ding 22, 23, and 24

So I got sick over memorial day weekend. I didn't have the motivation to anything much more than lay in bed and go to the doctor's office. But, before that I did level a bit and had a bit of fun fighting in Lone Lands and North Downs. I even picked up this incredibly goofy looking top hat from a quest.

And that's really all I have to report. I'm still recovering from the sickness that included a +102 degree fever. It's been a dim couple of days between that and the pain killers.

sniff.

Old Bauman

Well there he is . . . I knew I'd see my friend Bauman in this game eventually. I remember him talking to me at my house when he visited me from out of state. We played EQ together for a long time. He played a bard and then a necro and I played a cleric and then a beastlord. The words still ring in my head, "I know all about the Lord of the Rings books . . . inside and out." Now I play a Minstrel and he plays this NPC. CRAZY. To think he chose to be an old dude that gives out quests and whittles wood all day. Much respect.

I chose to be a wisened man as well. I don't give out quests though . . . I just raise the charisma quotient with a super thick beard and helmet hair. Life is good.

Ding 21 and Great Barrows

So I hit the magical 21st level and I'm ALL PSYCHED because now I can finally use the Herald's hammer trait. It's pretty cool . . . 'nough said. Being that I'm past 20th now, life is good for a minstrel. I have the rez spell. I have a couple of incredibly efficient heals. I'm wanted to play wac-a-mole with people's health bars. yes, life is good.

So a fellow Kinmate (Ramiel) . . . or guildy . . . however you want to say it . . . was asking for help from a minstrel in the Greater Barrows instance. Now I had been seeing people mention this instance and my interest was piqued, so I decided to give her a go.

I should have probably not gone since the wife was starting to put the children to bed, but I felt I deserved it after tilling the flower beds, mowing the lawn, and after putting in a hardcore 4 days in a row of Kari working nights while I watched the kids. As it turns out, a dad's work is never done . . . and I caught a little wife agro, but this wasn't too bad.

Anyway, this went rather well. I was the lowest level toon in the house at 21. We had a level 27, a level 25, a few level 23s, and me. This instance was everything you'd expect for an instance . . . a couple neat events, mostly elite mobs with a good amount of hitpoints, some swarms of regular mobs, and a couple bosses. We were after the main boss at the end, which you need a key to get to. Since 3 people already had their keys, we didn't complete the key quest for those that needed it (i.e., me). Time constraints . . . and this was cool with me.

We get the end boss down to 1-2k hitpoints (out of 15k-ish) and wipe on him. He does a nasty mana drain and has adds as part of his script, and everybody pretty much ran out of energy and was losing life like crazy. This apparently is normal and he's just tough. Well, we all retreat back to our bind point at the beginning of the instance and start running through the instance to give it a second shot; however, the same door we had opened before was now perma-locked and stopping our bloodthirsty rally to go beat on him again. This apparently was a surprise, a bug, working as intended, or someone accidentally closed the door from the inside. If I get any insights to that, I'll be sure to post them. Killing the end boss is a quest as well . . . I just didn't have it yet. I think you have to complete the key to get the quest to kill him.

It was good fun, and I'm definitely up for more instance runs like that.

Ding 19/20 coolness factor found!

Ding 19 and 20 . . . they both went relatively fast. I had been hearing this "ND" acronym being thrown around by the 20's crowd in guild and found that spot yesterday. A quest in Bree told me to head up that way and chat with some townies. So I did. It's a touch higher level for me, but I managed to complete a quest or two by sneaking behind groups and grabbing stuff from camps before respawn happened, which was quite quick.

The big news for me is . . . the coolness factor has been found and that is grouping and in particular fellowship manuevers. More info about those is found here. I had no idea they existed, but they rock.

I keep forgetting to load fraps, but I will . . . and when I do, I'll post up some video footage.

1,000 button mashes woohoo! (ding 18)

Last night I stopped stalling and just decided to finish a couple forsaken inn quests and be done with it. Ding 18.

There's a quest where you have to kill some wolves a little more northward of forsaken inn . . . kind of on your way toward weathertop. I just have to note here that it was a serious pain finding the stealthed wolves. There just aren't enough of them to go around. So bring some patience. What I did notice about this area was that there were quite a few cool looking trees that lent themselves to a fun looking battle with a few orcs. I wish I would have had Fraps running . . . in fact, I may need to head back so I can just make a fraps of this fight--try to recreate it or something. There was a lot of weaving in and out and around the trees; it was just awesome.

Also of note this level . . . I did it! I mashed the herald strike button 1,000 times and opened up the class trait "herald's hammer." If you mix herald's hammer trait with the noble cause buff and a few herad strikes . . . you can actually put out some pretty decent DPS for a minstrel. I'm incredibly excited about this . . . the only downfall is that I don't get another class trait slot until 21st level, and right now I have the medium armor trait in my class trait slot. So I'm going to have to wait, but it makes me anxious to reach 21st level! That's a good thing.

This morning I spent some time chatting and splitting mobs with an equal level minstrel as we both ran up the hill in Minas Eriol. It was really cool chatting with him. I added him to my friends list, and I hope I get to chat with him again. It's good to have some class comrades to chat strategy with in game. I used to do that with a lot of beastlords back in EQ.

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.

the fun . . . um . . . or cool factor in LOTRO

I was just reading an article comparing WoW and LOTRO and the argument seemed to be stemming around what was innovative and what was fun about the two games. I borrow a couple of those ideas below. Anyway it got me to thinking about what y'all are finding fun in this game and what fun are you having here in this game, that you couldn't have in another game.

1- /Music—For me, I've been liking the /music command. I don't think I've ever seen that in another MMO. I haven't been going crazy with it or anything, but I think it's a cool idea. I wonder if there are any rare musical instruments out there for the /music command. That would be awesome.

2- The LOTR story elements—You're not going to find them anywhere else.

3- The titles—They come quickly and with a variety. It's just a fun option.

4- Built in VOIP—It was a smart move. I don't know how it implements in a raid setting, but it's a good step in the right direction.

5- Evil is evil—You know in WoW how if you came across a horde player, you'd type /wave and kind of run past them . . . and in EQ, iksars were just good buds with wood elves outside of their towns. In LOTRO, evil is evil and you can't play evil outside of the MP. Evil isn't just a misunderstood group of opposing races.

6- I don't know a lot of people—there's kind of an initial rush for me of trying to get to know new people without coming off as a complete freak. The people that I do know that are in this game already are great people from a previous guild I was in.

Other than that, I can go on any other MMO and find a quest to kill X amount of this or that or gather an amount of this or that and turn it in for xp and gold or items. I'm not sure if I've yet found the "coolness" factor in this game, though. There has to be something that really makes it sing, or this is going to be a short trip in this MMO for me. I need the coolness factor.

I have no idea what end game gear is going to be like. Hopefully that is where the really cool stuff goes down or that is where I will feel like I've been through or witnessed something amazing.

Please feel free to chime in if you have an opinion about it.