How "livestreaming" is my salvation! Part 2 aka, I AM PLEASED

FunCrom, I do not ask for much, I do not have the tongue for it, but... Grant Me Livestreams!
(At this point I'm not gonna bother looking up the exact quote, but hey - close enough!)

Ask and you shall receive, yesterday Craig (Game Director) was part of not only one but TWO livestream session where he explained the where's, why's, who's, how's, but's and and's (You get the point, right?)

What else is there to say? "STEPHEN, ROLL THE CLIP - Stephen?"

WotLK and GW2 climbin' through yo windows

Two-in-one comin' at ya today - because I'm glad I finally got some time to spare! (Even though I really don't, I just got up earlier than usual so I could do this and a few other things). Anyway, I've always said that Blizzard took the Cimmeria theme and said "hey, hey - watch us do it better!" and introduced their own sieging, their own mammoths, their own vikings and their mini-Canada to sweeten the deal. Now, I'm pretty much gonna call GW2 out on doing the same thing here. NO, sieging is not something introduced in AoC - infact it's mostly known for being one of the major selling points of DaoC, I believe?

However, as far as I'm aware - DaoC and AoC are the only MMOs out there who's had a proper crack at it (Warhammer Online can go to hell ^^)  and now GW2's gonna try to accomplish what AoC arguably could not.

That in itself isn't enough to call BS on GW2's part, but I also want you to look at the Guardian Class and tell me that's not the Conqueror!

I consider myself fairly up-to-date on the state of Upcoming MMOs but I'll have to take a further look at this - GW2 is so much more than this of course and I commend the devs originality and drastic new look at things, but I'm just saying it's crazy how many good ideas have been implemented and represented in AoC, and now it's pretty much up for grabs by anyone who's looking for a little inspiration.

A busy bee, and also - Crafting?

Here I peek my head through the door to say I'm alive and Skyrim, SW:TOR, KoA: Reckoning and SSX (cus I'm a hipster... plain and simple) dares to come here and take that life away for months. I'm a follower of the Troopers on YouTube that actually manages to make a living off playing Video Games, and many of them say they're having some money troubles because there isn't anything new and exciting (big blockbusters) out there nowadays - Are you kidding me? Look at the previously mentioned list of long RPGs, not to mention the over-hyped-monster-whose-name-shall-not-be-mentioned-but-whose-release-date-is-March 9.

Enough of this senseless rambling about Gaming Controversies though, let's talk about Conan, because why in the nine hells not? Besides the Patch of Herp and Derp (3.2.3) there's now plans for a whole new crafting system - and we're talking about a 110% change here. It's not a giant surprise, it's been mentioned before when Sil laid out his defensive strategy for 2012 (it's gonna be a bumpy ride) but it's nice to see more details on it.

Basically, instead of picking up all the Gathering Skills and two Crafting Skills you pick up two Gathering Skills and one Crafting Skill. Instead of completing Quests to unlock the next Tier, you just level up the skill. Instead of having the nodes the way they are (with the ********** random encounters) you DON'T have that (I don't know the full story on that though). Most importantly, however, is probably the removal of the traditional Recipe Grind and the replacement which is surprisingly similar to KoA's System where you "Experiment". You pick up the necessary ingredients, you get a preview showing the minimum result (so you don't get screwed over) and you craft ahead. Apparently, there's a chance for all sorts of magical stuff to occur and Funcom's promising some very interesting things here overall.

Tell ya what, since I'm such a tech-head I'll go ahead and give a fancy-pancy link to the Monthly Letter.

Oh yeah, and one of these days I will finish my chain-of-thought!