Scott posted this on March 10th, 2010.
Categorized as Age of Conan, lotro, MMO Gaming, Whatever.
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Full link: http://pumpingirony.net/2010/03/10/its-alive/
Three months and one week after placing the order for all the parts for the new PC, it’s finally working!
Other than the Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS, it’s decidedly a last-gen (ie. DirectX10) system for now. The new DX11 cards were tempting but I’m simply not willing to spend that much just for a video card any more. On a side note, I find it interesting that when I was younger and living paycheck to paycheck I had no problem sacrificing and saving up for the brand-new hardware and now that I can afford it without batting an eyelash, I have a difficult time justifying it. My PC gaming is pretty much relegated to MMOG’s only now, and I think 2009 painted a grim picture for how I am feeling about the MMOG genre as a whole in its current state. At “bleeding edge tech” prices, a DX11 card just isn’t worth it for MMOG’s alone, to me.
This PC has been nothing but trouble from the moment it was assembled, so it was with great joy Monday afternoon when it finally booted up and Windows 7 was installed. After installing drivers and a few other applications, I naturally set out to get my MMO on. Age of Conan was first since it had less updating to do than LOTRO, which took all night to finish updating through two expansions and content patches.
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DocHoliday posted this on March 10th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, epic line, Equipment, gear, legacy, legendary items, lore, lotro, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, radiance, Raid, Raids and End-game, sto, threat, volume 3, Warden.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/back-from-a-short-absence/
So real-life has been a bit of a drain lately for me and I’ve been very quiet of late both here on my blog as well as in-game. It is a combination of a bunch of different things, but much of it will pass here soon.
So to re-cap on a few things, I did want to comment on some LOTRO items and also some non-LOTRO ones that were of interest too.
My in-game activities have been rather enjoyable, just limited after my fun in Volume 3. I’ve been playing much more on my Minstrel lately and have quite enjoyed not only soloing through content in war-speech but also running the various Mirkwood instances as a healer. I did notice more of my skills being resisted but really didn’t seem to be too big of a problem, but it was good to see that it has in fact been changed as commented on by CStM and confirmed by the devs on the forums as well. On a more positive note, I think I’m getting pretty close to having enough tokens for the radiance sets on him but will probably take a few more runs through SG. My legendary items still need quite a bit of work although I have a couple that are somewhat promising. I do have some of the legacies that help out on the resists, so I may actually play around with leveling them up instead of just leaving them at rank 1. Sadly, outside of the Volume 3 activity I really haven’t been on my Warden too much outside of an SG run or two. She still is 2 pieces from being eligible for BG, so a few more SG runs are in my future. And for those of you that actually do have your BG armor sets, there will be a change made to the set bonus as commented on the forums. Essentially the current bonus is broken (not that a 5% chance shield mastery will debuf your target was all that exciting) and will be changed to a 10% chance to provide a 10% melee damage bonus for the Warden. I’m glad they’re looking at those bonuses and that is a better bonus, but I would’ve loved a 10% threat bonus!
Up on the Warden boards there a pretty detailed discussion on threat. from precise blow and comparing it to damage done. Essentially numerically comparing how much threat was done to counter a certain amount of damage. The numbers worked out to about 1750 damage (or ~100DPS, which is pretty darn low) to counter the threat from a single precise blow, which does seem to indicate that you do need to work and continually apply our ToTs to keep ahead of DPS classes.
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Merric posted this on March 10th, 2010.
Categorized as birthday, General.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/CUxkwwkE36o/

A very Happy Birthday to one of my favorite Hobbits in the world! Today is Goldenstar’s birthday! And although a team of ponies could not drag out of me just how old she is, let me state that she is younger than me and that’s all that matters! She is both a wonderful mother, an incredible wife, and the best friend anyone could hope for. She is an amazing woman and the source of all the happiness in my life.
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Goldenstar posted this on March 10th, 2010.
Categorized as goldenstar, Hobbit Rage, Opinion.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/LSGYMnfxctQ/
I have an odd habit of chatting with the NPCs in game and it makes me curious if I’m the only one. I’ve done this as far as I can remember. Some of your may have answered them yourself. What may be considered odd is that I typically will type out my response in /say as if I’m really talking to them.
Merric just takes it as a silly quirk of mine but I believe it enhances my game play to believe they’re real characters. That’s not just a mindless NPC, that’s Aragorn or Gandalf. It doesn’t have to be a major character either. I’ll chat with a grocer just as soon as I would Frodo. Some of them even say pretty interesting things if you stop to listen.
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