Hello and welcome to the 12th Issue of Clan Soup! Before we get started with the meat and potatoes of the Soup, let's get the broth a-cookin'. Namely, I want to start by taking a moment to remind everyone that we're always accepting new members into our cabinet of ingredients.



To sign up for Clan Soup, send an e-mail titled "Clan Soup Registration" to jobildo at ten ton hammer dot com with the following contents:

• Your Clan's Name
• Your Clan's Website (if applicable)
• An e-mail to use as a contact (for our use only)
• A few sentences about your Clan

Those few things will get you all geared up for the wondrous world of awesomeness that is Clan Soup, so don't just sit there... get that e-mail sent! You can read up on all that Clan Soup's about here.



And now, it's my pleasure to introduce to you our newest members.

New Members of the Soup

The Destroyer's Legion - Clan Website



5 years and counting,The Destroyer's Legion, a guild that began in the primordial days of Shadowbane Beta, will be bringing some of its
Godsent anarchy to Age of Conan. There never has been a moment in our history that hasn't been Marked by the Will of The Destroyer. The
Destroyer's Legion has built empires and The Destroyer's Legion has thrown them aside in favor of running with a small group of dedicated
PvP'ers. We have fought and led server-wide wars and we have fought small guild versus guild battles. There has not been much The
Destroyer's Legion has not achieved during the guild's time in Shadowbane and World of Warcraft.

CoRe - Clan Website

CoRe*Clan is a multi-platform gaming clan. We have divisions in AoC, Eve, and CoD 4. We have been around for 8 years. The CoRe guild in AoC has members spanning the U.S. and worldwide who are all helpful and interested in having a good time. We dont take ourselves seriously and it affords us the opportunity to joke around with each others expense. Our Clan only accepts members 18+ with most of us being in the age ranges of 25 to 40.

Black Hand - Clan Website



Server: Bloodspire



We have one unified purpose - to destroy your city.

Weekly Clan News

SolidLine - Even though some members had the chance to enjoy early access, the guild landed en mass on the shores of Hyboria at the 23rd of May and immediately started to act up as a team… People teamed up for quests and those who where higher in rank helped the younger ones when they got stuck.



Now what have we achieved within 7 days after official launch?

• a Keep
• a Temple
• a Trade post
• a University
• almost enough resources to build the walls
• plans being made for the barracks

Of course we couldn’t have established this without the help of all the guild members who donated so generously in either money, resources or both. And considering the fact that we have 75 members I can say that I am very proud of what has been achieved already by so little people.



I would also like to point out that SolidLine has grown in a way that I have not seen in guilds that I have been in. We matured, after having had our fair share of problems but we came out of it stronger… building up a great community and making our own history in the MMO world.



All of this can be admired at Potain in the Western region (4th instance). We also have some nice screenshots which can be used… Just reply to me if you would like to have them. I think it would be nice to share this with the rest of the guilds in Hyboria so all will start building as enthusiastic as we are…

Clan Optera - We were very happy to finally put up our guild keep earlier this week. However, we have found that many of the features and benefits of having a guild city are not functional right now. Though we were a little disappointed to hear this, we are still optimistic and hopeful of completing our guild city - it just won't be a priority for now until Funcom fixes some of these features.

Ten Ton Hammer - Our guild was up and running around the time of launch, and since then we've been banding together to get our city built and to get our characters leveled, all the while enjoying Funcom's artistry put forth in their rendition of Hyboria. Feel free to check out our video of the Ten Ton Keep being built, and don't be shy about dropping by our forums to say hello or even get an invite. Membership is open to all!

Question of the Week

This week, I asked the Clans...



Now with some time in the game, how does your clan feel about Funcom's Age of Conan?



I asked the clans to be absolutely as honest as they could be and to bring up any major qualms they might have, and here are the replies I received.

Brotherhood of the Spider - The game has the usual new game pleasures and pains.

• Mid 40's-50's the game starts to stall due to lack of content, especially solo content. With the varying level paces of players it makes that pace all the more exaggerated when your forced to find groups just to level. However this is a common problem to new MMO's until the content is released in later patches. Your going to lose players to the post 50 grind, no helping that. Its too much for the average player to deal with, though luckily I do not fall into that category. However if not fixed in the first months of the game when those players come back to see the state of things and find it the same grind, they are then gone for good. And others will follow.
• Bannings - The mass bannings were rather uncalled for. Given that they encouraged large guilds to pool resources for guild cities how could they not realize that there would be many guild leaders and guild banks with a lot of money. Heck, had I not donated earlier that day I might have been banned based on the money I had farmed.
• Lack of itemization. The higher level dungeons do not have any drops from bosses, so other than doing the quest they are not worth going into. I am wondering if Raid bosses even have loot drops.
• The only real bad thing that I do not see as a new game growing pain problem is the Customer Service. First the EA debacle. Not entirely FC's fault they did warn, but should have rolled that warning out to vendors and on the pre-order packets themselves. Secondly and more recently the rash of player bans. Its really an ugly move to make, pulling innocents in with the guilty. Using a wide broom stroke never solves anything, cause those who do this can get back into the game easily enough, its the innocent players that actually suffer. If mass bans worked then gold sellers would have died with EQ. The did not, the MMO system itself is ripe for exploitation of all kinds. If your game is susceptible to duping, then fix your coding to keep such from happening.
• Fun. I will be honest I am having fun with this game. There are some issues that seriously need to be addressed and honestly the game should not have gone live without itemization and crafting being taken care of, but it definitely is playable and enjoyable. For all my complaints I am still enjoying AoC and plan on having a long stay here.

I could go on, but lets wrap this up by stating that the game has a lot of potential. And if it delivers on what it was stated to be it will become a very dominant MMOG soon enough. However FC rides a slippery slope and needs to not only work on Tech issues but Customer Service as their stance and take on things is due to either divergences in cultural outlooks or just bad reasoning skills on their part. But as of now the CS department would get horridly bad grading on my part.

Tainted Souls - The launch of AoC hasn't been without some very rocking waves I think we can all agree on that. The amazing thing though is that Funcom gave us a game that is so fun to play (at least until level 50 when the awful grinding starts) to a degree that no one actually cares about the bugs big or small.



The main disappointment between the players of our guild is the limited to non existent guild functions. The guild GUI is a complete waste of space, something we have said many times since beta. They have removed the only 2 good elements of it namely the Tax system and the teleport to guild city.



We all have the feeling that if they fix things like that AoC has the potential to be one of the truly greatest MMORPGs ever and not just the most popular. We are extremely confident that FC cares for those problems like they have shown patching many times in the first week.

SolidLine - We think that Funcom has made an awesome game, it is the best game since a long time. To bad that there are still to many features not active or bugged still. I hope they will give people some more playing days, those who suffer form the major lag spikes. This does not however kill our fun (yet) and we hope that they will do everything in there power to patch the problems.
I think the customer service needs some more work, they are slow and sometimes don't even reply.

Born In Chaos - Thus far, Born in Chaos is having a fantastic time on Deathwhisper. While there are a few things here and there that have been bumpy along the way, for the most part we are pleased.



A few of the things we'd like to see changed sooner rather than later:



The guild interface needs to be revamped immediately. The "Leave" button right next to the "Change" button is misleading at best and disasterous at worst. In trying to change my guild settings the other day, I accidently left the guild, and no character automatically promoted into mines place, effectively leaving our guild with no guildmaster. It took them 5 days to fix the problem- and we heard through the grapevine that we are not the only people this happened to.



We have to say that the keep being built around us as we stood here was just incredible. The graphics were just cool as hell.



I want to be able to make a guild cape!

Clan Optera - We are loving every minute of it, and can't get enough. We are very impressed and think the game is doing exceptionally well after one week into launch.They have changed the patch times to early morning instead of prime game time for the USA, which we thought was a great move.

Vigor Mortis - The guild seems to be fairy addicted to the game, playing any waking hour. However we feel like we are playing a beta-game. There are so many bugs and unbalanced things, as well as a huge lack of content for many of the levels, which makes the game seem very unfinished. Even so, it's very entertaining and addictive as hell.

Cleaning Up

That's it for this week folks.



We're always accepting new members and all you have to do is follow the instructions found on this page. And don't forget to check out the Clan Registry to get a look at all the clans in one heaping mound of goodness! It's changing every week, so go take a look!



Until next time, eat well fellow Hyborians!



Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed are those of the guilds represented in this article and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Ten Ton Hammer network or staff.