Fist de Yuma - December 28, 2004

End of an era

This is the last column of the year. It is also the end of my five-year run as a weekly column. From this column on, I'll only be posting when I have something fun to write about. Putting myself into a weekly column was not hard when the game started, because I had so much to write about. In the last year I have had to stretch my mind to come up with a good column. While I have been mostly successful, it had starting to become work. Five years of weekly columns is something to be proud of. I'm surprised I lasted this long. We can thank Turbine for giving us such a fun, action filled game. When you are excited about an adventure, it is easy to write about it. I might have a lot of columns when the expansion comes out. I cannot say for sure, but I have great hopes. Meanwhile, I'll still have columns, but this is the end of the weekly columns. I'll do my best to make sure the word gets out when I have a column. If you are on my mail list, there is no problem. If you depend on logging on each Tuesday for a column, and don't use the AC boards much, drop me a letter. I'll make a special list to tell people when I have a column out.

The future of AC

AC is a great game, but there is a lot of competition out there now. I have great hopes for the expansion, but that is in the future. For now, AC is kind of static. There are a lot of new quests, and new lands, but in the end, it is the same hack and grind, in a different place. Like I said, I expect that to change, and it will be fun to write about when it does. It is my feelings that Worlds of Warcraft is AC's main competition. EQ and the rest are very group orientated. Both AC and WoW will force people to group in order to complete a quest, but they never force you to do a quest. Both games can let you solo, but AC does it better. Graphic is better with WoW, but I expect the expansion will close that gap. The real advantage that WoW has right now, is it is new. Time will tell if it has staying power. With a 60 level cap, and other things, I'm not so sure. The people in my allegiance are worried about my playing WoW. I'm not sure if this is a valid worry. They were not worried when I played Morrowwind. They were not worried when I played Knights of the Old Republic. To me, this is just something different, and has no effect on my AC play. Right now I'm not playing AC much, but that is more Turbine's fault.

The new weapons are coming, but they are not here yet. A lot of my hunting is for gathering weapons and armor. I have about all the armor I need, and any weapon I get will be useless in a few weeks. After the next patch, I'll be back to 24/7 AC, as I try to get the weapons I need. With two swords, three mages, a UA and sundry mace players, getting the weapons and salvage I need will be a take a lot of time. I'm also looking forward to the promised melee leveling spots. For now, this is on the distance horizon, but at least it is there. I'm starting to think that this will be part of the expansion. So we have a lot to look forward to. I don't see it as a choice between AC and WoW, as both are different enough that you can have fun with them equally. In fact, WoW makes it easy to skip playing, as they reward you for not playing. The longer you are logged out in WoW, the more double xp you get when you return. As leveling is kind of slow at times, that double xp is a big help. So a month of hard-core AC play will be rewarded with several levels of double xp in WoW. That is the best of both worlds in my book.

Salute to a great Monarch

When Elder was leaving for flight school, he had two people to choose from, to assume the leadership of the allegiance; William the bat and myself. Of course, he picked William the Bat. This choice created some bitterness on my part. I was thinking of leaving to form my own allegiance, when I was asked to assume the leadership of the Reality Dysfunction group. I can say I have been successful as a monarch, because the people in the allegiance fit my leadership style. That style is a relaxed style. All I asked is you have fun, help others and not hurt others. I don't make demands or try to direct people in any way. If you have fun by logging once a week to hunt a bit, then so be it. If you want to make 150 in four months, that is also welcome. The key is no one player is any better or worse than the next. AC is for fun, and anything else is meaningless. Looking back, I am seeing that my style might not have fit my old allegiance. That old group benefited from Elders leadership until the last year. We sorted of drifted as Elder had a lot of real life things to worry about. When William took over, the strong active leadership was back. I'm not sure I would have had the endurance to take on that role. The result is that the William the Bat's allegiance is one of the very best. I have close ties with them, and take advantage of their greater power for some of the harder quests. So, in the end, it has worked out for the best. Even with 20-20 hindsight, you could not have picked a better result.