With only 5 weeks left before the much anticipated release of Age of Conan, many people are asking themselves the question, "What can I do for the next 5 weeks?" Never fear, if you are reading this and find yourself as one of the many that have this question, I have some answers for you:

1. Take your significant other out as much as possible and buy him/her nice things. Call this a "preemptive strike" of sorts to make up for all of that time that you will be in game when AoC hits the shelves.

2. Take a walk and lose some weight. We will all most assuredly gain a few pounds as we won't leave our computer screens for hours at a time playing AoC. That means fast food, beer, soft drinks, and a lethargic lifestyle. Lose the weight now, and you will have the room to grow in 5 weeks.

3. Get plenty of sleep now, and rest up. Once again, sleep will be secondary to roaming the lands of Hyboria in search of your next victim.

4. Upgrade your computer this month, get high speed internet, and make sure you have a working microphone. AoC will be an absolutely gorgeous game, so do what you can so that you can experience it to the fullest extent. If you don't use voice chat, crawl out of your cave, and go download teamspeak or ventrillo right now!

5. Put in for vacation for work asap! If you haven't done so already, well good luck. This of course only applies to those hardcore gamers that consider their virtual lives as or more important than their real lives, but hey, we have all been there at one point or another!

6. Go outside and listen to the birds, look at the trees, and take it all in. You likely won't be doing that much in 5 weeks.

7. Last but not least, hope and pray that AoC releases on time!

Laters,
adrift