Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

The title says it all. I spent two months levelling a character from the mid 40's to the cap of 85 just in time for Lotro's Helm's Deep expansion. Once the expansion launched I lasted 2 days. I loggeed off after two days and haven't logged in since. I cannot even blame the expansion. From the little I have seen it looks like an excellent expansion. In my opinion actually Lotro is getting better and better with each expansion. The devs are clearly lavishing care and attention in to the world they are re-imagining and the continue to tweak and improve the game play. Yes I do have some minor niggles which I will talk about in a minute but ther are not the reason I stopped playing. I stopped playing because the eight weeks I spend preparing for Helm's Deep burned me out on the game. I simply wanted to take a long break. So much for my grand plan to finally catch up with the herd and enjoy the thrill of discovering new content along with everyone else. As for the ni...

A couple of years back  I logged off my level 65 Champion and I really thought I was done with Lotro. This September however I was tempted back to the game while pursuing an excellent Coursera course exploring Lord of the rings in game, book and movies. ( https://www.coursera.org/course/onlinegames , highly recommended if they run it again). I figured I would only play for the few weeks of the course so I picked up a mid level Loremaster alt  and pottered around with him in original Shadow's of Angmar content. By the end of the course I had hit the original level cap of 50 but I was still enjoying the game so I decided to hang around for a bit longer. Lotro has changed over the years and for the most part the game is a lot easier to solo. Oddly enough this suited me and I was happy to play the game on my own for a few weeks. The Loremaster is a very fun character combining crowd control, Pets, debuffs, modest heals and moderate damage. It probably isn't the fastest charac...

When Lotro was first released (Shadows of Angmar) the six man Urugarth and it's sister instance Carn Dum were the "End Game". Level 50 Players used to  run them repeatedly to collect the class items which dropped only from the instance bosses. Nowadays those items can be more easily obtained from soloing skirmishes so Carn Dum and Uru' are neglected even by players levelling alts. Howeevr when I decided to try and get those class items for my level 47 Loremaster I had a mad notion to try it the old fashioned way (albeit using my level 65 Champion Throg to solo the instances) and it turned out to be a lot of fun. The elite and elite master mobs hit surprisingly hard despite Throg's 15 level advantage. It took multiple attempts and several hours to clear the place out. The Champions AOE abilities proved very useful at burning down mobs as did the ability to switch to tanking mode when more survivability was required. I will admit to cheating on the "nemesi...

I am a week behind the time with this news but I just noticed that Lotro is now available on the Steam platform. I spend more time in Lotro than any other mmorpg so I have a special love for the game even though I am not playing it at the moment. Checking the Steam forums indicates that a number of new players have been tempted to try it since its Steam release. Good news all round I think.

Logging in to check my Lotro account (in response to yet another security breach warning) I was dismayed to see a big red "Pending Cancellation" notice bannered across my subscription details. Squinting down through the fine print I saw that yes indeed my LIFETIME membership  was due to expire on June 1 2061. Think about it. I will be 97. Not a bad age but with medical advances and such I was hoping to hit the hundred. Ah well. 

Normally I am a miser when it comes to game purchases. My threshold of pain is about €10 which pretty much rules out new releases . Nevertheless I had made up my mind to pre-purchase the Isegard expansion for Lotro despite having sufficient Turbine points accumulated that I can probably buy it from the TP store after release. Having bought my lifetime sub at the lowest ever price of £75 some years ago I feel it is probably time I gave them some extra cash. Unfortunately reconciling myself to spending more than I need to on a game has weakened my resolve  and I now find myself seriously eyeing Deus Ex Human Revolution ( currently €36 from Get games ). I know I will be able to get it much cheaper in a few months time but once in a while it would be nice to be able to play a game while everyone else is still talking about it. If I do splurge on Deus Ex that exhausts my budget and Turbine will have to wait for new cash from me. Decisions, Decisions. EDIT: When I went tot purch...

Codemasters European Lotro is now closed and we players will be up and running on US severs in a few days. I logged in last night to see if there was anything happening in game but apart from a splash screen saying goodbye from Codemasters there was nothing special going on.

Perhaps the most controversial items in the F2P Lotro Cash are the stat tomes which give permanent increases to of a characters base stats. For example  approximately €5 buys you a tome of Vitality which permanently increases your vitality by 10. You can purchase up to 5 ranks of each stat tome for a total of +50 to each stat (in Europe the limit is currently +30 soon to be lifted).  To put these numbers in perspective: 50 points of might would increase my Champions melee damage by about 3% and a piece of end game armour  typically gives a total increase of between 100 and 150 points spread across several stats. 50 points in any stat is not a game breaker but it does make a difference. In theory the stat tomes drop in the game but the drop rate is extremely low and nobody seriously believes that farming them is realistic.  If you want the benefit of those extra stats you have to pony up the cash. Since so much of an mmorpg players time is spent trying to earn i...

I love the new zone of Endewaith. Even though it is pretty much optional from a levelling point of view it is the prettiest region of the game since the Shire. There are even some hobbits hidden in there if you look hard. The scale-able dungeons are also a big hit with plenty of groups being organised for once neglected zones of the Great Barrow, Helogorod, Annuminas and the Eregion 3 man instances. My thoughts on the cash shop are generally positive so far. Some folks have compained the "Go to Store and Buy Stuff" buttons that crop up all over th game now but hey, shopping is fun so I don't really mind. I got a generous allocation of free points as a lifer and I am some way from spending it all yet. I did buy a permanent discount on horse travel, some scrolls to speed up deed grinding and  horse riding skill for a low level alt. I have previously expressed concerns that having cash shop items which allow you to bypass grind creates a moral hazard for the developer...

After all the patching I finally got to play the new European version of free to play Lotro for about an hour last night. Too early to say too much about it except that first impressions are all positive. I started the Volume 3 epic quest chain in the hope that it would soon bring me to the new region  but I was soon distracted from my mission when Volume 3 book 2 offered me this lovely item as one of the reward choices. Since the release of this chapter in the US almost two months ago there has been feverish speculation on the forums as to what it actually does. Now we Europeans have gotten in on the guessing game .  Guesses include that the horse shoe might improve critical hit chance in combat, might improve a players chance in fellowship loot rolls,  might improve drop rate of rare items, might improve the outcome of legendary weapon deconstruction plus a whole host of other suggestions both intriguing and ridiculous. Turbine has remained tight lipped except for ...

Clients crashing, servers offline .... Yup it's patch day for European Lotro. I guess the forums would be going banana's too except they are also unobtainable. By the way if anyone is getting a hash sum error updating the client there is a fix: you need to replace the 3 files (.js) in codemasters/browser/greprefs with the ones from the beta or the preview client. Apparently a post on the forums explains this but of course the forums are unobtainable.

After a delay of almost two months European Lotro-players will finally get the new patch and the transition to free to play on Tuesday 2nd November . If I was to judge the mood of the european player base it is one of feverish anticipation. I know that European players were initially disappointed at the delay  and angry at the lack of explanation from Codemasters. During the first few weeks of the delay there was almost no communication from Codemasters except for a very occasional embarrassed post from a community manger telling us nothing. Eventually we got a post from the David Solari MD of Codemasters apologising for the delay and explaining it was down to contractual issues. This was an important and necessary conciliatory measure. After that post much of the anger dissipated and the anticipation began to build again.  The preview server that was put up last week was  mobbed and had login queues of three to four hours. We have waited, how we have waited. We wan...

Codemasters are running a preview event for the long awaited European launch of f2P Lotro. I don't normally go in for beta's but they were giving free Turbine points for the final release so I downloaded the client and logged in. The preview is proving enormously popular by the way with three hour queues to get into the one server but that is another story. The thing that really caught my attention is the instant levelling mechanism that Turbine uses on beta servers. I guess Betas need an instant levelling mechanic so that players can test the full game. Turbine implements this via an inn that spawns at various locations bearing the somewhat humorous title of "The Eyes and Guard Tavern". The "Eyes and Guard" is one of the most wonderful locations I have ever been in an mmorpg. It is a gloriously chaotic place. Like Dr. Who's Tardis it is much bigger inside than it looks and its various chambers contain npcs who can instantly bestow you with powers a...

Hm.... Less than a week ago I decided I had gone as far as I could comfortably go in Lotro and was  trying to decide whether to quit and wait for the next patch or to dabble in a few end game dungeons. A few days later I find I have slipped rapidly into end game mindset. I have been  running instances. I have started deliberating over incremental improvements in stats. I have refreshed my personal equipment and I have made a decent start on collecting some end game armour. Thanks entirely to the generosity of more experienced players who were willing to  show me the ropes in dungeons I have amassed 90 radiance out of the 120 radiance required for entry into the current end game raid Barad Gularan. In fact 90 radiance would already allow me into two lower tier raids "The Watcher" and "Dar Narbugud but these aren't run as often any more as attention is focussed on the main raid of BG. Perhaps the most damning evidence of my slipping into end game mindset is tha...

Lows: No free to play and no new content yet for Lotro Europe. Not even a clear date as to when these will be released. In the six weeks I have been back in Middle Earth I have pretty much achieved everything I wanted to achieve before the release of the new content. I am finished the Epic books and I have equipped my level capped main character with a reasonable if not spectacular set of gear and skills. The end game grind awaits which is the point I normally get bored and move on from the game but the carrot of new content still dangles tantalisingly out there. I guess I will try and run a few more end game dungeons while I wait without making a serious effort to gear up for raiding. Highs: I did have a minor success last night when I managed to solo a difficult quest that was recommended for a small fellowship (the Book 9: Epilogue quest set in Gath Ulunn ). It is common enough to hear players talk about soloing group encounters and I am sure more experienced, better geared pla...

It now appears that the rumour about European Lotro getting a never ending extension was no more than a rumour. Welcome back week ended last night. Now there are several threads on the forum asking " But wasn't welcome back week supposed to last...?" No official word on the issue from Codemasters or its CMs but that doesn't excuse me for having jumped on an unfounded rumour and spreading it further.  I am just going to hide under a rock for a bit and pretend it never happened. Ok?

There is an old saying:" If you want a job done ask a busy man ". I have just realised that the same principle applies, at least in my case, to mmo playing. My real life work is very seasonal and after a quiet Summer I am now up to my neck in work with long irregular days. Despite this I am spending lots of time in with Lotro. After a long hard day I find a couple of hours in Middle Earth is the perfect de-stressing tool. My playing hours can be irregular, sometimes early morning, sometimes late at night. This mitigates against organised group play but nevertheless I have made great progress on my epic books with the line help of kinmates. Only the last bit of chapter 9 to do and I am up to date. I even managed to join a few radiance gear instance runs. I enjoyed these but I remain convinced that radiance gear gated raids are a step too far for me. Doing dungeon runs with experienced players has given me an opportunity to think again about the differences between group pl...

BIG EDIT: Despite my post below it now seems that  welcome back week has indeed ended. Now I am red faced. It seems I may be guilty of spreading misinformation. You may have heard hat the European launch of Free to Play (f2p)  Lotro was delayed days before the promised launch date of 10th September and we are still waiting for a confirmed date. Commentators have pointed out the missed opportunity here and have pointed out that many Europeans who would like to try Lotro may go to the current free US servers instead. Well I just discovered that you can actually play Lotro for free with Codemasters in Europe already. This post explains it all but the gist is that returning ex subscribers can avail of a free "welcome back" deal which allows them to play for free until f2p launches while totally new players can use the free trial and they too will be able to keep playing for free until f2p launches. The welcome back package also includes accelerated XP and free horse trave...

Volume II book 7 was entirely solo as were the first few chapters of book 8 so it was quite a surprise when book 8 chapter 3 A Relic in Lumul-Nar turned out to be a very challenging 3 man instance. My Champion Throg was lucky enough to get the help of another champion and a minstrel from our kin but we were quite unprepared for the difficulty level of the instance, which I later discovered is called "The Hall of Mirrors". After many wipes and much consultation we did eventually overcome the first boss which required positional tanking and carefully timed corruption removal but it was getting very late so we didn't manage to complete the instance. You can read a fairly good walkthrough of the instance here . The key to the first boss is keeping two buffing matron wargs apart and preventing them from healing by removing a 10s corruption (buff).  For reference we had our minstrel kite one matron while two champions beat on the other and that eventually worked. These kind ...

I love finishing things. In single player games there is generally a final boss to be overcome and no matter how cheesy the closing cut-scene I find I can walk away with a warm glow knowing that I have completed the game. Mmorpgs are unfinished by design. There is no end of game. Nevertheless a certain completionist satisfaction can still be had from finished various subgoals of which there are many. Complete a certain quest arc, complete a certain reputation grind, complete a certain armour set, complete a certain deed or collection. Completing things was pretty much the theme of my weekend in Lotro. On Friday night I had the help of a kinship group to complete the quests in Volume II book 6 . In this book the hard pressed dwarven expeditionary forcein Moria were forced to ask for Eleven help to suppress the evil that has taken over the once great dwarven stronghold. With considerable effort on Throg's part the elves of Lothlorien agreed to help not because of any love of dwar...