Monthly Archives: July 2017

Lord of the Rings Online: Escape From Lothlorien

I purchased the Mirkwood expansion when it came out, played very little (as it turns out my character simply wasn’t high enough level for the area and things didn’t go well for her). 

I was never a fan of Lothlorien, and didn’t wish to continue playing there, nor did I want to drop my main character and level through older areas, only to get here again in the future.

So I stopped playing for a few years.

Here I am, frustrated with Lothlorien still, so I thought to look at the level for Mirkwood.   61-65!  Yay!  I’m level 62.

Abandon ship, I said, find the way to Mirkwood and la la la.

On the area map, it isn’t so far away.  I just need to cross the Anduin River and I’m off on new adventures.   Note my happy arrow.  Good ol’ Paint.

Ride, ride ride all the way across Lothlorien to the shores of the river.    Hmm, I can see they won’t let me get up on the other side from here.

Ride ride ride the shoreline.  This looks good, clearly I can swim over and climb up easily right from here.

Swim a few feet. Dead.  Inexplicably dead.  Retreat puts me back in the middle of Lothlorien.   If you’re going to cause me to die bogusly, at least stick me back on the shoreline where I apparently went so foul of the river’s swimming rules.

Many many bad words spoken.

I then looked up “How to get to Mirkwood for Lothlorien”.    How nice, I can get a quest from Haldir (which I likely unknowing got in 2009 but hmmpf), or I can ask the Elf at the Docks for a ride over.

Nice.  The boat awaits!

I actually wasn’t sure if I’d been to Mirkwood already, but I certainly had.  I had a FAILED quest in my log.  Welcome back, puny dog.   Been Here, Failed That.

Oh, man, we’re bunnoles deep in ORC territory.   How I’ve missed them!   Hubba hubba, ORCS, I say.

Damn. I was sooo eager to reach the Orc fortress, I didn’t see a Goblin in the murk.   He popped me off my horse, then completely grayed out all my skills so I had a tough time beating him, but I did get him, he’s a dead little goblin.

This doesn’t bode well.  Nope.  

PlayNotes: LOTRO

My goal this evening was to do as many quests as I could, to try to move on from Lothlorien.   The main set of quests took me into a sprawling orc camp, where I needed to find several locations as a scouting mission.

Way, way at the back of all the camps, there were weapon racks to destroy, a common past time in Middle Earth.

Unbelievably, when I got back to my quest giver he wanted me to go right back through all the camp locations and destroy five more weapon racks. 

You know how dogs look like they’re grinning but they’re really really concerned about your request?

Then the next three npcs to offer quests want me to go in several other orc camps and kill as many orcs as I can.

I had to log out.

Orcs aren’t my favorite foes.

Goblins are next worst.

Middle Earth as presented in LOTRO is full of orc and goblin camps.   Way too many.

Dear Diary:  Trapped In Lothlorien, surrounded by Orcs, send help!

PlayNotes: Rift and EQ2

 Rift

And it’s Rift day!  I didn’t feel like dealing with The Guy On The Stairs, so I did the classic thing:  I jumped down from the area starting platform to the area below and started fighting things.

I’m pretty sure this is where my character would have come out if I’d done the more frustrating route:

Heading left, I soon found myself in my new favorite thing, a Dead End.   I fought my way through rhinos and demons to get there, dang it.  Changing course,  I kept getting further away from my quest goal, which was always above me, with no way to go up.

Luckily Staypoofed and I are serene creatures who can take a moment to contemplate our ill luck:

I’ve been in this area numerous times via Instant Adventures, but of course you’re just on the run constantly trying to get your quest goals and you get no real sense of the layout of the area.   Try try again next time.

Everquest 2

The two games I’ve been playing most are WOW and EQ2.  In EQ I have all but my Froglok Bruiser off the starter island.    I thought it was time to send my main character, my Fury, out adventuring.

Somehow tonight she got from level 11 to 18.

She spent the entire time in wolf form.  It isn’t one of those shape changing classes that has the use of different skills in another form.  The only difference I can see is when you hit the skill to start a ranged attack, she barks at the opponent.

Oddities in games continue.  As it turns out I’m having connection problems once again, so that explains a few things that have happened.  As I came out of Qeynos though tonight, there was this big floating wall of text, and there wasn’t anyone fighting anything, and I wasn’t fighting anything but there it was:

It’s hard to describe the charm of Everquest 2.  I like the world, the quests, even the lovely drawings on the loading screens.  I was carefully picking up every quest I could see, and there are many.  I was thinking tonight if you are a quest lover, this is a great game to play.

I haven’t selected crafts yet for my characters.  I always want characters who can make potions, bags and furniture, three essentials for adventurers everywhere.   Sometimes certain crafts go well with certain classes, but I can’t tell if that’s the case here yet or not.  I’m reading guides before I commit to anything, but I’m filling my bags with materials just in case.

PlayNotes: Guild Wars 2

I was thinking I should play through a character’s Personal story, which I’ve only done to about level 20 on anyone, then dropped it as uninteresting and causing me to backtrack too much.

I do keep thinking that GW2 always seems a shallower world than most, but if I’m not playing all the parts that perhaps are supposed to give it depth, that’s on me.

I tried out a Necromancer I’d made but not played, to fill my last character slot.  I didn’t care for her skills at all.

So I deleted her, and tried a Mesmer, a class I have also never played.  She wields a sword, though a skinny pointy one that is probably called something else.   I’m comfortable with sword wielders, so this went much better.

I have a Norn Warrior who seems more at home in this area.  It is sort of rustic in a woodsy, barbarian way, but the Mesmer’s outfit doesn’t match the bravado she presents, and her  deep voice when she speaks in cut scenes doesn’t go with her movie star face.

In addition to the flouncy little skirt, she wears a mask at character creation, all three choices totally creepy.  I wonder if anyone wears them and doesn’t take the “hide” option?

If she can fight, that will be all that matters, and I’ll try to stick with the personal story for her to see how that adds to the game.

PlayNotes: LOTRO The Secret Road

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run…

I found the Secret Road with relative ease.  It was disappointing as a Secret Underground road, just very dark and twisty.  Orvar was impressed, but I couldn’t see much of anything.

Then I take on a level 60 semi-elitish thing like a scorpion without the curvy tail they usually have.  I could have beat him, but my controls froze up.   As these things go, the monster could still attack.  Then I was dead, but everything was frozen and I couldn’t even get out of the game.

I finally exit and go back in, and I’m way back in the Great Delving, 860 frustrating meters away.

I’ll come back to this another time.  I ported to Lothlorien, which has never looked so open and beautiful, despite the whole yellow thing.  Lovely Lothlorien.

Myndariel’s 1-20 Guardian Guide (And a few Mordor Notes)

I love the Guides to Middle Earth Classes that Myndariel of Myndariel’s Middle Earth has been doing, and I missed this one going by on my blogroll.

http://myndariel.blogspot.com/2017/06/introducing-guardian-level-1-20.html

This is a guide I really need!  My little Hobbit Guardian is only level 7.

With this guide, and my experiences in other MMOs, I could play this class now.  Way back when the game was new, it was only my second MMO.  I didn’t understand the idea of tanks at all, coming only from Galaxies.  The idea of one player in the group trying to get all the mob attention just for themselves seemed kind of selfish, and foolish.

I don’t think I really appreciated the tanking concept until playing WOW dungeons.   Then it all made sense.   Go forth and pull all the mobs, little Hobbit.

Speaking of Mordor  (weren’t we?)  I have this to say:

The fine folks at LOTRO “took me in” after SOE/LucasArts broke my heart with Galaxies.  They were a revelation.  Smart, determined to build an incredible game, invariably kind and generous, they seemed to do every single thing right.

I bought three Lifetime Subscriptions at release, not easy for me to do, financially, but I really was impressed and believed in them.

Now here they are, brilliantly still standing and putting out an expansion only dreamed of by Men, Hobbits, Dwarves and Elves.

It’s the Ultimate Fan Bundle for me, they deserve it, I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

Interesting article and discussion at MassivelyOP (as always):

http://massivelyop.com/2017/07/14/lotro-legendarium-mordors-pre-order-is-flat-out-ridiculous/

The Ancient Gaming Noob seems ready to head into the fires:

https://tagn.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/were-on-the-road-to-mordor/

Lina’s Biscuity Burrow   Has gone with the Standard Edition, and she gives a great rundown of what each package contains and how it all compares to previous expansions:

http://www.linawillow.org/home/2017/07/mordor-opens-july-31/

Ravalation looks at the reception of other LOTRO pre-orders have had

 http://ravalation.blogspot.com/2017/07/lotros-mordor-expansion-pre-order-deals.html

RIP EQ2 Fallen Gate Fury: Remember Her Thusly

In yet another bold move, I killed off the Fallen Gate version of Atheren, the Fury Who Struggled.   Here she is after her Dark Shaman experience, resting on her Frostfang rug.  

My thinking:

Fallen Gate is a slog for my character advancement, and these servers don’t seem like a place to find a long lived home in the game, but more of a limited time, shared experience for veteran players.

I was duplicating my Fury character, and I’d rather have another class to play than see how one struggles, and one zooms through the world.   I was kind of feeling sorry for this poor character.

In a way, I was playing two games at once.  Same game, different game.   I don’t really have the time for two versions of the same thing.

So I kill her off there, created a new Ranger on Antonia Bayle. (the class I killed off to get a character slot for Fallen Gate).

Happiness is…getting your character name.  So Atheren the Ranger now lives again, and the Atheren name is from my live Galaxies Bria Ranger Atheren, so she gets new life in a new world.

And she adventured happily ever after.