Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

I am writing as quickly as I can from a a very expensive and slow intenet terminal in Alice Springs Airport. We are on route to Uluru to see the great Rock. I haven't seen the famous rock yet but Alice Springs is a special place to me. Uluru is steeped in Myth and Legend but it is not my myth and legend. Alice Springs however has a special place in my own personal mythos having been force fed a diet of Outback Australiana by my older sister who first fell in love with Australian literature then with an Australian man. I find it hard to believe I am actually here. Having a terrific holiday in Australia by the way.

... for six weeks!!! No computer and no Lotro. I am quite looking forward to the cold turkey. It will be interesting to see what has happened in Lotro after I return. I guess most of the server will have passed me by. I hope it won't be difficult to organise fellowships. If I come across anything interesting on my travels Ill try and sneak into a web cafe to update this. In the meantime - enjoy the Summer.

In my glimpse into the future Throg finishes Lord of The Rings online and is rewarded with a "GAME OVER" screen. The books that Lotro follow come to a conclusion so why shouldn't the game itself? Of course I don't think it will ever happen and not just because the scouring of the Shire is a pretty unremarkable event on which to end and epic adventure. Commercial logic dictates that the developers of a game must keep us playing and paying subs for as long as possible. I am a reasonably fickle gamer. I have never stuck with one game for more than a few months. When I play a single player game I generally try to struggle through to the game over screen or at least finish one of the main campaigns. The traditional pay per month MMORPG doesn't offer that kind of uplifting parting of ways. No matter when I decide to leave I will always leave a failure - forced to sneak out the back door with my tail between my legs. This may explain why I can never see myself going ...

Warning: Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't actually read the Lord of The Rings (shame on you!). What a night. Following repeated wipes over the last few weeks Throg and his kinsfellows geared up for yet another go at the Battle of Bywater Raid instance. The large battle was tough as usual but for the first time the raid managed to completely surround the ruffians preventing any from escaping and pulling in additional adds. The raid's burglars used a co-ordinated sequence of conjunctions to to replenished all power bars to almost 100% just before the last of the ruffians was downed. This turned out to be vital because following a short cut-scene the raid was immediately catapulted into the confrontation with Sharkey and Wormtongue. Correct positioning was absolutely critical to this phase of the battle. The bosses have to be kept apart to prevent them unleashing their devastating AOE conjunctions. In addition it is absolutely essential to balance the damage on both bosses be...

One of the changes in the Shores of Evendim patch is that the default Roll/Pass options for loot distribution in pickup groups has been replaced by a need before greed system. When a rare item drops fellowship members are give the choice of Need, Greed or Pass. I assume that anyone who hits need gets priority over those who hit greed. There is much pontificating on the forums about the ethics of when you should or shouldn't select need. Personally I think it is too complicated for the average pickup group. Need before greed relies on an honour system where people are expected not to pick need on items they cannot actually use. However it only takes one player who is greedy or uninformed to break the whole system and upset everybody. This situation is aggravated by an annoying quirk of lotro: The same right click that is the default method of initiating an attack is also the default method of looting a corpse. Oh and did I mention that the default loot roll threshold on lotro is s...

The Shores of Evendim content patch went live for Europe yesterday. Thanks to Turbine / Codemaster's foresight in allowing the patch to be pre-downloaded offline I was able to get into the game with only a minor install delay having downloaded the patch the previous night. Very impressive performance for a major patch day. The forums are full of commentary on the changes. Naturally those with complaints are the most vociferous but it is probably too early to trust anybodies first impressions. UI scaling was promised but I couldn't find an option to scale the skill buttons. There is a welcome option to scale floaty names. The large fixed floaty names used to obscure all the action in fellowship battles and I generally turned them off. The new scaleable fonts used are not quite as readable as before but at least they can be scaled to the size you want. There has been a number of complaints about Champion damage and combat morale regen getting an undocumented nerf but I have to sa...

Logging into Guild Wars again was interesting. Beautiful crisp graphics with no lag. Fabulous responsive combat. I have to admit I was tempted to put lotro aside for a while and jump back in. I won't though but I had to think for a bit to understand why. First off I must explain that Guild Wars is one of the best PVP games out there but I amn't really into PVP. Nevertheless Guild Wars also has a truly terrific story based PVE game. If you haven't played the game recently you would be truly amazed at how the game has developed to make life convenient for players. You can fast travel anywhere for free. Total respecs are free. You can change to a new secondary class at will (for free). Missions can typically be completed in about an hour and if you can't get human companions you can bring npc henchmen and heroes instead. Why then is the game not as immersive and compelling as a traditional full blown MMORPG? One reason is that the world does not have as many frills as a ...