Awesome New Game

[CT Wolf]

About a week ago Age Of Conan was released. I've been playing it for a while now and the game is shaping up very nicely. While there are still some bugs, the company that made the game are getting the bugs squashed very quickly.
The graphics are comparable to Oblivion, which means pretty damn good. Game play is very good with real time combat rather than the usual "just click the buttons and I'll attack" kind of thing you see in most MMOs like WoW.
If you are thinking about playing the game, roll on the Set server and we can play together.
It would be cool to have a Chimpout guild there
-cheers

http://www.ageofconan.com/

[NightRaider]

About a week ago Age Of Conan was released. I've been playing it for a while now and the game is shaping up very nicely. While there are still some bugs, the company that made the game are getting the bugs squashed very quickly.
The graphics are comparable to Oblivion, which means pretty damn good. Game play is very good with real time combat rather than the usual "just click the buttons and I'll attack" kind of thing you see in most MMOs like WoW.
If you are thinking about playing the game, roll on the Set server and we can play together.
It would be cool to have a Chimpout guild there
-cheers

http://www.ageofconan.com/
I just bought the game. Think I can get away with a name like "Jigaboo Jackson" or "Junglebunny Jamal"? rolfl


Anyway, pm me. I have a 100 man vent server. Lets get a guild of nigger haters together :geek

[CT Wolf]

I just bought the game. Think I can get away with a name like "Jigaboo Jackson" or "Junglebunny Jamal"? rolfl


Anyway, pm me. I have a 100 man vent server. Lets get a guild of nigger haters together :geek

Maybe you could use Jigjak or something similar. I'm not sure how PC the Conan servers are.
I had a WoW guild named Narga Stole My Bike and we had to chage the name.

Oh and by the way :wlcm -cheers

[NightRaider]

Maybe you could use Jigjak or something similar. I'm not sure how PC the Conan servers are.
I had a WoW guild named Narga Stole My Bike and we had to chage the name.

Oh and by the way :wlcm -cheers

Years ago, I played a game called Ultima Online and made a dragon tamer. I made my toon a chimp named him "Jimmy Byrd" and made his guild title "Dragon Death". Took about 6 months for them to figure out what I was referring to. The ban hammer came shortly after rolfl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Byrd_Jr.

[103rapesAday]

Years ago, I played a game called Ultima Online and made a dragon tamer. I made my toon a chimp named him "Jimmy Byrd" and made his guild title "Dragon Death". Took about 6 months for them to figure out what I was referring to. The ban hammer came shortly after rolfl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Byrd_Jr.

I laughed my ass off reading this part, I'm amazed it took them so long to figure it out. :lol

[103rapesAday]

About a week ago Age Of Conan was released. I've been playing it for a while now and the game is shaping up very nicely. While there are still some bugs, the company that made the game are getting the bugs squashed very quickly.
The graphics are comparable to Oblivion, which means pretty damn good. Game play is very good with real time combat rather than the usual "just click the buttons and I'll attack" kind of thing you see in most MMOs like WoW.
If you are thinking about playing the game, roll on the Set server and we can play together.
It would be cool to have a Chimpout guild there
-cheers

http://www.ageofconan.com/

How many characters does it allow on an account? What are some of the minimum requirements for the system (maybe we can get a parts list for members here so they can meet it and play)?

[CT Wolf]

You can have 8 toons per acct.
For HW, this is what they say you need:
Required
OS: Windows Vista/XP
Processor: 3GHz Pentium IV
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 2.0 and 128MB RAM: NVIDIA GeForce 5800 or ATI 9800

Recommended
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz (E6600) or better
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GX2 or better
RAM: 2GB or more

Enhanced for: DirectX 10, 64-bit processors, multi-core
Supports Parental Controls on Windows Vista

I don't think I'd try running it on a P4, it would run like a nigger on its way to work.
A dual core and above should do well though.
With my quad core QX9650 and a Nvidia 8800GTX, I'm getting a minimum of 30FPS at 1920x1200 and that's with ALL eye candy turned up all the way.

Here's a review (http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/05/27/game-review-age-of-conan-pc) of the game, the Ars reviewer likes it a lot.

With a week of solid play and 25 levels under my belt, I have walked away from my Hyborian adventure immensely satisfied with a title that has so far proven to be incredibly robust and full of potential. Many MMOs these days launch with nothing but promises, but the early content of Age of Conan is more than enough to warrant the attention of serious and casual MMO players alike. With its strong combat engine, excellent narrative experience, no-holds-barred attitude, and expansive world rich in lore, Age of Conan is an incredibly, almost surprisingly, strong MMORPG at launch.

Conan adopts a far more action-oriented approach to combat than its peers, and while spells still have cool-downs and cast times, the general pace of combat is sped up significantly. Melee attacks happen in real time; you can't click the auto-attack button and sit back. Players must continually hit one of three attacks—left, right, and overhead—to attack the target, and stringing together these attacks in certain ways results in damaging combos. Better still, most weapons produce splash damage which allows you to fight more than one enemy at once—something you'll do often, as one-on-one fighting is definitely not the norm in the game.

[103rapesAday]

You can have 8 toons per acct.
For HW, this is what they say you need:
Required
OS: Windows Vista/XP
Processor: 3GHz Pentium IV
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 2.0 and 128MB RAM: NVIDIA GeForce 5800 or ATI 9800

Recommended
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz (E6600) or better
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GX2 or better
RAM: 2GB or more

Enhanced for: DirectX 10, 64-bit processors, multi-core
Supports Parental Controls on Windows Vista

I don't think I'd try running it on a P4, it would run like a nigger on its way to work.
A dual core and above should do well though.
With my quad core QX9650 and a Nvidia 8800GTX, I'm getting a minimum of 30FPS at 1920x1200 and that's with ALL eye candy turned up all the way.

Here's a review (http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/05/27/game-review-age-of-conan-pc) of the game, the Ars reviewer likes it a lot.

Thanks this gives us a start, here's a parts list for those of you in America and in my opinion at this time the best prices going for the items:

XFX PVT88SFDF4 GeForce 8800 GS 384MB 192-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150275) for the graphics card

EVGA nForce 650i Ultra Motherboard CPU Bundle - Intel Celeron Dual Core E1200 Processor 1.60GHz OEM (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3827864&CatId=3592) this processor from many websites and review can be over clocked and remain stable to 3.0GHz with stock cooling, a true budget processor that kicks ass, keep in mind though this combo doesn't come with the heatsink or fan for the cpu and you do have to deal with a rebate.

If you don't want to deal with overclocking, then the combo I would recommend is either EVGA nForce 650i Ultra Motherboard CPU Bundle - T1 Version, Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 Processor 2.40GHz OEM (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3720334&CatId=1599) or better yet EVGA nForce 650i Ultra Motherboard CPU Bundle - Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Processor 2.53GHz Retail (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3877509&CatId=1599) same as above will have to get a cpu & fan and deal with a rebate.

If you want to go cheap on a 64 bit OS I would highly recommend for gaming buy Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit English 1pk DSP OEI DVD - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116488) but only do this if you intend to run more than 4 gigs of ram.

I'm going to suggest for those of you reading this to avoid AMD processors at this time, they're not the bang for the buck champions they were in the past. I'm also going to suggest to get at least a good power supply namely about 700 watts to support this graphics card (about another $100). The reason I didn't recommend a particular heatsink & fan combo is that it'll be dependent on the computer case you put it in and the clearance you'll need (if you put it in a smaller lan box for gaming then you'll need a lower profile setup). I'm hoping many of you can just simply upgrade to some of these components or add some of this to what you already have. I intend to get the game myself in about two weeks and join in. thumbsup

[CT Wolf]

Excellent choices there. Price/performance ratio is awesome!
It's a shame that AMD has fallen so far behind in their development of both desktop and server architecture. Their new mobile architecture though looks promicing and may make them enough money to stay afloat.
Intel can now name their price for the high, mid and low end and there's nothing we can do about it unless we have about 6 billion dollars to sink into AMD. That's enough to buy the company and get them out of debt. After that, AMD would have to design a chip to compete with Intel's Nehalem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture))...and that isn’t going to be easy.
The July 2008 issue of CPU Mag has a great and very in-depth article concerning upcoming chip architectures and CPU/GPU functionality and integration.

[103rapesAday]

Excellent choices there. Price/performance ratio is awesome!
It's a shame that AMD has fallen so far behind in their development of both desktop and server architecture. Their new mobile architecture though looks promising and may make them enough money to stay afloat.
Intel can now name their price for the high, mid and low end and there's nothing we can do about it unless we have about 6 billion dollars to sink into AMD. That's enough to buy the company and get them out of debt. After that, AMD would have to design a chip to compete with Intel's Nehalem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture))...and that isn’t going to be easy.
The July 2008 issue of CPU Mag has a great and very in-depth article concerning upcoming chip architectures and CPU/GPU functionality and integration.

The only chance I see AMD having is how well they can integrate the ATI gpu sharing between the onboard video and any bought card (poor man's crossfire, iow if the overall net total cost will yield a higher performance so such a package can be sold to Oem like Dell, HP, etc to sell as a package for your average Joe). If you know how to build your own system Intel is the obvious choice for bang for the buck now and anything high end (many of the core duos can be over-clocked to the point that they'll outperform the AMD quads at a much lower price point, even my 6600 quad over clocked can beat out any quad AMD has currently and it's been out over a year), but where I can see AMD catching up is that they can press out both the cpu and gpu off the same dies if they can survive that long. The other problem they may have also is that Nvidia is creating an informal alliance with Via which may cut into this situation since this will be targeting the cost conscious consumer. Heaven help them if Nvidia license out sli to Intel, this most likely won't happen due to the recent differences by both companies.

I think what's killing them also is that ATI is also at this time getting it's clock cleaned by Nvidia, they really don't have an answer to 8800 ultra or gtx much less the 9800 series. The 8800gs I recommended kills any ATI card at it's price point and only two of their uber cards can outperform it, and the 9600 will kill any ATI in the price point above as well. I think ATI division needs to stabilize to a single set of drivers for gaming (main ATI weakness for years), I think they have the better lower end video cards but any mid end and higher is owned by Nvidia and it's not even close (which is really bad, the high end card is the developer's test bed to seed out to the lower model cards). The only thing they have going for them now is that is that most of their low end and many of their mid level cards also can run off of cheap power supplies, something you can't really say about Nvidia (once you go above the 8600 series you can't use the power supply from most store bought computers, this is why the option for most desktops at various sites end with this card option or an ATI model).

Sadly I have to admit until about the last quarter of last year I was an AMD/ATI fanboy (I haven't bought an Intel motherboard or cpu since the P3 days, last 5 video cards were ATI which I was using til the 939 core came out). I hope AMD can get it together, competition is good for us system builders and those we build them for, right now it's dirt cheap to build a good rig, but this will change in the future if AMD falls.

[CT Wolf]

Sadly I have to admit until about the last quarter of last year I was an AMD/ATI fanboy

Same here. I waited until the Phenom launch before upgrading to the QX9650. I did have high hopes that AMD would at least equal Intel and be competitive with Conroe.
I read with dismay the early reviews of Phenom and after recovering from a small depression, went looking at Intel's offerings. It just about the same day that I read a review of the QX9650 and the ABIT Maximums Extreme. To make a long story short, I went to Newegg and bought into Chipzilla.
Once the above parts arrived (along with 4GB of DDR3) I put the beast together and installed Vista 64 and fired up the machine.
It was slightly unstable but after a few BIOS updates and some careful voltage tweaking, I got the machine running stable at 3.83GHz.
Once SP1 hit MSDN, I had it and away went 99% of what few stability issues were left.
Time marches on and so does Intel's architecture. Anand wrote a preview concerning the Nehalem and you can read about that here (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3326)
Early results are very impressive with the Nehalem, it showing a good 30% increase in performance clock for clock over the Penryn.
The Nehlam launch is set for Q4 this year so we can expect even more performance by then.
Another avenue AMD has to win the speed (actually performance) crown is the Bulldozer (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3050&p=5)
which is set for a 2009 launch. There's no telling how well it will perform but I remember the Athlon and how it blew Intel out of the water back in late 1999. Hopefully AMD can do it again and bring some competition back to the marketplace.

[103rapesAday]

Same here. I waited until the Phenom launch before upgrading to the QX9650. I did have high hopes that AMD would at least equal Intel and be competitive with Conroe.
I read with dismay the early reviews of Phenom and after recovering from a small depression, went looking at Intel's offerings. It just about the same day that I read a review of the QX9650 and the ABIT Maximums Extreme. To make a long story short, I went to Newegg and bought into Chipzilla.
Once the above parts arrived (along with 4GB of DDR3) I put the beast together and installed Vista 64 and fired up the machine.
It was slightly unstable but after a few BIOS updates and some careful voltage tweaking, I got the machine running stable at 3.83GHz.
Once SP1 hit MSDN, I had it and away went 99% of what few stability issues were left.
Time marches on and so does Intel's architecture. Anand wrote a preview concerning the Nehalem and you can read about that here (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3326)
Early results are very impressive with the Nehalem, it showing a good 30% increase in performance clock for clock over the Penryn.
The Nehlam launch is set for Q4 this year so we can expect even more performance by then.
Another avenue AMD has to win the speed (actually performance) crown is the Bulldozer (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3050&p=5)
which is set for a 2009 launch. There's no telling how well it will perform but I remember the Athlon and how it blew Intel out of the water back in late 1999. Hopefully AMD can do it again and bring some competition back to the marketplace.

I hope they write into the kernel instruction set to take advantage of these multi-core processors and their capabilities to multi-thread as well. I'd like to see AMD rebound, I just hope it's not too late but it seems sadly they're method to spring back may be court and suing Intel. Sad that they must go this route instead of just providing better hardware.

[CT Wolf]

Some apps and games are taking advantage of multi threading. I think Crysis was the first along with games that use the Unreal 3 engine. Bioshock, Vegas2 and UT3 come to mind.
Bryce 6 uses multiple cores quite nicely, I have always liked Bryce but rarely did I use it due to the 4+ hours it would take to render a simple scene. I can now render a fairly complex scene in 15-40 minutes. I'm sure I can build something that would take hours to render and probably will once I learn more about that great program.
3D Studio has been multi threaded for some time and the other big dollar professional render programs such as Maya and Lightwave are following suit.
I just started making panoramas with Photoshop CS3 (which can use 2 cores). It takes CS3 about 15 seconds to seamlessly stitch together 5-17MB images into one panorama.
Many video and audio editing applications are now multi threaded with more on the way.
I think the next Photoshop will spawn up to eight threads and will scale to the processor.

[103rapesAday]

Some apps and games are taking advantage of multi threading. I think Crysis was the first along with games that use the Unreal 3 engine. Bioshock, Vegas2 and UT3 come to mind.
Bryce 6 uses multiple cores quite nicely, I have always liked Bryce but rarely did I use it due to the 4+ hours it would take to render a simple scene. I can now render a fairly complex scene in 15-40 minutes. I'm sure I can build something that would take hours to render and probably will once I learn more about that great program.
3D Studio has been multi threaded for some time and the other big dollar professional render programs such as Maya and Lightwave are following suit.
I just started making panoramas with Photoshop CS3 (which can use 2 cores). It takes CS3 about 15 seconds to seamlessly stitch together 5-17MB images into one panorama.
Many video and audio editing applications are now multi threaded with more on the way.
I think the next Photoshop will spawn up to eight threads and will scale to the processor.

That's good I know many of the big names will rescale and develop quickly due to the fact enough professionals in the field will pay to take advantage of it due to the nature of time is money will make the business more profitable if they can get the programs to run faster. Gaming on the other hand may not do so since their demographics are based on overall participants and many people buy their system pre-assembled therefore most likely only a dual core setup at best in the next year with other limitation becoming graphics and the power to use it (I also remember reading that "Ages of Conan" the AI takes advantage of the multi-cores as well). I wonder if many of these programs do take advantage of scaling on that level if we may also start seeing a multiple socket motherboards come out similar to the boards that support multiple cards or if the mfg will head towards the direction of more multiple cores instead or better yet even both?

I wonder at times if I jumped on the quad too soon but luckily it can be over-clocked drastically so I think I'll be okay for the next two years. Amazing that some of those panorama takes as long to render on your system and it's overclocked makes you wonder if they considered this when designing the program, after all most people don't have a clue about over-clocking and are usually too scared to try?

[CT Wolf]

There are some renders that take close to 48 hours and that's with good hardware. Take a look at this guy's site here (http://members.digitalblasphemy.com/)
And that's just one frame. Imagine the kind of rendering power you'd need to render a few minutes of special effect animation for a sci-fi movie. Those folks have render farms with hundreds of processors and Terabytes of memory.
What's nice about Bryce 3D (and the pro apps as well) is that they all come with software that allows you to use as many computres to render a scene as long as you install the client software on each machine you want to use.

[103rapesAday]

There are some renders that take close to 48 hours and that's with good hardware. Take a look at this guy's site here (http://members.digitalblasphemy.com/)
And that's just one frame. Imagine the kind of rendering power you'd need to render a few minutes of special effect animation for a sci-fi movie. Those folks have render farms with hundreds of processors and Terabytes of memory.
What's nice about Bryce 3D (and the pro apps as well) is that they all come with software that allows you to use as many computres to render a scene as long as you install the client software on each machine you want to use.

I wonder why kind of a rig they are running now? I sometimes wonder if this is the reason why so many programs come out with a lot of bugs and patched shortly (you'd think they'd have a good virtual machine emulator to avoid this).

[CT Wolf]

I wonder why kind of a rig they are running now? I sometimes wonder if this is the reason why so many programs come out with a lot of bugs and patched shortly (you'd think they'd have a good virtual machine emulator to avoid this).

This is what he's running now

he computer is a BOXX 8300 workstation, recently upgraded to dual quad-core Xeons (3.0 GHz) and 16 GB of Ram. The monitor is a Dell 3007 (30 inch). Yes, I only use one monitor. Call me old fashioned...

Read the article by Alex St. John in the latest CPU Mag. He talks about the issues programmers have to deal with everytime there's a new multi-cored chip released. It seens as though timing multiple cores to work together is a royal pain.

[Gnome Sayin]

I played EverQuest2 for a while, and tried to play WoW but got bored with it. EQ2 had 100% PvP servers, which made things interesting. Is AoC the same, as far as PvP?

I have a dual core 2.8gh, nvidia 256 gh 6800 and 1g ram, hopefully that's enough to play it on low settings. I'm not a huge gamer so I don't have all the newest stuff, but it works well enough.

[CT Wolf]

In AoC you can play either on a PVP or PVE server but you can PVP or both.
Guilds can build cities and attack other guilds using siege weapons they have built.