Lord of the Rings fans were greeted earlier this week by a splash screen decreeing that the long-guessed date of November 18th would indeed be the launch date for the expansion. Along with launching this, they have also deployed possibly the most confusing pre-order system ever designed. The amount of contradictory information, including *two* official threads, which are being commented on by different people with different information. It’s a bit crazy.
So, in the interest of our LOTRO fans, I have the info after the cut as to what gets you what and where that I’ve compiled after about an hour of work and at great possible risk to me. After all, the wife said no gaming last night…
Continue reading ‘Moria Release Date Set’
Due to a hectic work and school schedule, I’ve been forced to put gaming on the back burner. That’s hard when you enjoy it as much as I do, and thus when you know you have some time to play, you look for completely different things in a game. Also, taking a step back from gaming more than I have in probably 10 years, you look at games themselves differently. As such, here’s the first of several articles I plan to write on more of a meta level of gaming than I usually post.
First off, the biggest concern for a time-pressed gamer, the Time Value, aka “What do I get for what I put in”.
Continue reading ‘Deep Thoughts on Gaming: Part 1 - Time Value’
(I was so tempted to make a “Return of the King” rhyme, but managed to hold back. Thank me later)
Ah, long has passed since I last had enough time to post here, and much has happened. In a good and bad way, perhaps, most of this has been out in Real Life ™, and has kept me from playing. Now that I have a few moments here and there to play, I’m not looking as much to WoW as I used to. I have a good raiding guild there to work with, but the Sunwell content seems fairly flat, and I’ve not seen one thing coming in the expansion that interests me at all. So on the suggestion of a friend, I took my precious few hours of free time last week to an old place I’d been before, Middle-Earth.
Continue reading ‘Hobbits on Parade’
Recent changes in my Real Life have forced my Online Life to pretty much be non-existent. A full time job and full time college will do that to you, plus lots of other personal obligations, such as helping my wife study for her classes - which she passed, with flying red, white, and blue colors and became an American Citizen just yesterday - but I do miss being able to pass my days away in Warcraft. Especially now that we have ‘the new shiney’ of patch 2.4.
Continue reading ‘Two Point Four aka The Last Freebie’
I’m a lore junky. For those who knew me back in my EQ days, they would attest to that. I used to run trivia contests using my intimate knowledge of the game’s lore to entertain. I even had devs of the game ask me lore-based questions, which, for me, was a highlight of playing that game. However, as EQ progressed, the lore changed. Now, when a game lasts as long as EQ has, you have to have growth to the lore, and no one would look askew at you if you occasionally revamped some lore based on, perhaps, some “old hidden scrolls that have just recently come to light” or something. That’s good storytelling. Because that was one of the reasons EQ had such immersion - it told a fantastic story. Around about the third time Kerra Island’s back-story was completely written, I came to understand that the story had been left on the cutting room floor. One of the most interesting complaints I see from WoW lore junkies is the way a major element of the lore is being completely re-written for Wrath of the Lich King.
Continue reading ‘For the Lore!’
I must have some sort of gamer’s OCD because I find myself unable to complete Phantom Hourglass without finding the last two gems (which are not required) to power up my Spirits (also not required).
If you have a Nintendo DS, you really should get this game. It’s the first in a long time that really uses both screens constantly and engagingly. Even my concern about using the stylus to completely drive the game has faded, as it’s so easy to use and natural.
If you do, send me a Wisdom and Courage gem, huh? *wanders off mumbling*
You know, sometimes it’s funny how small of a world the internet is.
Every night at midnight I pull up Woot and see what they have, hoping for the BoC to magically appear. After checking Woot, I check its two spawns, Sellout.woot and Shirt.woot. Shirt.woot has interesting designs, most of which are pop-culture related. Each week, a plethora of designs are submitted, many humorous in their own way. Tomorrow (tonight, depending on your time orientation), is likely to feature a shirt that says “The cake is a liar.”, which I didn’t get at all. After researching this, I find out this is from the popular Portal game for the xBox360, which I don’t own so have never played. Reading more about this leads me to find out that the ending song is quite funny (first link is it in its entirety, second is just the words and music), which is sung by a woman with a very haunting voice. A smidge more investigation leads me to find out that it was written by the amazingly talented Jonathan Coulton, whom I first discovered from a funny WoW video link a fellow guildmate forwarded. And it comes full circle. Kinda like Portal, I guess. Amazing, isn’t it?
So, having wrapped up my affairs in Middle Earth, I’ve returned when possible to Azeroth. Sadly, my life schedule continues to allow me little time for playing, but two forced weeks of staying at home let me get into it fairly deeply. I’ve always been more of a social player, and so returning to guildmates and friends was nice. I managed to run the Headless Horseman event a few hundred times to ensure everyone had what they needed (sans a pet for me, or any guildmate *sigh), but what I’ve been doing mostly is PvP, specifically, Alterac Valley by the truckload. Because that’s where honor grinders come when honor grinding is needed. I’ll explain that in a minute, but the wierd part is I’m actually enjoying it.
Ya, I know, right?
Continue reading ‘In the Valley, Fer Sure’