WARC: Getting Organized

The Windy Acres Riding Club met again last night, and our numbers have grown a little bit. We had some new members, and took care of some administrative tasks to get better organized. After voting on the website for our uniform and team names, we put them into action in-game.

 The riding practice uniform is a combination of Arth-Crus and some Quilted Pants, dyed black. Kiralynn gave us freedom to choose our own shoulders, gloves, and shoes, and while we can't wear hats, we can wear headbands, so I chose the Boots and Gloves of the Eorlingas, and the Circlet of Men. No shoulders for me. I think they would take away from the fantastic look of Arth-Crus. My full look turned out rather dashing and smart, I think. I might change the boots though. They look a bit too chunky. There are some good slim knee-high boots in Dunland, if I remember correctly, but it is a long way still for baby Indy till Dunland. She's up to 35, so almost halfway there, but still, a very very long road. Got to stop messing around and seriously push through the levels. I can go back and grab rep/deeds later.

We decided on Heraldic colors for our team names, so we now have teams Argent, Sable, and Azure, and also the backup team of Purpure (captained by me!) Once we had finished all the team organization and decided on what time alternate practice on Saturdays should be (noon est!), it was time for our leader Kiralynn to go. Most people stayed though, and I ended up leading an impromptu practice for the new folk last night. I did a rough job of explaining what we were doing, but I think folk got the general idea, and in the end I think progress was made by all. We only made it through two formations, but for me, who had NO idea how to explain it the way Kiralynn explained it last week, I feel it went well. At times I felt like Marlin trying to retell that horrible joke about the mollusk and the Sea Cucumber.

 Practice will be each Wednesday evening at 9:30 EST and Saturdays at Noon EST. Contact Kiralynn ingame on Landroval or visit their website for more info.

On Youtube, She Is.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been working on leveling a new Indrabar on Landroval. Although I am well past the Lonelands now and into the thirties, while I was trudging through the Lonelands, I ran into a minstrel named Movaro. Turns out, Movaro is played by a guy called Dulayne, and he's doing a let's play series on Youtube. Consequently, Indrabar made her first internet debut as we ran together doing an escort quest!


If you're interested in his channel, check it out here. I've embedded the episode here, and Indy makes her first appearance at about 2:56, running by blithely like a true huntard. We group for a while and he moves on to other quests after I switch to another character. Most of his other videos are pretty fun to watch, so I recommend checking out his channel.

I must say, my first Youtube appearance is tons of fun to watch, but I can't help but see all the mistakes I made while I was running with him.

More Meta-deed Completion

For a long time, I assumed Indy was forever doomed to be casual. I was never going to see the inside of anything tougher than Sword-halls. Then I started raiding, and I saw the insides of some very cool places. Progress was beginning to be had all around on meta-deeds of all sorts.

 Then I stopped raiding, for the most part, due to dropping my sub and getting out of the game for a couple months while I tested out SW:TOR, and in the process of leaving the game I got behind and all the rest of my kinmates are far ahead of me in content and raiding experience. Trying to get in runs now, being behind the curve, it's kind of hard sometimes to imagine ever having all of the meta-deeds finished. If they keep adding content fast enough, then perhaps I will never be finished and I will always have some sort of goal. Of course, as long as I have alts, I will have goals, but that is a tangent we don't want to go down just yet.

Tonight, with the dedicated help of my favorite tank, I managed to finish one of them, the Tempest of Dol Guldur. This one, while less intensive than say, the Moria or Angmar meta-deeds, still took a long time and a lot of work.

Now it's all paid off, and I finally have it finished. The default name was Moonlight, but I changed it to Ananlend, Sindarin for a very long journey. Indy decided to show off on the banks of the Great River Anduin in the new area of Thinglad just after sunrise. I know this sounds silly to all the non-gamers out there, but it was rewarding to finally see it, to ride it around. Felt like I'd accomplished something. Even if it was all pixely and not really worthwhile in the long run, I guess.

My only problem now is to decide what deeds to tackle next. I have pretty much run out of things to do duo or solo, and I'm getting into deeds that will take a goodly number of people to run. The more people something takes to run, though, the longer it will take me to complete the deed, especially when the deeds are ten levels old. No one wants to run that old stuff. For example, I have the Ost Dunhoth meta-deeds to do now. But no one runs Ost Dunhoth anymore, because it isn't cap anymore, and no one wants to waste time on getting raid gear when they're going to blow through those levels on their way to 75 anyways.

/sigh. Back to being casually anonymous, I guess.

Deed-mongerer

Yes, I know he's not emoting in this shot.

So if any of you have been reading this for a long time, and I pity you if you have, you may remember a post about the new meta-deed mounts. There were three deeds, and the other day, I finally finished all three of them. I have my Angmar meta-deed done, my Moria one, and just now, my Lothlorien one. So now, I has a shiny white goat as a reward. Oh, and I treated myself and bought one of the mounted emotes from the store.

Of course, it took me so long to finish all three that by now they have other meta-deeds out. One for a Mirkwood horse, one for an Ost Dunhoth horse, and I think there's an Isengard one as well. Oh well. Something else to keep me on the perpetual grind, I suppose.

SHFT: Super Rare

Short post today, just wanted to brag.

So today, I was exploring a random hole in the ground and came across someone odd. Mr. Tim. No, Squid, not Mr. Timn. Just Tim. He wasn't hard to kill, and he dropped a spiffy hat.

And the best part?  Apparently he's super rare and killing him is the only way to get that hat. Now I feel special, cause Indy has a pointy hat.

This almost makes up for me deleting my spectre boots.

SHFT: Mistakes

All this time I've been playing Terraria, I've been playing as a character named Garbledytesting or somesuch nonsense. Well, I finally got her gear up to snuff and decided to shove everything in chests and then delete her, and use Indrabar, whom I created a long time ago while I first played Terraria with my husband. So I shoved everything in chests, and then, I shoved all her gold and armor in the piggy bank. I saved and exited the world, and deleted her. Then I loaded in Indrabar. Then I noticed something odd.  Chests will carry over between characters. Piggy Banks do not. All that gear, my Spectre boots, my feral claws, my mining helmet, my 56 gold. It's all gone. At least I put the weaponry in a chest, so I still have that. Oh well. Back to the drawing board. Time for Indy to earn her stripes, and to find some more Hermes/Rocket/Spectre Boots.

Does This Mean I Have No Life?

So I finally did it.

I cancelled my lotro sub.

And yes, I shed a couple tears before I hit that green button. Does that mean I take the game too seriously? Does that mean I have no life? Probably.

Do I care? Yes.

We can't justify paying for three mmo subs right now, and with SW:TOR still pretty fresh on our plates, lotro, being the old, worn out, flataslastweek'snewspaper game, it had to go.

So why was it so hard for me to cancel? I've waited weeks to do this. I've wanted to find a way around it. I considered using Christmas money to pay for another year's sub. I considered all sorts of things to scrounge up the money to pay for another year's sub. In the exit survey, one of the questions asked was "what can we (Turbine) do to bring you back to Lotro?" I put in that they could give me a free lifetime sub if they wanted, because honestly, there is nothing wrong with their game (or wrong enough to drive me away).

I just don't have the time (or, more importantly, the money) to keep paying for it.

I guess it is all the time I have put into the game over the years that is killing me. All the fun memories I have of running things with Squid. The friends I've made - who thankfully, have moved around with me to other games (I'm looking at you, Minecraft and SW:TOR, and yes, even you, stupid Tanks).

I think my biggest fear in hitting that green button was that this felt like a betrayal to Indrabar. She's been with me for so long, and hey, it is an rpg, after a while it does begin to feel like that pixelated thing on the screen is a part of you, and that you really did defeat Mordirith or clear out Sammath Gul or down a dragon or two.

It feels like a betrayal because there was no Indrabar in SW:TOR yet, and there probably won't be, because, as my husband once said when I was creating my character for that short stint in SWG,  - "It's not a very Star Warsy name. It just sounds, well, elvish." So, for SWG, I went with Tsuka, and Tsuka is now in SW:TOR.


Tsuka was also in Skyrim, instead of Indrabar. A psychologist might say that two personalities are fighting for control.

Yes, I know it is just a game.

Yes, I am a sane, mature adult. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have cancelled.

Just because I am an adult though doesn't mean I have to be happy about the choices we are sometimes forced to make.

 Well, here's to the 20th, and whatever changes that will bring to Indrabar and the rest of my lotro characters. Hopefully they won't all just poof into thin air. Hopefully I won't cry like an idiot again.

Maybe now I can have a real life, you know, in the real world.


If I was able, I would give Indrabar permission to punch me in the face for just metaphorically indefinitely locking her in a dark cell with no chance of sunlight or ever seeing her forty-nine horses and three goats again..