The End of Their Folly

"Upon the battlement nothing could be seen. All was silent but watchful. They were come to the last end of their folly, and stood forlorn and chill in the grey light of early day before towers and walls which their army could not assault with hope, not even if it had brought thither engines of great power, and the Enemy had no more force than would suffice for the manning of the gate and walls alone."
~ from The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Agriculturally Speaking

Out of all my nine characters in LotRO, only two of them are farmers. There is good reason for that, as farming is probably the most tedious and time-consuming of crafts. It's not difficult or even very expensive, it just takes a very, very, very long time. I have already reached Supreme Master Farmer with Indrabar, and so if I need something grown, I try to let Thyrra do it, since she's still pretty low.

The only problem is, the last time I went farming, something scary was watching me:

Just kidding. The rabbit belongs to me. I had him out because when I took this picture was taken he was the only fluffy, non-combat pet I had. Plus it seemed appopriate to have a rabbit in the fields, even if he is terribly scurry looking. His name is NastyPointyTeeth, because I don't really like rabbits. Because they are scary... and that is all I am going to say about that.

Last night they updated some of the different crafts (thank you Turbine!) and my sis learned how to farm. I don't think she likes it very much....

She's not actually doing in this pic other than standing there looking cool. I think I was explaining farming to her. Notice I have a new pet too - no more rabbits yay! This is my turtle Nanu. He's kind of ugly ^.^

One of the aspects they changed about farming yesterday was that certain ingredients which before could only be bought from suppliers and vendors (at a very expensive price!) can now be only grown by farmers (for much cheaper!). One of those things which can be grown is the Shire Apple:

See? This is the first apple tree I ever grew. I am very proud of it. Sis was too, she cheered for me and my tree.

I don't know what I'm bragging about, actually. It's not any more difficult to grow an apple tree than it is to grow anything else, the apple is just unique in that it actually looks like a tree. Everything else, and I mean everything, looks like some strange grain. Whether you are growing cabbages, carrots, or tobacco, it will look like the same strange plant. Apple trees actually look like trees, for which I am thankful. Maybe one day Turbine will change the appearance of all the vegetables so that what you are growing actually corresponds to what it looks like you are growing.

I found these white horses...

So I finally finished Volume 1 today, only because Turbine was gracious enough to let us poor people who can never get fellowships for quests do the quests on our own. For a few glorious minutes I felt like one of the heroes of ancient elvendom, staring at my morale bar of over 18,000 hitpoints. I was doing 2k damage an arrow, easily. I felt like.... something divine and all-powerful. Granted, the quest was still hard, and I did almost die. But I finished it. I fought the witch-king himself, too:

Why I decided to show up in that dress instead of any armor I don't know, it probably had something to do with me almost dying, lol. But I did fight him, although I didn't kill him. That glory was reserved for Narmeleth there, in the red dress. Poor girl.

After I returned to Rivendell to inform the elves of our triumph, they handed me a bunch of nifty items, namely a cloak, a picture for my house, some armor I can't use, and a fairly decent ring.

Oh, and this:

A white horse. Anyone who knows anything about me and about how I play lotro knows that I am obsessed with two things: clothes and horses. Everytime I get a new horse I am ecstatic and take lots of pictures of it to show it off. This horse I named Bainrhi, which is elvish for "beautiful crown," because I consider this horse to be the symbol of the crown of my achievements in the game thus far. You can also see my new dress, but I didn't get that from the quest, I got that from the lovely beer-filled dwarves of Thorin's Hall. I handed them enough goblin heads and they were happy to give me a dress to say thanks.

Welp, I'm off, back into the game, to see what other wonders I can discover!

I now know how he feels....

For anyone who's ever seen Leroy Jenkins, they will understand completely what this post is about. For those who have not seen it, I will provide the video, so that you may watch it and erase all confusion.  This is a clip someone captured from the game World of Warcraft, which in all actuality is at the bare-bones level very similar to LotRo, which I play. I do NOT play WoW.

*bad language alert*


Okay, so now that we have that out of the way, I want to say that today, I felt like the leader of the group in this video. We had a good group, we had a plan, we had a very difficult instance to run, and then somehow, someone (thankfully I don't know who or I would be a bit upset) managed to ruin everything. We all died. About five times each. We were locked out. Mobs were spawning incessantly. There was no shouting, no cursing, no declarations of chicken, but we did all kind of stand there and get hit by mobs we couldn't see while we died, suddenly and unexpectedly. LotRO tends to be a bit more mature and laid-back than WoW, thank goodness, but the instance tonight represented, to quote my favorite sea-captain: "a level of ineptitude that borders on the imbecilic."  To put it in the plainest of terms:

NO ONE was following the plan. 

So after we had all wiped for the umpteenth time, we stood around the rez circle, wondering what the heck happened and how we could do better next time, when everyone took a look at their repair bills and suddenly disappeared. Apparently having to spend lots of money makes people hesitant to try again. And again. And again.

Thankfully, after we all went our separate ways, I managed to get that horrible repair bill repaid and realized that sometimes, being an officer, being the one in charge, isn't all that great.

"Stick to the plan!" doesn't work when no one is listening. 

A Night with the Loremasters

So tonight sis and I finally went questing (yay for questings!) and this is a brief summary of what happened:

We started off in the Misty Mountains, where I gave sis the scroll that would let her summon her very own fox! It is a rare item, and I was glad I found it on the AH, so I grabbed it for her, cause I'm nice like that.
Isn't he adorable? Then we did ONE quest to get just that much farther in the epic line, but then we were stuck at a full fellowship quest, and when we asked for help, we were met with the news that Turbine is nerfing ALL of Volume I, to my great dismay (and tiny joy. Now I might be able to finally get my white horse). In other words, if we wait till Monday, when they make the changes, we might not need the help and should be able to do it on our own.

Here we are in the Misty Mountains while I tried to get my mic working again. Thankfully my headphones didn't die on me this time. Just in-game problems. Sis, of course, is looking radiant as always, all shiny in the moonlight, while I look like a dork and don't even have my eyes open. Typical.

Then we went down to Rivendell, where we contemplated fishing in a lovely little water hole we found, until we noticed this strange bubbly bit of water. It intrigued us greatly.

Then we were bored, and started swimming about in the water. It was a lovely swimming hole, after all, and a welcome break from the cold mountains we had just left.

 Then we were joined by a couple Kinmates, and ran up to Forochel, where we killed many mooses (meeses?) and wolverines and wargs. Sis also discovered that she cannot play the Lute well. So she smashed it and I threw the bits in the nearby campfire.


All in all it was a lovely night, and except for us wandering too far ahead of our level and getting ourselves killed (repeatedly) by mobs much stronger than we were, it was loads of fun. I love running with my sis ^.^

Today In Urugarth

We fought a bunch of dragons. 

Oh, and a hint to all those using voice chat. Please, please, please don't ever use the "hands-free" option.

Not only will everyone else be able to hear your dog bark, your doors open and close, your radio, your phone ring, your conversation with your pharmacist discussing all your meds (cut back on the Ambien, by the way), we can also do nothing but listen in pain while you cough up a lung for ten minutes. 

Then there is that uncomfortable silence from everyone else in the group.

Dude, are you okay? It sounded like you should be bleeding.

65

Well, I hit the level cap tonight.

Now what do I do? I suppose I could go back and clear out old deeds like I've been trying to do since I had old deeds, or I could keep pushing forward. I feel kind of reluctant to keep going forward though because if I am not gaining any level experience, I feel almost as though all that work will be wasted. I know it's not, because I am still gaining experience for my LI's, but still....

I miss my blue xp bar.....

I suppose if I didn't want to push forward at all I could go to my EIGHT alts and level them a bit. Some of them have been around almost as long as Indrabar, and are still below forty. How sad.

My First Rep Horse

Finally. I have a reputation horse. And it's one you don't see very often, too. Mostly because to get it you have to be considered kindred with the Lossoth - and most people hate Forochel, so they don't even bother getting the horse. But I got her, and I still have deeds to finish - so hey, all those extra items I loot will give me a headstart on the rep with my other characters. Yayyyyy!

Because she is the "Tundra Pony" (you can't really tell, but her fur is kind of long and shaggy) and because she came from the snowy realms of Forochel, I named her Losslir, which means Snow-flower in elvish. I took this screenshot from the backyard of my house in the Shire, because I consider that better scenery than the icebergs and whatnot that adorn Forochel.

And technially, now that I think about it, she isn't my first Rep horse. I have the ability to purchase the horse from the people of Bree, but I forgot and haven't bought him yet. I couldn't buy the other horse now anyways because I spent all but 41 silver of my money to buy Losslir. (Why I have to buy the horse after I spent all that time doing quests and whatnot for these people anyways is beyond me - after all the work I put in they should just give her to me, lol)

.... but I do hope I don't die anytime soon, otherwise I won't be able to afford the repairs. At least now when I go out on the moors I won't get laughed at for not having a better horse.

Dear Turbine

*note* I was going to post this on the Lotro forums, but somewhere in the process of writing it I lost my nerve in the face of angry apathetic devs and the ever-present trolls. Maybe if I ever find my courage I'll put it there...

I've been here almost a year, and for a while, something has been growing in the back of my mind, bothering me.

When I first started playing lotro, I was amazed at the depth of the lore, the attention to detail, the high level of immersion in another world that this game gave me - compared to other games. I quickly fell in love with the game and over the past ten months have devoted countless hours to wandering the fields and hills of Middle-earth.

However, the farther east I wandered, the less impressed I was with what I was seeing. Yes, the views are still fantastic. Yes, there is still a certain something (something I don't know quite how to describe) that will hold my attention. But something has also been lost.

Perhaps it is the lore - the quests began to seem less unique, I suppose. Perhaps it was the players - the higher in level I moved, the farther it seems I was from other enraptured, wandering souls and suddenly I found myself in the company of power-hungry players only interested in the quality of their gear or their personal stats.

When I gained Kindred Reputation with the people of Bree - I really felt as though that meant something. I had worked tirelessly, serving the people in so many ways - and finally, I was rewarded. The Council of the North, however, or the Galadhrim, or even the Lossoth - while I may know these people, know what they supposedly stand for - I do not have the same connection for them. I have not yet reached Kindred with any of those, but when I do, instead of a grand sense of achievement, I instead fear a feeling of "so what? I finally finished a long grind and can now ignore this facet of the game. Yayyyyy." Turbine, this is not how I should be feeling after leaving an area.

I will still play, Turbine. And chances are I will still love LotRO, but please, remember what you have left behind. Remember the Shire and the hills of the Lone Lands. Not all players are interested in leveling at lightning speed and running high-risk instances. I don't consider myself a RPer, perhaps I am just full of whimsy and wanderlust. There are many facets of the game you as devs have not touched for reasons totally unknown to us players since the launch of the game. Why is there still only one hobby? Why is the housing system made up of code over fourteen years old when the game is only on its third year? Why is the crafting system horribly unbalanced?

I started playing LotRO because it was different from all the other MMO's I had seen out there. Why did you feel you had to change, Turbine? Why must you become like all the others with your new content that pushes forward - raises the cap, raises the bar, the intensity, for what? Three days or less while the die-hards run everything and suddenly, they are all at level cap again and bored. Do you work just to please them while the rest of us run at our own pace? Just because we are not first does not mean we should be ignored.

The Farming Loop

To help out a fellow kinmate last night, I offered to make him some Bundles of Tea Leaves, which he would then give to someone else to make Cups of Red Tea for him to use - they offer a nice Vitality boost which can be very helpful before a rough battle.

It also didn't hurt that I hadn't gained any experience in Supreme Farmer yet and that growing this tea for him would give me a good amount of points.

So I bought 100 Tea seeds, some fertilizer and some water, and headed out to the field in the Shire. It was raining, but that was okay - I tried to think that instead of getting soaked it was helping the little tea plants grow.

I use 5 seeds for every plant, and each plant has the possibility to give me all sorts of items in return. The two main items I get though are the Poor Tea and Fair Tea Crops. After harvesting all my tea plants, I take these poor and fair crops to the nearest workbench to transform them into the Tea Bundles, and amazingly enough, more seeds.

So, 100 seed, 5 seeds per plant, that's 20 plants. Only, each plant can sometimes spit out up to five of each of the two types of crops. Which means, when I take those plants back to the workbench and separate them, I suddenly, instead of having no seeds in my bag, have 38 seeds. Hooray. That means I can go out and plant some more!

So I go back out (after buying two more seeds to make it an even eight possible plants) and plant my second batch of tea. This time I come out with 27 new tea seeds. So I buy three more and go again. This time I come out with 13 seeds. So I buy two more and go again. This time I come out with 7 seeds.

At this point I realized that I was caught in the vicious French Fry/Ketchup loop. You know, the one where you order some fries, and in the process of eating those fries, you run out of ketchup, so you get more ketchup to try and even it out, but then you finish your fries and you still have ketchup, and you hate wasting ketchup, so you go get more fries, but then you run out of ketchup.... you get the idea.

So yeah. I looked at those seven seeds, looked at that muddy field I'd been standing in for two hours, and then walked up to the little farmer hobbit standing near the field. Instead of buying more seeds to even it out (so I could plant *gasp* more tea plants) I sold those seven little seeds back to him and called it a night.

I escaped the cycle, but I think I might have wasted some ketchup.

The Absent-minded Adventurer

Yesterday I quite ferociously declared that my account had been hacked, due to my logging in and apparently missing a rather large amount of in-game money.

Today I logged in and realized that I had spent the money myself.

It is a relief to know that my account is still, for the moment, secure, but it is also somewhat disheartening to know that I could be that forgetful.

HACKS! I CALL HACKS!

So I logged out last night of lotro with a bank account of something approaching nine gold on my main character, Indrabar. For me, this was a major achievement. I was trying to decide how to spend my hard earned wealth and had decided to buy my first Reputation horse from the lovely people of Bree since I had reached Kindred status with them.

Today, however, I log in only to find that Indrabar is only holding 4 gold and 440s. Where did all my money go? I filed a report, but chances are I was hacked. I have changed my password and am now running spybot, just in case. In my defense, I have changed my password and will simply muster my strength to get back out there and earn it all again.

At least I still have all my items. At least I hope I have all my items. I haven't checked my other characters yet. Oh help....

*runs off to check inventory*

Freeping: a Noob's Guide

So I've been playing lotro for almost a year now. For me, for an mmo, for something that requires paying for on a regular basis - that's a very impressive number. All this time, I had never once (except for one tiny quest to introduce the system to me) set foot in the area of pixelated Middle-earth Turbine has christened The Ettenmoors. Why? Because I would die if I did. And quickly.

The real horror of dying in the Moors lies not from signature elite mobs, or even from random arch-nemesis (in my whole year of playing, I have only run across maybe five of these. They are not fun. I usually run when I see them and don't even stop to see how strong they are). No, the real danger in the Moors lies in other players . That's right. The Moors is lotro's PvP area, or in this case, PvMP (the M stands for Monster). In the Moors, players entering the area from the rest of Middle-earth will fight (and quite likely die) as an elf or hobbit or whatever race their character happens to be. Or, players have the option of entering the Moors from the login screen as a monster. Players can choose between all sorts of nasties - orcs, wargs, spiders - lots of dangerous creepy things.

Why is this so different than every other place in lotro, you might ask? Because, when you have people vs an AI system, it's pretty predictable what the thing you are shooting at is going to do next. However, when you are pew-pewing away at another person, a certain level of... well... uncertainty comes into play. There's no telling what the person behind that Uruk-hai is going to do next.

Anyways, back to my not being on the Moors.

My avoiding the Moors ended about a week ago when I decided, since I had finally hit lvl 60 (which is almost at the level cap for lotro) to see if I could step past that barrier without being instantly ganked by some warg hiding in the bushes. Plus, with Turbine's recent change to the mount system, horses, instead of being a pickandchoosecauseyouonlygetone sort of thing, are like Pokemon. You gotta catch em all. And one of those horses lies in the Moors. It is not available for purchase until you reach something called "Glory Rank 9." I figured Glory can't be that hard to get, so I headed out to Glan Vraig, the safe point for Freeps (that's the good guys, it's short for Free Peoples) and set about asking if there were any groups out.

Within seconds I was sent an invite into a group of about twenty people. Twenty very loud, very rude, very scathing people. One of them sounded as though he was seven years old. After I died a few times (which didn't take very long, even with the group - they assumed it was my fault for dying and not the healer's for not keeping me alive....) they began to talk about me in chat, as if I wasn't still there and couldn't hear what they were saying. The seven year old proceeded to tell the leader of the group that "he had inspected my traits and I wasn't even traited to be out here, what the **** did I think I was doing out here?" (I am bleeping his words for courtesy - I was shocked that a kid would use that sort of language.

I stuck with it for about thirty more minutes before I finally dropped the group and mapped back to the safety of my hobbit-hole. Then, I sat there for a full five minutes and tried very hard not to cry.

I was in shock. In all these months, in all my hours of playing, I had never once been reduced to tears by the community of lotro. I have found the players to be mature, respectful, and on the whole very friendly. This was something completely different. This was like playing WoW or something. I logged off and went and made supper.

A few days later (I suppose I have a short memory or something) I decided to go back to the Moors. As luck would have it, I got into a much better group - no one yelled, no one cursed, and we rained fire and brimstone down onto those Creeps. I was enraptured. I lost track of time. I played for six hours straight into the night. Finally, when the group disbanded, I realized that it was four o'clock in the morning. I was surprised at the time, but then again I wasn't. I was also hooked on the Moors.

Since then I have been back out there several more times, and I have worked my way up to Glory Rank 4, or the "Man-at-Arms" rank. I have managed to get into almost the exact same group every time (apparently this is a regular, scheduled thing for them) and not once have I seen that horrible seven year old.

I still have a long way to go for that horse (which, I've been informed, is considered the "ultimate" status symbol for lotro - you have that horse, you are immediately looked upon with respect. The fact that each rank increases in size and difficulty, but hey, I am in no rush. Right now I'm enjoying the Moors, and by the time I do get that horse, I will probably keep Freeping.

The Past Three Nights

1. I was in a room painted a strange mustard yellow color, sitting on a brown sofa that had seen better days. There were three or four other people in the room - but they were hazy - I don't think they mattered. A man came in, an older man in a suit, carrying a small cactus in a pot. This was one of those cacti that can grow tall and stay rather cylindrical - kind of like a miniature saguaro (sp?). Anyways, he set it down on the coffee table in front of me and then held a radio up to it. The radio was playing latin music very loudly, and the closer he held it the faster the cactus grew - up and up and up until it hit the ceiling. There was a vent in the ceiling but it was burning hot like there was a fire on the other side or something because every time the cactus would touch the vent it would shie away almost like it was in pain. Finally the cactus just turned and kept growing along the wall, until I threw a string of Christmas lights at it and it exploded into drips of white goo that peeled the paint off in strips. The man with the radio was very mad at me and so I jumped on a box of doughnuts and flew away. A bunch of emo kids yelled at me and told me I was horrible. Then I woke up.

2. We were opening up a farm, trying to start a new life, and our animals had just arrived. We had a goat, a rabbit, two chickens and a rooster. I was carrying one of the chickens to its pen when I dropped it and instantly, the bird died. Immediately the rooster came over and just stood by the body of the dead hen, staring at it like he was sad. Allison came up and told me the rooster was mourning for the hen. Then she pushed me into the rabbit pen. It was very muddy and slippery and I couldn't get out. Allison was standing on the walkway above me, throwing feed down at me and telling me to eat, but as it fell down the feed changed to manure and I was covered in it. Then Barney Fife showed up and shot our goat. Then I woke up.

3. I was being held captive in a hotel on the beach by a witch - a fat ugly witch much like one of the sisters in Spirited Away. There was a little girl there with me, who kept urging me to do everything the witch said or horrible things would happen to me. I ignored her, and then the witch turned both me and the little girl into stuffed animals. I remember the feeling of being turned into a toy because the stuffing came up my throat and it was very difficult to talk. Then she forgot which of us was which and she killed the little girl by ripping her into pieces. I was terrified while I watched her and have never felt so helpless in my life. Then she turned me back into myself and I managed to escape by climbing out of the window, but the road dissappeared and I was in the middle of the ocean. Then suddenly I was on a pier with my family, eating grilled fish. Then I was at my grandparents' house, in the back, with a horse someone had just given me. It was grey and kind of small but this was the first horse that I was able to ride in my dreams. Normally they are so small my feet drag the ground, but this one was only a little small and I managed to stay on. I was so happy that I stayed on the horse that I named her Anchor (strange, huh?) and then helped my family rebuild the fence so the horses (apparently everyone had gotten one) would have a safe place to stay. I was digging through the loam, trying to clear away the mess when I found some old latches for the fence from when mom used to keep her horse there. They were brass and still shiny. There were also some latches shaped like elephants, but they looked ugly so I left them in the loam. Then I woke up.

Stopping and Looking

I finally finished the first Assassin's Creed. I consider that something of an accomplishment, even if I never ever go back and collect those hundreds of flags.

So now Desmond is posing as Ezio, and I find myself loving Italy. Well, not so much Italy, because of all the Italians (who I have nothing against, but when you are trying to escape from the guards they tend to get in your way and clog the streets and whatnot), but mainly, I noticed as I was playing this morning, that I am loving the game simply for the location -

As I was clambering about within the Duomo in Firenze, I realized that I was smiling. Why? Because with the light streaming in through the windows in lovely golden hues while dust motes floated down about my agile hero as I guided him along the scaffoldings and beams and chandeliers of the church, I couldn't help but compare it to the first platforming game I ever played: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Now, games have come a very long way as far technically since that game, but technology is not my focus. I love it when a game makes you stop, just look, and realize you are holding your breath because of how beautiful it is.

Granted, the Duomo was the first time ACII has made me do this, but my point is that this happens very rarely for me. Only a handful of games, that I can think of, have made me stop at some point or another and just look.




The video above is from ACII, the location to which I was referring earlier, while the image below is from Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.



Maybe Ubisoft is just good at getting us to stop and look, because another series of games (a series this time, mind you, not just one game IN a series) that takes my breath away is the Myst series:





A few games I am looking foward to playing are Uncharted1 & 2 and Red Dead Redemption. I have watched Cody, my husband, play Uncharted 1, and it was gorgeous, but the second one is rumoured to be even more gorgeous -



Also, who doesn't love cowboys???



What about you? What games have made you stop and just go "oh!"?