Well, the missus scrapped her Guardian and is now playing a Minstrel, which explains the abscence of anything in my blog because I pretty much had to wait for her to get back up to my level, which she now finally has. Lone-Lands is pretty much finished - there are a couple of things left to do in Agamaur (a swamp where the water is basically blood - depressing much?) and lots of quests for the instance there, Garth Argarwen. But we finished Book 2 which was pretty cool, talking to Radagast and running around killing undead.

I also bought a house in the Shire, where I've been spending quite a bit of time fishing and stuffing animals to put on my walls.

Currently we're in the North Downs, working for the Rangers of Esteldin (and working on Book 3 - we managed to two-man the Defense of Trestlebridge section which was quite difficult for just the two of us, but we scraped by). I'm ready to buy a horse, but have to wait 4 more levels.

Things are going well. The quests at the Forsaken Inn at the Lone-Lands are complete and we're ready to move on to Ost Guruth.  Or whatever it's called. Tolkien's names all sound vaguely similar. Had a few serious tastes of Fellowship action today. The first left a lot to be desired, we were led by a level 28 Hunter who didn't give the missus chance to get aggro and in fact pulled most groups himself. My stuns were constantly broken by pretty much everyone, and we finally wiped when the Hunter led us on a stupid charge. Later on we attempted the same three quests with a Fellowship of the right levels and, taking it slow and careful, we cleared all of the quests without any defeats. It was a lot of fun.

Also, we went back to the Great Barrow. I finished my quests in there but we had serious problems in the group. The first was the make-up... we had three Guardians (35, 25 and 20), a Minstrel (21 and a complete MMORPG newbie), a Hunter (21 and, again, a nubcake) and myself, level 24 and just plain awesome, obviously. The level 35 GRD led us, but to be honest he was a total cock, and a lot like most tanks you meet over the course of gaming. Hell, I've probably been the same way myself at times. He was rude, arrogant and bossy. Yep, definitely sounds like me pre-DPS. The Minstrel ninja looted a nice shield that dropped from the final boss, so Jackie and the level 25 GRD weren't too happy about that, but she was a total nub and had no idea why people were pissed off at her about it, so I spoke to her in whisper while our level 35 "leader" quit the fellowship without helping the other guys get the second part of the key. So I took over a little and we attempted the second boss with just the 5 of us, most of us too low level. We got the first Elite Master down but only the main tank and myself were still alive, so Jackie didn't get her key fragment and, also because of the ninja looting earlier, wasn't too happy about that. We reset the encounter to go again now that people sort of knew what to expect, but they ran into respawns on the way back to us and we just decided to call it a day.

So. Loot drama, arsehole tanks, and healers with no idea about how healing aggro or power management work. Yep, definitely an instance. I think once we find a good group of people to count on for instance runs it'll be a lot smoother, but fuck it, I had fun anyway and it's all part of the experience. More PuGs very likely on the horizon. Oh the agony.

Today we decided to just leave it and see what happens. She'll catch up soon enough anyway.

So I got into a group for the Great Barrow.

It wasn't ideal, consisting of myself at level 22, a level 25 minstrel, a level 30 champion, a level 50 Loremaster and a level 41 hunter. It felt like, and in fact really was a boost. Which I've never liked. This was okay though, as we ended up 3-manning most of it. I got a couple of nice bits and pieces too, though I'm not a high enough level to wear either of them. A nice Robe, and a nice Ring as well. Good times.

As my first major foray into Lotro's instancing system, it probably didn't reveal much. I enjoyed the dynamic, everything felt much more like a battle than anything that WoW has, and the faster pace made it feel much more like a game than "press these buttons in the right order and stay out of the fire", but the fact that it was a boost was highly noticable and detracted a little from the experience. I'd like to have a serious go at an instance, but I have a feeling that I won't get that until the "real" instances at level 50 - although I didn't finish the chalice quest, so I'll have to go back inside at some point anyway.

After that, Jackie joined me with her guardian and we stormed through Chapter 11 of Book 1. She's had a few days now to get used to how her computer runs Lotro, and she did brilliantly. The only person who pulled aggro was me, and that was from a very early heal that aggro'd a tertiary target on the large group pull of wights. It was quickly pulled off me.

I'm about to begin my Monster Play character on the Evernight server. I've got a Rank 1 Orc Reaver on Gilrain, but I'll be honest - he gets the shit kicked out of him when facing Loremasters or massed ranks of Hunters. So I'm thinking maybe I'll go with an Uruk Black Arrow. I got lucky on Gilrain though, raiding and retaking the entire map in 3 hours with a decent group of players, with pretty stiff opposition from freeps at the beginning. I don't know how quickly I'll be able to get a new character to Rank 1.

Lone-Lands, here I come!

I first played Lotro over a year ago, before Book 10 was released. I levelled a Guardian up to level 20 or so, and it was alright. But I've never been able to grind levels alone - if it wasn't for my girlfriend playing WoW, I'd never have levelled my characters there - and so my time on Lotro at that point was short lived and I went back to Outland.

This time, I rolled an Elven Lore-Master, and straight away I was happier. I've never played a female character before, but since she's an elf and the lads are just as feminine as the ladies (if not more so), it didn't seem to matter. I charged through Ered Luin, completing all the Deeds and Quests, but the "Undefeated" Deed Chain came to a horrible end when I fell off a waterfall outside of Duillond. Sure, I could have started again, as I was only level 7, but I thought... nah. Let's just go.

I was level 16 when I left Ered Luin, at which point I headed to the Shire. After completing every Quest and Deed there, I was only level 18, and I'd spent far more time there than I had in Ered Luin. Still, I was having fun, and I knew that I'd do the same thing in Bree. It didn't matter than the enemies were 5 levels below me, I was enjoying the experience and actually reading the quests and dialogues.

My girlfriend, bless her, had been watching me play from time to time. She'd tried the game before, but she has an inherent dislike of change and to her, if it's not WoW, don't bother. But it wasn't long before she'd rolled a Guardian and was hooked. Unfortunately, the difference between my computer and hers is quite large. The game looks great on mine, but stutters and splutters on hers. So by the time we finally started playing together, she was level 15 and I was level 22. Questing seems managable, but we attempted to 2-man Book 1 Chapter 11, and we got all the way to the end where we were defeated. Afterwards, she admitted that her computer just couldn't handle it inside the instance, and so now I'm really stuck.

I've finished every Quest and completed every Deed in all three Tier 1 areas, including the Barrow Downs. She has some catching up to do, as she's only just about finished Bree-land, and can do the Shire and Ered Luin on her own time. But I don't want to go into Tier 2 zones without her, and I can't even complete Book 1.

Hopefully we can get her computer upgraded soon. Cause I want to get some Rift in before Expansion.

I'd like to start off this blog by telling you a little bit about myself.

For around 18 months, I was playing WoW. I joined the game after the Burning Crusade was released, and finding myself on the lowest population server in the entire world, times were tough. The server was a RP server opened with the release of TBC, and so Gruul didn't go down until around July. Our guild killed him in September for the first time, but the players who were level 70 were all splintered amongst three or four guilds. I was a protection paladin back then, and had to fight for my right to maintank at every step. Eventually I took up the role of raid leader and we got Kazzak, Doomwalker, Magtheridon and 3/4 TK 4/6 SSC quite quickly once we merged with another guild. Unfortunately, I ended up doing almost all of the work myself (which was my own fault as much anybody elses) and the pressure of dividing my time between WoW and reality caused me to quit the guild and prepare to transfer to a higher populated server (which many, many raiders were doing at the time, sick of the struggle).

However, with my quitting, a number of other people also left, and I was asked to stay on the server and raidlead for the guild forming in the wake, on the promise that I'd be raidleading, but that would be where my responsibilities ended. Which was fine by me. I switched to my Mage, and it took us 3 months or so to get back to where we were - remember, this was (and still is) the lowest populated server in WoW, with the slowest progression worldwide (mainly due to that fact). The attunement process to Tier 6 content was removed, and the other guilds on the server were in Mount Hyjal on the same day. We waited. We wanted to do it properly. Vashj died quite quickly, and we spent quite some time on Kael'thas, but real life was making it harder and harder for me to raid. My girlfriend really needed a break from the WoW stuff, and so I'm currently on hiatus. Thankfully, Kael'thas is now dead for my WoW guild, and they're doing Tier 6.

Me? I'm playing Lord of the Rings Online. And I'm loving it. This is my blog.