A light blue kind of excitement . . .

So, I'm level 38 (ding 38 btw), and I'm closing in on my 40's (and the last 10 levels before the cap). From what I hear 40-50 is a longer haul, so it'll probably take a while.

*puts on his Mr. Explainer cap*

You see, there are really 5 levels of gear in this game

White . . . you're only going to see levels 1-10 wearing any of this stuff.

Yellow . . . your standard world drop and easy quest reward (equate to greens in WoW).

Purple . . . the nice quest rewards and world drops (equate to blues in WoW).

Teal (incomparable) . . . Raid gear and high level epic quest rewards (equate to purples in WoW).

Dark Blue (legendary) . . . /shrug . . . not many get 'em? (Equate to orange in WoW)

?

People in guild have been linking a lot of their teal “incomparable” weapons in guild chat lately, and those weapons are pretty nice. There's also some talk of raiding. Some of the 50's in our guild are already doing pickup raids or forming alliances with raiders, and I can already feel the pull inside me to get to 50 and see the raid stuff.

This is tough for me. I've quit two other MMOs before over raiding, mainly because I know how tough raiding can be on me and my family. Let's face it, raiding in WoW and EQ can be unforgiving for the essential classes, but developers don't stop at essential classes anymore. Take WoW's Karazhan instance; it's brutal (from what I hear). It was stated to me that I could expect to not move from my chair for 3 hours if I raid Karazhan. Ridiculous! If you think the kids and wife will put up with that nonsense, you're living in a completely different universe than me. Even in EQ the newer raids were starting to glue me to my seat, and I was playing a beastlord. Yeah, next to the bezerker, a beastlord has the most uninspired role ever in a raid force. Point. Click. Kill. Yeah yeah, I know, buffs, fero, and pet control, but still there's not much to it.

I've chosen to play a minstrel in LOTRO. There is some heavy, heavy, and intense wack a mole going on with minstrels. Wac-a-mole you say? Yeah, if you've played a healer in any MMO, you know that what you really do is not look at the pretty undulating graphics in front of you; you instead look at the little health bars and wac at them before they reach empty. It's just an advanced version of wac-a-mole.

Events that make it so you have to position, run, jump, tap your neighbor on the shoulder, and bonk your head twice on the mystic healing tentacle while playing this advanced game of wac-a-mole are brutal. fun. but brutal.

And why???? WHY? (you can tell I've completely lost it here in the rant) For that shiny teal “incomparable” gear . . . oh it's so nice. *reveals a bit of geeky leg to the reader*

So . . . again . . . I'm level 38, and there are basically 12 raids in this game at the moment from what I hear. I have no idea what it's going to entail, but knowing me, how intense or not intense of an activity will be what makes or breaks the game. I love putting ultimatums on a game so I feel like I have a sense of control.

. . . or I could just level up another alt or play monster play . . .

BUT WAIT (the rant takes a surprise and almost shocking turn!!) . . . THIS JUST IN! Wait a gosh darn minute, you can get incomparable items another way?

As stolen from https://beta.turbine.com/showthread.php?t=67074

all single use recipes when crit at grand master produce incomparable items.
some regular recipes when crit at grand master produce incomparable items.
class epic quests yield incomparable items.
incomparable weapons drop randomly from bosses in urugarth and carn dum.
an incomparable pocket item is the reward for completing book 8 chapter 5 (in addition to the selectable reward).

there are many level 50 players running around with 5 or more incomparable items.

some of the more lucky crafters are wearing multiple single use crit armor/rings.

with the best tools in game (20% imcomp) and a scroll, the best any crafter can get is 35% chance to crit and make a light blue tool/weapon/ring/piece of armor. every single use recipe requires a trophy from one of the various semi rare elite mobs in the regular combine (eg: colnor, skybreaker, acathling, sagruz, et al). thus there is no crit item for the combine (hence the 35% max chance to crit).

needless to say, it will be quite a while before we see anyone with a full set of light blue armor/rings.

What's "crit" crafting gear? It's just that.

When you make crafting gear, you get a critical chance for it to be extra nice. It's a good perk for crafters.

*takes a breath*

nice.

/end of rant

Honest to goodness newbie

Honest to goodness newbie

So I ventured back to Breeland the past couple of days to catch up on the prologue to the epic quest that I have been conveniently avoiding, right? I get a quest to go kill a bad dude named Jagger Jack and poison the sheep corpses he feeds his wolves off of. I run to the ruins where this guy is chillin and start poisoning sheep corpses when this dude asks me to help him out. So I join his group and he has a level 8 with him, which is incredibly low for the area we were in.

So we run off and take down Jack without much sweat and all of a sudden the level 8 starts dropping like mad in health . . . of course, he has aggro’d a TON of mobs. Well, being the good minstrel I am (as opposed to “smart” minstrel) I toss him a heal. This transfers the hate of 6 or so mobs on to me who decide to both hit me with metal objects and poke me with pointy arrows. I try to heal myself but the interrupt rate with any more than 3 is ridiculous . . . even if they are green or gray to me. I die. Mr. level 8 dies. And wouldn’t you know it, the other dude is like . . . heh, I just soloed like 5 of those guys I ROCK. Nerf Champions.

So Mr. level 8 then asks, what’s agro mean? Well looky here! An honest to goodness MMO newbie. The other guy and I start to explain that it means the bad guys in the area got “aggressive” to him and even more so because he was such a low level. He explains that, yes, this was in fact his first MMO.

It’s interesting to note that this phenomenon is always going to happen. Not everyone that plays LOTRO is going to have years of EQ and WoW experience . . . there will be a rare few who are, in fact, fresh out of the game console scene. In my mind, this is why these games are always going to survive. People are going to be fascinated over and over with the MMO world and find the things we all found a few years ago in these games.

I actually do have fond memories of EQ. Every once in a while I’ll get a flash back of being on orc hill in Greater Faydark (which by the way is going to be redone . . . the next expansion is going to renovate it) or in various dungeons that we use to hunt and smile. I remember my first raids and Kael Drakkel and the Halls of Testing with fondness. Taking down Dozekar will always be there in the back of my mind. It was fun.