(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’
The Shire juts into the next zone. Oatbarton is on the Evendim map but counts as The Shire, a little agricultural village on the edge of danger. It explains so much. Back south, there is a deed with the Crop Saviour title for killing oversized flies. I see why that could be an issue for a farming community. Then you cross the zone border and see a farm swarming with level 28 locusts. “Kill them while they’re young” may not have been fully effective.
The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ has no loading screens between zones. You just walk from The Shire into Evendim. This means that you are running past level 10 bears and goblins, which were formidable at the time, and then into a field with stealthed level 28 wolves. Ouch. (The Bree/Lone Lands border has a similar effect, where the level 10 goblins mix with the level 20s.) There is also a herd of elk around town, using the same model as the level 1 deer. They are herd animals, so aggroing one can lead to a very messy incident with a lot of very angry elk. This is not a threat I expected amongst the minions of Mordor.
: Zubon
I am enjoying The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™, but I find myself not reading all the quest text. At first this was because I had read it during beta, and I needed to consciously remind myself to stop and read new stuff. Habit is a great deadener. Then I stopped caring about why this particular person needed me to kill ten boars. And it usually is boars, sometimes wolves or birds.
Look, I understand that I am doing the Epic Side Quest while Frodo carries The One Ring, and I get to maintain the home front and be a distraction from the real battlefront. Fine. But I am repeatedly being sent on quests for food, including one hobbit who sent me a zone-and-a-half for oatmeal. Oatmeal! The woman next him wants me to slaughter evil birds so that she can stuff pillows with their feathers. First, are craban feathers really the best substitute for fluffy down; more importantly, has she not heard about The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™’s famous chickens? I vaguely worry that I am missing some good and interesting writing when I skip through it, but I see a title (”Thin the Wolf Pack”), an objective (”bring 8 wolf teeth”), and I know the pattern. Orcs or bears attacked you, spiders at your dog, I get it.
Please let me know if there is quest text really worth reading beyond the epics (and I have my questions there).
: Zubon
Playing The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™, I have really been enjoying the PvP content. This is unusual for me, as I am not a big PvPer. Maybe it will fade, but let me tell you about it.
There is one The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ zone in which people play the monsters. Human-played orcs, uruks, wargs, and spiders (”creeps”) work with similar NPCs and huge trolls to control five keeps. Any player can hit a button to get a level 50 monster. The opposing forces are the normal PCs, the Free People (”freeps”) who unite to dethrone the tyrants of each keep and claim them for the light. This is Player vs. Monster Player (”PvMP”), The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™’s answer to PvP.
Continue reading ‘PvMP’
In another attempt to keep me from reaching the level cap in any MMO, Turbine has done their part by introducing fishing to Lord of the Rings Online. I spent much of my recent game time on the shore of any lake or river I could find, doing battle with another form of monster, the fish of Middle-earth.
Some of my prize catches have already been stuck on the walls of my house. First trophy was the Giant Goldfish, yes that’s correct. Later on I caught a Magnificent Minnow. Hard work paid off with some bigger fish. Eventually I caught a Colourful Charr and then a 4-pound Salmon.
Not all was fish guts and glory. I also pulled in piles of weeds, more rusty daggers than I can count, and several of these tasty items. All and all, Turbine did a fine job of adding the first of many hobbies to the game. At this rate I’ll never get to level 50.
- Ethic
I am sorry, you are not high enough level to eat pork chops. Note that you can crit when cooking pork chops.
: Zubon
I have made several brief comments about The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™’s session play, so I thought I would make a more coherent statement.
As gameplay, the chickens are disappointing. It is a set of “go talk to x” quests, with poor directions to x. Despite being just outside the hobbit starting area, this is not newbie content. You must know where things are and be able to find them with a blank map while playing a level one character. Taking a chicken through the higher level areas is presumably an interesting challenge, although having a babysitter makes it much easier. The greatest annoyance is uninteresting running. If your quest is “talk to animals in Bree,” your first step is a five-minute run across the Shire to Bree, an almost perfectly safe run with just enough twists to keep you from going AFK with autorun on. Bottom line: not fun once the novelty of “lol chicken” wears off.
As a story, it is without value as far as I have seen. Chickens are scared, you talk to other animals, they say they will not help. Every time. As a tech demo, I suppose it is okay. There must be some technical issues in moving from a PC to a connected one-shot puppet. It is a shame that everything is flushed between sessions, including your map. Building up a chicken could be amusing.
In many ways, chicken play is the logical extreme of The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™. If you read The Lord of the Rings and thought, “I wish I could be a secondary character doing sidequests while Frodo carries The One Ring,” The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ is designed for you. Taking it one step further, what if you were a hobbit in The Shire, and you could level by delivering mail or gathering eggs? Taking it one step further, what if you were a chicken in The Shire, laying those eggs? Just $15/month, baby!
I have not tried a troll or ranger in session play. From what I hear in /ooc as a monster, the freeps use rangers as mobile artillery platforms at the center of groups, while the creeps avoid using the trolls for fear that the human players will give up and leave. Your server may vary.
: Zubon
First: Happy 1st Birthday Lord of the Rings Online!
Now back to the topic at hand, from here:
Turbine develops MMORPGs and company officials said when they replaced Anderson with current CEO Jim Crowley the move was done in preparation for a change to Turbine’s business plan.
Turbine spokesman Adam Mersky said the company plans to make an announcement regarding its future plans in two weeks. But the company website includes employment listings for console-game positions, fueling speculation that Turbine could be expanding from the online market to the console player market.
Hmm…
- Ethic
