The Ultimate Mirkwood Recap (Part 1)

Hey! I just got a nice E-mail from Rick Heaton, the LOTRO community manager, and he had a TON of links to information surrounding the release of Mirkwood to share. These links went to all the LOTRO community sites. He's calling it the Ultimate Mirkwood Recap (copyright 2009 Rick Heaton . . . ok, that catch phrase isn't copyrighted, but I like it; it's catchy!).

First up is a long list of links for a developer diary look at the new Skirmishes system:

Part 1: Overview
Part 2: Story Instances
Part 3: Randomization and Scaling
Part 4: Skirmish Soldiers
Part 5: Rewards
Part 6: Accessibility
Part 7: The End

Ok, I now officially have a lot to read.

Then Rick lays the true dirt down about all the OTHER features in the new expansion:

Crafting in Siege of Mirkwood
Welcome Back to The Lone-lands
Introducing Dol Guldur
Mirkwood Region
Legendary Item System Update
Legacy Pool Updates
Siege of Mirkwood Skill Upgrades
Combat System Changes
Character Panel and Stat Updates
Mounts 2.0
Shared Storage

Cripes! Did I tell you I have a lot of reading to do now?

Ok, I'm going to stop there for now . . . After I finish digesting some of that, I shall revisit the remainder of this e-mail.

Merry Minstrel-ing! (think I may be close to my own catch phrase there!)

He's Bach!

So, I bit the bullet and shelled out the money for a few months of playtime and the last two expansions. My character was there and still as shiny as I left him:


Who says dwarves are the only ones who can have beards?

So, my character's name is "Bachelbu," right? But everyone calls me "Bach." It's just too fitting for a minstrel. Anyway, it's a running joke that when I log on the people in my guild (er kinship) all yell "He's Bach!" Last night was no exception. It was good to be "Bach" once again and see some old familiar faces.

A good majority of the night was spent just trying to remember what all the buttons do and trying to find my old house so I could pay upkeep on it and bring it back out of forclosure. MAN, pricey little venture letting your house go into forclosure. It was like half a gold piece to remove all the dust and pay upkeep for a month and a half.


By the end of the night though I was galloping alongside my old friend, Tony. Or, Calab. Or Calrain. Or Jelalron. Actually, he's Jelalron in this game. We've played way too many games together to keep the names straight.



It was good to get some face time again! He got me all set up in eregion and showed me where it was that I needed to start questing. Life is good!

So I'm going to be happy to report all my dings and experiences from this place. It's a beautiful landscape (as illustrated by that picture above), of course, LOTRO is a beautiful looking game. Never a bad screenshot to be taken!

Happy Minstreling! (hmmm, need to work on that catch phrase)

The LOTRO Conundrum--Should I Come Back?

So last night I patched LOTRO and sat there very quietly contemplating what I was doing. Do I really want to play LOTRO again or am I just happy doing what I'm doing?



You know . . . it really all boils down to getting some rare face time with my good friend, Calrain. But, on the other hand, how much face time will I really get since I MUST make some agreements up front about playing this game again if I do play.

1- I'm not a raider. I just can't put my 3 kids through the loss of their father for 2-3 hours twice *or more* a week. That's just not going to happen.

2-I'm a limited grouper. Once again, I have to be able to afk when things go down off screen in real life. That means grouping with people that fully understand who I am and how I play (I AM extended AFK man!) . . . and that they take my situation with gigantic chunks of kosher salt. Calrain is one of those people. But will guild peer pressure be hard on me?

3-I'm mostly an unknown soloer in a big big world. In some ways that's actually attractive to me. I don't mind some quiet play taking on stuff that I have no business taking on. My favorite memories of LOTRO are when I soloed Beryl Shard droppers in the Bree Faction dungeons. Will I be able to find the same with Mithril Flake droppers and beyond in the new expansions?

Let me tell you . . . I'm am perfectly content just playing Wizard101. It's totally different from LOTRO and yet has those MMO Fantasy characteristics just like LOTRO. But Wizard101 is FUN and BRIGHT and HAPPY (and I'm arguably "famous" in that game). LOTRO is more beautiful and eerie and mellow (and I'm literally a nobody in that game, which has its benefits ;)). Yeah, both have their moments of boredom and both have their moments of intense excitement, but they are about as opposite as you can get.

You know what really gets me here is the cost. The Mirkwood and Mines of Moria expansion are going to set me back $30 and a 3-month subscription will cost me another $30 . . . that's a year's worth of play on Wizard101. Yes, yes . . . I know there are other options like the $200 lifetime subscription, but I'd still have to shell out $30 for the expansions at this point.

My wife said to me last night as I was sitting there pondering this state, "Well, if you want it, then Merry Christmas." Hmmm. What to do.

um . . . hi!

So, I'm wondering if anyone out there still has this blog tagged in their RSS feed? Hello? Is there anybody in there?

So, listen. I'm excited for all of you LOTRO players after hearing that Mirkwood was going live today. I hope it's everything that you want it to be.

I've been thinking about coming back to LOTRO to play on and off. Heck, I'm behind two expansions, there'd be plenty to write about. Then again, I'm really busy maintaining my new love: The Friendly Necromancer! My time blogging for Wizard101 has really taught me a thing or two that I wish I would have known back when I was actually keeping this blog.

So, hello again, if you're out there. Please let me know what you've been up to and if you're still playing Lord of the Rings Online. You may see me in here once again from time to time trying to catch up to you all.

As I say over on my wizard101 blog . . .

Happy Dueling!

Catching up with Bach

Wow. Turn around and a couple months fly by. Sorry about that. Hopefully everyone that reads this blog has marked the RSS for subscription and comes back to read.

So here's what's been going on with my gaming life . . .

• Super Smash Brothers for the Wii -- Really disappointed no one does random internet games on Super Smash. /shrug.
• Boom Blox for the Wii -- My son is absolutely addicted to this game.
• World of Warcraft -- I, yes, defected and played WoW again for a month. In that month time frame I worked a Rogue up from 1-50 and decided that, no, I don't want to play that game.
• Guild Wars -- Every Sunday night our little band of brothers gets together and works through a mission or a quest or two in Guild Wars.
• Diablo II LOD -- Old schoolin' it with BPaul. Rock on. Rolling me up a necro, bonedaddy.
• LOTRO -- Yes! YES! I came back to LOTRO! Let me tell you that the break was just what I needed to refocus myself. I'm back in the swing of things and loving the new (to me) Forochel area.

Forochel was exactly what the game needed for the upper level soloing game. When I took my break from LOTRO my champion was stalled at level 49. I just didn't have any more solo quests I felt up to doing. Forochel, my friends, Forochel. You just catch a horse ride from esteldin over to tinnudir and then run up north until you get to that freezing cold water.

Stingite dings 50 in Forochel!

Side note . . . that water is cold up there. I mean, in some parts if you get in the water, you're dead in about 10 seconds. You've been warned.

Have fun with what you're doing!

I Found This Hilarious

The April 1st message is here.

My favorite part is "Crush your foes into 6, 12, or 20 pieces."

Here it comes . . . the mines of moria

Well, Turbine announced the new expansion and watch out, here come the Rune-Keepers. Jeepers-Creepers! Just sounds like a great new class name, doesn't it?

"Marvin is so funny in kin chat that he shouldn't be called a Rune-Keeper; he should instead be called a Hilarity-Keeper! LOL"

"Nah, Marvin sucks, he should be called a Rune-Failer. xD"

Hyphenated class names ftw. It's built in kinship chat comedy!

The other new class they announced was The Warden. What a completely unfun name. I can't even think of a good rhyme to go with Warden other than Boredom, and that's not even a good rhyme . . . that's not even half-rhyme . . . just some lame quasi-assonance. I hope the class plays better than the name. sheesh.

If you're looking for details, you're going to have to wait a bit. Turbine has set up the mines of moria website and it looks like at the end of March, beginning of April they'll be having you play little mini-games to unlock secrets and information about the new classes and all the other new goodies . . . unless of course they just announce it was a big April fool's joke on us all.

Level cap is going up to 60 as well kids. Have fun with that.

I'm wondering if they'll increase the number of characters you can have in your account by 2 (ala Guild Wars) because currently you only get 5 slots. There's a gal in my kinship who has all 5 slots filled with level 50 characters, and I don't think she's the only one.

Along with this expansion will come six new books worth of quests under a new "volume," so that should be a lot of fun. Rock on. I wonder if you're going to see Gandalf say "you shall not pass" in one of them. /scratches head. Would be cool.

And now . . . pirate picture!

Nalgron, Burwinn, and Bachelbu modeling the new pirate-barbie look!