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.

Gaming updates – Oblivion

As I mentioned in my last post I started playing Oblivion.  I really like the game.  I can’t remember a game quite like it that I played before.  I can’t quite play the game at the highest graphics settings, but even at mid-range quality it is very impressive.  The lighting, shadows, cobwebs, grass, effects all are very convincing.  The game-play is pretty straight-forward, left click, right click, block, sneak, etc…  I have found myself playing a dark elf, which gives me the ability to summon a skeleton, throw a fireball at enemies and my class is an Assassin.

• Nimble and quiet, they move in darkness to strike at the unsuspecting. Locks hold no doors shut to them. Assassins are killers who rely on stealth and mobility to approach victims undetected. Execution is with ranged weapons or with short blades for close work. Assassins include ruthless murderers and principled agents of noble causes.

So I find myself sneaking through dungeons with my bow equipped and taking out my foes with one shot before they have a chance to spot me.  This doesn’t always work, so I quickly switch over to my 1 handed sword and shield and summon my skeleton bodyguard to take some damage.  Also, the lock-picking ability is really nice to have, I have opened a lot of chests and doors using those skills.

There was one incident where I entered an inn and started reading a book on the table, I decided to take it with me and before I had a chance to take a step I was arrested by the local guard and had the choice to resist, pay my fine or go to jail…so I paid my fine, the thought of resisting was tempting, but I felt I wasn’t quite ready for a battle with a guard.

I have read there are a ton of mods out for Oblivion also, I will have to go see what I can get into.

I still haven’t made my way to the first gate to oblivion, I have been meandering across the countryside investigating every cavern, ruin, and village I can accumulating my skills and loot along the way.  More posts to follow as I continue my journey in this great game.

LotRO Log – 13 Jul 07

Friday the 13th and all is well…

 Middle Earth is full of a lot of shouting people, dwarves, elves, and hobbits these days.  I am so happy Rekkr has come back from his vacation in the Shire and put down his pen and picked up his sword again taking on the evil in Evendim.  The last patch brought back the SHOUTS! and added some new sounds as well, I think it is great, when in a fellowship you really feel like you are in the middle of some hardcore hand to hand combat with everyone yelling and shouting out with blades swinging and heads rolling.

On another note our farmer, Sean has reach the level of Grand Master and is now perfecting his culinary skills, about time eh?  Yes, I thought the same thing. 

 We are looking for a motto for our kinship, something simple, but catchy, any marketing gurus out there?  Along the same lines our numbers have been steadily increasing and the quality of members has been rising as well.

 I have been having some problems when the game shuts down on my PC.  If I click exit straight from the game my computer seems to lock up with a black screen and the mouse pointer sitting there.  It will stay like that until an error reporting message shows up eventually asking me whether I want to send it to Microsoft or not…I have read a little on this problem and I don’t know if it is a driver issue with my VC or another problem, but one solution that seems to help is to logoff to the character selection screen then exit from there without a hitch.  Has anyone else seen or heard about this at all?  Other than that I have no problems running the game at all.

March of the S.O.D.

A week or so ago I was feeling drawn to hop into some FPS action, specifically Battlefield 1942, so I decided to download the demo client and see what I could do online. I ended up finding the 1.1 patch, not sure exactly what changes it has, but the servers I found with it seemed a bit more stable and active.
I would consider myself in BF1942 a novice sniper, above average pilot, above average tank operator, good engineer, and crappy medic…pretty much cause the game isn’t anything like a MMO where your healing class stands behind the party putting bandaids and reviving players as the fighting is done in the front. No this is straight up PvP, us versus them.

I do have Battlefield 2 and I enjoyed playing it, but there is something about piloting a japanese fighter plane, Zero, taking it up as far as it will go vertically in the air, targetting a player on the ground and zoom down out of the skies with guns blazing, eliminating your target and pulling up just in the knick of time while the player curses you for being a hacker…

There is so much I still enjoy about this game, primarily the ability to operate all the equipment, vehicles, planes, boats, etc…it just adds so much more fun to the experience.

It took me about a week to be able to effectively jump into the seat of a plane and dog fight with other players to the point where I had a chance at survival. I am enjoying the game so much I might install the ful version again.

It would be a nice break from the total immersion in Middle Earth.

Change is good, change is inevitable, embrace it friends.

P.S. No idea why I chose to title this post as I did, anyway the S.O.D. were a band I used to listen to “back in the day”.