Little Update on a Little Elf

I’ve sort of cut back on my play time, and I miss it! My little elf is now level 24. She’s leveling in the Lone Lands, which is a zone I don’t remember from the books or the movies, but I’m definitely enjoying it.

I got to meet the illusive Radagast the Brown. I always liked him, maybe because he didn’t have a very big part in the books, and he seemed so mysterious. I like him in the game because I get to interact with him and do quests for him, specifically the epic lore quests. Here I am being a tourist, and Radagast is rolling his eyes at me.

I haven’t spend any of my hard earned gold. I’m waiting to get a mount, which I’m really excited about. I wish that I was a hobbit or a dwarf because they get to ride ponies, but the horses are cute too. When it gets closer to when I’ll get one (level 35, I think?), then I’ll go stand beside them and figure out what color I’ll want. I did that in WoW and EQ2, which is kind of silly, but I want to be sure that I’ll like my horse.

My fiance and his brother have started playing LOTRO, which I’m very excited about. I got to help them with a couple fellowship quests. I feel powerful.

Three weeks and counting…

It’s been about three weeks since I started playing Lord of the Rings Online. I’ve had some frustrations, some unexpected successes, lots of questions, and lots of fun.

I’ve been thinking about the three major MMOs that I’ve let myself get wrapped up in over the last four years. How my attitude has changed, and how the games have changed with me. I’m not sure if I enjoy games more now that I’m a hardened gamer (lol) or if the wonder and newness of MMOs was more exciting. I guess they cant really compare.

World of Warcraft was the first MMO I ever really got into. Before that, I had tried The Sims Online for about a week, but I didn’t like having to go to work in the game I was playing, and I quit almost as soon as I started. My best friend Joe got WoW shortly after it came out, and I will never forget the first time I saw it.

He was playing a gnome warrior, and had just left the starting zone. I remember sitting on his couch watching over his shoulder as he ran up to Ironforge, one of the main cities. On his not-so-great computer, the interior zone took a little while to load, but when it did, oh boy, were we excited. All those blue names running around! I could hardly fathom that people from all over the world were playing the same game as us at the same time and that we could see them running around, doing their own thing.

It didn’t take long for me go out and get the game. The hard part was convincing my mom that we needed cable Internet, but after assuring her I would pay for it, she agreed. It took agonizingly long for Comcast to come and install it, but patience persevered and soon I was creating my first real character. Yargz, the troll shaman. My two friends and I were on the phone when we created our characters together (we had no idea that something called Ventrilo even existed!) and we had planned what we thought would be the perfect group, a shaman to heal, a rogue to dps, and… a hunter. We didn’t think about a tank, but it didn’t matter, we had fun anyway.

We played those characters until the mid 20’s, and then, for some unknown reason, we all created other characters on other servers. Actually, it was just me. They still play together, now, both level 70, and in a raid guild. I, however, was somehow persuaded to create a Night Elf priest, which I played up to the level cap.

The beginning of my MMO experience was so exciting, and overwhelming. I’m glad I had the simplicity of WoW and the help of my friends to easy myself into the gaming addiction. I don’t recall how I felt about other players, other than feeling awed by high level characters, and wondering what kind of amazing and fun content they must be seeing. I dreamed about getting my first mount, and wondered how I was ever going to save up the gold for it (sound familiar?).

When I quit WoW in April, my fiance and his brother and I decided to give EQ2 a shot. We had played a free trial when it came out, but after putting the WoW crackpipe down, we were ready for something new.

Now familiar with the general classes of MMOs, I knew for me to really enjoy it and stick with it, I needed to create a “cute” character. I made a fae, which was the expansion that they were promoting at the time. Faes are cute little forest fairies who live in a city built in the branches of some trees. I like that kind of thing. So I knew with this new race, I’d be able to enjoy the game a lot more, and as a result, I stuck with it for a while. It took three different classes to finally decide on the summoner class of conjurer. I like classes with pets. I played a hunter in WoW (with my fearless cat Fantastico), EQ2 (with my bruiser elemental Jarn), and now LOTRO (with my courageous bear Huckleberry).

After playing WoW for 3 years, it was a breath of fresh air. The people seemed so much nicer, so much more willing to answer nooby questions. I joined a guild 2 days after starting the game, and never left.

By this point, I was pretty familiar with the mechanics of MMOs. Quests, loot, auction house, guild, crafting. They all have it. I was so excited to be experiencing something new. The collections were one of the things I was most excited about when I started playing EQ2. WoW had nothing that compared to collections. I loved the idea of spending hours just wandering around looking for little clumps of yellow sparkles on the ground, and the anticipation of picking it up, wondering if it would be one I didn’t have. After a couple days, I vowed I would never buy a collection piece from the broker; I would find them all myself. This attitude lasted for quite a while, until it got to the point where I needed one piece in multiple collections to complete them.

When I got burnt-out on EQ2 (after getting my first character to level 40 in about 3 weeks and my alt to 20 shortly thereafter), I quit. It had a lot of good thing going for it, and a lot of bad things. I needed something new, something I didn’t know much about, and didn’t have a sordid past with. And along came LOTRO.

I’ve been playing it for three weeks now, and I cannot say that there are any major things I’d change about it. It seems as close to prefect as it can get. There are a few minor inconveniences that could be ironed out (better auction capabilities, but there is another post for another day). I haven’t had any problems figuring things out, and if I did, the Advice channel is full of helpful people.

I have yet to encounter any rude players; on the contrary, everyone seems so nice. Last night, a guy in my kinship helped me and the fellowship I was in finish an instance. It took a good 2 hours, and he said he had just done it with another group. But he didn’t complain at all, not once, and he was just happy to be helping us. Today, I saw him again offer to help another kinship member. And that seems to be par for the course with people in this game. It’s amazing, but it shouldn’t be. I’m so used to the bitter, jaded, unhappy people in WoW, who, when someone asks a question, instantly snap that they need to go check Wowhead first, nub. They forget that they were once those “nubs” asking the same questions. Now that I think about it, the only unpleasant people in the general chat channels, are people from World of Warcraft trying to convince us why WoW is better, all the while asking for advice on leveling up their new LOTRO character.

Maybe it’s because LOTRO has only been out for a year, and maybe it will turn from the nice, good-natured game it currently is, to the depressed, over-worked game of WoW. So far, I don’t have any intentions of quitting this game. When I’m playing it, I still marvel to myself how fun it is. I have so much more to experience.

The meeting of Tom Bombadil

Just two little photos here today. The first is Serriath and my favourite character from the books, Tom Bombadil. He has some flavor text over us, but I thought it was appropriate. Huckleberry is off to the left.

The second screenshot is just me and Huckelberry outside Tom Bombadil’s house. He sits down and yawns/roars when we’re not doing anything. I really like the way pets behave in this game.

Housing

I’m considering buying a house. I’ve just made enough money from the AH to buy a small house, which consists of two rooms. I’m limiting myself to the Bree/Shire areas, because I love the lore from there and I think the houses are cute. That said, my choices are the following:

A small Bree house.

Or a small hobbit style house.

My other option is to keep saving my gold, and eventually buy a deluxe house, which is generally three, much-bigger rooms. They’re 7g each, and gold seems rather hard to make in this game (another post for another day). The deluxe houses are pictured below.

I’m partial to the hobbit houses, even though I’d have to stoop to get inside. Tiny hobbits, tiny doors, not meant for giant elves.

I have a few concerns about buying a house at this point in the game. The first one is that they all seem very out of the way. They’re all pretty far from auction houses and either of the big towns in the area (Bree-town and Michel Delving). So, I don’t know how much I’d be spending on travel costs, and what the point of having a house would be, other than the cool factor.

People in my kinship said the main point of buying a house is for the extra storage, but I’m not yet finding that to be a problem. My bank is getting sort of full, but I can get another bank slot for only 45 silver (as opposed to 950 silver for a house and 50 silver a week in upkeep). I also don’t yet play multiple characters, so I wouldn’t need to share items easily between characters.

The other main issue I see in buying a house, is the fact that I’d be spending almost all my money at this point. I have about 1g 500silver. I’d have about 500silver left over, which might seem like a lot to some, but it doesn’t to me. I have skill upgrades to think about, and repairs, and crafting materials. At level 35 a character can buy a mount, which I heard costs around 3.5gold. I’d really like a mount in order to be able to travel faster, and maybe after that point, it would be more practical to buy a house, because I wouldn’t need to pay for a stable horse to get to my house.

EverQuest2 had player housing, and I loved it. The houses were all in the main cities, close to the broker and anything else a character could need. Platinum was incredibly easy to make in that game, and I didn’t feel bad spending 2plat to upgrade from my one room acorn (I was a little fairy who lived in a city built in the branches of some trees) to a two room acorn. I became a carpenter and made a bunch of furniture, and had a lot of fun. In LOTRO, I’m not sure how much furniture costs, what kind there is, who makes it. In EQ2, it seemed like you could spend your entire time in the game making your house look cool. I always liked to go visit random people’s houses and see what their decorating style was like. I haven’t found a way to go inside anyone’s house, so I really have no idea what furniture is like yet.

I think I’ll wait to buy a house. As much as I’d love one, just to say I have one, I don’t need one yet. I think I’ll want a three room house when the time comes. When I’m in the three room houses, I walk from room to room, and imagine which room will be the kitchen, and which will be my bedroom, and what the living room will look like.

Hello from Bag End!

Occasionally I plan to post pictures of Serriath in exciting places in Middle Earth. The first one is Serriath at Bag End. Good luck on your mission… quest… thing, Frodo!

Books –> Movies –> Game

After about 3 days of playing the game, I decided I needed to rewatch the movies. My fiance was playing the trial, and having some difficulty with the hunter class; it just wasn’t the play style he was looking for, but it was as close as he could find. So, late on Saturday night, we began the marathon.

I hadn’t seen the movies since their respective extended-edition releases on dvd, and Rob hadn’t seen them since the theater. So, needless to say, it had been a while. We decided we needed to break them up into 1-2 hour sessions.

The first few sessions went as planned, and after an hour we had to take a break. However, by the time we got to The Two Towers extended, we were hooked. Having never seen the extended editions, Rob was blown away by how much more information there was; how the characters were all so much more important; how the story was so much more flawless. It’s understandable that Peter Jackson had to cut so much out (the extended editions are all 30 minutes to an hour longer) given that the average movie-goer gets bored after about 2 hours, but it’s a real shame. I’m so glad that the extended movies were released, because they’re so much more true to the books.

We watched The Two Towers in two sittings. I realized that it is by far, my favourite of the three. I love the region of Rohan and the Rohirrim are so cool. When we were done with the movie, I ran up to my computer to make sure that Rohan was a zone in the game, and I’m so excited to find out that it is. I cant wait until I’m high enough level to get there; I hope it’s a fun as I expect it will be.

We watched The Return of the King in one sitting. One long, 4.25 hour sitting. And it was great. When I received the extended edition of RotK for Christmas 2003, I had kind of lost interest in the movies, and hadn’t ended up watching it. But I was delighted this time around. The extra scenes are fantastic, as they all are, and I was so glad that it made the Frodo and Sam scenes less boring.

Having read the books, and seen the movies, I can appreciate the game so much more. The lore in the game seems completely canon to the story that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, and I can really tell that the game developers wanted to make it coherent for fans of both the books and the movies.

Yesterday, my LM (now level 17) went exploring in the Shire. I found Farmer Maggot and Hobbiton. And up a little hill, I found Bag End, complete with the Sackville-Baggins’ fighting over ownership. I was also absolutely delighted to find Goldberry in a forest not far from the Shire. I hear Tom Bombadil is in there too, but I haven’t gone to see him yet. This makes me so excited, because Tom has always been one of my favourite characters and I was so disappointed that they had to leave him out of the movie. His little songs are so cool.

After having watched the movies, Rob got kind of excited about playing a hunter. He decided that he needed to change his play style, and adapt it to be more like a “ranger.” I think he’s going to get a few levels this weekend. We had a great time watching the movies together, and I think it made us both feel closer to the game, and more connected to the lore. It’s so fun to be playing in this amazing world that Tolkien created. It really isn’t lacking in any areas and I’m very proud of the developers for being so true to the story. If they hadn’t, I’m certain the game would have failed, as devout fans would not have put up with too many non-canon changes.

Dead

Well, it seems I spoke too soon. I thought I’d be fine doing a level 15 quest, after I just hit 16, but alas, they got the better of me. It was a quest I had to solo for some LM upgrades, in which I went with an NPC into an instance. I thought he’d be fighting with me, but he just stood there, and there wasn’t any way to exit the instance. I’m very disappointed with the game, and myself. I really wanted that survival title, but I guess I just wasn’t ready. Maybe if I ever roll another character I’ll be more prepared.

There are lots of other good titles that I can work for, just none that seem as elusive and special. Oh well.

And So It Begins…

After playing World of Warcraft for nearly 3 years, I decided to give up the addiction and try something new. EverQuest2 held my attention for about a month, but the game didn’t draw me in; I didn’t know the lore, I couldn’t get attached to my characters. When my fiance bought me a new Dell computer, a complimentary Lord of the Rings Online trial was included. I had played a trial when the game was first released, but at the time, the hands of WoW still had a tight grasp on me, and I quickly abandoned Middle Earth for the familiarity of Azeroth.

So now, here I am. I installed the trial that came with my Dell, and I fell in love. The beautiful environments! The connection to the story, of which I’ve read all the books, and seen the movies about 20 times! The traits! The deeds! The quests! It came at the perfect time, and it drew me in. I quickly rolled a hunter, having played one in WoW, thinking I would have an edge. I didn’t. Which was wonderful, because it helped me remember that this was something new, and my old habits needed revamping. I decided to go with my old standby, and roll a caster. In LOTRO, they’re called Lore-Masters.

My first two lore-masters both died at level 8. I’m a perfectionist when I want to be, and this was not acceptable. One of the things I love most about LOTRO are the deeds and titles, both of which are achieved through questing, crafting, and up-to-a-point, surviving. I don’t really know why, but I desperately wanted to be one of those people who had the highest survival title available, the Undying, which you get at level 20. As of this post, I haven’t seen any, but I’m sure it’s just because the higher level characters have cooler titles. So, I was disappointed when I died at level 8. Luckily, having done those quests twice in as many days, it didn’t take me long to level up to that point again, and this time, I was ready.

I saved my health pots, I ran when I had to, I did quests that were below my level. And I got past level 8! I got to 10! I got to 15!

Which is where I am now. It’s only been about 3 days since I started this new lore-master; her name is Serriath, and she is an elf who has made her way to Bree-land all the way from her home in Lórien. The land of the hobbits is much different than the land of the elves, but the little people are curious, and so far, accepting of this outsider.

I feel a little silly doing quests that are intended for characters 2 or 3 levels below me, but I’ve set this goal for myself, and I intend to keep it. Five levels to go, and then I wont need to worry about dying (obviously I’ll still try not to).

I’ve always had different priorities in the MMOs that I’ve played, sometimes to the frustration of my fiance. I love the little things. Every MMO has quests, and raids, and crafting, and players. But the little things have the potential to make an MMO special, and I’ve definitely found that to be true in LOTRO. I love completing deeds, and getting titles and traits. When I get to 50 (which is the level cap), I’ll still be able to come back and finish the deeds I didn’t get a chance to complete earlier in my questing.

Middle Earth is a huge, beautiful world and I cant wait to experience more of it. I’m taking my time with this one; I don’t want to get burnt out and end up quitting. I want to experience everything it has to offer, from player housing, to crafting (I’m a farmer and a cook), questing to kinships (aka guilds). I look forward to detailing my adventures (and misadventures) here.