Free at Last

It has been a while since I sat down and updated my thoughts on AC, AC2 and LOTRO. Actually, I have been a little too busy playing the games.

Summer came and along with it was Turbine's announcement that AC was going Buy to Play. What that broke down to was that if you were playing with a live subscription on July 1st, it became free to play for your account on AC and AC2. No more fees. If you decided that you wanted to activate an inactive account or purchase a new account, the fee was 9.95 and no additional fees.

I wound up taking my 4 accounts live into the new model and also reactivated 5 inactive accounts that I had in the past.

One of the great things about this change is that I am seeing a lot more players in all of the worlds. The counts have almost doubled at any point in time and many, many past players are returning. AC may be almost 15 years old, but there are no games out there that can come close to it in enjoyment.

As people are creating new characters and trying the new weapons and summoning, they are not pushed to get to end game. Sure, they can rush along and get to 275 as soon as possible, but there is little purpose to it anymore. Now a person can try out combinations that they would not have tried in the past, enjoy the scenery that is this world, run dungeons and do any of the many challenges available. This is not only in AC but in AC2. It still has a nice community and its world is so worth travelling.

I just created a Finesse Melee Player last night. I ran him through the Facility Dungeon and got him up to level 43. From there I took him over to get his Jitte Improved. Now I am having him go through all of the Exploration Society Stamp Quests. When he completed the 6 quests, he will be level 50 or 51. He can run through the Evis Dungeon for his pincher and will be shortly ready for the Danby's Outpost Moarsman Dungeon. It has excellent loot and good XP.

I am shaking my head a bit at the number of characters I have to deal with. Nine accounts give me 99 characters per world to manage. Sure, some of them are mules and some are crafters, but that still totals a lot of characters. I am working towards getting cottages for all accounts on all worlds. One of the places I am focused on is a set of 8 cottages where I purchased my first cottage the day that any cottages became available in the worlds. It requires Iron Hearts and they are difficult to acquire. A few years ago, Turbine bumped up the Iron Golems to over level 100 and they are pretty tough. There is one dungeon where a number of them are located and I farm them for hearts.

Many of the worlds now have nightly Paradise Valley Quests. Many players can get a level and a mana forge key at the end. The current problem is that the quest is so popular that portal storms have returned. It becomes a battle just to stay in the Valley to get the reward at the end. That is a good problem.

With the Missile weapon changes, the Devs did not treat Thrown Weapons like the Bow or Crossbow. With TW you need Strength and have to give up Focus. It just delays your Fletching power a bit.