Over at Age of Conan Roleplayers and also on the official Age of Conan forums it would appear that Wiccana has been announced as the unofficial Nth American RP PvE server, with Bori being announced as the unofficial home for PvE RP’ers for EU. So those roleplayers that aren’t interested in a free-for-all PvP RP server then you can head over to one of these.
Well it’s finally here. The servers have been named for Age of Conan. Notice there are lots more PvE servers then PvP. The FFA PvP’ers seem to have the loudest voice but the PvE servers have always been more popular, especially if it still offers some form of PvP. They ask the question “Why so many PvE servers” over at the official forums. I’ll even go out on a limb and make a prediction here. The PvP servers will be merged due to lack of players. Anyway, here’s the list.
US Servers (Early Access 17th of May)PvE Servers
PvP Servers
RP-PvP Server
European English Servers (Early Access 17th of May)
PvE Servers
Crom
Dagon
Ymir
Bori
Astoreth
PvP Servers
Fury
Wildsoul
RP-PvP Server
Aquilonia
French Servers (Early Access 17th of May)
PvE Server
Ishtar
PvP Server
Ferox
RP-PvP Server
Stygia
German Servers (Early Access 17th of May)
PvE Servers
Mitra
Asura
PvP Server
Aries
RP-PvP Server
Asgard
Spanish Server (Early Access 17th of May)
As Tobold mentions, us Australian players of MMOs unfortunately have to play on servers 10,000 miles away, since no MMOG that I know of has any servers located in or near to Australia. This means that for me, I frequently experience pings of 200-400 ms, and often higher. Tabula Rasa generally pings around 500ms or more, and once pings start to reach 700-800ms the game gets frustrating and almost unplayable.
This particularly concerns me where PvP is concerned. When nearing a ping of close to one second it can be too late to react to an attack. I even worry how Age of Conan’s more active combat system will work for me when modifying my attack to compensate for someone’s shield or adjusting my own defences.
I’m currently in the process of upgrading my internet to a faster and more reliable one so hopefully I can see somewhat lower pings, but I don’t expect to see the day where servers are located in the same city/state that I live and pings are only 50 ms.
Tobold discusses how Alliance outnumbers Horde on most of World of Warcraft’s servers and whether the same will apply to Warhammer: Age of Reckoning between Chaos and Order and the ramifications. I couldn’t help but reminisce about Dark Age of Camelot.
When I first started playing DAoC I played Albian on the Pellinor server. The term Zerg referred to an alien race in Starcraft, the strategy of which was to overwhelm the enemy with numbers. This was also the strategy of the Albians, and an alb zerg was common. But surprisingly it wasn’t the albs that held the most Keeps, but rather Midgard. I remember when I was playing an alb, other albs would complain that the hibs (Hibernia) were Mythic’s favourites and were overpowered as a result. I would also here complaints that the Mids were better hands down and needed less people to achieve the same thing an alb zerg would.
When I changed servers and started playing hibs I would hear complaints about alb zergs and overpowered mids. I loved my Animist by the way, it saddens me to think I’ll never play another animist or class that compares. When I started a Midgard character on another server, surprisingly they didn’t complain much.
Depending on who held the most keeps, they would get bonus XP plus increased coin from mobs. They would also get access to Darkness Falls, a huge dungeon ranging from around level 14 through to level 50.
There were definitely more albs than hibs or mids, but I enjoyed playing all of them much the same, and I can’t say it impacted me too greatly. Sure, some days would suck where numerous groups of albs were roaming all over the battlegrounds, but so long as you only came across one group at a time it didn’t really matter. Keep sieges and defences were a different story, but they were still fun, even if you didn’t achieve your objective. I’m more concerned with the impact that realm/honour points (or whatever they call them in WAR) and raid gear will have on the battlefield. I don’t want to hit level cap only to find that some hardcore player who reached the level cap three months earlier is wiping the floor with me, and not because of skill but because he’s geared up and buffed/boosted with RvR points.
Hopefully WAR will be everything I hope for and unless I’m hopelessly addicted to Age of Conan or some other MMO I’ll be definitely playing. Hmm, now which to play; Order or Chaos?
Much like Keen I was contemplating the value of purchasing the Limited Edition copy of Age of Conan versus the regular version. Here’s what you get with the Limited Edition.
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures - Limited Edition includes:
The regular copy sells here (Sydney Australia) for $79 while the LE goes for $109 (yeah, WTF). Now there’s not really anything in the LE that I really want. They’re all nice to haves but hardly worth the extra $30 in my opinion. My sister, on the other hand, has pre-ordered the LE (yes, girls play MMOs too). And her biggest selling point, of all things, was the drinking cape. She insisted I buy the LE so that we could both go to the taverns and have free drinks. I wonder if she realizes they’re not REAL drinks. But hey, who can turn down free drinks.
So I pre-ordered the Limited Edition copy on the weekend. EB Games were offering the Mammoth as part of their pre-order deal while GAME had the Rhino. Both my sister and I wanted the mammoth but EB Games had sold out of the LE so it was either get the regular one or go to GAME, grab a LE, and settle for a rhino.
So that’s what I did. I have one LE on pre-order and I’m warming to the rhino. Now that I’ve committed to AoC I’m starting to get excited. See you all in Hyboria, just look for two drunken barbarians loitering in the taverns.
