So after a few weeks of playing, wholeheartedly in fact, Age of Conan I finally had to uninstall it.  I was a little sad about this because I spent quite a bit of coin upgrading my machine to play it “right”.  I upgraded my motherboard, my video card, and my power source.

I even picked up Windows Vista 64 for pete’s sake.

Know what?  Still crashed.  I must have reinstalled Windows four or five times.  Now, in all likelihood, it’s my hard drive.  That’s still sitting in a Fry’s Electronics bag on top of my computer desk.  I don’t have the heart to reinstall all of my programs again.  I know I should, but my teeth itch every time I think about it.

Shell shock, maybe.

Anyway, the game had some merits.  I thought it was lush and beautiful.  I loved the music and the atmospheric sounds, and my character was pretty awesome looking (if not slightly cookie-cutter to all the other hot women running around Old Tarantia).  At least my character had clothes on.

She was an Algonquin beauty, I’ll give her that.  Blonde hair, deep tan, silver eyes.  Really lovely.  Something to behold.  And I could especially appreciate my great taste in character creation during some of the earlier cut scenes. 

And then with the crashes…   I’d managed to get one of my characters up to level 43 and was well into my altoholic addiction when the crashes started.  By then, I’d already gotten a little annoyed with some of the game’s quirks and was actually opting to watch episodes of The Closer rather than play the game.

That’s a death sentence.

Actually, that’s almost a death sentence.  The death sentence comes when you have to reinstall the game five or six times because you’ve had to reinstall Windows five or six times.  And patching is great fun. 

So, I hate to say it.  I really do because visually, I really love the game, but I’ve gone back to WoW for now.  My husband wants me to play EQ2 with him again, and I am actually a big fan of EverQuest 2, but WoW was calling me back.

I do have to say, though, the graphics pale in comparison.  It’s like Marge Simpson standing next to one of Luis Royo’s amazonian creations.  Just doesn’t measure up.  At least, in that regard, Everquest 2 looks pretty good (now that they’ve finally given us appearance alternates).

So we’ll see.  Time will tell.  It always does.