TheOneRing.net is going talky! Talk radio to be specific! We’ve joined forces with BlogTalkRadio.com to produce TheOneRing.net Talk Radio Show. A show dedicated to all things Tolkien, and then some! Check out our profile page here. We will have alternating hosts and a ton of interesting guests for you to listen to. You can participate to! [...]

December 8th, 2009 I received a mysterious email followed up by a phone call in the last few days. I don’t know much, all I know is that ‘Something is coming’ on December 8th, 2009. And that we should be watching this space and www.lordoftherings.net stay tuned for more! What could it be? Speculate on our boards!

Movie fans will again have stars in their eyes when The Lovely Bones gets the red carpet treatment at the Embassy Theatre. Two of the film’s biggest names – Oscar winner Susan Sarandon and nominee Saoirse Ronan – will attend the Kiwi premiere on December 14. New Zealand stars Rose McIver and Carolyn Dando are [...]

TAVERNCRAFT ANNOUNCES THE HOBBIT™ AND THE LORD OF THE RINGS™ LICENSE ACQUISITION FOR STEINS AND PREMIUM DRINKWARE First Release to Feature Smaug™ the Magnificent Stein SAN DIEGO, CA (November 19, 2009) – Taverncraft, a subsidiary of 3 Point Entertainment LLC, today announced the acquisition of a multi-year worldwide license agreement with Middle Earth Enterprises [...]

Kristin from Reelz Channel sends this in: So we are having a bit of fun in the Hobbit Casting Rumors department. Since there isn’t much else to report on, why not? This time we’ve narrowed the possible monsters that Guillermo del Toro might play in the movie. More..

Lothlórien. Such a beautiful place, easily one of the fairest landscapes I’ve seen to date in LoTRO.

Yet, I’ve had a serious case of what’s probably best described as anxious burnout since Dyjia arrived here.

I love the scenery, love the atmosphere. I know that Lothlórien is sort of a place where time stands still - while wild things happen outside the realm, this place seems to continue just as it has for ages.

I think though, from a gameplay point of view, I’m just bored. I know, I know, I can see the Elf enthusiasts quaking with unbridled hautiness at my uncouth words already!

But in all honestly, while the quests are very very easy, and even relaxing - carry a pitcher of water to thirsty musicians…pick flowers on the hillside…sing to trees…retrieve seeds from hungry shrews, etc - this isn’t what I had in mind for my character.

Dyjia I envision to be a sort of wild warrior, fearsome and ferocious!

It’s hard to keep up appearances when I’m playing a gardener and busboy.

The fact that nearly half the quests appear to be repeatables is probably the main reason why I’m burning out so quickly though. I’d prefer to only complete these sorts of errands one time and move on to all new quests.

I said anxious earlier, and by that I mean that I am very eager for Mirkwood.

I’ve kept up on the information streaming from fansites and forums about all the new systems arriving December 1st, and can honestly say I’m very excited about the upcoming expansion!

So, I’m just biding my time.

Scolding drunks at midnight elf-raves by the riverside.

Just a quick post to officially thank some folks who took time out of their gaming to come help this newly-60 Captain with her Moria class quest tonight. I now have Hands of Healing happily traited.

Brotherhood of Southern Knights:

• Windariel
• Gilandras

Allies of the Free Peoples:

• Alvirhelm
• Manou
• Gondilin

I did it! I made 60 and the level cap before Mirkwood releases. It’s been a wonderful journey, this first time through Middle-earth…. and it’s been great fun to blog along the way.

And it’s hardly even over! There’s so much left that I should do and so many places I’ve yet to see!

I’ll of course have 65 to shoot for soon. I haven’t sweated finding the perfect LIs or farming for Radiance gear simply because I know there’s new systems for those coming into play in a couple of weeks. Skirmishes should help with obtaining my last class quest piece (that slime has been the bane of my virtual existence).

I guess my goal now is simply to help get Sanjali up to cap with me, and possibly - if there’s time and inclination - to work on Virtues… though I truly despise grindwork.

My poor alts have all been left in a dusty corner too. One day I may get around to playing them again.

Yesterday I was shocked to hear my boyfriend say that Sanjali - his main and a Warden - is his most favorite character ever. I actually had to ask him to repeat himself because what he said didn’t click in my brain!

This was surprising for two reasons.

One, he’s a fairly ancient gamer with at least a decade under his belt… though I’m not sure exactly how far back his gaming goes as I didn’t know him back then. Together we’ve played through numerous online games, though I have not gamed nearly as long as he.

As best as I can tell, he started with MuDs. He was there for the beta of the original EQ, which is how I know it’s been at least a decade, and to this day is a walking encyclopedia of Norrathian lore (I’m not joking about that either - ask him anything pre-Shattering and he’ll know it).

But, my point is that’s a lot of characters over many years and games he’s played through to compare.

The second reason is that anyone who’s played with us for a length of time knows that he’s appeared to have a love/hate relationship with his Warden all along. At points he’s gotten so frustrated that he no longer wanted to play it, but sometimes - like right now - he’s been on a rampage with trying to level it.

I asked him why Sanjali was his favorite ever. I mean, he’s had some *very* accomplished characters in the past, though nowadays age and real life responsibilities has eased the majority of that drive.

The answer? The class is so darn challenging and intensive that it was immensely rewarding when he actually pulled off something crazy!

There is no downtime in any fight, so you can’t turn your attention away for a second. It’s the challenge of getting every gambit off at the perfect time, but also the challenge to get the right gambit off for what’s happening at that fraction of the fight. And yes, he actually keeps a list of gambits taped to his PC.

He’s chuckled at how “easy” combat is on his other alts because they were nowhere near as complicated as Sanjali to him. They are his “vacation” from his Warden.

So here’s to Wardens! Thank you Turbine for providing a class that’s so engrossed a veteran MMO player - which in turn has made his girlfriend very happy.

Also we went through the epic instance, “We Cannot Get Out” for the first time last night. We were so enthralled by the might of Captain Ori that soon after we rerolled a couple low-level alts to create two new Dwarf Champion characters in homage to the memory of him!

Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!

Late last night, a couple of us kinnies were chatting as we did menial things like farming and crafting. It turns out that one of them was also a member of a Captain/Warden duo like I am, so we started comparing trait setups and strat. This sort of evolved into a “Hey! Let’s go try something neither of us have done before!”

So logically, we decided to find Lothlórien though we hadn’t been there yet or really knew the way. Or had any business being there since we hadn’t finished Moria!

Through morroval...

Finding the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm!

The First Hall - and exit!

At the first camp in Lothlórien, where we rested for the night.

Unfortunately it was late & dark both in game and in real life, so we wrapped up here. I look forward to seeing more in the daylight.

Surprisingly I really enjoyed the Captain/Captain duo. We complemented each other well since we could run different buffs and we decided to use the heralds to help beef us up a bit through all the orange con mobs.

I wonder what other classes also do well with each other?

So, another first for me this week: I rolled a Creep and started PvMP!

I chose a Weaver for my first one, both because of the ranged attacks and also just in case I get a chance to participate in the Halloween PvMP events happening on Landroval. I kept a beginner’s guide on my web browser behind my windowed game screen so that I could try to follow the advice as I navigated the new terrain as one of Sauron’s baddies.

As a newbie, or “green”, PvMP toon you are started off with only 4 skills and you need to spend Destiny Points to obtain more. Since I had a stockpile of around 17k points from PvE leveling, I picked up a few more active skills along with one health boost passive skill right away.

I also needed to begin a series of quests to obtain maps for fast traveling between outposts. Creeps do not get access to mounts, so maps are your only source of fast travel in the Moors. I set off to first unfog the entire Moors world map and also to work on my first series of quests to obtain a better map to Gramsfoot (the Creep starting area).

I have to admit that my first excursion into PvMP was not pretty. At all. I was a walking bullseye for Renown-hungry Freeps who rightfully saw a very easy kill in a lonely greenie Creep, and I was toast within two or three shots. Lesson learned there - looks like I need to find a band of friends to go creepin’ with until I gain more experience and survivability!

I did manage to get most of the landmarks opened on my world map, and about half of those first quests done for my first map deed before cocooning for the night.

I now face the depths of Moria in all my noobie glory! For several days we’ve been exploring the shallow end depths of the mines, but I know soon we’ll have to venture deeper, deeper, where the darkest beasts lie in wait. Time now to take up the mantle of hero, become strong in arm and soul, for the long road before us.

Today I finally downloaded and installed CStats, the combat log parser for LoTRO. I knew of its existence early on but had not availed myself of it for a couple reasons: one, I wasn’t too worried about performance as I was leveling, and two, I had just come to this game after playing endgame on my prior one where parsers were a must-have for every play session and your performance was monitored and judged by everyone.

The latter is a partial reason why I left that game, because I felt I could no longer let my hair down and just play. Even on casual group runs someone always had a parser running and spammed group chat with rankings.

LoTRO is different though in that the combat logs don’t generate data for other players, so you can ever only view your own combat data (though I do think it measures incoming healing - not clear on that yet). That’s a good thing for more casual players in my opinion, because it allows people to self opt-in to log parsing and performance evaluation. If you don’t care about it, no one is going to come at you and say “Your DPS is XYZ!”

For myself, this will allow me to make my own judgments on what’s truly best for my character: what works, what doesn’t, what is overhyped, and what’s a load of poo-poo on the forums. If I’m iffy about some concept I can go run my own tests to see how effective (or not) it really is.

I know some people are saying at this point: “Bah! Who cares about that - just play the game!” and for the most part I do, but I have to admit that I’m a wannabe geek.

So, after installing and loading the program, I immediately ran out to kill some mobs and see my results.

Yes, the results suck! I’m not max level or geared with endgame items, I’m traited as a full-on healer, I admit button-mashing, and I am using my starter Legendary from the book quest (so sue me, I’m leveling it to 21 for decon and it’s 19 now). No epeen going on here!

But, I learned something valuable already.

One, since my auto-attack is nearly half my damage output, my weapon damage spread, critical melee chance and stats affecting weapon damage are all very important. That starter legendary has got to go soon.

Also, just using two same-level signature mobs scenarios, I did 8.53 more DPS using a Herald of War rather than the Banner of War. Obviously that’s not a good sample, so I need to test this on one single mob a bit more extensively, but that could be significant information for soloing.

I can also test out legacies as I find more LIs to play with, and judge for myself which ones are more beneficial to me rather than rely on information thrown around on forums. I can also figure out the best skill rotation instead of mashing buttons…

Now, is DPS the be-all-end-all measure for a well-played Captain? Not at all. There’s a lot more to it than pumping out damage and I would surely frustrate some people if I only concentrated on that! I am not advocating giving up my main job in favor of DPS. I need to buff, heal, and hit the panic button when needed with my duo, so that continues to be my main focus.

But as the old adage says, knowledge is power. And so every sliver of it I get only helps this noob break free of noobdom!

I freely admit that I don’t play games purely to roleplay anymore. At one point long, long ago in EQ1, I did roleplay very heavily and was exclusively “in character” - but I don’t think I could do that now, especially with the advent of voice chat that I use nearly every play session.

Today, as I was scrolling through the plethora of kinship ads on the forums and seeing more than half are for roleplaying kinships, it came to me. I don’t roleplay nearly as much because of two reasons:

1. I created characters that are very difficult for me to maintain RPly in their environment
2. I generally shy away from melodramatic situations/people

Looking back, characters I’ve successfully roleplayed over the years had quirky personas:

• A kleptomaniac halfling
• An evil necromancer with a lab to carry out experiments
• A mischievous child
• A pirate with a heavy cockney accent
• A mischievous fairy
• A shamanistic tribal outcast who only spoke the common tongue brokenly

That last one was the namesake of my current Dyjia avatar and is what I created my character here around…her name, her looks and cosmetic items, my idea of her background, everything was done in the hope of recreating that persona here, Middle-earth style.

However I’ve done a terrible job of it! I know what she should be, but I just have not allowed her to bloom here.

I’m not wanting to do something against lore - I’m more a purist at heart in every game I play, so I steer clear from vampires/demonspawn/half-gods as much as any other purist. (And good golly do I dislike vampire RP…)

But the truth is that I’m afraid that by having a character who isn’t from a vanilla background I’ll make some pretty hefty mistakes that would set off the lore-alarms. I already had one person comment skeptically on one of my few attempts, so I sort of gave up after that.

And so Dyjia languishes RPly….adventure wise she’s doing fabulous though!

I wanted to say thank you, dear readers, for your visits to my little gaming space of the interwebz, and in particular thank those loyal few who always seem to comment with every new entry I write!

I’ve never been much of a diarist, but this is such a supporting, welcoming little community that I’ve really enjoyed doing so here. Though I don’t always respond individually to every comment left for me, I do read them all and always welcome your own anecdotes on whatever topic is up.

For any potential new bloggers: I encourage you to give it a try! Read some blogs, leave your comments, request friendships with your fellow bloggers whose material you enjoy (we don’t bite, I promise) - it’s really a nice sidelight to our gaming here in Middle-earth.

Now, as promised in my previous post…

Introducing…

Yep, the old Man was chosen and is our brand new LM!

Though the redhead Woman definitely got brownie points for being eyecandy for us, in the end we decided that the entertainment value of Ardulf far exceeded the youthful beauty of the lady model.

Entertainment value, you ask?

Well, it went something like this:

“Wow, he looks like he’s on his last leg!”
“I don’t think he can climb a hill much less travel all over Middle-earth.”
“He should be a Burglar or Guardian, I bet he moves faaaast. (harharhar)”
“You know, we could park him in front of your house and have him yelling at fiesty hooligans to Get off my lawn!’” (His game house is in Falathorn, so those hooligans would be Elves…)

The last one cinched the deal.

[Note that neither my boyfriend nor myself are exactly spring chickens ourselves so it's all in good fun, I promise!]

Have been on blogging hiatus for a couple weeks. A mix of stressful real life stuff has taken a large part of my time lately: my abuelo (grandfather) passed away and I’ve been juggling midterm exams. I’m very lucky to have outstandingly supportive family and friends to help out though!

Also, gamewise, I’ve finally given up Morrowind and all the mods I made for it in favor of starting anew with Oblivion. I’m always such a latecomer…

Good news in Middle-earth, I finally entered Moria and got my first legendaries! I am so excited by this, and despite what anyone says I really like how LoTRO did their “epic weapon” concept. One thing I never was too wild about in past MMOs was that my epic class weapon was the exact same as everyone else of my class, but here I can not only choose how to build it, but also name it!

So my two lovelies are:

Bite of the Serpent, a heavy old halberd whose worn leather grip is engraved with a silvery coiled snake

Insignia of the Ayonic Journey, a small ivory badge carved with a pattern of tiny musical notes

The first is purely an RP invention for my current Dyjia avatar, the second is a nod to her prior incarnation in a universe far away.

I’d love to hear about what you guys used as names for your legendaries!

Also, my boyfriend reactivated his second account and is going to work with me to level a Lore-master on it. We decided it might be nice to have the extra storage, and also a pocket third for future 3-mans when there’s no one around to group with. I created two LMs on it and am going to let him choose which one he likes more: a young pretty redhead Woman with amber eyes or an old Man with a long white flowing beard, all Gandalf-like. Wonder which he’ll pick…. taking bets! lol…. pics with next post.