Goldenstar posted this on April 26th, 2010.
Categorized as grouping, Hobbit Rage, Opinion, raids.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/xtffsqjA1pw/
I purposely waited a couple days before starting this post because the other night I was very irritated and felt it would of come across as a little mean. I’m not trying to be mean, just vent some of my frustrations. I’m not a hard core raider and I realize that our kin and friends of the kin aren’t raiding kinships. I don’t think just because we’re not considered “raiders” excuses people from being responsible team members.
This post is about raid moochers. You know the type. People who come to raids unprepared and feel positively no remorse that they’ve made you wait 30 minutes for them to buy potions, get quests or craft some food. What is worse they just show up and expect you to give them the potions and food they require.
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Goldenstar posted this on January 1st, 2010.
Categorized as boss, dungeon, grouping, Hobbit Rage, Minstrel.
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People have been kind (brave?) enough to take me to heal their instances in the past. It’s confession time for Goldenstar and this may make everyone who has ever fellowshiped with me now, or in the future cringe:
I don’t always listen to the boss fight strategy.
Yup. You are there earnestly jabbing your jaws to make sure everything goes smoothly and I’m off in la-la land making sure my gloves are the right color to be fighting such a beast.
Outraged yet? Well, at least let me try to explain!
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Veneration posted this on December 31st, 2009.
Categorized as class, General, grouping, Hobbit Rage, New Player Advice, pick up group, pug, roles.
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Throughout MMOs player interaction has created stereotypes and euphemisms that transcend gaming and enter into the vocabulary of the general public. As Goldenstar points out in “Newb vs Noob“, players of all sorts come together and often things can get hairy! These groups formed from chat requests and /lff channels can be united under one name…
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Goldenstar posted this on November 5th, 2009.
Categorized as experience, fellowship, grouping, New Player Advice, penalty, solo.
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I would guess that most have assisted others they aren’t in a fellowship with before. Assistance can be given in helping kill a monster or in buffing or healing a character engaged in combat. For instance, if I heal someone who’s in combat with a enemy, I will placed in combat as well even if not in a fellowship or not attacking the monster at all.
A lot of the time this assistance is appreciated. I personally can think of the time I clicked on a glowy item simply because I couldn’t resist and spawned a signature monster when I was unprepared for combat. I would have certainly perished if it hadn’t been for the helpful burglar who had popped out of no where and made quick work of that monster for me.
There is a downside to this assistance and it affects the amount of experience the person being helped will receive. This assistance experience penalty happens when any assistance is given. Any amount of damage given to the monster, a debuff applied to the monster or buffs and healing applied to the fighter all will enact this penalty.
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Jaxom92 posted this on October 17th, 2009.
Categorized as commentary, dev diary, grouping, instances.
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Full link: http://middleearthadventurer.blogspot.com/2009/10/skirmishes-dev-diary-3.html
Here's the part I was most interested in regarding skirmishes: randomization and scaling. These two features combined offers so much potential for content that will retain players beyond the typical instance or raid progression. I'll let the dev diary speak for itself, but I have to mention I'm not keen on the idea of the fellowship leader being required to set the group level (i.e. solo, 3-man, 6-man, and 12-man). I'd rather see it auto set. Why? Because it puts the UI and system in between the player and the world/content. Certainly setting the difficulty, if you will, is a small and painless step in the process. That isn't the point. Instead I think a philosophy of transparency is better. Completely subjective design opinion on my part so long as the UI interaction is as painless as I'm assuming. I'll leave the thought here, but I have a post in the works that delves more into this design philosophy. For now, know that I'm still excited about skirmishes. It's my biggest anticipated feature. Well, the horse change too but just because I want to collect all the horses. It should be a pretty awesome system.
Jaxom92 posted this on October 17th, 2009.
Categorized as commentary, dev diary, grouping, instances.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://middleearthadventurer.blogspot.com/2009/10/skirmishes-dev-diary-3.html
Here's the part I was most interested in regarding skirmishes: randomization and scaling. These two features combined offers so much potential for content that will retain players beyond the typical instance or raid progression. I'll let the dev diary speak for itself, but I have to mention I'm not keen on the idea of the fellowship leader being required to set the group level (i.e. solo, 3-man, 6-man, and 12-man). I'd rather see it auto set. Why? Because it puts the UI and system in between the player and the world/content. Certainly setting the difficulty, if you will, is a small and painless step in the process. That isn't the point. Instead I think a philosophy of transparency is better. Completely subjective design opinion on my part so long as the UI interaction is as painless as I'm assuming. I'll leave the thought here, but I have a post in the works that delves more into this design philosophy. For now, know that I'm still excited about skirmishes. It's my biggest anticipated feature. Well, the horse change too but just because I want to collect all the horses. It should be a pretty awesome system.
Jaxom92 posted this on September 5th, 2009.
Categorized as commentary, expansions, grouping, instances, links, preview, raids, siege of mirkwood, systems.
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Full link: http://middleearthadventurer.blogspot.com/2009/09/pax-siege-of-mirkwood-preview.html
The folks over at
ignvault were lucky enough to
snag a preview of some of the Siege of Mirkwood content, specifically more info on the skirmishes. I'm absolutely thrilled by what I read. I think this could be an excellent activity for those at the cap who aren't big instance runners and raiders (such as me and some of my kinship). We as yet don't know what the rewards will be for gathering skirmish points, but I'd imagine they'd be inline with the barter items from loth rep quests or something similar.
And, as I've said before, scalable content is the wave of the future. Seriously, having content that caters to the group size rather than being forced to either 1) find more or choose between your friends who gets to go or 2) ignore some of the content because it doesn't fit your group size is an better direction. We're always looking for a more living breathing world in MMOs. Usually this means wanting more of the fluff that fills out a world, but I think it can also mean content that caters to you, rather than you to it. We're removing a barrier to entry, a wall that breaks the player from the world and puts him into the game-side of things, and a stumbling block to fun. We need to see more of this - and again, I'd love to see this implemented for all instances/raids.
Jaxom92 posted this on August 25th, 2009.
Categorized as commentary, grouping, instances, mobs.
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Full link: http://middleearthadventurer.blogspot.com/2009/08/bone-man-is-pansy.html
Heyo! What a blast Massive Hobbits had with Chapter 11. Then Monday night we went off into the southern barrows completing a host of quests, old and new. One of those was Bone Man, previously a fellowship quest, now definitely soloable, or if not that, in a duo. We had a full group blazing through wights, barghests, crawlers, rats, ect and Bone Man was no match. Indeed, this wight had mere seconds to see a horde of Hobbits before he experienced a second death.
What struck me at that moment was a bit of disappointment. I understand completely why some of this content has been made soloable. Indeed, a host of games from WoW to Everquest have done the same thing with old content - made it easier. Why? Because more players are at the cap and finding a group for harder lower level content is... well... harder. The very nature of the game makes the content fun at the beginning of the lifespan, and less fun later. And yet there are those rare occurrences such as with Massive Hobbits that a group does exist for low level group content - and there's little to none of it left. Even though I understand, and even agree with the way Turbine has changed the lower content, I still have to feel a bit of loss for an epic Bone-Man. Or Sambog in the GB.
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Jaxom92 posted this on June 15th, 2009.
Categorized as commentary, grouping, kinship, systems.
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Full link: http://middleearthadventurer.blogspot.com/2009/06/your-friends-or-game.html
Why do I play LOTRO? To answer that, I have to first go back to why I play games. That's easy though, I love getting sucked into the worlds the games create. Why is Mass Effect so awesome to me? It does a very good job at creating a world you feel connected to. Why do I love Lord of the Rings Online - because it does a great job at linking me to a world I love so much. I started playing LOTRO because of the IP connection. From there, I discovered it was a good game. But what about now - what keeps me playing?
Honestly, I have to point more towards my friends than the game itself. No game can sustain interest forever, and nearly three years with one game is a long time (August 2006, closed beta). But in the process of playing LOTRO I gained some friends. I was extremely fortunate in running into the kinship I'm a part of. When I haven't logged in for a while, I don't feel guilty for not playing. It's not my monetary investment. That paid for itself already. It's not the game that I'm missing, or I would have logged in. It's the people. I feel like I need to keep in touch, let them know I'm still alive, kicking, interested, etc.
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Jaxom92 posted this on May 25th, 2009.
Categorized as books, commentary, grouping, kinship, quests.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://middleearthadventurer.blogspot.com/2009/05/fellowship-quests.html
Turbine has put up
an official article talking about fellowship questing. My most favorite moments in this game have been when I was in a fellowship that has successfully completed some challenge, mostly comprised of my kinmates. There was one PUG group that tacked the Twisted Heart questline in Evendim. After some poor organization, I took it upon myself to "chew them out", basically saying if we couldn't handle what we were doing then, there would be no way we could handle the finishing instance. And we managed to complete this quest. It was an epic win if ever one could be called epic.
Even though I don't do fellowship content very often, mostly because of the timesink involved and the fact that I'm interrupted fairly often during my gameplay, it's probably my favorite content. And it's the content that best reflects the spirit of the IP. The Lord of the Rings is all about companionship, friendship, and coming together to face overwhelming odds. If this game truely wanted to capture that flavor, we'd all be playing in static fellowships. That's of course impossible to orchestrate in sustainable subscription numbers, so we get what we get. But don't ignore the fellowship content. Rarely have I come across a really bad PUG (mediocre, yes) and every fellowship experience with my kinship has been wonderful, even the failures (such as Friday's wipe on 2.5.5).
I purposely waited a couple days before starting this post because the other night I was very irritated and felt it would of come across as a little mean. I’m not trying to be mean, just vent some of my frustrations. I’m not a hard core raider and I realize that our kin and friends of the kin aren’t raiding kinships. I don’t think just because we’re not considered “raiders” excuses people from being responsible team members.
Skirmishes Dev Diary 3
Jaxom92 posted this on October 17th, 2009.
Categorized as commentary, dev diary, grouping, instances.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://middleearthadventurer.blogspot.com/2009/10/skirmishes-dev-diary-3.html