Winter has Come

Sybil and Gaucho ride home from school

Winter has come to Appaloosa Plains. I think I have decided that it is my favorite of the seasons in the game. So peaceful and calm; everything seems to be sleeping.

The Legacy House in winter, all bedecked with lights.

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.

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.

Thing 75: Genetic Musings of the Desultory Kind.

As part of the Day Zero Project, one of the things on my list is to play through a family on Sims 3 ... but through 20 generations. Most of my progress with the DZP will be tracked through my other blog,  The Desultory Housewife, but as this was a goal concerning games I felt it was more fitting to post about it here.

But back to the goal. 20 generations. That is a lot of game time in the Sims 3. My record is only eight generations, and even that was trying my patience. For the record, I am keeping their lifespans set to normal, with only slight extensions on the sliders for adulthood. I am not a point keeper for legacy challenges, and I am not using any cheats. The family I've chosen for the challenge, so far, hasn't reached that boring point, but that's probably only because everyone is diverse enough that I'm able to keep my interest up and not get bored.

 The founder, Duncan Polk, started with a big empty lot, no money, a nothing but a dream. His temporary wife (who broke his heart and left him with two small children) almost broke that dream, but he pulled through, becoming a great scientist and thinker, and has now passed the torch on to his son and heir so that he can rest peacefully in that great neighborhood in the sky.

Meebo, gen2

His son Meebo is a fantastic gardener, and most of the family's income is derived from the sale of his produce. I realized while playing this sim that the gardener career becomes exponentially more and more difficult to level, because each level requires you to pretty much reach what you've made cumulatively in sales already.  50k worth of vegetables is a lot of times spent in the dirt.

Lana, gen2

Here is Meebo's sister, Lana. She's a writer and a painter, and I'm debating moving her out of the house as it's getting a bit full. Turns out royalties from books are a great way to make money, so between the seven or so books she's written and the occasional painting, she proves to be a good asset to the family's bank account, which in a house as large as theirs, is a very very good thing. There's always something broken or something that needs remodeling. Yes, I said it. NEEDS remodeling. Because, you know, that wall just has to go.

Kesha, gen2; and Pascal, gen3

Next are Meebo's wife and son-in-law, Kesha and Pascal. Kesha was Meebo's highschool sweetheart, and I was thrilled when I was able to get them to agree to marriage. Pascal came over from France, and while he's in the military now, his dream is to one day have a thriving nectary. They both enjoy pursuits of the mind, so they often play chess together on fine summer days (which, coincidentally enough, it is always a fine summer day in Appaloosa).

Mio, gen3

Meebo has two daughters. The eldest, Mio, is married to Pascal, and is a great equestrian. Her two horses, Cameo, and Cascade's First Cameo, are both prize winners, and she spends every day training them to be better racers and jumpers. Here we see her with Cascade's First when she was just a little filly.  It's actually kind of a good thing that the house is full right now and Mio can't have any children with Pascal, because the horses are a handful! One of the interesting things I noticed with Mio is that genetic traits in the Sims 3 can skip a generation. I gave Duncan yellow eyes as a genetic marker, just to see how it was passed down, and while it skipped Meebo, Mio has them. It looks like my Sims are doomed to be blondes though, as Meebo got his mother's blonde hair, and Kesha is blonde, and Mio and Satele are both blonde as well. Pascal is a brunette, so maybe there is hope yet for some darker hair, but I'm pretty sure Duncan's spitfire red hair, which only Lana seems to have inherited, will be lost forever. Mio will be the next heir, and the family name also changed to Morel with her marriage to Pascal. No more Polk :(

Satele, gen3

Meebo's younger daughter is Satele. She's only in grade school right now, but one day she hopes to be a great martial artist and athlete. Here we see her doing her homework under the watchful gaze of her grandfather's portrait. She is a dedicated student, and if I'm able to keep her in the house and not move her out to make room for heirs I'll probably send her on adventures overseas to participate in martial arts tournaments and collect rare treasures. Maybe. Don't know. She's kind of whiny right now, so she's getting on my nerves.

They also have a dog and a cat, Tiffany the beagle and Gilbert the cat. Gilbert is getting pretty up there in age, and I think he might go to be with Duncan soon. Tiffany is a proud hunter, and brings home jewels and bones and rare stones every day.

I will probably post an update once I get to generation 6 or something like that. Hopefully my save won't corrupt or anything.

You mean I actually have to work for it?

I'd forgotten how much work a festival in lotro can be, if you are as obsessive about collecting everything as I am.

Wait, let me back up.

A year or so ago, I decided to get both my Inn League and Ale Association standings to kindred. Getting both to kindred takes a good deal more work than just doing one or the other, as doing one will give you negative rep with the other. It was only through a delicate balancing act and several weeks of grinding dedication that I managed it.

By the time I was there, I had a couple stacks of the barter tokens for each faction. At first they seemed useless, but as Indy is unable to throw anything away, I shoved them in the vault and forgot about them. Until, that is, at the next festival, when I saw that these tokens could be traded on a 1:3 ratio for any festival token of your choice.

Suddenly, acquiring all those festival cosmetics and mounts was a piece of cake. I no longer had to grind out the quests and deeds to get tokens. Festival's started today? Okay, go to the vault, pull out a few Inn League or Ale Association tokens, turn them in for the appropriate festival tokens, aquire goods, done. That was it. I could usually accomplish all my festing in the space of five minutes, unless there was a new deed I wanted to finish.

Well, the Yulefest started last week, but due to the release of SW:TOR, I've been distracted. I just decided to log onto lotro today, and what would you know, but I'm all out of those IL and AA tokens.

So now, to acquire my new Yulehorse, I had to actually run quests, which isn't all bad since I still hadn't finished my Feast-beast title from last year, and there is a new snowman building quest/deed thingie. Thank goodness the festival will run until Jan 30th, because it'll probably take several days for me to get all the other cosmetics.

At least the new Yulehorse isn't that bad looking. Don't know what's on his head, but the rest of it looks good.

Dunedain Outfittery and the Prince of Rohan

Let me start out by saying I am really enjoying what Turbine is doing with their new book content. Either they've got some new tech or they're showing off some new trick, but either way, some of the things I've seen in the Rise of Isengard expac and the new update 5, which just launched today, are making me bouncy happy.

Preparing for battle

Mounted npc's? Yes please. Now, when do we get mounted combat? Would that even be possible, Turbine? Also, looks like they are getting more comfortable with putting lots of npcs in one spot - some of the epic solo chapters are, well, epic. Between Wulf's Cleft and this new chapter, the Prince of Rohan, I am finding the story to be much more immersive, and superbly written. I suppose with the launch of SW:TOR looming on the horizon, it makes sense for any mmo other than WoW, and maybe even that one too, to throw everything they have at their player base in an attempt to retain subscribers. I have come to the sad decision to cut off my lotro subscription in the coming months, but that is the beauty of the game being free to play, I suppose. I can keep playing, and only pay for what I want. How a la carte of Turbine.





I haven't finished the new book in Volume III yet, but I'm loving what I have seen so far. Especially the fact that Indy finally has Dunedain clothing. I have wanted that since she first stumbled into Esteldin, over three years ago.Back then, the rangers were cool. And now, Indy is about 20% cooler. I'm just wondering how it will hold dye. My wardrobe is drooling, waiting for both sets to be put in it. That is, assuming I can afford the extra wardrobe space. I might just pick certain pieces for everyone else, and reserve the complete set for Indy. She gets all the shiny things. Boot knife!!! It's only fair, you know. Okay, now I'm just rambling. I'll stop.

I can't wait to get into some of the new Isengard instances. It will probably be a while, and Indy is kind of behind on her gear, but I'll catch up eventually. It just might take me a while.

Since Squid hasn't made much of an appearance lately, here she is in her sultry new duds, beating an old goat about the brainpan with a stick.

I miss my free time.

Spring Steed and giant flowers

That is all.

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 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.

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.

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.

Death to Narmeleth!!!

So Squid and I finally finished Volume 1 of the epic story in lotro. Thank heaven. Finally. I think she was ready to strangle the elf-woman by the time we were done. But, all that matters, besides strangling, is that we finished, and that we have these lovely white horses to show for it.

Oh, and matching cloaks, but it was night-time in Rivendell when we finished, so the pic didn't turn out quite as well for that one.

The story really is nice though, and if you pay attention to it (unlike sis, who just accepted and moved on without reading) it pays some interesting tributes to some lesser known Tolkien lore every now and again.

Balrog Down

After weeks of trying and countless gold pieces spent in repair bills, I finally managed to down the balrog with an outstanding group.

The most amazing thing to me is that after all these dozens of tries and failures, where the group would wipe multiple times - on this go around, not a single person died. It was perfect. Textbook, in a sense.

Other than getting bugged out at the end of the fight and thereby unable to receive any loot ( insert sad panda face here) I gleefully ran back up to the surface to turn in the quest. This was the final step in gaining my Dunedain Warhorse, the first of my meta-deed mounts.

However, after turning in the quest, I was woefully surprised when my meta-deed did not update, and I did not get my horse either! In something fast approaching a fury (it is amazing how, when you play a game long enough, not receiving a reward, even a pixelated and quite imaginary one, can send one into confused and startled anger. Like a badger), I cried out to the gods on Olympus (aka the GMs) and asked where my horse was. I wanted my horse.

The GMs actually responded, and a certain +Ohtah+ told me to try relogging. I did so tentatively, but upon my return to the game I found a Dunedain Warhorse waiting for me in my inventory and a very satisfyingly complete Saviour of Eriador meta-deed.

So here is the much sought after horse, and while he is indeed rather ugly (the modeling of the head is the most horrific), I ride him proudly throughout Middle-earth, showing off my triumph and dedication to the game (and also my complete and utter lack of any meaningful activity, production, or social life).

The Spring Festival, day one

Just a few days from now will mark my one year anniversary with lotro, and I find it fitting that my 'birthday' falls in the Spring Festival. I love the festivals in the game. Each one holds different activities to try, and while some are simple, some require a good amount of skill and practice.

One such activity requiring a bit of effort is the horse race. There are two race-tracks in the game, one in the Shire and one in Bree, and since the advent of the new, improved horse races back in the winter festival, I have made it a point to practice riding on the race-course every time I go to my house in Michel Delving (what? It's on the way, and since I am such an avid collector of horses, I figured it wouldn't hurt). When I first tried the race-tracks back December, I failed the races more times than I won them.

However, as a result of my practice, I ran the Spring race today with Indrabar, and received my Spring Fest Horse Token, which, when combined with other items, will allow me to trade for a spring horse. Yay!

 My only wonder now is if Turbine has added a new horse to the Spring Festival, as they did in the Winter Festival. Just in case, I went ahead and ran the Bree race too and received a token from there, so, provided I can get the other necessary items and the money, I will have at least one (and possibly two!) new horses in the near future. Now I simply need to get my other characters up and ready as well so I can have Spring horses for them all!



Stay tuned for a rundown of the other events in the land of Middle-earth during the Spring Festival!

Now I know why I am always broke

It's because I can't stop buying horses!!

I like this one alot though. He's possibly my favorite. I bought him from the Wardens of Annunimas after gaining enough reputation with them. I wanted to name him Sequoia, cause it seemed to fit, but apparently Turbine seems to have some issue with that name (why?) so I named him Skeeter, after the paint horse my mom used to have.

Now hopefully I can gather my money in time for the Spring festival  next week- because I heard they have a horse to earn there too!!

Taking in the Scenery

One of my favorite things about playing LotRO has to be the environment. Sometimes I will get bogged down in a location and become too focused on the quest at hand to really stop and pay attention to my surroundings, but today I took my minstrel, Sioned, out to Northern Bree to finish up some quests she forgot to do before. She kind of ran through Bree in a hurry because I mainly played her during LotRO's kinship contest last year, and as I was trying to level her up as quickly as possible I didn't stay too long in any one area. Minstrels are always in short supply, especially good minstrels at a high enough level to actually be useful to a good percentage of the other players, so it probably wouldn't hurt to level her up a bit. Which I did today. Twice. She's now at the glorious height of 39. All that to say that the mobs in Bree are now no challenge at all. Which gives me the freedom to stop, take a look about, and enjoy the fields and hills.

I really do love this area - even if the quests are a bit spread out and it can take forever and a day just to get to where you need to go - the weather for one thing is always gorgeous - even when it's overcast and raining I love it.

 I also celebrated my quick stop in the Hengstacer farms (that's the horsefields for all you noobs) with a game sis and I invented: Pony Jumping. Now normally this epic sport has to be done on foot, but since I was feeling especially festive, I decided to attempt it, rather eval kineval style, on my horse, Aggregate. Don't ask about the horse's name. I don't know.

Anyways, that was fun. Jumping over the ponies always is, whether on foot or horseback. The ponies don't mind either. At least, I don't think they mind. They never make any noise or run away or anything. Sometimes they just swish their tails. Hrm....





Lately with my characters I've been dabbling in the role-playing aspect of the game, something completely optional of course, but it does give the game a little more variety as I get to add a personality to each of my characters. Kind of like acting. So I decided to make Sioned a bit unpredictable and crazy, because I usually have to be in a crazy mood to play her. I don't really like minstrel that much. Which is also why I do things like stopping and admiring the scenery, or jumping over horses, cause I have to do something. But I ramble, it's late, I'm feeling a bit tired... and I think it's starting to show.... so I'm off to bed and then who knows what will happen the next time I find myself in Middle-earth.

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!

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.