Category: MMO

Great Barrows to Rivendell

Posted on by Nimgimli

The three day weekend wound up being devoted pretty heavily to LOTRO. My Champion is up to level 28 now, and went through the Great Barrows three times (I think?) this weekend. Enough that I’m not anxious to go through there again, in any event!!

For all the hours I played, I didn’t advance much. Did some deed grinding (the trees in the Old Forest, Wargs and Crows in the Lone Lands) and helped guildies and others with some quest lines. It felt like every time I needed a fellowship for a quest, everyone was about 3 steps behind, so I’d have to catch ’em all up. I don’t normally mind this, but I was on my main and some of the people I was catching up were on their third alts. It’s hard to catch my main up to their main when I’m spinning my wheels killing grays and helping their #3 alts to level.

Finally read a post at Kill Ten Rats about leveling fast. Tried it a bit yesterday and it sure works. I might just skip the Fellowship quests and concentrate on soloing for a while, except at such times that a Fellowship quest reward is going to really help me, or a group is set to go and needs a bit ‘o extra DPS.

As the weekend drew to a close I got it in my head to ride to Rivendell, so I did, on my pokey freebie Bree Horse (from being a Founder). Things got hairy after I crossed the ford where Glorfindel/Arwen (depending on whether you read the books or watched the movies) turned back the Nine. The road peters out after that and everything was purple, but I made it. Coming upon Rivendell for the first time was truly breathtaking (and the Trollshaws were nice too, I look forward to hunting there). I spent a good hour running around Rivendell geekgasming all over the place.

My only regret is that I didn’t get there earlier. I understand it used to be the you could stumble upon members of The Fellowship wandering the roads of Rivendell, but now they’re all sequestered in housing in preparation for the Mines of Moria expansion. (They instance housing so you see different things inside a building/room based on where you are in the storyline.)

Good stuff. I was getting vaguely bored before heading to Rivendell, I have to admit. I kind of feel like LOTRO keeps you in a particular zone for much too long, if you’re anal like me and don’t like leaving unfinished quests behind. I need to let go of that and play in areas that I’m enjoying, rather than grinding through quests because I “should.” Visiting Rivendell refreshed my enthusiasm for the game; I need to level up so I’m ready to explore the Mines of Moria!

But WAR looms on the horizon…

WAR is still coming (Headstart Dates)

Posted on by Nimgimli

I haven’t seen this officially on the NA Warhammer sites, but the European site says that the Warhammer Online Headstart Program starts on Sept. 14th for Collector’s Edition pre-orders, and Sept. 15th for standard orders. Note that the 14th is a Sunday, so (most) CE pre-orders have a full day of headstart over standard buyers.

But this means that Open Beta is at most 7 days. I guess that’s enough time for some stress testing, but I’m not sure its enough time for many fixes to be developed, tested and deployed.

The Calm Before the Storm

Posted on by Nimgimli

Not a lot happening here at Dragonchasers HQ.

I’m playing the hell out of LOTRO these days, but there isn’t a lot for me to say about the game that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. It I was high enough level to be enjoying the latest new content it’d be one thing, but I’m still hunting the Lone Lands looking for Wargs. Don’t read that wrong, I’m having an absolute blast, but I’m not doing anything ‘newsworthy.’

In the absence of real Warhammer News, blogs are turning towards navel gazing and in some cases sniping at each other. I myself spent some time arguing with Sara Pickell in the comments of her blog, which was ultimately not a good use of my time or hers, since the topic at hand seems to be an emotional one. Sorry, Sara.

Spore will be here soon, I guess next week. Not convinced it’ll be great, but that didnt’ stop me from pre-ordering. I think it’ll at least be interesting from a ‘student of games’ point of view. And then a week or so later, Headstart for Warhammer Online starts. So lots of excitement coming in.

And thanks to Grimjakk, I just ordered an “Omnibus” edition of some Warhammer novels to get me in the mood for the game. I so blindly followed his suggestion that I’ve already forgot the title. Heh.

I dunno, I’m a little sick of the hyperbole of the blogosphere. So many bloggers declaring absolutes that aren’t, citing facts that only exist in their own mind, and so on. We all get swept up in these things, I guess. But it’d be nice if we could all try to remember that just because we feel certain things are or are not important, it doesn’t mean everyone else feels the same way.

WAR vs LOTRO: Why I may try to play both

Posted on by Nimgimli

Following up on my last post, I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings Online, and looking forward to the launch of Warhammer Online. The sensible thing would be to drop LOTRO when WAR hits. But I might not. And here’s why.

You hear the term “theme park” applied to MMORPGs a lot. What it means if an MMO is a “theme park” is that the player is guided from place to place and taken on various “rides” along the way. Warhammer Online, from what I’ve seen of it, is very much a “theme park” MMORPG. You log in, you immediately start questing and fighting and progressing in various ways. It feels like a pretty high-energy game. Mythic hasn’t put in fishing or smoking or even dancing (a staple of MMORPGs everywhere, for some reason). There’s no personal housing. Warhammer is very much a GAME. And I like that. It’s goal focused. Always moving. Always getting “wins.”

LOTRO, on the other hand, has all of that, but it feels a lot more low-key, and there is a lot of what Mythic calls “fluff” in it. You can sit around in an Inn blowing smoke rings, playing a lute, and listening to people gossip. You can spend some quiet time fishing, or go out collecting wood or veggies. You can decorate your house. LOTRO is still a theme park, but it’s a much more laid back one. Lots of quests require spending time to gather a group of folks to aid you (here’s hoping Mythic’s “Open Grouping” system gets copied by other devs). There’re lots of places to relax and socialize, and in this way it feels a bit more ‘virtual worldish’ to me. Sometimes I log in and just hang around the Prancing Pony and make no ‘progress’ but still have an enjoyable time.

I like both of these styles of gameplay and I’m definitely not saying one is better than the other, though of course we all have personal preferences and one might be better suited to YOU, dear reader. I happen to like them both, so perhaps I’ll try to keep a toe in the LOTRO waters while I’m fighting my way through the tiers of WAR.

Back to Middle Earth

Posted on by Nimgimli

So after I flamed out on Age of Conan, and used up my free EQ2 time, I was stuck with no MMO to play for August and the start of September. I didn’t want to burn out on the War beta, so I turned to Lord of the Rings Online.

When LOTRO first shipped, I signed up as a Founder (Lifetime) member. I’ve never regretted it, even though LOTRO hasn’t been something I play constantly. But I did it so I’d have a ‘fall back’ for just such times as these (I was actually unemployed when I bought the Founder membership; money was starting to get tight and I wanted to ensure I’d always have a good quality MMO to play).

Thing is, even though I’ve been playing on and off since launch, my highest level character was all of 23. I ran into some focus problems early on during my adventures in Middle Earth. I’m an alt-aholic in every game I play, so I was playing around between a bunch of characters. To make things worse, my friends kind of split between two servers (Landroval and Elendilmir) and I had duplicate classes on the two.

But the final nail in the coffin for me was Bree. One of the biggest problems I have with LOTRO is that Bree feels like such a bottleneck, with every race and class having to spend some time there. Which means every alt ends up doing the same quests, which meant, for me, that boredom set in. I’d log in, putter around doing Green quests, and log out, making little to no progress. Then something else came out to attract my easily distracted attention (Tabula Rasa, maybe) and I left LOTRO behind completely.

Until earlier this month. This time I focused on one solo-friendly class (Champion) and ignored all my alts. I joined a Kinship (though that didn’t last long…nice people but just not the right levels for me). I started doing PUGs for Fellowship quests, and was astounded that generally speaking that wasn’t sucking. I still struggled when I hit level 20 or so and was faced with (it seemed) nothing *but* Fellowship quests, meaning I had to have a good solid block of free time to progress. I almost quit, right there at the same level my 23 Hunter had. Something about those early 20’s just feel slow and thick and painful to wade through, to me. But sheer stubbornness helped me press on. I wasn’t going to have 2 characters stuck at the same level!

Last night I hit level 25. That meant I got to use my freebie “Founder’s Horse” (not as fast as a ‘real’ horse but still nice). I also bought my first house, which was kind of fun. Having a background in EQ2 does make the house decorating in LOTRO seem pretty anemic though. On the other hand, your house is a house, with a yard and neighbors, compared to the apartments of EQ2. And I’m finally pushing out into areas I’ve never seen, thank goodness!

It was a shock coming back though, and curiously I read Tom Chick’s post on this topic soon after I’d gone through the same issues, so I won’t recount them myself:

here’s the other thing that’s difficult about getting back into an MMO after a year away: “Holy cats, what is ALL THIS JUNK in my inventory? Look at all those buttons ON THE HOTBARS? Who can bothered to know all that stuff?” It takes about an hour of wading through grays and reading tooltips and hunting for hotkeys just to get back into the swing of things. At which point it’s “Oh lordy, what are ALL THESE QUESTS? What are these places? Who are these quest vendors? WHERE DO I GO?”

– Lord of the Rings Online: …and back again

The other odd thing is that everyone assumes you have a “main” somewhere and that you’ve done quests already. I zipped through a few quests in the Lone Lands last night so fast (had 2 level 50’s powering through everything, along with 4 23-25s) that I never even realized we’d completed the quests. Somebody carried a statue somewhere… I never even saw it.

I’m really conflicted about this, because I do enjoy the lore and like a good fight. On the other hand, clearing out a bunch of Fellowship-required quests in a single highly-chaotic hour was nice.

But WAR is Coming. When September 18th hits I’ll be all over Warhammer Online, and what will happen to LOTRO then? I’d love to say I’d keep playing it, as it offers things Warhammer doesn’t. But I’m just not sure there’s enough hours in the day to play two MMORPGs.

Warhammer Online Preview Weekend Begins

Posted on by Nimgimli

Actually, the title of the post says it all. A friend who has been playing in the Preview Weekend says that the servers are crowded but that everything is going very smoothly, with no crashes, very little lag, and almost no waiting to finish quests.

Let’s hope its an indication of what the live launch will be like.

Me, I’m going to be playing LOTRO this weekend. I’m very much anticipating the WAR launch, but I just can’t take another start and wipe at the moment. I want the next character I create to be my “forever character” (to borrow and pervert a term from the animal rescue people).

And I’ve been enjoying LOTRO more than I have since launch, but that’s a topic for another post.

Warhammer: The Hating Begins

Posted on by Nimgimli

So much fuss is being made in the Warhammer Online fan community about a post at a site called Virgin Worlds. I’d never heard of the site but I’m sure the author had never heard of me, either. But the Warhammer bloggers seem riled up by this fellow. Anyway you can read his rant here.

I’m tired of responding to the post in the comments at 101 different Warhammer blogs so I’ll just respond to it here.

I guess it depends a lot on what you enjoy about these games. This Brent dude is clearly sick of MMORPGs as we have come to know them. He wants *something else*. But how is that Warhammer’s fault?

Personally, I don’t want *something else*. Games like The Agency look interesting but I don’t really want an action-MMORPG. I want a stat-based game. I like stat-based games.

Current MMORPGs to me are like the old Avalon Hill or SPI wargames. I didn’t need totally new game mechanics to buy a new wargame. In fact, I didn’t *want* new mechanics that I’d have to learn all over again. What I wanted was a new game covering different subject matter, with a few “Special Rules” to make it slightly different.

Brent even acknowledges that it is “OK” for strategy games to work that way. Also its OK for puzzle games and FPS to maintain the same basic mechanics. But he has deemed that this is not Good Enough for MMORPGs, then he “jumps the shark” and says MMORPGs won’t be good enough “until we have environments nearing or exceeding those described in Snowcrash”. When I read that my eyes rolled so hard I was dizzy.

I’m thinking Brent just likes the attention, and hey, it’s working for him. It got me to his site for the first time. But slagging Warhammer Online for being exactly what it has promised to be is pointless. It’s like saying “I hate football and I hate sports games, and Madden ’09 is NO FUN.” Well of course if you’re playing a game-type that you don’t like, it isn’t going to be any fun. Duh.

If Mythic had been claiming that Warhammer Online was going to be some revolutionary virtual-reality game to rival Snowcrash, then Brent would be justified. I must have missed that press release.

Warhammer NDA Lifted, a cry of WAAAGHH!! fills the internet

Posted on by Nimgimli

So the NDA is lifted, huzzah!

A million war bloggers are posting a billion beta posts, great walls of text that will numb your mind.

Not me.

I’m going to tell you that my time in the Warhammer Beta has been a hell of a lot of fun. But character wipes have been frequent which is why I’ve backed away from it for now. Each ‘faction’ (3 per side) has its own starting area and starting quests, but still I’ve played them all a couple of times now and I just don’t want launch day to start with a sigh and a mutter of “OK, let’s get through this again.”

WAR: NDA lift-off and Preview Weekend

Posted on by Nimgimli

So the further Warhammer Online buzz today is that the NDA is expected to be lifted tomorrow, and comes with a big reveal as to why its been in place for so long. We’ll see.

Unlike a lot of bloggers, I don’t have a bunch of beta impression posts written and ready to roll out. Honestly there’s been so much Warhammer Online coverage around I should think we’re about at capacity. I will write up a quick post of my general impressions I suppose, just so I can go all fanboy for a while.

Other news is that the “Preview Weekend” is this coming weekend plus some, August 22nd – August 25th. This is an “invite-only” event, and it looks to me like you have to have pre-ordered to get invited. I suppose if you’re invited you’ve already got the email and if you weren’t, then you probably don’t care about the event! 🙂