or 2 100+ hits from its ghost that send ya screaming to the lifestone.

I haven't been in many dungeons yet but so far they all look the same except the Esper vault which was the same only red. Heh. I tried to do a quest but I died halfway through, so that sucked. It was some misty something quest, ya get some broken gem thing and take it to a fount and get it fixed, then return it, I fixed it but then I had to navigate a gauntlet of monsters on my way outta the dungeon and kept bounce lagging against the walls which lead to a quick and painful death. I could transmute the fixed gem for 100 gold though so it wasn't a total loss. I also did the obelisk quest but it's just lame and the info panels are wrong anyway.

There are lotsa annoying places in the landscape too, MANY places where ya can't for the life of ya figure out how to get from here to there cuz there's a mountain or a ledge in the way that seems unclimbable. I dunno if it's that way on purpose or not, but I wish they'd even out the hills, they're too pointy and it's very frustrating. One really good example of this is up around the Haunted Cave, if you can find the lifestone there, you are smarter than me. Rivers are cool though, most monsters won't attack you if you are in water and even if your vigor drops to zero you can still swim. Speaking of swimming, the best part of AC2 is waterfall diving! Whee! Especially if you have a lugian character, you can do double gainers and stuff jumping off cliffs into the water, it's loads of fun. Unfortunately, humans seem timid and always seem to "dive" feet first. Lame.

Towns are also lame, they lag you to death and there are no NPCs there so again, what's the point? The worst town is Cragstone. Same as in AC1, it should be called Lagstone. It does have a lotta portals in it though, hopefully they won't nerf the portal rings like they did in AC1 beta, right now there are 3 rings that all connect at Cragstone. Same was true in AC1 beta (I think, I know they were all connected at one point, not sure what town though). If they break them apart then traveling will really, really suck cuz stuff is REALLY far apart in AC2, the world is HUGE. And there is NOTHING to see on those long runs, even most areas don't have monsters. Just endless repetition of the same ground textures, ugly trees and overgrown grass, ugh! Someone mow the lawn please!

Anyway, enough ranting, here are a few pix taken from beta, most of 'em are taken on pretty low settings cuz uhm ... my computer sucks. Click on the images to see them full size.

Here is my newbie "elf" character

Here is my "elf" again, at sunset ... this is the old user interface

Here's what happens when you try to portal into Arwic at peak times

Here's some mis-matched vertices around the Haunted Caves ... very spooky there

Hmmm ... heads stuck in the ground ... odd

Ack! Don't try to jump on top of a tree! I am hopelessly stuck there now with no way to /lifestone due to my not having a staff I can use, I'm glad there's a wipe coming!

Here's my Lugian showing off the medium resolution graphics settings

Same scene, this time using high-resolution settings

All Asheron's Call 2 Fallen Kings screenshots © Turbine Entertainment Software & Microsoft Corporation

[ 1:50:00 PM ]   Posted at the speed of blight by NONOBADKITTY!  



Tuesday, August 27, 2002

I am bored la la la. I need a job. And a life. Hehe. Math class is boring (for a change) and I am tired of beta testing buggy online RPGs and sewing in UO is hurting my fingers <giggle>. I guess I could do something productive like brush up on my Java programming or do some art for my portfolio or <gasp> look for a job. I did actually have an interview yesterday but I was too l33+ for them so they didn't hire me. Uhm ... well maybe. Hehe. I do think I was kinda over-qualified cuz it was for a general office job which even a trained monkey would be over-qualified for. Either that or they sensed my complete aversion to clerical work. ;) But I'm not lookin' for a "real" job yet cuz I gotta go back to school in 11 months and it's mean to accept a job then quit later especially if ya know ahead of time you're gonna quit later. So I am probably gonna have to do clerical type stuff but at least some clerical jobs are not totally mind-numbing general office stuff.

[ 1:47:00 PM ]   Posted at the speed of blight by NONOBADKITTY!