My Conqueror has just a few quests, high in the mountains of Atzel's Approach. It only takes her half an hour or so to fight her way through troglodytes and worms to get to the nesting grounds.

Lag the way it is, I haven't been too motivated to attempt the climb.

I have been really obsessed with LotRO and haven't played in a week. No surprise at all that I need to update the game before I can play. So I start the game and walk away, letting it update. Come back to the computer and hit the play button to get an error message that states that some file didn't load properly.

~sighs~

Restart the game and find that I have more updating to do. I am familiar with this ritual and will probably get to play sometime next week. Until the next update comes out.

My Barbarian finally gained the Ambush Feat. It's like the Conqueror's Charge ability, except that it is done from hiding, and does a lot of damage. It can kill minions by itself and with use of Savage Rage, it can take down mobs of equal level quickly. It is a fun ability to use. This and Savage Rage make the barbarian quite a powerful class.

I have also been learning about macros. Unlike other MMOs, AoC has no emote text. It has plenty of cool animations: bowing, waving, hugging and even farting. But they have no accompanying text. So unless you are watching the avatar, the animations are missed.

This bothers me because there are times when I want to wave or bow to someone, but they never see it. In the scripts section of AoC, one can write texts with commands for the animations and attach chat text to them. In game, I can activate the script by typing in its file name preceded by a slash. The text appears in a selected chat channel, like /say, but it's better than nothing.

AoC has a wonderful mechanic called apprenticing. Within twenty levels or so a character can apprentice a lower-level group-member. At sixty-four, Leyek was apprenticed to seventy-nine by an eightieth-level guildee. I got to explore Keshatta in epic mode and help kill bosses there.

There were some issues when the raid got wiped and I respawned all the way to the other side of the zone. I could not solo level-seventy-four mobs in epic mode. But there is a trick to zoning and entering the instance in normal mode. Just move the window asking to join the group in the epic version to an out of the way spot and clicking it when you have gotten to the same area as your group.

The fights were a furious blur. Even with AoC's cool collision mechanics, we were on top of each other, hacking away at the mobs. I am glad that my damage arcs don't hit group members.

In epic, the fights lasted a while, even with a dozen of us all on one boss. Some of the mobs could heal faster than we could damage them. If the healer went down, or the tank lost aggro, usually due to adds, we died quick. Leyek couldn't survive three hits. I got to watch a boss crit a flame spell on her, which was exciting, to say the least.

There are a lot of capabilities to Conquerors that I have yet to learn. While most of the tanking was done by a Guardian, the other Conqueror showed some awesome abilities. If raiding becomes a regular activity, I may have to invest in more "goading" abilities.

Funcom has finally implemented DX10! My conqueror's scaled armor has scales with so much more dimension, even on low settings!

And the bugs have become buggier. Even though my settings indicate that they are in full screen mode, the game starts in windowed. It takes some repeated finagling to get fullscreen. Lagspikes are even more frequent and annoying. But the game is prettier.

And I rolled up a ranger. I like playing female avatars, so I rolled up a cute, little Aquilonian. And, as my girlfriend has informed me about the female avatars, yep, she is going to be having back trouble when she gets older. The SMALLEST cup-size in AoC is C.

Now, I have taken several avatars through the jungles of Tortage, namely my conqueror and my barbarian. Certain encounters take several attempts. I mean they take several deaths and respawns.

This is not so with this ranger. Not only is she a bit top heavy, but her only deaths are from the aforementioned lag-spikes. She can use most weapons, even daggers and two-handed clubs, and she can wear up to medium armor. She has devasting ranged skills, including roots and traps, and she has some pretty decent melee attacks. The missile skills definitely give her an edge over the barbarian, which is a similiarly flexible class.

I should be in Atzel's Approach, collecting crafting stuff for my tier and doing quests that bring the most experience for the labor. But I accepted those quests in Ymir's Pass, so I will make my toon do them. Actually, I accepted even more of them.

I found this whole camp of mercenaries giving quests, just outside of the entrance to Atzel's. Now I have to fight my toon in and out of ruins to find herbs, books and notes; to kill so and so, or a few of his friends, or both.

I really really get tired of spending hours fighting my way into enemy camps and then back out to a quest giver that then says: "Go back in and kill more..."

First I had to go through the days of letting my computer download the latest updates. Then I had to update my Mirage UI with the the cool "By Crom" application. Now have to go through long zoning while the different zones update.

And then I got to find the warm hearts of Atzel's thugs to place on an altar in Ymir's Pass. The altar is in an area filled with frost giants and their lackeys.

It took two attempts to advance the quest. The hearts need to be warm so I only had half an hour. Needless to say, I rushed my first attempt and got swarmed by adds.

Now I have to kill the Son of Ymir. I can't even damage him. I love it when a solo quest advances to a stage that requires a group. Maybe I will try it again when I am a higher level or some guildies can help.

I like playing the damage-dealing rogue classes. They seem to have some interesting flexibility. They can sometimes even tank if you set them up right and in the right group. But they can be squishy, frustratingly so.

The Barbarian Class in AoC is no exception to that. He can dual wield or use a two hander. He learns skills and feats that can make him tougher or more damaging or sneakier. I like having to sneak and plan and ambush. It reminds me of the dynamics of real warfare.

And like real combat, one ounce of lag or one surprise add, and my barbarian is looking for yet another tombstone. And in an MMO, where it's all about grinding, this is the frustrating part. The expletives fly when I play my barbarian.