Goldenstar posted this on May 24th, 2010.
Categorized as General, Opinion.
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I’ve been reading many accounts lately of people who recently returned to LOTRO. In everyone of these posts/emails I’ve read, it starts the same. They are so happy to be back. It feels right. The game is more beautiful than they remembered. All have a general sense of being pleased with their choice to return.
However, for some there’s an attached “but…” to those statements. Mainly that they feel too far behind. They quit the game around Moria and have been out of the game for a year or more. So much information to catch up on and what the heck do all these skill buttons do again?
I know the feeling. It’s very intimidating to return to a game with a higher level character about a year later. Merric and I returned to LOTRO last summer and having quit approximately a year before ourselves. We felt the overwhelming wave of new information that we simply had no clue about. It felt almost like an impossible learning curve.
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Merric posted this on May 17th, 2010.
Categorized as General, Hobbit Rage, Opinion, radiance.
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I was going to save this post for my last concerning Radiance, but since this week’s Tell the Community Team brings up the subject in the form of a poll, I thought I would go ahead and start discussing my thoughts on it and open it up to you all as well. I also encourage you to vote on the official thread as well, because without you doing so, Turbine has no idea how you feel.
So the theoretical solutions that Turbine provides us are as follows:
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Goldenstar posted this on May 3rd, 2010.
Categorized as Classes, Hobbit Rage, Opinion, race.
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Many of us have been playing LOTRO for a while now. You may or may not have a level 65 (some of you have multiple 65s). We love our characters but it’s also natural to have that “grass is greener” thinking of how cool some other class is or how you wish you had the racial abilities someone else selected.
The question I’m posing is:
What if Turbine offered you a sort of do-over and could select your character but still keep your level?
To clarify, I would basically trade Goldenstar in for a different class or a different race and still be level 65. There are multiple questions that could go along with this question.
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Goldenstar posted this on April 28th, 2010.
Categorized as Hobbit Rage, Opinion, achievement.
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There are many ways to be a success in an MMO. Each player can have their own definition of what makes their character successful in game. It is not always defeating that end boss in XYZ dungeon.
We discussed on the podcast in the past about all the different types of “end games” people enjoy in LOTRO. From completing crafting tiers to completing deeds to simply leveling alts; everyone has different goals that drives them. Completing or perhaps just hitting big milestones of these personal achievements mean a lot!
Today I’m thinking about my own personal game and wondering “What are my top three achievements I’m most proud of?” This of course will be a “as of today” type listing as I have no intention of quitting any time soon and I can only assume I will find new goals to reach for and complete!
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Goldenstar posted this on April 26th, 2010.
Categorized as Hobbit Rage, Opinion, grouping, raids.
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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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Merric posted this on April 21st, 2010.
Categorized as General, Hobbit Rage, LotRO News, Opinion, Warner Bros, turbine.
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So as most of you know, last night it was announced that Warner Bros. has acquired Turbine. But what does this mean to us: the gamers, the bloggers, the podcasters… the fans? Initially I felt a sense of dread and in my mind I saw a huge, red wall of bureaucracy coming down between the channel of communication that we as players and also as a fan site have been able to establish with Turbine. Will there no longer be interviews with Developers? Will their activity on the forums be curtailed? Will they be as open to the players and fan sites as they have in the past? Will PAX be a completely different experience from now on because of Warner Bros??
But then after a while, after taking a breath, I realized that there was no reason to panic and that maybe this is a good thing. I mean Warner does own the movie rights to “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit”, they have also purchased other gaming studios such as Snowblind, (the assets of) Midway, TT Games, and Rocksteady Studios; and the world hasn’t ended for those people. In fact, this could open up a lot more resources for Turbine than they have had in the past such as voice acting talents, artists, open up new jobs and even might allow them to be more lax about what they can and cannot use in the game (such as names and places). And who knows, with the weight of Time Warner behind them, maybe we can finally see some LOTRO themed T-shirts, posters, action figures, or other items that can be purchased.
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Goldenstar posted this on April 20th, 2010.
Categorized as Hobbit Rage, Opinion, dungeon, playtime, raids.
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I found this very interesting post on my.lotro by Deusdictum going over the last three years of his playtime in LOTRO. Merric and I should totally be friends with Deusdictum as we have a lot in common. We were married in August 2006, we had a baby in early 2009 and she was 6 weeks premature. Deusdictum most likely shares our family schedule and lack of playtime woes.
I did find the post very interesting though to see how he’s always planning on getting to end game and not really able to attain. He then returns to leveling alts; hoping to prepare them for end game with the next expansion. It’s a vicious cycle. One we know well.
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Goldenstar posted this on April 16th, 2010.
Categorized as Hobbit Rage, Opinion, decorations, housing, maintenance, suggestion.
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Finally a topic that I can whole heartily jump into and really give you my detailed thoughts on! I love LOTRO but I very much love stupid little side fluff objects that MMO developers give us to play with. It’s a passion of mine and player housing definitely fits in this area.
First I want to point you to the articles that spawned the “jumping in the discussion” title of this post. You may want to read them yourself!
- Last week’s Tell the Community Team where the question asked what players would like improved and the response was strongly focused on housing.
- Fionnuala had a blog posting about her thoughts on housing.
- Massively’s columnist, Justin Olivetti, addressed housing in his “Road to Mordor” article.
- This week’s Community Team question where question two asks specifically about how you would change housing lock-out and escrow.
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Goldenstar posted this on April 13th, 2010.
Categorized as Bree, Hobbit Rage, Opinion, map.
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Bree is a very important city in LOTRO. Its the first major city all the players see. It’s the main questing location that each race is eventually herded to. Not only that but Bree is very iconic in terms of the story holding the Prancing Pony for example.
Merric and my latest project is leveling up a hunter/runekeeper combo and being in the mid-twenties, Bree is my main hub for city type amenities like banks, bards, and auction houses. Lately, I’ve really disliked doing business in Bree and the main reason is that it is very inconvenient to the visitor.
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Merric posted this on March 15th, 2010.
Categorized as Dev Team, Hobbit Rage, Opinion, forum, rant.
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Recently, there was a post on the forums that although atypical for the LOTRO forums (as far as my experience goes) is fairly typical for most gaming forums; especially MMO’s. How is it typical? Well, for those of you who do not want to pollute your mind with meaningless drama and crud, I’ll go into a somewhat brief description.
The title is “@Orion” and the message is simply, “How goes the North Down’s revamp.” For those who don’t know, this was answered in a blog post by Orion in late January, stating that he is no longer working on the North Down’s revamp and has been moved to other projects. Once informed of the situation by another player, the author responded with the single-word reply “Fail” . However, once Orion actually responds to this post, the post is hijacked by those who begin to discuss how the game is awful, how it’s changing from its original design, how nothing is good anymore, that people are leaving in droves, and basically that everything is poop. When others fire back that they do not share the same views and that perhaps those complaining should find a different game, some of those complaining use the justification of how they love the game and wouldn’t spend all this time telling everyone how much it sucked if they didn’t. Bull-poopy.
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