The Ghostwolves got thier Tier 3 Keep

Some of our members at the Tier 3 Keep Build

Sorry for not writing in a hot minute. Real Life work and running the Guild has been keeping me pretty damned busy. First and foremost, we raised up our Tier 3 Keep over the weekend. This was a huge accomplishment for the Guild and I was pretty happy with it's successful completion. Last night we also hit renown Lv 4 which again was a great step forward. Our Core membership is still small but a dedicated lot they are. We have plenty of those members that just drop in, play away and never say a word. They still help in the renown business so I'm not too hurt. We also made the top 20 list this week at number 14 for renown gains. This guild was originally built as something my wife and I just wanted to do together. We never thought it would grow or progress to this level. So to the members of our guild, my deepest thanks!

On a different note, I have found a new favorite class to play. The mighty Bear Shaman. I have in the past tried to play the class with little success. But I see they really shine when they hit around lv 30. This was evident when I was able to solo Torgvhal while still being in lv range. It was a long fight with button mashing everywhere, but I was able to take him down with no help. So, yes the Bear Shaman has become my new favorite alt class to play! Below is Czcibor, my Bear Shammy.

Czcibor after cutting down Torgvhal.

It take a bit of getting used to with a ton of things running at once, but wow the bear shammy is both fun and challenging. It is rough in the beginning to be sure, they really don't start kickin butt till well into thier 20s-30s but man can they drop the Hammer so to speak. For the player that enjoys a challenge and doesn't mind having to micro manage his toon while throwing out nice heals as well as serious dps, this is hands down a serious winner!

Final thoughts today, the game continues to run smoothly for my toons. We have noted however that some of our guildees are still experiencing multiple crashes, especially those not in the US. We have no solid reason why but we hope to find some solutions to it soon.

3.2 The House of Crom!

Ancient Watchers in The House of Crom

Well, first and foremost, I gotta say I was impressed with the 3.2 patch. It gave a new high end content place to adventure with some pretty epic scenery. The House of Crom arrived, and guess what? There was minimal messy bugs that usually plague AoC patches left and right. When I phased into the instance to check it out, I was prepared for several minutes of download limbo,s o I set my Pandora play list up and lit a smoke while sipping on some good Irish whiskey. Then it happened, I damned near spewed the whiskey all over my keyboard because lo and behold, it loaded me in under 1 minute of content updates!

In the cold halls...very eerie!

This was unheard of, I remember when Godslayer came out and how painful that was to load through the first time. But this had to be a mistake! I prolly zoned into an empty instance and was about to get Funcommed. Friends, that wasn't the case. It worked! I got to actually get a small preview of the adventure ahead. Now being on a pve server I wasn't too concerned about being ganked, but since it was a new place, I was keeping to the shadows on Khadoc to see what was about. The internal scenery just blew me away. And wow, my latency was holding low with a decent fps. YES! it was working.

At the ready amongst the ancient stone watchers

 So I began to explore carefully. I won't lie, I got hit pretty hard when I got too close. But here is the kicker, even solo, I was able to clear like 4 or 5 quests out as well as make sure I could get into the instances by both the Field of the Dead side as well as the Eiglophian Mts side. While knocking out the quests, I was able to catch some of the interesting bits of lore along the way. It gave some new insights into the past of the Atlanteans and ergo the ancestors of the Cimmerians. Further more, I was able to get a lv 80 world drop legging set for Bear Shammy that dropped while I was fighting some nasty ghosts. I also walked away with some bad ass potions that were rares.

Ancient Crypts

 Overall the experience was pretty awesome just to peak in. I'm looking forward to actually hitting up the bosses as well. Something else, I noticed occasionally there were walls that looked like they could be clicked on. I want to solve the puzzle as to their use. Supposedly there are several puzzle pieces to figure out while you are in the Halls. So it gives me something to shoot for. Now, the other cool part is that the House of Crom is PvP enabled for those on PvP Servers. This presents new dynamics. While it isnt directly PvP content, those PvPers who are clever will find this one helluva place to fight in!

 On the tech world end. Looks like our Renown issue has been resolved and is resetting correctly. The Auction House still seems a bit buggy though I am collecting sales from my auctions so I cant really complain too much. I haven't seen nearly the lag spikes or rubber banding that I saw when 3.1 first launched so improvements seem to be getting on forward. Character transfers are still an issue, though they are in some additional testing to ensure they work correctly. Additionally, the developers are working on completely re creating the crafting system sometime during the summer quarter of this year. This has my interest piqued. If AoC can pull of a serious crafting revamp and make it work successfully, then they will have achieved something that has not been done in a long time.