AoC 3.1 issues at hand..patchday roflz

Ok, the custom UI's don't necessarily work correctly at this time. I got mine to work reasonably well but it is prone to not showing all combat data and does cause the occasional crash. Overall, make sure that when you start up your patch to check all zones for options during DL. It will cut down some of the initial lag spikes. I expect within the week FC will have a hot fix patch. This happens almost every patch so I would say be patient.

3.1 Live but what about custom UI's?

So the server was down an additional 2 hours beyond the 18 they posted prior to me going to bed. I'm ok with this though the nerd rage on the forums was entertaining to me. I do feel sorry for the Aussie's though. They would have had a chance to actually play during prime time if the patch kicked off like it was supposed to. Before you think I am going to flame FunCom, think again. You see, they made huge server changes to better the performance over all in the game as well as class fixes and a few other things here and there. this takes both soft and hardware changes and it probably can become a real pain in the ass. I'm no IT, but having been around military IT's I can tell you major upgrades can take some time, especially when issues arise. I doubt their staff for the AoC area is that robust either. So give em a break, at least they are trying to work things through. And yes it is still frustrating, but really if you are getting mad over a game being down a day with amounts to maybe .50cents of your $14.99 per month you really got to get a life.

 When I get home tonight I will post the actual final notes for 3.1, or you can check them out on the Official Forums. Pretty much everything I posted from the TL though is what their final posting indicated on the Patch notes. There may be a few minor discrepencies, so it is still worth it to go check them out. I did notice one of the Bear Shaman Combos got reduced by 1 step. This is nice for the Shammies for sure. I think though there will be some seriously pissed off Conqueror's as one of their big finishing blows is still a 4 step combo. This makes for ugly situations in PvP. Hopefully the Conq's qill get a little love in the future. Conq's are one of my favorite soldier classes by the way. I also noticed that Asassin's got some fun as well. again for details hit the official notes for specifics.

Ok so I tested out the 3.1 real quick before work this morning. My old custom UI (Strange) decided to poop out on me. SOOOOO...I first tried a ByCrom update to kill the bmxl files and update...no dice folks. I decided a that point I would go ahead and uninstall Strange and see if Corruption would work. I like Corruption by the way but I was enjoying Strange as far as UI's go. Anyways, Corruption did in fact install correctly. Now tonight when I get off work I will test it out to ensure all numbers/data/bags etc work correctly. But so far, Corruption is a go for cutstoms. I haven't tried out Fire UI or Stonerune so they may be options to check out. My suggestion though is whatever UI you have, uninstall and reinstall first before nerd raging. Trouble shoot it, then try a different one. They may not be your ideal UI you like but they damned sure beat the hell out of the default UI. Anyways, you can find all the custome UI's on Curse.com. In a previous post I mention Fire UI and Stange UI. They are found on Deviant Art and you can DL them directly from there. Well, that' it for the moment. Good luck out there in Hyboria!

3.1 Patch backed up 6 hours

Well, with the new patch it seems they had some issues and it is now backed up 6 more hours. On another note, this seems to be all the patch notes included for 3.1. Mind you this is off of TL server notes so lets see what happens. Anyways I am kinda bummed as I was looking forward to logging in tonight, however I will wait patiently for this release.

Notes:

**These notes do not necessarily reflect the final version that will be deployed on Live**


General
* New server side PhysX that improves our infrastructure and server performance.
* New Server Load Balancing, and system changes, to improve performance in Raids and Siege PVP (or indeed any situation with lots of players present).
* Major Database update that will allow us to expand player inventory and storage space in the updates that follow this one. This one means we will also be expanding the quest log space by 15 slots for premium players in this update.
* Back end optimisations that help server performance and should reduce instances of 'server lag'.
* Improved handling of Damage numbers that should help client performance for some users.
* Improved handling of offline buff timers for better consistency.
* The 'tap' style combat systems was reworked, both to optimise performance, and ensure that the results appear consistently.
* The stack size of Imperial Insignias was increased from 100 to 1000.
* The Playfield Access window now has a category tab.
* The inventory GUI now displays the repository cash for free players.
* You will no longer get multiple cancel buttons appear on the main screen when timing out.
* Fixed an issue where you could suffer from rubberbanding and warpback when walking over small gaps.

Khitai
* Northern Grasslands: Changes to the wildlife and citylife to improve gameplay and player experience. Safe spots have been created, gank squads removed, some patrol lenght reduced and the amount of choke points have been reduced.
* Paikang: Changes to the wildlife and citylife to improve gameplay and player experience. Safe spots have been created, gank squads removed, some patrol lenght reduced and the amount of choke points have been reduced.

Turan
* New Collectors have moved in to the Temple in Ardashir City offering high quality raid armor in exchange for Relics.


Class Changes

Assassin
* The Corrupted Poison feat now also lowers the reuse time of the Grim Corruption combos.
* Increased the finisher bonus damage of the Slow Death Strike combos.

Barbarian
* Slightly increased the finisher bonus damage of the Wreck Armor combos.

Bear Shaman
* Removed 1 step from the Bewilder combo and increased the finisher bonus damage.
* The Improved Ether Theft feat now also increases the damage of the combo.
* Slightly increased the finisher bonus damage of the Crush Armor/Feral Growl combos.
* Clarified the description of the Wrath feat 'Combo - Bloodthirst'.
* The bearshaman spirit during casting is transparent again.

Conqueror
* Clarified the feat descriptions of Improved Fire Weave and Lingering Fire Weave.
* Clarified the ability description of Rend Flesh.
* Clarified the feat description of Mocking Sneer.
* The Hate Increase on combo starters gained from the feat Mocking Sneer have been replaced by a flat amount of Hate Modification. Furthermore, the amount of extra hate generated by this feat has gone up.
* Targets hit by the Fire Weave Banner will now play a visible particle effect.

Dark Templar
* Dooming Presence will no longer cast Recently Impaired on npcs.
* Fixed issues with rubberbanding and stamina loss for targets affected by Dark Burden.
* The Dark Burden feat was slightly changed: The first point will give you a snare with a greater movement hinder then before but shorter duration. The second point will increase the duration and decrease the recast time.
* The Talisman Mastery Buff should now always be reapplied after zoning.

Demonologist
* The spellweaving subspell Hell's Garden now displays a particle-effect in the area of effect.
* Let them Burn can now also do critical hits.
* Consume Flames will now only eat the Incinerate stacks built up by the caster. It will correctly also only give mana back based on the stacks of the caster. It can also no longer be cast when the demo does not have Incinerate stacks running on the target.
* Clarified the feat description of Phase Out.
* Clarified the feat description of Charged Storm Chains.

Herald of Xolti
* Thundering Flames will now place a visible 20 second immunity buff on the target.
* Molten Flesh now has particle-effects that last for the duration of the buff

Necromancer
* Clarified the feat description of Unholy Inspiration.
* Adjusted up the bonus on Chilling Breath.

Priest of Mitra
* Fatalities triggered through Repulse will now play fatality spell-effects.

Ranger
* Cancelling a combo that used a directional attack bonus will no longer prevent you from getting a directional attack bonus for a few seconds.
* Clarified the ability description of Pitch Pot.

Soldiers
* The AA feat Veteran should now correctly increase the duration of Furious Inspiration, Sadism or Vengeance on the soldier having the feat trained.


More details about the tap system changes :

Tap System

The old tap system reported health, stamina and mana gain for every single hit. This created a lot of network traffic and feedback in the game also causing loss of frame-rate in certain situations. In the new system health, stamina and mana tap results are now accumulated on the server and released once per second. We have also added a minimum amount the accumulated value must reach in order to be released. The value interpolates between 2 and 12 from level 1 to 80 (This can easily be tweaked). This makes sure characters with low tap ratings no longer get constantly spammed with insignificant tap results. The goal of the new system is also also to better communicate tap results. They are clearly identified as taps in the combat log. A tap per second approach will also communicate the value of taps much better. We have also fixed a number of issues such as physical DoT effects from combos not producing any tap results.

The Ghostwolves

Well, I went and did it, created a guild on Wiccana. Wiccana is the unofficial RP server but I wanted to create a guild where new players and old could just have a good time. Within 3 days of recruiting we are 30 members plus, mostly new or returning folks. I did this specifically to address new players needing coaching if they wanted and a guild where a lot of new players could band together for instances and stuff that can be difficult obtaining on your own. The idea is to help them work their classes and eventually get raid ready. Rules are simple for us, have fun, be respectful and help each other out. Not difficult. By day 2 of the guild's inception I was able to raise the beginnings of a Guild City. The crew so far are fun to be around and yesterday several of them banded together in the Ruins of Acheron (read beginning zone in Tortage) and blew straight through the Bat Demon quest line. They worked solid as a team and everyone got their rewards. It was nice to see this happen. I am hoping they stay to learn the instances together and work towards raiding down the line. I suppose I could have done this on the Set server but honestly I like the crowd on Wiccana. Anyways here are a few screens of the Guild City as it stands:

The City is Founded near Brandoc Village

So, AoC randomly assigns you a Guild City Site. The small stones show you where construction points are. In the background we see our City is hedged right at the foothills of a mountain overlooking the Leichash Plains a little North East of Brandoc Village. On the immersion level, I figure the place is assigned to guard Brandoc Village along it's frontier edges. Strategic wise, it has an excellent overview and plenty of choke points. There is also an abundant supply of baseline resource nodes nearby which makes it fairly easy to obtain more materials to build with.



The Raising of Ghostwolf Keep

  One thing I never tire of is watching the buildings actually raise up from the ground as though construction is going on when you have gotten your materials and your plans put together. You need to choose the Architect skill set to build anything at a Guild City site. The skill is very expensive as it takes a plan set for each building, wall section, tower and upgrade. For the Tier 1 City this is over a gold per plan to create. Good thing is, you can often find bargains on the Auction House to cut costs. Eventually though you will pay for the plans to turn in your work to increase your skill.



The Keep built

 Here we see the Keep finished. It is of course small, but that is just the beginning. The nice part is that each building built gives a bonus to all guild members. But it's a testament to commitment to build these things as it's pretty resource intensive. In the end though, it is something to be proud of.

The Weaponsmith

Always important to have someone banging iron into steel and have weapons at the ready. Each building corresponds with a craft as well so that members can easily access basing crafting mats within their city if they so wish.











The Armorsmith

 Very militant to create these first but there is method to the madness. As a city is created, certain buildings can't be built until some basic ones are created first. The Weaponsmith and the Armorsmith must both be built before the Barracks can be built.











Standing Watch over the City

 The Barracks was next in line, Here Khadoc stands guard at the Barracks. In my design, the barracks overlooks the lower part of the city but is forward of the keep. I did this simply because it made sense to deploy troops both to the inner Keep and the city at large when necessary (on the immersion/RP level by the way as it has no real effects for placement in the game).

The Alchemists Tower was next. Alchemy is a pretty good skill set to have within a guild. Better powered potions and food make it a good thing for raiders etc. You can climb up the stairwell inside all the way to the top...good views heh heh heh!

A Den of Thieves

Every City has one place where criminals and ne'erdowells congregate, Thieves, Cutthroats and Vagabonds the lot of them. They do however provide spies as well as gem cutting supplies. So, tucked in a corner of a side alley, the Thieves Guild is born.








To date this is the progress I have made upon the city at large. I love to build things and Guild Cities are no exception. They are time consuming and a money sink, but it's fun to see stuff you create as a whole to provide for your guild. So here is to the Ghostwolves, every last one valuable to the success of this endeavor.

AoC Patch 3.1 update

Well, sort of. See the patch is updating as we speak and the servers are down for the next 12 hours. Most times it isn't 12 hours but this one supposedly has a lot of performance based issues addressed. Normally the EU servers are updated first and while they are updating we get the patch notes to look over in the US. This time, the US servers are getting the patch first. Tarib states it's due to needing technicians on hand at certain times to make sure servers and hardware connect correctly. Still, I would have figured they would have at least given a little teaser on what to expect from 3.1. I did a little digging and found  this post from MY MMO Site that gave a little hint of what 3.1 is about. Content doesn't seem to be the issue as far as we can tell at this time. Mostly seems to address performance for better frame rates. While there isn't much that is interesting per se, it is good that FunCom is addressing the playability and stability of their servers. Well, I am eagerly waiting to see what the final outcome is.

Day 6 ~ Traveling

First and foremost, I can never get enough of the scenery in Age of Conan. It is by far one of the best qualities of the game. Take for instance the Lacheish Plains. This is one of the instances where player cities can be found as well as a place to farm materials such as metals, wood and cotton. It can be pretty dangerous for lower levels such as me as there are some pretty hefty beasts out there if I step in the wrong direction. The plains themselves are rough highland country surrounded by mountains. Brandoc Village which sits close to the center is a place for training professions.

 





Here are a couple of examples of the Lacheish Plains. Forests are common as well as open areas. This was on the way to Brandoc Village.

Time goes by and heroes develop in different ways. Khadoc my Barbarian, with whom I am enjoying leveling as a melee class picked up a nice looking bow while in the Sanctum of Burning Souls. Granted, bows really are not a barbarian's tools, but I figure it is an additional tool, heh if nothing else for hunting.

Bow at the ready....arrows?

Anyways a short jaunt about, oh yes he picked up a nice chest piece during his foray into Sanctum as well! Anyways, just some experiences shared. 

 





Day 5 ~ The Forums

To be honest, the official AoC Forums haven't changed much. There are a few writers there that are worth listening too. I look personally for 2 things these days, technical advice/speccing choices and the PvE forums for my server. These are the least toxic. However, I do see a lot of the same old forum trolls that enjoy being rotten to the core. There is solid advice out there but you will have to sift through a lot of garbage to get them. I do enjoy some of the writer's RP orientated stories. Many of them are well thought out and have that Hyborian flavor. Some are long, others short but still enjoyable to read. For technical advice you will see some very argumentative threads, I advise the reader to take the time to read some of the suggestions first and try them. I know I have found even some of the ancient ones on interface and graphics settings useful in maximizing my gameplay. Avoid getting into arguments though, people can be extremely narrow minded. Also, there are several forum trolls that even though they no longer play love to interject their ever so important anguish on the forums.

As advise, avoid posting lamentations of treatment in the game, it incites a lot of the trolls to come out and flame the hell out of you. If you have an idea to post, make it concise, to the point and cover all points in an in depth manner. Make sure you know what you are talking about before throwing your opinions in, otherwise get ready for ugly debate.

There are new player help threads which I have found useful as I relearn the game. I skip over complainers of how broken the game is and look for honest suggestions or answers. If you are looking for guilds on particular servers there is usually a thread stickied and updated for the servers. Take it with an ounce of salt though, people do come and go often.

Day 4~ My Army of Alts

Well, I thought I'd let you all in on a few of my favorites right now. I took screenshots with best resolution for these. It makes for piss poor fps rate as my graphics card is sort of mid grade, but awesome for those gorgeous screenshots. I thought I would share some of them with you all.

Khadoc at the Gates

Here we see Khadoc, my barbarian berserker. It's funny how even with the lowbie quest rewards you can fit in an outstanding costume set while underneath it all your "real" stats and armor style is hidden to your desire. He looks like a Barbarian in this. In this shot Khadoc is on top of the Conarch Village wall within Connal's Valley. The mountains in the distance make for the setting just right as he over watches the Ramparts.





Mhorgrim the Conqueror

 Next, Mhorgrim, my Conqueror on the prowl. I took this within the main Cimmerian town while he was armed and at a walk.

Finally, we have Jhahangir, my Ranger/expert bowman. I went ahead and purchased the Bossonian Archer set of social gear for looks and was pleased with the final effect. The shot was taken in the very beginning zone where you make your way to Tortage. The fading shadows and God rays for sunlight came into play for the shot and I enjoyed the play on light and shadow.




All in all, I really enjoy setting up screenshots for Age of Conan. The graphics are stunning even on low settings but to me outstanding on the maxed settings for simple shots. You can make them both jpg or png format so it's pretty user friendly. These were taken as jpeg's for the record. Anyways, I'm having a lot of fun leveling the toons I have. On a sad note, it looks like my wife's AoC account got hacked and both her lv 80 toons were cleaned out (to include a guild city!!!) and then deleted. We submitted a ticket to FunCom but have yet to hear a reply. The toons are easily replaced, but loosing the guild city that she and I built by ourselves to Tier 2, well that hurt. I'm hoping we get some sort of response from Funcom. But it has been almost 2 years so I don't know if anything can be done. Guess we will see. In the meantime, I am having a blast playing on my toons and leveling and enjoying the world as a whole.

Day 3 - The Server

As was posted earlier, I am currently on Wiccana for the server. For the most part the people are friendly. Most are helpful and there are still folks out there doing the low level questlines. I got 3 of the Connell's Valley group quests knocked out last night as some teams were forming. The economy is pretty cheap at this time, though this may be in part because there is a Thanksgiving Sale on for the items that can be bought for real cash. It is still somewhat difficult to form groups for instances, but this is only my third day of play so I can't totally be a judge of this. I have started doing the material gathering quests in hopes of making some extra silver on the Auction House, but it's still a pretty rough market. I expect things to slow down since there are a number of game titles that just came out, but still there is a fair amount of activity. I did log onto a couple of old toons on the pvp server Tyranny, but it really seemed pretty dead, during the time frame I logged (around 7 pm Central time US), Wandered around a little bit and found little activity so I went back to Wiccana. I here the other pve Server, Set is pretty active though I haven't explored it as much yet.

Day 2 - Mechanics/Interface

Ok, let's talk about what I saw 2 years ago compared to today in the way of mechanics, content and the interface. The initial Tortage scenario while stunning is still a bit stale. I've gone through it from different places and really I try to minimize my time during the day unless I am short on gear. The nice thing is as a veteran player from 09-'10 I had a few account perks that allowed me swift leveling to get out of there. In this, I wish Funcom would put out like maybe 2 other possible starting areas. Don't get me wrong, I especially love the night time story progression. There are a couple of fun story lines with the picts in the Acheron ruins, but over all, it would be nice to start in a different area with different stories.

That being said, let's talk about graphics. DX10 is pretty intense even when your settings are not on maximum. For the immersive player this is some gorgeous stuff. Now, if you do have a mid-high end rig, you can get some really awesome terrain views as well as the clarity of your toon. I run a 5780 Radeon, 8 gigs of DDR3 Ram and a pretty decent 3mhz processor. Even on high graphics, I still range around 30-35 fps frame rate. Not too bad, though it can get a little chunky in the cities. I did get a little frustrated with server lag spikes that occasionally screwed up my combat combo sequences, but I'll tell you, it has improved considerably since I last played. Back then I was ranging around 15-20 fps with a fairly decent rig. At that point I had to keep my graphic settings pretty low to be able to play.

For game play mechanics, well casters need only to pick spell and let loose. Melee classes, you got work ahead of you for the combos. In the beginning its just mixing and matching  single button combos based upon your opponent's defensive pattern. This isn't too hard, till you get into your 20's where you will need to keep a stock of lesser and greater hitting combo strikes on hand. I picked a Conqueror for survivability as a melee class. It's a little more challenging as they progress to figure out which formations and disciplines to mix and match as well as dropping banners or discipline abilities.  Still not too difficult. I am still getting used to not hitting an auto target and auto white hit while in combat. I'll get to it as I progress. 

The UI they give you as a default is OK in the beginning but as you progress you will need additional hotkey slots. That I promise you. So, for those who want to continue on beyond say lv 25, I suggest you install some customized UI's that are available. Curse still carries them and there are some pretty wicked ones out there. HOWEVER  unless you are a guru at manually installing your files and taking out the bxml files or tweaking them, you need to download AoC UI installer for installing the customized UI skins. My personal favorites are Plagued UI - Revived and Bombata's Fire UI as far as reskinning and adding additional hot key bars. They are clean, can be made small with numerous slots for hotkeys. Makes it quite a bit easier to deal with additional stuff. Now one of the keys you should be aware of, and that is if your install gives errors or won't progress, try running the AOC installer as administrator. For some reason this seems to work a lot easier. The UI's don't take much more than 4 or 5 megs of space and the installer is pretty lite as well. Personally I recommend it. You may have to play with the key bindings a bit to set them the way best operates for you but it's still not too much of a chore. Just practice a bit with the combos to get your muscle memory down. I still haven't figured out how to program my mouse the macros needed to strafe left and right, but I'll get there. It won't just take the key hit like in WoW. Eh well, small issues but not game breakers.

Content after you leave Tortage is based down to 3 areas, Conarch Village in Cimmeria, Tesso in the Zeleta Wildlands, and hmmm, I forget the Stygian one, I never go there lol. Ehh I'll try that down the road and report on it. If you are looking for the Barbaric look, Conarch Village/Connal's Valley is the go to place. Killing Vanir sometimes reaps nice barbaric looking armor and weapons for those needing them. The missions have you travelling up and down twisting paths in the mountains and there is some storyline with Kern Wolf eye. Additionally, there are missions that require 3 or 4 players to down outdoor bosses. Now this is all well and good in a high populated server..but if you are on your own...not so much. So, if you are soloing, around level 25, hit up Tesso, there is a kick ass instance in the ruins there anyhow for 30ish player level.

Socially, like many mmo's you got good and bad people out there. Expect a rougher edge in the global channel here. If you don't have a thick skin or are offended easily, turn it off or don't play. Some people are a bit too far so I put them on ignore. The one annoying thing I see is the constant gold spammers as well as emails and and tells. That is annoying but there isn't much that will be done about it.

Server populations are kind of low. There are a total of four servers right now, 2 pvp and 2 pve. They aren't non existent, but still a little low for my tastes. I have seen people still adventuring in the low level ares, but most are doing solo stuff. Doesnt hurt to ask if you need help though. Currently I'm working out of the Wiccana server and for the most part people are reasonably helpful when I asked noobish questions.

Ok those are my observations for the day. Gonna go play now. See ya!!!

Day 1 - Relearning Age of Conan

First and foremost, I have played and still play quite a few mmo's. I find each one has something different to offer in the way of entertainment. I am not a fan boy of any particular game, though I do have a select few that I have stuck with throughout the years. There will be a few others I'll get to when I find the time. For MMO game play experience, I have played EQ, EQ2, NWN, Guild Wars, SWG (pre NGE), WoW and of course AoC. I am still an avid WoW player and am looking forward to a few future titles as well. This blog will be primarily about my current experiences in AoC as well as the odd story here and there.

Second, I'll do my best to refrain from rants. Understand, I played Age of Conan back in 08, then in '10 for about 6 months a piece. I have seen how it has evolved over time for better or worse. If I bring up anything negative, it will always include possible system solutions. This has been tried several times on forums, though I find most forums very poor in mental aptitude. I also think those who bitch too much tend to be the least loyal to any game per se. Yes, that's my opinion, don't care if it isn't respected.

The current state of AoC is a F2P hybrid. I know there are a lot of misgivings, but honestly I think it's good business. As a free player you have a lot less options for classes, only 4 to choose from. Your carry space is severely curtailed and there are a lot of instances you can't get into without buying passes for them. Premium, which is the constant subbing, gets all the basic game stuff such as all classes, all instances, etc. The hybrid comes in for the ebility to buy the expansion for the Savage Coast of Turan and various items from an in game store interface. You must buy those things with real cash. These items include mounts, pets, companions, armor, weapons and vanity equipment. There are other things which can be bought as well. You buy them by buying Funcom points from your Funcom Account. These come in increments based upon how much you want to spend. It can get pretty pricey by the way. But, if you want to see Turan, you'll be dropping 20 bucks anyhow. $20 will get to 2100 points I believe which is enough to get the Turan expac and have a few left over for fun purchases.

One could buy weapons or armor, but really thats a waste of time if you are leveling to get to the end game. If you are maintaining pvp brackets...it may be worth it, but I'm skeptical of that to. This brings up the ugly pay to win model. Well, perhaps. BUT...the gear bought is just barely on par with the pve gear dropped in dungeons. I really doubt it's a game changer, especially not for skilled players. Asides, the hardcore pvper's get their pvp lv 10 stuff and wreck everyone else, so I doubt they have much to bitch about. In open world, a skilled player with rare world drops can still dominate the grounds and do it pretty cheaply with in game silver. I've checked the economies on the AH and to be honest, it wouldnt take much at all to keep a toon decently geared for open world pvp.

What I really got interested in was the vanity armor. This was cool because while they provide no stat enhancement they look friggen wicked! What good is no stats? Well my friends, you have 2 equipment windows, one for power the other for vanity. The power window you equip the necessary items to maximise your class and skills. On the vanity window you drop whatever you like to get a certain look for your character. This will be the "skin" your toon appears to you and everyone else. So if you wanted that bare chested loin clothed barbarian look, but needed gear to be competetive, you can! Need a certain cultural look but the gear you have isn't doing it? No problem! You equip your power slots with whatever you need. Then find the cool culture gear you like and in the vanity slots equip and check boxes. This does nothing against your power stats. I LOVE this! Yeah I do like to be a bit immersive when I can. WoW is doing the same thing with it's transmogriphication, but to be honest, AoC made it a shit load easier to do.

Ok, it's late and I got to work in the morning. I will discuss game play tommorow and the hardware issues at hand.