Lord of the Rings Online Back to the Beginning

A little spare time this morning so I took another look at LOTRO.  Backed down to a level seven Hunter and worked the Combe area.  I remembered the quests so well and the area hadn’t changed.  I decided not to pick up a craft, as I normally would do immediately.  I was just learning the interface, working through the world, etc.  I examined my packs and had a ton of veteran rewards.  I think this is an excellent way of making returning players feel welcomed back.  I understand the argument that if you haven’t been playing for several years you shouldn’t be rewarded, but it is nice to be on the receiving end.

I decided to take a look at Bree, largely because I wanted to put a few things in the bank.  The city has been redesigned (and I didn’t go all over yet).  There is this bustling (with NPCs) little passageway into town that I don’t recall.   Very appealing and atmospheric.   The town itself really had no players in sight, but again maybe they’re elsewhere.  There is a new to me shop called Lalia’s that is a big indoor marketplace.  There were merchants in booths with their wares on the walls so you could see what things looked like in the world (rather than the icon in the sales window).   The cloaks!  So gorgeous.  A booth of horses!

The bank was in here as well so I unburdened my stuff.  It looks like my space is pretty limited, but there’s another value to not taking up crafting at this time, nothing fills your inventory or bag space like crafting materials you need or might need someday.

Working with a newer character was a good idea.  The world is new, yet familiar, and the character has a ton of adventures and possibilities to come.

Another Sad World of Warcraft Ruins Real Life Tale

I was looking for something else and came across this article about a 21 year old who could not tear himself away from the game.  He was lost to this world for five weeks while the pizza boxes piled up around him and he became a big time in game personality.

He chose unwisely.

 

7/29/13   Well, well. This post generated some fine Spam, including one which made it past the site filter but not past me.   Did you know that there are “disposable email accounts” available?  Poof.

Everquest 2, Ribbit!

Hehe.  I had forgotten that at some point you were allowed to have access to a character from the past before the game went free to play.  How I loooove my little Froglok.   You can’t tell from the picture but sooooo adorable.

 

I killed something with ease. Explored the area a little.  Graphics sharp.   The Froglok hops around like a real frog sooo cute.   Did I mention he was cute?  Another character who is also very cute is a cat creature but she is locked.  Everquest 2 has a real high fantasy feel to it, the world, the art, the storylines.  Really unique.

I had forgotten about the “collections”  where you pick up random stuff and add it to a collection towards some end reward.  Nobody likes collecting things as I do.  ^-^

I can’t find where my screenshots are, this one I copy/pasted to paint.

Since I was instantly re-attached to my Froglok and there is a world waiting to be explored, and I recall the dungeons as being quite fun (and now I’m a Dungeon Hound thanks to WOW) I think I will be back to this world.  After our guild gets those last two levels (we are now at level 23, Yay!)

A Return to Lord of the Rings Online

It is amazing how much a game can change if you haven’t played it for four years? I’m not certain.   I load up my Hunter who is in the 21st Hall and the first thing I notice is how poor the graphics are.  The last time I played everything was super sharp. I went in and changed my graphics settings and not much difference at all.  This game has some really nice artwork and scenery and armor, which was previously shown off nicely. Wow, I say.

Culture shock two, she’s got four maybe five rows of skills. Yowie.  Obviously I just need to look at the tooltips to see what they do and re-learn everything but that’s a little daunting.

I thought I should back down to a lower level character so I bring my Loremaster who is in Angmar.

I kill a few spiders and beaky things, with the help of my stealthed Lynx, who is still a great pet.  It went well enough but, the interface has changed so much, I didn’t realize how to pick up loot or where it was going.  Apparently you are on a timer to pick what you want from a bag that appears at the lower right.

So, I back down to my lowest level character a level 2 Captain.  There we go.  If everything has changed so much really, start from scratch so you can be led along like any other newbie.   Good old Archet.  Poor Amdir *sniff*   I always hated that he couldn’t be saved somehow.

Thanks to time spent in World of Warcraft working on every class, I know I could go back in here and level all the characters, I probably will work on it, but boy, soooo different.

The cash shop was not as intrusive as I thought it would be.

I looked at the splash screen for the new area and my desire to explore it kicked in but, I have no character who could go there and I’ll have to move my lower levels up, after solving the graphics issues and re-learning the interface.

It was nice to be back in Middle Earth.   How I loved Moria and will be interested to see how it has changed.

Game Notes

 

Over 80% of the way to a level 23 Guild in World of Warcraft thanks largely to my spouse who is awesome & does whatever is needed to help in any way.  Playing my own characters like fiends too. I will be so happy relax and just play once we’re at 25.  I get a bit fiendish about meeting goals.

Rock Paper Shotgun reports that American McGee’s OZombie Kickstarter has been cancelled, which is a shame as it looked really intriguing.  I love the very twisted take on Alice McGee has done, because I like horror and because these are great traditional RPG adventure games.  I thought the author of the article was needlessly harsh in his write up, enough so that it sounded personal.  No need for that.  Also implicit in this discussion is that Kickstarter has had a bit of the shine taken off of it because of a few games which met their goals, people’s money was taken, and then the game was cancelled or stalled.  Speaking of I haven’t had any Planescape updates recently, heh.

Here is a thoughtful article on Kickstarter from Gamasutra  http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AdrianGoersch/20130712/196146/A_Backers_Story.php

The game I most want to play that I don’t have the machinery for is The Last of Us.  It sounds like a really engrossing story and I’ve had an eye on it since the first trailer.  Between this, Hard Rain and the Uncharted games maybe I will consider a PS4.  As a hardcore PC gamer, I have to say that it used to be you could play every single cool game that came out as long as your pc was up to date.  Now you have a few good games scattered across three different pieces of hardware and your gaming investment is huge if you actually just want to play the good stuff.  Pretty twisted, really.

From Joystiq, a mention of a new intellectual property from Bioware Edmonton’s team.  No real info, just a note they are doing one.  Without the Good Doctors and under the helm under game studio crusher/killer EA I dunno.  Still call me a fish.  I’ll keep an eye on it.  http://www.joystiq.com/2013/07/17/new-bioware-universe-coming-from-mass-effect-and-kotor-creators/

 

Notes from my old games notebook. It used to be you couldn’t play a game without a note book at hand to help solve puzzles or remember details or codes that would crop up later in the game.  Everything was significant!

Mobile Game Reviews

I read game reviews when I’m not sure I’ll like a game, I especially appreciate reviews of games for my iPod since there are so many to choose from on the App Store.  There are several sites I look at:

Pocket Gamer is a site in based in the UK.  They review all mobile platforms and they are right up to date on new releases.

Slide to Play is all app store all the time.  Fun stuff though  A bit of an attitude.

Touch Arcade

All mobile platforms all the time.  Thoughtfully written reviews.

Though I can’t find it again at the moment, I read an article on Gamasutra from a mobile game developer who said that he was finding it impossible to get his game reviewed and he was running into nothing but sites that wanted him to pay like $300 or so to get reviewed.  Really an eye opening article and I’ll post it if I find it.  It made me think that I should make sure I write up any new mobile game purchases I get and give my opinion.  That’s what I’m looking for when I read reviews, what was it like to play?

Here is the article  Mobile Game Review Sites Are A Waste of Time

Pocket Gamer’s List of Newly Free Games on the App Store

Apparently the App Store will be five soon and they are celebrating by offering some of their most excellent selections for free.   Check out Pocket Gamer for the current list and stay tuned to them for upcoming offerings.

 

Prince of Persia The Shadow and the Flame

Prince of Persia the Shadow and the Flame will be available for IOS and Android on July 25th for a mere 2.99.

Doomed Dungeon Run of the Week: Hellfire Ramparts

As a semi-regular feature, I thought I’d write a short post on a dungeon run that was immediately doomed.  You can always tell when a run is doomed but sometimes you’ve been in the queue for so long you desperately want to make it through somehow.

Today’s feature is a run through Hellfire Ramparts.  One of the most straightforward dungeons in World of Warcraft.  There’s really only one conceivable choke point, and that is at the second curve where you can pull Watchkeeper Gargolmar while you’re dealing with the other baddies in that area.  If your group is a crummy one, this will do you in.  Right?   Otherwise you sail through.  Done.

My Priest is finally at 58 so I took her in expecting no trouble.  As you know, your healer needs to identify the tank, and fast.  It isn’t always easy if there are several classes who could tank and none make a move forward.

In our nightmare scenario, we have two Death Knights.  They seem to take turns pulling, and sometimes they seem to try to beat each other to the punch.  Neither does anything to hold aggro.

They ignore my request to just have one of them tank, and everyone dies at the corner with the Watchkeeper.  I should have just picked one and let the other die.  I thought of that afterwards but have never seen this situation before.

We get to the top of the ramp, the “preferred” by me DK runs around the corner out of my line of sight. I run after him, everything attacks me. I die. Everyone dies.

I pay the Angel of Death her pennies to resurrect at the graveyard and leave the group.  Doh.

Rift Silverwood

I moved on to Silverwood Forest.  This is the area where my former graphics card went kablooie for this game and everything was covered with green moss. So I consider myself caught up.  I can pick up a craft or two here but I’d rather know more about them so will have to do some research to see what I’d like.

Since it is free to play my bag slots are limited to three spots and the extra bags I got via questing are very small.  Four slots? Whoa.  Could be wrong on the count but noticeably little.

My first Public Quest was in Silvermoon.  I really like these and liked them in Warhammer.  Such a good idea to toss in a bunch of baddies and let everyone have at them.  I was thinking the Rifts are sort of like random open air dungeons that anyone can pop into.  No worries about needed class roles and queues, just whale on over there.

Character models:  My elf is cute but she absolutely lumbers stiff legged through the world.  So does everyone else.  Very much like the way WOW’s Undead walk with those jointed legs of theirs only it is EVERYONE.  They should fix that.

Horses.  There was a quest to go ride an NPC’s horse and perhaps there is an opportunity in that area to get your own but I didn’t see it.  The horses are HUGE.  Monsters.  I know there really are big horses in our world but yo.

 

 

I notice in chat there are all sorts of people asking how to do this and that, how to complete/find this quest whats the most uber this…very much like you get once you’ve gone from a closed beta to an open one and all the new folks want to know how to level from 1 to maximum the fastest way possible.   Which means that Rift is attracting a lot of new players, good for them.  The game is good so far, intriguing, a bit different and above the average play of many MMO’s.

 

There is a site called Rifthead  which will help explain the game and help you calculate your build and all that. By our old buddy Zam.   http://www.rifthead.com/