Got my mule from 184 to 188 in two days so far. The best thing about this is not the 50% increase, but it's making people want to do more quests.

Darktide (DT) is the most populated server. It's open PvP, so it's a difficult to get started on, but it offers the most long term interest. If I could start over I would start on DT.

They are turning AC into a graphical chat room. It's getting too easy. Matching armor is not unattainable, just as spell components were not unattainable. It just takes time. It's a challenge.

You don't like putting in time? Have you tried Hello Kitty Online? I would have said WoW, but it will actually take more work to get a matching good armor set in WoW than AC after this change is implemented.

I'm sure the whole rest of the community wants to have fun and hit 275 on all their characters. Why don't we just hand out free level 275 gems? You have to draw the line somewhere. This is crossing the line.

They are doing this too much now. It's similar to the rare and component exchangers. Don't like what you have, just switch it out! Why do I even have to switch it out? They might as well just popup a dialog and let me enter the stats of the item I want and then spit it out into my inventory. That makes the game more friendly for everyone!

I should have been more clear, it makes obtaining a matching armor suit fairly easy. I It used to be a big accomplishment. Like my complete matching major plate suit that I worked a long time for. It's actually not worth much now with epics, but it was a big accomplishment two years ago. I'm a bit appeased to know that you can only transfer from the same slot. It sounded like you could take any slot and put it in any other slot.

What exactly is an accomplishment these days? Leveling is easy, quests give tons of xp. Top tier loot is easy to obtain, they added way too many MF Key quests.

I think the toughest thing now is actually getting titles. Title count is something to show off.

They need to remove allegiance housing and marketplace IMO. That would bring back life to towns and make the game seem a bit more lively.

zantax, you should rephrase your last paragraph. It's a bit harsh, specifically the bit about closing the game. You think a game with thousands of players should be shut down. All because there aren't as many people playing now as there were 10 years ago, which is not surprising at all. I bet the people playing, the ones who pay, would disagree.

I do agree a f2p option should be implemented.

Allowing people to swap armor stats is a huge mistake. I'm all for making the game more approachable, but that makes putting together a decent suit of armor ridiculously easy.

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Originally posted by Rhiaden
I am trying the trial out...just got to configure my router I think...when I go through the portal at character loading, I cannot move, and then it disconnects me :(

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You have to forward your ports. If that doesn't work it's possible you have an incompatabile router. I had a Netgear router that wouldn't work with AC no matter how I configured it. I switched to a Belkin and now everything works fine.

I'm not an expert in networking, but from what I gather, AC uses some dated networking protocols. They are still technically valid. The problem is they are just older standards, and not well supported by all router manufacturers now.

Darktide isn't very newb friendly, but it is the most populated server. The other servers are all fairly close except for Verdantine. Avoid Verdantine and you'll be OK.

You'll need to be at least level 150 to hangout with most of the other people. Most quests these days are 150+ (the cap level cap is 275). You won't be competetive until 180. It seems like a high number, but leveling is much easier these days. Quests give A LOT of xp. You can level entirely on quests.

The new hot trade items are Mana Forge Keys. You get them from quests. Again they are easy to obtain if you do the right quests. So you should have no trouble trading and obtaining items once you start getting Mana Forge Keys.

Also FYI you can play the trial at http://trial.ac.turbine.com/

1) Olthoi Arcade is probably the best place. BSD hasn't changed.

2) Virindi Master's drop White Jewel's. At your level I would try Desert March. I know there are some Virindi Master's in there.

You should use the official AC forums at http://forums.ac.turbine.com/. There are server boards, so you can ask the people on your server for help or there is a new player forum. They are a little more active than these.

Here is a list of Pathwarden's: http://asheron.info/~asheron/index.php/Pathwarden_Greeter. I thought there was a Pathwarden in Holtburg, but I guess not. You need to get to Arwic, Shoushi, Sanamar, or Yaraq. There is a Shoushi portal in Holtburg, so that would probably be the easiest route for you.

You give the Pathwarden the token and he gives you a key. You use the key on a chest next to him to obtian some armor. The armor isn't great, but if you don't have anyone giving you items, it's better than nothing.

You will end up throwing the armor away eventually as you advance, so don't stress out too much if you never use the token.

If you are worried about graphics then AC probably isn't the game for you.

http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?t=42680 is the link to the test server info. It's only open to current subscribers.

You can call "By Telephone: 781-407-4020, Monday through Friday 4:00pm EST to 8:45pm EST" but I have a feeling it won't be much help. They will probably tell you your card is declined and that's it.

Do you only have one card? I would try another. If not, I think you're out of luck. You will be stuck in circles, both companies blaming each other.

The LAN issue is overblown. Smelly nerds can still sit in the same room and play together, there just has to be an internet connection in the room.

Also I thought during multiplayer games, clients connect directly to other clients. So, there should be no lag. When the game is actually being played, it is not running information through Blizzard servers. Blizzard servers are only used to authenticate the client and to create the initial match up. I thought that's how most companies could afford to offer multiplayer for free, it doesn't take that many computers to match players up. There is little persistant data and the servers are not tracking every action in every match.

This is annoying feature of Facebook and MySpace too. I never update my mood, status, feeling, or whatever the sites want to label it. I never care to see what anyone else is doing either.

I ask my friends why they feel the need to update their profiles with "going to class", "studying", "sleeping", "at work", etc. Do they really think anyone cares? They say they do it for themselves. They say they find it fun. I believe they have delusion of grandeur, thinking that they have fans or people who care about their state at every moment.

The whole thing reminds me of when I created my very first web site back in 1998 or 1999. It was a crummy web site. No one visited it. Yet I worked on it and posted on it everyday. I convinced myself that I probably some visitors. Even if I didn't I wanted to keep it up to date just in case someone did visit.

The information I created went to waste, it's all gone now and I doubt anyone ever read or appreciated any of the work I did. Not that it should have been appreciated, it was mostly worthless information that you could have been obtained elsewhere and in a better format. The only good that came of my time was that I learned some new skills (web design, graphics editing, HTML, CSS).

I am able to run the game on Vista. I'm pretty sure the problem is his anti-virus software. ACs problem isn't really Vista, it's the combination of anti-virus software and Vista. Even disabling the anti-virus softare doesn't work. You have to compeltely uninstall it.

Like I said, I don't waste my money on anti-virus softare, but others have suggested using AVG. It supposedly works with Vista and AC.

The death penalty is still the same. You drop a number of items based on your level.

However, there are Augmentation now that you can use to reduce the number of items you drop to the point where you don't drop any items at all. The Augmentations are expensive though, costing 2 billion experience each. Each Augmentation reduces the number of items you drop by 5. The death item Augmentations do not work in PvP, so if you die fighting another player, you still drop items. They only affects PvM deaths.

I use Massive Mana Charges as death items. They are worth 65,000 each. The problem with using all one type of item is he system sees identical items as half the value of the first one. So, the game sees every Massive Mana Charge except the first one as having a value of 32,500.

Also the official forums are at http://forums.ac.turbine.com/, they are more active.

Uninstall McAfee.

Be a man. I don't run anti-virus software. I'm still alive.

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Originally posted by AllNewMMOSuk
I think as usual you underestimate the amount of time it would take to convert AC into these systems. If you look at DDO, they were quietly working on the game for at least a year, that is a game with many modern systems already in place to help the process. Just because you look at it and go, oh they click on something and it brings up a web page to buy something, doesn't mean the behind the scenes coding is simple or easy. That just means they did a good job with the interface by making it look easy.

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Actually I have a good idea of what it would take. I program PHP for a living. They need to be able to connect to the game database from the web page. Then the trick would be to send the character ID to the web page some how when the store is opened. I don't know how their database is contsructed but I'm sure you could determine the total number of pack slots available and if they are full. The information is all in the database. The hardest part for me would be making the store look good since design is not my strong point.

The reason it would be a difficult task is because they would have to divert time form developing new content. Also I don't know if they actually have a PHP or ASP developer.

Making the game free to play with a premium account option would not be that difficult. There is already a system in place for tracking what version of the game players have purchased. They could to flag all free accounts as not having purchased TOD or DM (I realize the DM checks are gone, they would have to readd them). This would mean you could only reach level 126 instead of 275, can't own a house, and can't access a couple islands.

When you ID some items and portals now it says "Must have purchased Throne of Destiny." They could change that to "Must have a premium account" and add those restrictions to whatever they feel like.

Also I think you over estimate how difficult a micropayment system would be to add. The DDO microsystem is not that complicated. The micropayment store is just a web page that you can access from inside the game. They built a web browser into the game. They could do the same for AC (not sure how hard that would be). When you buy something from the web page it updates the game database. It's not that complicated. You might have to logout and back in for it to take effect.

I would buy a 10% health gem from an AC micropayment store. Not sure what else they could offer that wouldn't be too unbalancing.