[Venjenz]

I had a 203 keeper and 220 enforcer when I quit. I raided high end Shadowlands crap, was part of mercbot for maybe 8 months, and did AI stuff for a few months. Here's my take:

The bad stuff:
-Hecklering. Those aforementioned "rock monster thingies" would be Shadowlands hecklers. From about level 60 to about level 210, you grind on a steady diet of hecklers. It gets old...fast. Everyone hates it, but it's the best leveling. Adonis hecklering ftl.

-The 1k token board. A great item that is pretty much must have gear. Problem is, you only get 6 tokens per mission at the point you begin farming the tokens. Grab 6 missions in one spot, run all 6 in about 2.5 hours, spend 30-45 minutes selling off gear, rinse repeat about 25 times. Then came the 1750 token board. Ugh.

-The sided shoulder pads and the Trash King. TK not really a hard kill, but he is a timed spawn with a 20% chance to pop every 20 minutes. On top of that, if you go to the junkyard he pops in, expect to find at least a dozen players all there for the same thing, so you wait in line. It sucks. I got every one of my TK kills at around 5 AM eastern time. Bleh.

-Mochams Gift. If you are an MP, then you are cursed by being able to cast it. If you are a caster, then you spend every game session looking for it. +140 to MM skill means much better pets and available nanos castable. A twinkers delite that makes KEI look pitiful by compare.

-Shadow knowledge. They fixed a lot about the SK system, but not when I was grinding.

-Melee weapons pretty much sucked at the time I left.

The Good:
-Mercbot. The raiding bot system kicked ass. The game kept track of your DKP, bids, items won, etc. Made it so pickup raiding was a reality, and one everyone was cool with. No more "guild as second job" living for the good gear, and my enforcer got a bunch of gear through mercbot.

-Implants and Symbiants. The learning curve was steep, but your character was so much more customizable than in any other game.

-Bag and bank space. 30 slots bags in all your personal slots, 30 slot bags in every bank slot. Easy and cheap to get from container vendor NPCs. I miss that more than anything about AO.

-Insurance/Reclaim. Best death system so far besides EQ. All experience gained since last insure gone at death, and you popped up at the reclaim booth nearest your last save. In some cases, this meant a long ass trip back to where you were at when you died. Rezz sickness of 10 minutes, and all those tasty buffs = gone.

-The Yalmaha personal aircraft. It took a lot of camping in Rome Blue/Green or Tir, but once you got one on the market for less than 5 million credits, the game changed forever.

-Enforcer tanking. Funnest tank gig in any MMO I have played. Plus, atrox enforcers with 2H I-beam just looked like tanks. I loved my enforcer.

-Travel. Between the whompah network, the grids, and the SL garden system, travel was pretty slick.

-Shadowlands catacombs. Scheol and beyond, those catacombs were hellah hard and hellah fun. Took no effort at all to have a TPW with a momentary lapse of concentration. Great rewards, even though the loot tables sucked for drop percentages (tier 2 profession armors = bleh for farming).


It was a good game, and I even consider going back to it. I just have all new stuff to do in EQ2, and I am more explorer than grinder, so all the new goodies in EQ2 Norrath have me interested. But I will always say good things about AO.