Fire and Ice or Evil and Stuff

Hello readers, another post here with stories of grand adventures of our mighty heroes still lost in the grind out in Middle Earth.  Floss reached level 30 and is now an expert tailor, he completed his 30 minstrel class quest which seemed surprisingly simple compared the other class quests I had to do, especially the lore master riddle quest which was a royal pain in the ass.  He is cruising right along, still trying to get Chapter 8 of Book 2 done in the red pass, seems like it is a challenge to find a group for some reason.  I do enjoy playing a healer class, it is about a tie between my minstrel and captain, Rekkr who is now level 43 and is out in the Misty Mountains wreaking havoc on all the beasts in that frozen land.  He found a group to finally finish Chapter 8 of Book 5, Fire and Ice;  Elrond told you that after the dwarf-king Durin defeated Thorog the dragon, the body of the dragon was left to moulder in the empty treasury of Helegrod. He fears that the ice and cold of Orod Lostol will have preserved the body to such an extent that the arts of the Gaunt-lord, Drugoth, may be able to instill it with a fell spirit and raise it as a wight.  The instance itself is situated in the northern bruinen source and after I finally got a sigil off of a wight standing guard to the entrance we made our way in.  This was my first experience inside a part of helegrod and it was really cool.  Our fellowship consisted of a variety of classes, which included 2 captains, a minstrel, a level 50 champion, a burglar, and a hunter.  We never really had to worry about dying, I think the 50 champion died once, because of whatever reason, but seeing that dragon brought to life was cool, at first we weren’t sure if we had to kill it, and the thing had over 300k hp so we were a bit skittish to say the least.  Luckily the final battle was against the nazgul, who wasn’t too bad.  I would recommend that everyone in the group be at least level 42 if you want it to go smoothly.I felt a certain sense of accomplishment once I finished Book 5; I am looking forward to some more dramatic instances like that in the future.  I was informed of a good spot to mine some dwarf iron, and I guess I can share it here with you…just promise not to tell anyone   If you start at the little encampment on the western shore of Evendim lake and just follow the shore all the way to the south you will find a nice amount of nodes, just be careful of the level 39-41 elite wood trolls, if you aren’t careful they can sneak up on you…believe me I know…also the only other mobs that give me grief are the fire flies, they tend to gang up on you…but so far my farming along the shore has been good.In other gaming news, I am still playing the demo for enemy territory: quake wars, I found the class that is equivalent to the field ops, and I loved calling in hammer strikes on the unsuspecting enemy players…taking out 3 or more players at one time is just priceless to watch through your binoculars.  This might be the next game I break down and buy…I am a cheap skate though, so no guarantees…I do recommend checking it out if you ever enjoyed playing RTCW: enemy territory or even quake, it is a kind of variation of them both, lots of fun to be had there. 

Past, Present and Future…

My journeys in the world of Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games has been pretty short compared to a lot of other folks out there, but I feel like I have learned quite a bit about the genre and I enjoy sharing my thoughts with you all here.  With that being said, I wanted to let everyone know what I have played in the past, what I am currently playing and what games I look forward to playing.

I get a lot of traffic to this blog from people searching for Jame’s Horde leveling guide, which is fine, and I didn’t realize how popular using guides to play these games actually are.  WoW was a fun game, it was my first MMORPG and I haven’t played anything else like it to date.  I suppose I am an advocate of using leveling guides because I did so myself, so without the hypocritacil banner waving over my head, I will not say it is a bad thing.  It is nowhere near as bad as using bots, or paying a leveling service to get your character high in level…maybe my gaming morals have a limit and the point of playing video game is to have fun.  Of course there are other people out there who only look forward to the end game, PvP, etc…  To me, having fun means more than being the highest level toting the highest rewards from PvP battle or raids/dungeons.  Don’t get me wrong, of course that stuff would be cool to have but since I am a casual gamer at the core it isn’t a reality for me. 

Let me touch on the leveling guide issue again, now some people call them cheats or that they ruin the experience of playing the game and figuring things out on your own or with limited help from others.  I used to play like that and I still do to a degree.  But with all the resources out there on the web these days it’s like being given a test and knowing exactly where the answers are, but choosing not to look at them.  This is where I am, but if I can’t figure something out within a reasonable amount of time and effort I choose to go to the old reliable google search and type in the quest name hoping to get some guidance on my next step.  That is now, in LotRO. 

Back when I was in WoW it was different cause I had played 4 different characters to level 60, 1 to 70, so when I created my last toon, Flamen, the blood elf paladin all I wanted to do was get to the outlands and start doing some dungeons, etc…normal endgame stuff.  But, that never happened for whatever reason, call it burnout, call it reduncancy, LotRO came out and I made the transition over pretty easily without any withdrawal symptons.  I know there are quite a few people out there who stopped playing WoW, went to LotRO, and now have returned back to WoW.  To each his own, I don’t have anything to say about that, do what you like, who knows, with the next expansion I might have to check it out, also one of my friends who plays should be back from Iraq, so I won’t rule that possibility out of the question.  But for right now, I am still happily content in Middle Earth playing my handful of characters, managing a kinship and having a good time. 

What am I looking forward to playing in the future?  Well, Starcraft 2 of course, I am a blizzard fan ever since the first Diablo, it was my introduction to any kind of online RPG, which before that all I had messed with was Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc…so it was a welcome change and I embraced the community like it was my long lost family.  I made quite a few good friends and was in a clan for quite a while.  There has to be more to the gaming world than Blizzard games right?  Oh yes, there is, I downloaded Enemy Territory: Quake Wars the other day and I have been playing that.  It is very fun to play, but has somewhat of a learning curve as far as becoming an expert goes.  I do play FPS but I am not very good, that could be argued by some, but I know my reflex skills aren’t anywhere near all those basement dwelling gamers who are amped up on Red Bull and can spot a roach scurrying from 500 yards away, sniping it between the eyes without hesitation.  That isn’t me.  But, this game is more than run and shoot, there are vehicles, objectives, airplanes, helicopters, jet packs, and much more involved.  Similar to BF2142, which I played the demo of that as well, but not quite as demanding on your system.  I am all about cheap and free games, I guess becoming a MMORPG player and having a monthy fee to play a game has given me higher expectations out of the future games.

Tobold has said in many of his posts that WoW is the gold standard to judge all other MMO’s by.  I have to agree, even when I first started playing LotRO I remember thinking, this is like WoW but better…so where do they go from here?  Who knows, I am no developer, I just like playing high quality games just like any other gamer out there.  I guess what I would like to see in a game would be ease of controls, nice graphics that don’t require a beast of a machine to run smoothly, an indepth storyline, and how about an online world where the economy isn’t inflated within 6 months because of the gold sellers?  Is that too much to ask?  Of course people would argue that it is inevitable, the more money that is pumped into the game will happen no matter what you try to do to control it.  I guess it’s beyond me, no easy solution to creating a perfect game, cause in the end you can’t please everyone all the time, and you are lucky if you please some of the people some of the time.

Time to dabble

The lag I have been experiencing in LotRO is really a drag and is starting to get on my nerves.  This whole time I have been very positive about the game and everything Turbine has been doing to keep it “fresh”, but like so many other people have pointed out, if something isn’t broke, why fix it?  Unnecessary changes to classes, and other items of interest come to mind, I guess that is the nature of the beast.  My friend who played Dungeons & Dragons Online mentioned to me today he is seeing a pattern forming where Turbine listens to all the people complaining and starts changing things that don’t need to be changed.  Those of us who are happy have nothing to complain about, so…I guess our voice isn’t heard because we have nothing to say…who knows…

I do have to admit, the changes made to the Captain class were pretty cool, although having to hit another button to put down a banner is annoying, so I choose to keep my herald by my side.  The quick heal is very fast now, no charge required…helps out in those hairy situations…  But what is going on with the stuttering in the game?  Is it just me?

Well, with classes coming up soon, I am going to have to limit my gaming time to primarily weekends and occasionally during the week when I can manage it.  I think that will make my time in the game that much more enjoyable, you only miss what you can’t have…or whatever that saying is…

Along with cutting back, I will be branching out more, I have been trying to split up my time in Middle Earth with some time playing RTCW Enemy Territory, just because I love that game still after so many years…and Oblivion will be next single player game to check out slowly, no rush or anything…

I have heard nothing but good things about Oblivion from lots of different sources.  So I am going to check it out soon and post my thoughts on it here.

Gaming Updates – 20 Aug 07

I went and found xfire and installed it again, I posted the miniprofile here for my visitors in case you wanted to say Hi, or whatever, my username is seansflow.  I have a few friends added, but not sure if they still use it…

In The Lord of the Rings Online news, servers went down today for the Chapter 10 update.  I had prepatched my game over the weekend to save me time this evening when I go to login.  Not sure what they are doing besides adding Chapter 10 of course…we shall see.  I have been playing Floss Greenroot my hobbit minstrel who is now level 26 and enjoying it very much.  Of course the same old quests in the 20 levels do get redundant, but being a minstrel opens up lots of grouping opportunities I normally wouldn’t have available if I were to play another class.  So, being a person who enjoys splitting my time between solo and group play it forces me to have to choose to group or not, is it necessary for me to have a group to go kill 10 widgets or can I do it solo?  Those quests labeled by Turbine as requiring a fellowship to complete are much easier to get completed in a timely manner, so there are positive aspects to being a healer.  Usually one of the least appreciated classes in most MMO’s, at least from my experiences, I sense a feeling of gratitude from most of the parties I have been with over the past few days, especially when we complete a quest and it is only because I was there to keep everyone alive…

If you were to take a peek at my xfire profile you will see I have been playing some Wolfenstein: ET using the No Quarter mod on thephreakz.com server as BigFloppyOne and loving every minute of it…amazing how such an old(er) game can still bring so much joy to my life.  I think it truly shows the great effort and thought put into the game back in the day.

My pastime or What my wife would call obsession…

I am full aware of my time I dedicate to playing video games and how it be an unhealthy obsession; something that could place me into the category of having a Computer Addiction …

I can totally understand that point of view and I respect my wife enough to try to explain why I do the things I do to the point of being viewed as obsessive. Whether or not she understands that I am trying to change is another subject altogether.

I have no excuses and i don’t need to explain my actions to anyone besides a chosen few in my life who know who they are, my wife included of course. But, everyone in this world have coping mechanisms or ways to relax and chill out. I spend my time in a MMORPG called World of Warcraft. I have a total of four characters I have created to the highest level you can reach in the game, 60. These characters each have a minimum time invested each of 14 days of gameplay or 24 hours X 14…you can do the math to see how much time is spent playing/ leveling these virtual people. I really enjoy doing this, obviously, or why else would I play every day? Just for the sake of people possibly searching the internet to find other WoW players, I will post my character names here in case you find yourself on my server, Sen’jin and would like to chat, hang out, whatever, I have a couple alliance characters there, my main toon is Tabeyus a restoration (healing) druid and I am in the guild called ABSOLUTION. I enjoy being in this guild, we are a small group of internet friends who chat using ventrilo and get together to accomplish quests or raid dungeons that must be done with at least five people. I also have a horde character on the server Blackhand he is a Troll Shaman and is in the guild Shattered Spirits. I only play this character every once in a while, but if you would like to get together I would be glad to make your acquaintance. Ever since the 2.0 patch I haven’t logged in to fix my talent points, before the patch I was focused on Enhancement, which is like a caster or mage type…Shamans are healers, but not as efficient as Priests or Druids. I am not sure what direction I plan to take with this guy, but after the Burning Crusade expansion comes out I plan on making more of an effort with the character. Also on the Blackhand server is my first character I ever made, a Warrior called Tabeyus…I know same as my druid, my wife came up with the name, my way of trying to include her into this universe I call my second home, the spelling isn’t right, which should be tobias, but I don’t care for the name Toby, and Tab sounds cooler, has multiple meanings, like the Tab button on the keyboard is used for selecting your next target to kill…anyway, this post has gone on long enough about my obsession.

I am pretty bored right now at work, it is Sunday, and there isn’t a damn thing going on. I took my final for my math class yesterday, and I know I did well, I was kind of nervous about it because I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time studying everything I should have about algebra, but actually, since I graduated high school in 1990 I realized I hadn’t forgotten everything…hehe So, that is over and now I can gear up for my next series of educational endeavors, called CLEP or college level examination program, something offered by the military and I guess to other organizations to “Test Out” of classes…I am so close to have my CCAF degree, Associates Degree in Business Management Logistics, I can taste it. After that I am going for an undergraduate degree in IT. The online courses are much more demanding on a person because the teacher isn’t standing in front of you explaining everything in detail, so it requires more of an effort on my part, which isn’t bad.

Better get going, got coffee to drink and a banana screaming my name, till next time folks, have fun, kick ass, and take no prisoners!