I recieved an XP Boost clicky in the story quest as an award.. Keys ive found as loot off trash.. 

Gold would cost you tons of $$$ to convert gems into gold, the percentage to ratio is not worth it for RL $$..

I don't thnk any of what you said in the OP has any fact to it.. sorry..

Vindication is recruiting!

GM: Valorstrike - Leaders: Skinnie, Jeanaw - Officers: Aidenia, Tuckfard, Oneshotirski, Jaedzia

We are taking anyone that wants to raid. (we are filling slots to do 20 man content)
Our current goal is to clear up raid rifts, and gear up the guild best as possible - Members should actively be working on obtaining raid caps *toughness, hit, focus, etc* by completing content to rack up plaques.

Raid rifts will be Tues, and Fri (9pm EST) - Sat we are planning GSB. (10pm EST) - RoS will be planned in the future. We currently raid 2-3 hours a night depending on whats going on - weekends could be longer if we feel like it. We also rub out Akalia in Shimmersand for 11 plaques before our main event weekly. We will focus on GP 10 man raid dungeon , as more are geared up for it.

We have a sign-up system in place. You can sign up if you are coming, if your not sure, or that your not coming. We then know in advance the guilds intentions for our events, every week prior to the event. (makes our life easier!)

We have a paid website, paid vent, and we are a fun bunch of people! 

We are looking for people who want to raid - If you dont want to raid, we arent for you.
We do not walk around with some elite attitude. We want to raid , but we have lives outside of Rift. We are varied time zone, but EST is what we base events out of. We are a casual guild - we have husbands, wives, bfs, and gfs, and long-time friends all under the same roof. We play well together - we are fast learning people. We love to wipe over and over again to get the win.

If you like what you hear, get back to us.

PM me here, PM me on our website (http://riftsvindication.guildlaunch.com) or /tell either of us in game (see above for roster). You can also mail me in game. (Valorstrike)

We look forward to progressing as a guild, w/ you! 

hmm, not sure how it did that, unless where I uploaded it compressed it automatically.. Sorry, that was just a screenshot from the 1080p video of the warrior class. Either way, I think it looks awesome :P Can't wait to get that flaming sword.. :P

I think it looks great!

50 PAL FTW

This game rocks, I have been playing it since Beta 2. I allready preordered it! Pre-order the collectors edition , and get it for the price of the standard!

Fantastic..

I know my UI is screwy on TL its the old Mirage XML's - but it is purple epic armor.

I will definitely be gearing up w/ this set!

I dont know if you can play on  US Servers w/ EU origin, but on Set its very busy all the time. Set also has Oceanic region / players doing pugs after 2am EST even, for 3-4hrs.

The useal primetime is busy and filled w/ mutiple pugs at any given time going on, w/ places for people to join in after 5-6pm EST, all the way up to 2AM easily.

Theres even 2-3PM EST Raids going on, but not as much. (pugs)

BRC during peak hrs/primetmie has over 20 instances running.

I am in a guild, and never pug useally - but just giving you an idea. Theres lotsa players on Set ;) I see people doing Black Castle, and Sanctum constantly. So you shuld have that midrange help and the raiding side there for you too.

PVP Wise its pretty busy too., You have a few guilds rivaling constantly, and though Global can be bad , its really not that bad lately -most of the idiots have left or stopped being idiots. Guilds have Battlekeeps , and Sieges happen pretty much weekly as well .

GL!

Originally posted by Rallycart

As someone that beta'ed the game in both closed and open, was in Early Access, and quit within two months of launch, I think there are several unmentioned points here. I loved the game, and how it played, and how it looked. However, they botched things, plain and simple. The memory leaks were pretty bad, and I think anyone around in beta and launch remembers the dreaded grey map. Especially for someone that had a low-mid range rig, it was VERY annoying, because loading back in could take 4-5 mins back then, and if you crashed while fighting... Yeah. No fun. It is excusable in the beginning, but after 10-20 times, it becomes a major annoyance. I, however, was WELL used to it from beta, and shrugged it off. But a lot of people were pissed about it.

Next, we have the bank problems. To make matters worse, the NPCs controlled not just the bank, but the AH and mail system too! They worked fine all through beta. Never a problem. And then Early Access hits, and they don't work? Pretty crappy. So, you get loaded down with stuff, or, god forbit, you were actually out gathering materials, and you now have a full inventory. Nothing you can do about it. You cant even mail off the stuff to an alt... You either need a friend you trust, or a second account.  But that was just the start. Once you hit 38ish, and the gems started dropping.. Forget about it. They dropped like crazy, and they didnt stack for some reason. Even worse, they were not going into your resource bag, they went into your regular loot bag! And, even worse again, you had no idea what they would sell for, so you wanted to keep them all, but at the same time, you wanted make room! So annoying.

THEN, FINALLY, they fixed the bank NPCs. People floked to the AH, flooded it with gems so that they could clear out their inventory, and they were worth nothing! ALL that time taking up space, and they were worth crap because so many people were selling them.

Not to mention half the feats didn't work, or didnt work as advertized, and several skills were crap. Then the nerf bat started swinging, and the readjustments came... Within the first few weeks of launch... No better way to piss off a large group of people. And the PvP? Not too much of it, and it usually didn't work out too well. And that was the battlegrounds. Seiging was completely impossible due to poor performance. Oh, and the little fact that you could not actually make a tier 2 town until several patches in because one of the plans required things you could not get... But, once they finally DID fix it, even people with VERY nice computers had to put the settings to low, and STILL have terrible FPS stuttering, memory crashes and all sorts of other problems just to attempt to seige...

Now, dont get me wrong. I loved AoC. But really, if I had not betaed it, and already gotten a feeling for the game, and liked it from that, I would have dropped it even faster than I did.

Good read, it was mature and thoughtful. Thanks :) I am curious have you played AoC since the time you quit? IF not, maybe you should give it another whirl. Alot of what you talked about has been fixed, or is not a problem anymore really.

Started December 27th 2008 - Still playing today.

Name: Valorstirke , Server: Set.

80 Aquilonian Conqueror is my main.

Gear - Full T2 Raiding Armorset including T2 Weapon

Guild- Prophets (http://prophetsofset.guildlaunch.com)

We raid every week, w/ mains 4 nights a week. We raid pretty much every off raiding night w/ alts and host pugs on the server every other night.  We enjoy the game, just salavating for T3 Raiding content, some new PVP content, and of course longer down the road - we can't wait for the expansion and T4 Raidnig content :P 

Poll doesnt fit me, because I did not play at launch - and I started 12/08. Since then Ive had virtually no issues ingame, besides the ones people experience globally after patch day here and there -- in which those get rectified w/ hotfixes by the next day, and we all move on.

I was one of the peeps though who wouldnt even try it - My best firend insisted I play w/ him, and try it - its awesome etc , h said -- Im glad he did, becuase I was like everyone else - it had a bitter launch and users were bitter - and it had bad tastes in peoples mouth wihch till this day still comes out on forums etc as current.

AoC is an awesome game. I enjoy it immensely, look forward to raiding in T3 soon!

I just wanted to add one more thing --

The weather effects at the very top w/ the finale boss are PHENOMINAL. We need more of that w/ the rest of the world!
 

Iron Tower is one of the coolest dungeons Ive played in a long time! Not only does it have cool quests inside w/ cool rewards, but the design and bosses are really cool. The Executioner walks around in the dungeon below , and when fighting that boss you are presented w/ many tasks - If you dont complete those in a certian amount of time, the executioner will kill one of your group members. They did a great job w/ this, and the animations. You can be put in a spikey box, you can be kneeling down in a wooden contraption w/ your hands cuffed and your head ready to drop in a basket w/ the Executioner above you w/ his weapon swung high. You can be tortured and streatched. I mean they did an awesome job here with all the custom animations/stances.

Once you go to the higher level, you have a bunch of locked cell doors - these keys which drop from random mobs , open these cells. Each cell can randomly have a boss encounter inside w/ rewards for all to boot! Not only this, but all rewards ive seen in Iron tower have unique looks and design then any other armor in the game to date. They really made a unique approach w/ the loot in Iron Tower.

Now while your fighting these mobs, you get to certian mini boss's that drop ward stones. These ward stones are used later in the guardian to the final boss. You have to use them approiately as a group , and only 5 get these stones! If you dont use them properly in the encounter you are constantly being damged from the Gaurdian's spells that protects the finale boss. (and you will die!)

So not only is all of this awesome, and unique- and a refreshing change from your smash and kill dungeons - it has also built in encounters if you do them differently *or harder, strategically* the reward is greater.  You might get a blue chest, or you might get a raid powered chest which is Purple , and actually better then what is in game right now - if you fight things w/ a more strategic mindset.. you just mind get lucky!

So is Iron tower the same? I think not - you obviously didnt do it, or didnt understand what you were doing in there.. No one would call it the same old copy dungeon - Funcom defniitely gave us a unique experience, with the Iron Tower.

I look forward to killing Thoth Amon and his buddy I released up there..

Kudos to Funcom on that dungeon - its fantastic! 

I havent posted here in awhile, im pretty much what you would call a grade "A" lurker..

 I just wanted to point something out..

Originally posted by Jackdog

Still has more unique hits here than some other games over the past 6 months I would say the forums here are just fine. I don't know if you noticed the half a dozen troll/alt accounts that were banned in the past couple weeks.

www.google.com/trends

Google trends data does not support the statement that there is a lot of interest in AOC

the Google Trends graphs show 2 things

the top graph has the number of times people have used Google to search for the term,

the bottom graph shows number of times the term has ended up in Google news.

It is pretty obvious looking at the two graphs that Lotro has been used as a search term much more than AoC or Warhammer even though the bottom graph shows that Warhammer and AoC has been in the news more. Draw whatever conclusion soyu want but to me it looks like that many people are just not looking for AoC info on the web, even though AoC has been hyped to high heaven all year long 
  

http://www.google.com/trends?q=AoC%2C+lotro%2C+warhammer+online&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0

If you actually used the Acryonym instead of the full game name, (as obviously everyone calls it AoC) - your point you were trying to make about it the lowest, not being searched,  etc - is wrong. Its actually the opposite. AoC is the highest in the example when you actually use what people search for..

AoC rocks - Ive been playing it since New years day. I am in a raiding guild, we clear Tier2 every week, and we run Alt raids as well, where we clear T1, and T2.  We are very much looking forward to T3!   (should be on test next week or so).

To give you an idea, I played EQ 5 yrs, EQ2 5 yrs, and pretty much every other MMO for at least a few months.. except Lotro , I played that maybe 20m in beta.  Wow maybe 3-4 weeks in Beta. AoC is the only game that has held me for almost a year now - and I don't see myself losing interest anytime soon.  The Expansion will bring T4 raiding as well, and hopefully thats not to far off from us clearing out T3.

Dont listen to people - I like movies reviewers might of thought that sucked, and I like games people might complain about.  Everyone complains about something. Try it for yourself, make your own opinion.

Our guild on Set is very active, and we get apps every day.  http://prophetsofset.guildlaunch.com - People can raid any hour of the day on Set , by joining Pick up Group raids, or assisting w/ friends from raiding guilds.  The game is very much alive. I don't use XFIRE, and no one in my guild does either - most dont know what it is or dont use it - I asked in global several different times. Xfire means nothing. If you need any advice, or just wanna say "what's up!" -  /tell Valorstrike on Set.

Have a great day! :)