That prayer alone is enough to make me join the guild. I think I'm going to go swing an axe into someone's face to relax now. So...where's your website? If you've got diamonds such as this amongst your forums I must join them, no question. Hail Thor brothers, those who await the last winter and the fiery dawn of the end.

~Ulfhednar

Actually, what I thought was coolest was not the walkthroughs and guides (valuable though they are to me as well), but the Character Monument site you're pimping on your sig. Frickin' awesome, I just uploaded all my old WOW and GW characters on there. Took a while to get the monuments right, but the concept is amazing. Thanks for giving that site the publicity it deserves. Kudos on the guides as well, I guess

What I'm interested in seeing is data on preorders for WAR or any other upcoming MMO, a comparison of forum activity (number of unique users per game site vs. number of posts vs. number of topics in the forums), and possibly, though later, a graph showing number of unique subscribers (ignoring multiple accounts in a person's name) over time.

Such data would give you a much better idea of both the hype factor surrounding a game, the actual player base a game is drawing in, and how long that game is going to last. However, this particular game (AOC) has been out for just over a month as of now, so its hard to tell.

What I CAN say, and its not a quantitative piece of data at all, is that my experience with FunCom's customer service and their numerous patches since launch has led me to conclude that if they continue with their current trend, this game will effectively die after 6 months. Its too buggy, the moderators on their forums are hostile at times and very defensive (not at all like other games <cough>WOW<cough>), the combat system, while different and engaging, is not "revolutionary," and there are just too many other mainstream online games out there right now, competing for the same market. Which means that unless FunCom ups its game, dusts off some shiny new content and polishes the shite out of its existing product (fixes lag, siege bugs, clipping issues, etc.), then the market they are trying to woo are going to just play F2P MMOs like Rappelz (shudder) until they can get their hands on WAR or Aion.

Maybe this has been said, maybe not, but its what I see from the catbird's seat. And frankly, its just too early to tell what FunCom has up its corporate sleeve.

Whatever, as long as the PVP is more engaging than WOW or AOC, then I'm cool with it. The mechanics of most MMOs thus far (at least the mainstream ones) has hinged on gear bonuses rather than player skill. Here's hoping WAR brings some of that back into the mix. If not, there's always Darkfall