The second rule of being a Dungeon Master

People will die.

So last night we had our second session, and before our characters had even moved from their campsite, we had had a death. Amata, the Crystalboy, decided he had a better character in mind, and could he not be the shardmind anymore, please?

Sure.

So, having mysteriously died in the night due to a fright from the still twitching corpse of the rat-man, our adventurers briefly mourned the unexpected demise of Amata and promptly stole all his items.

After bumbling about the temple grounds for a while, the paladin had a vision from his patron deity of steamy hot springs. There were hot springs on their map, why not go there next? So they did, and were joined by a giant barbarian named Lowkeg. Oh boy. Lowkeg AND Kegslow? This will be fun.

While at the hot springs, our adventurers discovered that the slaying stone, the object of their quest, was in the possession of a young and petulant brass dragon. They were unable to convince her to give the stone over, as it was obviously an object of dark power and could be used against her, so she assured them of her ability to easily kill all of them and dismissed them from her hotspring.

What now?

Well, our paladin once again sought guidance in the form of prayer, and in return, received a vision of a mug of ale. In response, he set off for the ruined tavern, the travelers following only reluctantly, for perhaps our dwarf was only claiming that it was truly divine guidance pushing him towards a chance of ale.

Once at the tavern, our adventurers were met with the sounds of drunken singing. There was a nasty looking female orc inside, quite intoxicated, who our adventurers managed to convince to go back to the hot springs with some of her orc buddies, as they too were looking for the slaying stone. She waddled off, leaving the party free to explore the tavern, where of course they found nothing, other than a strange circle of blue runes on the floor.

Piers the wizard, after a bit of examination, recognized it as the back end of a teleportation portal. Wow, really blogger? You think teleportation is not a word? Take that stupid red line away, now!  With a great deal of effort, our heroes managed to chip away at the runes, thus damaging the circle and preventing anymore whatsahoosits from coming through. 

Our adventurers then made their way back to the hot springs, where they discovered that the young dragon had been killed by a band of 40 or so orcs. Luckily for our adventurers, about 32 of those orcs were dead now, killing by the raging dragon, and our adventurers only had to deal with the remaining eight orcs, who had the stone in their possession.

This proved to be one of the most difficult things to watch I have ever seen. Kegslow, the paladin, died more than once, but managed to save out of it every time. In fact, everyone died at least once. I really thought it was going to be a wipe. In the end though, our adventurers managed to defeat the orcs, with just the paladin left standing, and then, after slowing rising to their feet, our heroes discovered that Lowkeg, the giant, had fallen in battle and could not be revived. He had really and truly died. This was two characters now who had died, both owned by the same person.

After wearily collecting the stone and deciding to destroy it rather than give it back to the woman Treona, The woman was, needless to say, a little ticked off at their blatant non-compliance with her request, but she got over it and shoved them out of her tower, throwing a bag of money after them.

Level up! Hooray, with the completion of the quest, our characters ( the surviving ones, anyways) advanced to level two, and while reveling in their success, they met up with Meebo, the halfling sorceror. This was our unlucky player's third character, and everyone seemed to enjoy him. Hopefully he will stick around.

They journeyed together to the town of Winterhaven, where they restocked and rested, and where Kegslow decided to sell off all the brass scales they had collected from the dead dragon and use them to make a suit of wyrmscale armor. Lana was glad to have her bag of holding empty again. Piers, on the other hand, sold off all the interesting books and scrolls he had collected in the ruined library back in Kiris Dahn, and attempted to buy a better staff, but still lacked the gp, so he moped a bit, but got over it.

After asking around in town, the innkeeper informed them that the lord of the city, Padraig, was looking for adventurers to deal with a kobold problem. So, they set off along the road after meeting with Padraig, in search of the problematic kobolds. They dealt with the ones along the road with no trouble, and followed their tracks back towards their lair, where they fought a whole bunch of kobolds, mostly minions.

This fight would have been much more difficult if I, the DM, hadn't been so sleepy at this point and had remembered that the ten minions should have been attacking the whole time instead of just standing there. I didn't realize that they hadn't been attacking until there were only two minions left. Oh well. Our adventurers had just had a horribly difficult experience with the previous battle with the orcs, why not throw a couple easy fights at them, with stupid minions who don't know how to fight?

Anyways, with the defeat of the kobolds outstide the lair, our session came to an end and we look forward to the next session, when our adventurers will enter the kobold lair and discover what or who is behind the attacks on travelers to Winterhaven.

A Day with the Loremasters: Horse Envy and Menial Labor

So Squid and I began work on Volume III the other day, and it didn't exactly begin as epicly as the other volumes had. It was all menial labor - as in the screenie to the right, where I am toting pumpkins for Butterbur. Silly innkeeper can tote his own pumpkins for all I care. We were also required to tote various other produce, but I didn't feel the need to record each and every step of the way, as soon after I finished playing carry-all, I met up with sis in the common room of the Pony for a pint before we headed out.
Silly elf was finding Barliman's benches way too comfortable and refused to move for a while. I felt the need to scold her while she took an inordinately long afk. I took this time to notice, as if for the first time, the messy state of the Pony. You'd think that all that time I spent carrying vegetables that the proprietor could at least wipe down a table or right a stool or something. Anything. But no, it's all a mess, and it's been a mess, and it will always be a mess, and all Butterbur will do is stand there saying "So much to do!". You're telling me. Go do some of it, you lazy innkeeper bum.



After Squid finally decided to move, we set off for the northern edge of Bree, where we had to fight off a ruffian who had been insulting Squid's sabercat, Ronon. Ronon took great joy in beating the tar out of this ruffian, as did Squid. Except she called down fire and lightning, like Taborlin the Great (sorry, had to put that in there) and he ran off squealing, much like a little piglet. Excuse my big head in this screenie, but I was awestruck by how awesome Lightning Storm looks when seen from the third person. I usually don't get that sort of view.

Then, Squid decided she needed to show off her newest horse, the Steed of Night. She managed to acquire it the day before it left the Lotro Store (forever?) and made no attempt at hiding the fact that she had a horse I did not. I have to admit, it's a nice looking horse, moreso when I don't have one myself. Le sigh.

One day I will have the most amazing horse in the game. I just need to decide which horse that is first.

The first rule of being a Dungeon Master.

wall of text alert. You have been warned.

Last week we finally managed to get a Dungeons and Dragons group together (what, you didn't know that was something we have been trying to do for .... a year?) and the first foray was, without a doubt, hilarious. I have no idea how accurate our gameplay was, and I'm sure our newly established houserules would shock more experienced players (hey, I'm a new DM, my answer to almost everything was: "Sure! Of course you can do ___!").

First, for those of you who may be mildly interested (or at least feigning interest), let me introduce the cast of characters.

The DM (me!)
Piers Ravenwood, the human wizard (and my RL husband!!)
Raylana, the elven cleric (one of my coworkers. Ugh, day job)
Kegslow, the dwarven paladin (and Raylana's RL boyfriend)
Amata, the shardmind avenger (Raylana's RL brother)
Also two bystanders, who had never before witenssed D&D, and did nothing but laugh the whole time at our antics :)

Now that I look at it, the cast of characters sort of centers around Raylana. /shrug. Oh well.

Our adventure of choice (or rather, my choice), was to be The Slaying Stone, a prepublished adventure set for characters of the first level. On my first reading, it didn't seem too difficult, and I felt it could be something I, as a totally virgin DM, could handle.

First rule of DMing: the players will always do something unexpected, usually more than once.

We started out, did the first encounter with the wolves without too much hassle ( I say this figuratively, as most of us were still getting a feel for each other and how to actually play the game, as more than one of us was a total newbie and one or two of us were veterans. I'm not saying who), and then was thrown for my first loop when the players started to ask questions about the old woman, Treona, who was giving them their quest to fetch a mysterious stone with dark arcane powers. They were sensing doubt in this woman. Something shifty. Something not along the lines of lawful good. So after questioning her, and me giving her a shiftier side just to satisfy their seemingly insatiable curiosity (she really was fine in the book, THEY MADE HER EVIL), Amata, the avenger, decides he wants to attack her. Why? Who knows. Because he can. While I was frantically looking for random stats to assign this woman since she now had to fight them, Kegslow began to intercede and attempt to calm our randomly aggressive shardmind down. It's a good thing he succeeded with that Diplomacy check too, because I was about ready to throw a level 15 Hag on their level 1 tails.

That should have been my first clue. I have said it before (and if I haven't, I should have) and I will say it again, I do not always catch the obvious the first go-around.


The heroes started out on their journey, and came upon the forlorn ruins of Kiris Dahn, torn apart by goblins. I present them with a map of the city and show them their options for entering. 1, the front gate, but it is heavily guarded and they are attempting stealth as the goblins vastly outnumber them. 2, across the river to the north, but it is very wide. 3, the forest to the south.

Kegslow: "Why can't we go this way?" points to the eastern edge of the map
DM: "Because there is a lake there."
Amata: "How many goblins are at the gate?"
I really didn't want them to go that way, so I sort of railroaded them. "Fifty. Bad idea."
Amata: "How wide is the river?"
Kegslow: "You want to swim?"
Amata: "Well, I don't breathe, I'm made of crystal, so technically I can't suffocate. I say the river."
Kegslow: "Easy for you to say. Fine, how wide is the river?"
DM: "200 feet." It originally was only about fifty feet, but my realization that his class made it easy for him to get across, I decided to spice it up and keep it mildly difficult.

At this point ensued a hilarious round of watching them try to figure out how to get across the river, whether to carry each other across in the manner of that old children's puzzle, or to try and make a raft, or to .... then suddenly Raylana remembered she had 50 feet of rope in her backpack. Surprise, Piers did too. Did Kegslow and Amata? Sure, why not? So I made them roll strength checks for the knots, then athletics checks to see if they could manage to hold on for the entire 200 feet. Kegslow almost drowned, but they all made it in the end.

Then followed a hilarious episode where our heroes managed to sneak up on a lone kobold who was... attending to nature... and convince the kobold leader to create a diversion with the goblins so our heroes would be more free to search for the stone.

They then stole off through the library, where Amata, or Crystalboy as we had come to call him, managed to one shot the miniboss for this particular encounter. As I was still new to DMing, I didn't have the sense to send a horde of goblins down the stairs in retaliation, so I just sat there numbly while the goblin fell to the floor and then the rest of the party finished off the minions.

Next came the shrine of the moon, where they met a lone npc, who at first seemed non-threatening, if at least distant and mostly unresponsive. So when a horde of goblins burst through the doors, surprising our heroes, and the npc retreated to the corner to shake like a leaf, it is small wonder that the heroes ignored him.

It was not my plan for Piers to one shot the minions  in one end of the room, leaving all the other players to run to the other side and deal with the other goblins and their evil boss. It was not plan for Piers to get left alone on that side of the room with the cowardly npc.

It was, however, my plan for that npc to be a wererat, so when he changed over into his more menancing form, and when he bit my husband's poor wizard in the rear, and when my husband contracted Filth Fever, and when he couldn't save out of it, I couldn't help but laugh. Until Piers started to make a very pitiful face at me because he thought he was going to die, and then I started to cry inside because I was killing my husband. I had the power to save him, but that would be cheating, so I let him fight that wererat alone, while we both waited desperately for the rest of the party to decide he was worth helping.

Eventually, and only after a very long and what was becoming desperate fight, they managed to kill the wererat and the goblins, and are now, for the sake of the story, sleeping peacefully in the now empty shrine.

Next time I won't go so easy on them. I will be bolder, and they will tremble at the sound of my dice.

Glasswork and Hired Help

 Today I made a good deal of progress on the Masterwork, mostly in those four-way arches that will eventually line both sides of the cathedral interior. Notice that some of my dirt scaffolding is still in place. I removed as much of the redundant/unnecessary scaffolding as I could, but some of it I forsee myself needing again in the future, so I left it there.

I also finished up a bunch of framework for the windows, and with Squid's help, got them all even ("three singles and a double!") Then I gave her a bunch of glass and she filled in all the windows I had framed up for me.

I am excited to see what it looks like when the details on the outside - the flying buttresses and such - are finished as well. I hope they will dress up the outside, because right now those walls are a bit too smooth. I will have to post pictures of those archways on the interior once I get them all finished. Also notice that doorway smack in the middle of the wall. That, in all likelihood, will not be in the final version, but with the walls up, I needed something to let me in and out between my storage chests and the construction easily. Why I couldn't just put the chests in the middle of the cathedral I don't know.

In honor of all my talk of flying buttresses, I give you the only movie reference I know of related to classical architecture.

The Loot Dropper

Those of you with the constitution to handle it, and especially those of you who need to work on your Angmarim slayer deed in Angmar (no? durr), will find this little tidbit to be particularly tasty.

In north-eastern Angmar, near Gath Forthnir, is the little nasty village of Bail Catharnakh. In the nook of one of the buildings, interspersed between angmarim, duvardain and gorthorog, you can find this charming little fellow - a Cargul.
As a level 50 mob (elite I believe) with 10k health, he's a bit of a hassle for lowbies, but if you're at level cap, you can get some decent loot off of him. He and his buddies all have a relatively quick respawn rate, and his friends go down without too much of a fight, the two archers and the one melee npc. The Cargul can throw out some fears, disarms, and silences, but other than that he's not too bad. Within thirty minutes of farming him, I had gathered, among various old level 50 weapons/armor/pocket pieces/jewelry, these prizes:

And also a "Tome of the Snake" cosmetic pet for my Loremaster - the only one I was missing :) I still have lots of characters who need the angmarim slayer deed, so while I'm working on it I'll be sure to catch this guy a few more times and see what else I come across.

The Yule Fest

I know this is late, the Yule Fest is over. But I found these in my screenie file, and didn't want to just delete them. Instead of your normal Yulefestery, this year Turbine gave us a whole new area with Frostbluff. It had several activites, like an eating contest, a very fun little theater instance, and a snowball fight. There were others, I just can't remember them at this point in time. Oh, and one of the cool things about this festival is it was the first time in the game you are asked to make a moral decision based on what you have learned through the story. Once you have made your choice, that's it. No going back. Also, this is the last time I will mention that moral dilemma. It was a bit traumatic to make. Not that anyone cares, and several people thought that the new Frostbluff area this year wasn't that great, but I thought it was pretty cool, so I will share a few screenies I took with you, the theoretical reader (because we all know you don't exist. I'm writing to the vast emptiness of the internet here, and there is no one out there).

 Here we have a view of the snowball fight, and me and Squid's lovely blue outfits. Also a view of some poor sucker who bought that $25 horse.

As a Loremaster, Thyrra has lots of animal friends, but not all of them are .... 'pets.' Edinburgh the fox, for instance, never listens to anything Thyrra says and will get up on the table and eat pie, regardless of her protests. Or, lack of protests, in this shot. I guess she's resigned herself to fate.

Here is Squid on her Hobbit Pan, who is sitting on her pony.... and isn't she just the cutest hobbit you will ever see? Squee! I want to hold it!

 I found out how to get onto the roof of one of the houses, and Indy had some fun dancing around on the chimney for a few minutes until someone shot fireworks at her.

And finally, a shot of Indy and Squid at sunset in Frostbluff, on our new Glittering Yule Steeds, this year's addition to the festival horses.

Now just to wait and see what they do new for Springfest this year.

Discrepancies

Only after I started raising the walls a bit in my cathedral did I notice something when going back and forth between my reference photos and what I was actually building - my building was not tall enough. To truly capture the grand majesty of a cathedral, I need this thing to touch the sky, literally, as I will probably go all the way to the top of the map. So, after some more tedious math and some re-working, I managed to get at least one side to the correct height, so far anyways.

I don't know if you can really tell from this screenie, but notice that the right side has openings that sit significantly higher than the openings on the left side. The right side is correct, height wise anyways. I still need to work on the windows a bit. But it's coming along, and I have height now, yay! Oh, and that other side needs fixing. Maybe Notch will have invented colored glass by the time I get ready to put the windows in.

More work tomorrow, maybe, if the ice-storm doesn't kill me.

The Masterwork

I love Minecraft. I've been playing for a few months now on a friend's multiplayer server, and I've enjoyed building my little creations. And I mean little seriously. Even my greatest work so far, my Elfstone Castle, is nothing compared to what I have just undertaken. I have taken a very basic floorplan of the Metz Cathedral and am working on building it in Minecraft. It will be rough. It will probably be ugly. Especially as I have no capabilities for stained glass and the Metz is known for its windows :(

I'm not sure if you can see the sheer size of this undertaking from this screenshot or not, but this is the basic groundwork for the structure. I will continue to post updates as I add bits and pieces, and maybe I will get it finished and make it beautiful.

The hardest part so far has been that I've had trouble counting out the grid appropriately and my measurements have been off. I finally think I got them right. You'd think, after almost 26 years, that I could learn to count in multiples of ten.

The One Lotro Horse I will probably never get.,,,

Because as of right now it's only available in the LOTRO store for real money. About 25 bucks' worth. For one horse. For one character. Across ten characters, that's ... wayyyyy more money than I want to spend. So yeah, the Steed of Night, available in the Lotro store for only 1995 turbine points. Go buy it, if you have the money to burn. If not, just enjoy Kismet of Gladden here, who shelled out the bucks for the thing.

Perhaps there really are people in this game crazier about collecting horses than I am.

Sly Cooper Returns!

One of my favorite game series has always been the Sly Cooper games. Well, let me back up a bit. If you've gathered anything, it's that I have a fondness for platformers in general, but Sly has always had a place in my heart. There's just something about that slinking raccoon that makes me smile. The trilogy of games were all released several years ago for the PS2, but were just recently re released on one disc for the PS3. My wonderful husband got it for me as a surprise gift, and for the past few days I've been reliving the stories I enjoyed so much back when I first played the games.

You play as Sly Cooper himself, a dashing raccoon thief, and sometimes (more often in the later games) his cohorts. The games are cel-shaded, but the series is one of the few games I have found that manage to tie the uniqueness of the graphics together with a reasonably sound story. 

Granted, the game series is geared towards younger audiences (throughout most of the dialogue this is readily apparent, but there are odd snippets here and there that lean towards an older listener), but that doesn't mean the average adult gamer can't get a kick out of playing the series.Some sections of the game can be fiendishly difficult, and with the 'one death and you have to start over' rule, this only intensifies the feeling of having to get it right the first time. There are some power-ups you can collect to temporarily override the one-death rule, but at the most you have two or three chances to get it right before you have to start over again. The other games have different versions of this, but as I haven't gotten to those games yet my memories are still a bit hazy. Stay tuned though, because when I get to the second and third games I will be sure and post more!

Strange times in Middle Earth

Ask anyone who plays lotro with me regularly, and they will tell you that I am a screenshot addict. I am taking pictures all the time. Besides a particular obsession with taking pictures of every single spider in the game (don't ask me what that's about, I have no idea. It's just something I started doing because I felt it needed to be done. Yes, I am weird), I like to take pictures of things I find amusing or .... interesting. Most of them, like the picture below, end up being the rigormortis poses of dead mobs, but sometimes it's other things too.

I couldn't help it. We killed the giant and he looked like a turtle. Enough said.

Sometimes, the game yells at you to Go. Away. Now.

Cocoons. Spiders will build them anywhere. Even on top of shacks. Because, you know. spiders regularly build cocoons.

Speaking of strange spawn locations, I found a buried treasure! Half-buried, anyway.

I used to have a lot more, but apparently when I went through and did a mass cleanup of old files I accidentally deleted my weirdness folder. :(

Not that any of you care about any of this, assuming there are any of you at all and this is even worth mentioning. Which, I suppose, it's not.

Blogging. Never have so many said so much to so few about so little.

And she fell down into the big Underground....

Lately, I've been playing Minecraft. A lot. When my husband first showed me the game, I thought it was meh, but once I tried it myself, I found it very addicting. The graphics and gameplay are simple, and there is literally no story, dialogue, or (if you in multiplayer mode) combat. All you do is dig. And build your ultimate _________ (<--- Insert whatever you've always wanted to build here).

If you are in single player mode, the concept is simple. You start out somewhere on a randomly generated landmass, with nothing in your inventory. You must find shelter and a light source before nightfall, because soon the monsters will be out. This comic from Penny Arcade best describes the early stages of the game to me.

After a while, I kept deleting and restarting my single players saves because I wanted a landscape that was inspiring and really would challenge me to build something fantastic. When I loaded this world in, I was wowed from the start and have been in love with it ever since. However, being in the shade from the cliffs and grotto means that I have to deal with more monsters than usual, and I have died several times.

Last night, a friend of mine from lotro and I received an invite to play on another lotro friend's multiplayer Minecraft server. We checked it out, and have decided that multiplayer is much more fun than single player. Sure, the game is still in alpha, so the multiplayer mode doesn't at this point have all the functions that single player does, but the general concept is still there. I found it much more fun building things when other people could see what I was building and not only admire them, but offer advice, make their own modifications, and such.

Theories and I are in the process of building a gigantic fortress - which, due to a lack of knowledge about where the rest of the players had started building, is VERY far away from everything else, but we are okay with that. The friend who invited us built a massively long bridge/highway from their village to our fortress, so now we at least know how to get to them if they need us, or we need them. Multiplayer currently has no monsters though, so unless we are suffocating under a pile of sand and need to be dug out, that won't really be an issue....

The Strongest Horse in the World

Up until the release of Enedwaith, the highest amount of hp a horse in lotro could have was 150. Once Enedwaith was released, however, the opportunity to get two new horses with 200 hp. This may not seem like a big deal, but that 50 points could very well make the difference in whether or not you get knocked off your horse while you are riding though dangerous territory.

The only caveat to obtaining both of these new horses is that you have to be at Kindred standing with the Grey Company and with the Algraig, the two new factions. Normally, it takes me weeks to get to kindred standing with any faction, but suppose the thought of a shiny new horse or two had me all excited or something, because here I sit, just eight days after the release of the new area, and I am sitting proudly on my Grey Company horse.

 He is a fantastic blue-grey color with wonderful detailing on all his tack. His mane is also done up in tiny little braids. The name he came with was Hunter's Pride, which I wanted to change to Wolverine in honor of a rather embarrassing episode from a couple days ago, but the game told me that was an invalid choice for a name.   :(

Anyways, now just to push for the Algraig rep, which I know will take much longer, as there aren't as many opportunities to further it and the dailies can only be done, well, once a day. /sigh.

Until then I am content with my new horse, and also in the fact that I am only one of two or three possible people on Gladden right now to have the horse. That could just be because only certain people have announced it, but whatever.

Leaving Moria

So, the other night, Squid and I finally left Moria (I know, I have been slacking severely in my Lore-master chronicles and I can't recall if I even mentioned us going IN to Moria in the first place, but whatever, we left it). She had been refusing to leave Moria until the epic line prompted us to, because, in her words, "Once I leave Moria, I'm not going back." After running all the way east to First Hall, we stood for what seemed like ages at the doorway, just staring out into the last bit of darkness. Squid claimed she was afk, but our burglar buddy, Licentious, suggested that maybe she had Stockholm Syndrome and that perhaps Moria had been so bad to her that she couldn't tear herself away from it. She huffed and puffed at this and claimed that she could leave anytime she wanted to, thankyouverymuch.

So we left. The sunlight outside was bright and stark after the long dark of Moria. The elves of Lorien, of course, were snobby and wouldn't let us in. So we had to run back and forth, carrying arrows and clearing the orc muck out of the Nimrodel before they would let us pass. They are very protective of their realm, and even shot Squid for trying to enter Lorien before they said she could. Heck, they even stuck a couple arrows in me for getting too close to their borders while trying to clear out orc muck.

Finally, we had done enough menial demeaning work to satisfy the elves, and they let us into Lorien. As we rode our horses down the pathway, with twilight just coming on and the last bit of sunlight fading away into blue duskiness, Squid couldn't help but exclaim how beautiful everything was. I had to agree with her. Lorien has always been one of my favorite places. We ran around performing more tasks for the elves, helping them keep the forest alive and well, like in this screenshot, where we are singing to the sick trees. Apparently, in Lorien, that helps.

Eventually we had done most of the quests that didn't involve a lot of killing and resorted to outlandish acts, simply to see how far we could push the boundaries. One of the defining marks of Lorien architechture is the construction of Talan, or great platforms high up in the boughs of the Mallorn trees of Lorien. There is a deed to discover all of them, and in the process of climbing up all of them, we discovered that the huge branches can be walked out onto.

This of course led to all sorts of shenanigans, which, inevitably, led to misadventure. The problem with jumping around in branches high up in trees is that you will most likely fall out, and it is a lonnnnnggggg way down. And when you fall a long way, you will die. Which we did, more than once. It was loads of fun though, and in the end, as the sun came back up over Lorien, we called it a night and went our
separate ways, leaving the rest of Middle-earth for another day.

Perhaps eventually we will make our way further east towards Mirkwood, or even south into the wilds of Enedwaith, but for now I am content to sit and relax in the eaves of the Golden Wood.

Dear Turbine,

Dear Turbine,
I will admit, when I first heard you were giving lotro a free to play option I felt a strange sense of dread and uneasiness creep into the back of my mind. I dismissed it, carefully, even after getting into beta and seeing so many things that seemed, in my mind, to break the spirit of what lotro used to be. There were things in the store that shouldn't be there, there were things that cost points to unlock that should have remained open, and the fears that the community would be destroyed hung like a cloud over the beta testers.

Slowly, as beta wore on, my fears gave way into acceptance, and once the free to play headstart launched on the 8th (just last week!), my fears were for the most part relieved, as some of the major issues I had with things I'd seen in beta seemed to have disappeared. Of course, my being a vip subscriber helps alot, I'm sure, as many of the money-grabbing tactics I saw displayed for f2pers in beta do not apply to me.

I will be honest - I am thrilled that you listened to the community on several of the issues that were brought up in beta, particularly the quest dialogue revamp and the reputation horses. However, I do not believe you are ready for free to play. Why do I say this? Because, even though you added new servers and new hardware to handle server stress, I have not been able to enjoy the game for the past three days because it has been such an outright lag-fest. I know you are working on it (at least, I hope you are), and part of me is thrilled that so many people have flocked to this game, which, over the past two years, I have grown to know and love. Most of me, however, is still upset at the fact that I, today, cannot even get into the game, and have been sitting in a queue for upwards of thirty minutes now, waiting to get into a game that will be so laggy it will be unplayable. I am paying you good money every month for a product that is supposed to work, that is supposed to not give me issues. My subscription runs through December, and if I do not see any improvements, though it pains me to say it, I will probably be canceling any further payments beyond that point.

I know the cancellation of one subscriber is no real threat to your company, what with the masses of f2pers and the income they will bring you through your lotro store, and I am happy that your development team may finally be seeing the money they need to bring even more fantastic content to this game. While my cancellation may be no real threat, I want you to seriously consider the workability of your current system. If more and more people cancel, or even if the f2pers stop playing because your game is simply unplayable with so many people on, then how will you make money if no one plays? You will be back in the same boat you were in before. Remember the sayings - one vote can make a difference, one grain of sand can tip the scales, one drop in the ocean can cause a flood? Those are true for a reason.

Be wary, Turbine, and get your act together, or my letter may not be the only one you see. I know you are trying to fix this, at least I hope you are, and I hope whoever monitors the servers warned you about this and didn't blithely assume that everything would 'be ok.'

With regrets,
a disgruntled elf