Seems someone at the presentation was to trigger happy on twitter and missed the NDA bit..

With the new vanity tab option you have plenty of options to look as you like. But if you don't want to buy social sets from the item store you will need a bit of patience. The gear you get in Tortage is quite dull as you said.

With the launch of the free to play model and the subsequent influx of new players the population on lower level zones have increased quite a lot. But as allways, there will be variations from server to server. Leveling is pretty fast in AoC, so if you focus on it, getting to max level should'nt take you so long anyway.

I'm not remotely close to being a PvP pro, but one thing I have heard again, again and again in AoC: Use macros and see yourself getting slaughtered.

The melee combat system still has 5 attack directions, but  you wont unlock the last 2 directions until midlevel. That said, I think the melee combat in AoC is the main reason I keep myself sticking with this game - no other game gives me the same rush as when my dual wielding conqueror starts slicing and dicing.

Well, Funcoms first MMO Anarchy Online had (and still has) three factions - Omni, Clan and Neutral, so I can't really see how that inspiration came from DAOC that launched half a year later than their own three faction game..

"Why would anyone buy another game from FUNCOM?"

I have bought The longest journey, Dreamfall, Anarchy Online and Age of Conan and I've enjoyed them all. So why would'nt I?

Originally posted by Falfeir

Many of the kitaian mobs become un-hit-able(is this a word?)

 This issue was brought to the game a couple of patches before expansion and is related to the performance of fatalities related to certain types of combos. The dual wielding conq combo whirlwind being one of them. When this combo fatalizes one of the mobs, the others in melee range gets frozen. Luckily there is way to kill them though as they will succumb to the use of a fire weave banner. Just a tip while we wait for a fix for this.

Funcom have given compensation a few times before due to unexpected downtime, and I guess they might toss a day worth in this time too.  2 or 3 more of these downtimes and I can get myself a full cup of coffee wort of refunded playtime! whohoo!

Thanks for the croc!

Bear shaman will also be the only healer class playable by the Khitai - the new race coming with the expansion.

Originally posted by arieste

So is there no point to doing quests whatsoever once you hit 80?  (story aside)

 If you are part of a guild or join one, the solo quests at around lvl 80 are a very good source of guild renown to level up your guild. There are also some decent quest rewards to be found, but as others have mentioned, most of these are to be found in the 6 man instances.

On a sidenote, if you have been gone allmost since launch, I would highly recommend starting a new character to fully see the changes done to the game.

Good show. Best episode yet.

Originally posted by cujo603

I got the game when it first came out but it seemed buggy and half finished.  Just came back and leveled a couple classes to 22 or so. The game plays very nice now only a few graphical bugs. It just seems like alot of other games, like eq 2 , lotr, and wow, mainly a solo grind with very little teaming.

Yeah, the game until endgame is solo friendly, and no part so much so as Tortage. But there is a lot of group content in AoC, and even every zone can be done in epic mode, so the grouping opportunities is allmost endless. But with the game being in  a more mature state with people mostly playing their max levels or making in-guild groups, joining a decent guild is what you need to do to access much of this.

If you don't want to solo your way from 1-70, then there are no better way than to join a guild, and preferably a good and active one. It's the way it has allways been in MMOs.

@Loke: With the introduction of the renown system in patch 1.07 that released less than a month ago, you now can decorate your city to your hearts content. Plants, pillars, banners, statues, heads on sticks - the lots. There are fixed spots on where you can put this stuff, but what to build on them is all up to the guild to decide. When the guild levels up you also get more building options and more spots to build on. Recipies for decorations also drops from mobs in certain places too.

To be counted in the YG numbers you need to be in target vicinity of someone in game that are running the YG client. Sometimes this character will be a static logged in toon in Tortage or elsewhere, on other occations it's dedicated players running it while they play. I have no idea how many is running this client, but I don't think it is very many.

My main server which is Crom Pve Eu is very healthy and has seen a nice influx of new players lately, so all is well there. And no, no servers were recently merged into this one.

These days Crom server has more than one instance running of Kheshatta at prime time every day and does not have any problems at all. Sieges seems to be working ok'ish too. There is an occasional lag spike now and then, but nothing game breaking. The same seems to be the case of most other servers too from what I read in the forums. I really hope they figure out whats messing up your server soon.

In the expansion the zones will be directly adjancent to eachother, so even though there will be loading screen when going from zone to zone, you will see directly from one zone to another, thus furthering the openess of the world.

Check the AoC forums for this one. It is related to background downloading of code ingame to reduce the size of original download which cause the lag. For most people this seems to sort it self out after some time ingame.