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The Anvil of Crom: You must unlearn what you have learned
Hoo boy, circle-strafing. Basically I suck at it. However, with a little help from a new peripheral and an hour spent coming up with a rather meticulous set of key-bindings, I'm on the (slow) road to improvement. This week's Bear Shaman-flavored adventuring featured a lot of unlearning as I've scrapped the traditional WASD/keyboard-turning approach to Age of Conan that I've been using since the game's release. It's not pretty right now, but once the awkwardness wears off, I'll likely be much more adept at both PvE and PvP. As far as content goes, I got Mr. Oakarm into his mid-30s and struggled to find a group for Stygia's Black Castle dungeon (still trying to coordinate one as of press time, in fact). Craig Morrison also weighed in with his monthly dev update, and all of this adds up to a lot to cover this week. Join me after the break for the details.
The Anvil of Crom: Combat, casuals, and birthday cake
So I've got a week's worth of healing under my belt, or more accurately, a week's worth of playing a healer class. Suffice it to say that I'm in uncharted territory here, despite the fact that I rolled through the familiar environs of Tortage and the semi-familiar environs of the Wild Lands this past week. Along the way, I met with a handful of friendly Massively readers, took a bunch of purty screenshots, and generally had a swell time. In a little over 15 hours of play, I managed to get my Bear Shaman to 30 and came away with a fairly solid understanding of the class's utility in low-level PvE. I also got reacquainted with Age of Conan's melee combat system, which, depending on your perspective, either makes Funcom's MMO the best thing on the market or one to avoid at all costs.
The Anvil of Crom: It's the Bear Shaman (barely)
Well, the people have spoken, and it seems like I've got some new marching orders when it comes to Age of Conan. If you've been following the column for the last little while, you'll know that I'm running a miniseries that borrows heavily from Massively's Choose My Adventure pieces. Every so often I'll offer up some polls relating to various gameplay choices, giving you the reader the opportunity to vicariously explore aspects of Funcom's fantasy title that may have lacked previous coverage. I'll report on my character's adventures on a regular basis, with the long-term goal being a pretty comprehensive record of what it's like to play AoC from 1 to 80, as well as a deep look at endgame. In addition, it's a public character, so anyone who wants to group for dungeons, PvP, or general shenanigans can hit me up in game. Preambles aside, head past the cut to see the results of last week's polling and a glimpse into the future.
