Lord of the Rings Online
Tolkienesque Adventure from Turbine!
The Other Fellowship Of The Ring made some welcome progress this week, managing to finally deal with our old nemesis from a few weeks back, Nazgul #7, or possibly #5 - they all look the same to me. Vol 1, Book 5, Chapter 8 was probably the most difficult encounter so far and took two goes in the end, with the increasingly common early 'Recon Wipe' damping our initial spirits a bit.
Clearly a bit of SERIOUS BUSINESS, we ended up pulling out all the stops for the ultimately successful run and it involved a large number of consumables; shield spikes...
After this weeks jaunt we've made a bit more progress on the Lord of the Rings Online Epic, fetching up in Book 5, Chapter 8, for those following along at home. The previous big punch up, at Chapter 5 was quite hard work, not least of all hampered by the fact that although I was having a blast, my little hobbit on the other hand, was quite terrified throughout the final boss fight of the instance.
I'm sure I'd gushed before about how interesting and novel the Dread/Hope mechanic in LotRO is, with different places, people and situations causing increases in,...
Confronted with The Old Problem again on Monday, in Lord of the Rings Online, although LotRO is hardly the only culprit. I've been gushing about what a rollicking good time I've been having in there for some weeks now so I shouldn't be surprised that some of my other online friends (mostly from the Tuesday N00b Club and Guild Wars) have expressed an interest in trying the game out and have rolled up new characters on our server, [EN] Glirain.
I'd invited them to join the LotRO Kinship, of course, and we chat and natter during play, but there the friendship ends for...
Our ongoing assault on The Shadows of Angmar saw a welcome leap forward last night, with the hapless band of Hobbington Crescent managing to complete Book IV and almost without realising it, plough right into Book V and get several chapters into that too. We'd been off the narrative trail a bit over these last few weeks, and it was nice to push onward with what I'm regarding as the Main Point of the whole adventure; the cleverly interwoven tale that is The Other Lord of the Rings, which as far as I'm able to make out, is...
Umm, you know when I said that the podcast wouldn't replace this here blog? Well, I may not have been entirely frank with you all. A weekly hour-long ramble about exactly the kinds of things I'd otherwise talk about here does leave me a bit dry to be honest, hence the slackness here of late. Perhaps this place might work best as footnotes; expanded ramblings to accompany glib and sometimes rushed and dismissed avenues of further musings from the show. At any rate I've no intention of trashing the blog any time soon and this is mostly just...
Well into those "Difficult 30 Something Levels" now, a universal constant I seem to have come across in every MMO I've ever played. Game after game, they all seem to share this common problem. It could even be a problem with me, which certainly seems more feasible than that every single MMORPG I've ever tried has a massive gaping hole of bland mediocrity lurking in the mid-game. Those oft-forgotten Drab Thirties, between the glorious rosy sheen of The Fresh Game Honeymoon Single Digit Levels, and subsequent Teenage Levels of Proficiency and Class Understanding, and the far end Pre-Endgame Gear-up...
Its all gone a bit peculiar actually - for once, I seem to be on the right bus, and find my usually curmudgeonly solo self in the midst of something of a Lord of the Rings Online revival, with quite a few folks setting up static weekly groups and working up from the ground floor, seeing it all for the first time from scratch, or getting stuck into all the new and shiny at the top end, with the big expansion. I try not to get all fanboy about these games if I can avoid it, but it is...
In a somewhat sudden move, I seem now to be playing Lord of the Rings Online. I've never quite worked out why it's taken me this long to get round to it, and in typical fashion, I seem to have turned up in the main game, just as everyone else is launching into the first expansion, Mines of Moria. Heigh ho. I think that's a part of why I'd shown typical lack of self-control and caved in to sign up now, of all times - lots of people saying a lot of good stuff about the Mines lately and...