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.

Might not have had your ports forwaded.

The denying fans here will say "your problem isn't common" or "it isn't a big deal".

The caption should say "WHERE'S THE GIMMICK?"

Please tell me how UCMs effected you? Did they prevent you from hunting? You could have joined the UCM fellowships, they are open to everyone.

It seems most people are just jealous of the UCMs gaining xp and loot. It's not like you couldn't UCM. The program was freely available to all.

I do agree the game would be better if everyone played legit. However, it's difficult to discourage people from macroing because of the way AC is designed; The static, fast spawns in dungeons give a lot of xp. Also the best items are from killing monsters.

Turbine could completely ban Decal, but Decal provides too many other benefits that make up for ACs inadequacies. For example, ACs in game map is crappy, so navigating is difficult. Decal provides better navigation plugins. There is no easy way to keep track of quests or find quests in AC. Decal provides plugins to suggest quests and track which quests you have done. Decals provides a tradebot plugin. So, we really have player run shops thanks to Decal.

I played WoW after I played AC. I liked it as much as AC. It's an extremely polished, well thought out game unlike AC which is a victim of 10 years of monthly patches and numerous dev teams incorporating their ideas.

My only problem with WoW was the amount of time you had to invest in battlegrounds and instances. You have to devote a certain number of minutes or hours without taking a break. If you leave you or have a crappy group you get little or no reward.

This is why I hate the Colosseum in AC. You are forced to complete a task in an hour. You can't go out at your own pace like most other quests. If you have a crappy group on other quests you usually can still complete the task, but it could just take longer.

I don't mind the time it takes to level in AC at all. 275 is a strange, high number. I just would like the number changed to be 100. This would require either monster xp be decreased, quest xp be decreased, or the amount of xp per level to increase. A level 100 cap would also increase the frequency of receiving skill credits. Right now, after 130, there is a lot of spacing between credits (10, 20, 25 levels per credit).

This will never happen of course because there is such little benefit. However, I bet you will see a much lower level cap in AC3 if it ever comes out. It will be like WoW, starting at 50, and raising by 10 over time. It's just a psychological thing.

I agree the 275 cap is slightly ridiculous. I always thought it was discouraging to new players. Even if it was easy to reach 275, the number itself seems like it would be hard to achieve.

Like I said, you can get a lot of experience from quests now. My mule is now 167. He levels every two or three days purely from quests. You have to know what quests to do though, such as Crystalline Crag, Colosseum, Bonecrunch, Monouga Lab, and the quests for Mana Forge Keys.

Once you reach 150 or 180 you can start hanging with the high level (200+) players.

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Originally posted by AllNewMMOSuk
Yes I've read your posts, and the truth is the situation you try to post about is not always accurate.
 
The game hasn't fallen into any disarray, the game is built on 10 year old technology and as such is limited by it. Loose UDP was a very normal format 10 years ago, however it isn't used that much now so some cheaper modems just block the packets all together. But as I said before this is the exception of modems not the rule.
 
As for most of your complaints on other forums, they are all smaller them you make them out to be. You don't agree with some of the content and systems they have put in, but there are players who do. You also fail to normally make the distinction between coders and content designers. And finally you always post in a manner as if this was a newly coded engine and certain things should be very easy to do that are in fact most likely quite difficult.
 
But none of this is really applicable here, I was letting the person know that majority of players never have any type of connection issue, but some routers do require port forwarding to work correctly. However and easy way to figure this out is to try the game for free for 14 days, if you have connection issues then don't sign up.

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I say disarray, not only because of the tech issues, but because of the mess of systems and concepts the game is now. Also in recent years the game has shifted from its roots.

Derrr, the current players don't have any issues as they are obviously successfully connected and playing.

At least once or twice a week you can go on the official forums, here, or VN and see posts from people who cannot connect to the game. AC has problems with routers, ISPs, antivirus, and firewalls. You think it's acceptable to turn away potential new customers because Turbine refuses to devote a large amount of time fixing them. It can be fixed. It's not impossible. I never EVER say it's an easy task. I always say I'd rather have them fix the many tech issues rather than add new crap (quests, items, monsters) every month.

In the previous sentence I somewhat compared tech issues to content. Is this what you're referring to when you say I don't know the difference in programmers and designers? New content is often new tech (e.g. roaming mobs, mobs that attack based on your society, no dropping items in certain dungeons). Also who knows how advanced the dev tools are and how much programming it takes to produce even simple content.

I have a feeling the dev team is very small now as the content updates have become increasingly smaller and the support is so poor. The quality and quantity of the art has gone down, I'm betting someone who isn't really an artist is doing some of the art now as a side job. The duty of designer and programmer can over lap. This is all speculation of course.

I wish AC would become f2p. It would be easier if they just made the original AC free and then made a premium subscription that gave access to all the expansions. However, I agree a marketplace to buy game items for real money would work out better in the long run. It's just a lot more work to make a marketplace system.

Turbine has other options for revenue, like charging to rename characters and charging people to transfer servers, but apparently it's too complicated.