It’s Time to Say Farewell

Tony posted this on January 28th, 2010. It has 13 Comments »
Categorized as News, Site Updates.
Tagged as .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2628

This may come as a bit of sur­prise, but I’ve decided to close up MMeOw.

I felt this way a few months ago and was encour­aged by sup­port from fel­low LOTRO blog­gers and pod­cast­ers. I stuck it out and, in many ways, I was happy I did.

Still, I know what it is that I’d like to do … unfor­tu­nately, that means let­ting go of this site. There are too many other things I need to do and wish to accom­plish, things I want to learn, places I want to go. True, MMeOw in and of itself is not pre­vent­ing those things nec­es­sar­ily, but I spend a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time, money and energy on it. While I still love the game and plan on con­tin­u­ing to play it reg­u­larly (it’s almost all I play it seems!), my pas­sion for writ­ing about it and main­tain­ing this site has dwindled.

I’ve really loved writ­ing here and I hope other peo­ple have enjoyed it as well. The LOTRO and extended MMORPG com­mu­nity have really been won­der­ful toward me and this site. I’ve appre­ci­ated the kind words and help along the way. I’m prob­a­bly most sorry that it’ll dis­ap­point some peo­ple in doing this, but I think you’ll for­give me :) .

MMeOw was some­thing I wanted to do because, at the time, there were rel­a­tively few LOTRO blogs out there. Now there’s quite a few of excel­lent ones out there, headed up by some really great peo­ple. I think this makes it a lit­tle eas­ier to move on (please don’t read this wrong, as I don’t want to over­state my impor­tance). I encour­age any­one who vis­its here to check out the LOTRO Combo Blog, which links to quite a few of them. As of right now, I plan on leav­ing that run­ning indef­i­nitely; how­ever, if any­one wants to pick up the reins on that, let me know.

If you still want to know what I’m up to, you can visit my more per­sonal site, radish​.me, or fol­low my non-MMeOw twit­ter.

Thanks!


Clarification on Barad Guldur Gate Issues

Tony posted this on January 27th, 2010. It has No Comments »
Categorized as News, Patch.
Tagged as , , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2624

This morn­ing, LiuT­sieng posted a brief expla­na­tion on how the gaunt­let sys­tem for Barad Gul­dur is sup­posed to work. After the bug fix for the gate issue in this area, some things have been adjusted.

We don’t do a great job of com­mu­ni­cat­ing the way the gaunt­let works, so here’s what’s hap­pen­ing in that pic:

 — You have 40 min­utes from the time you kill the last two armored guards at the end of the gaunt­let to kill Durch­est with­out hav­ing to reclear the gaunt­let.
 — 39 min­utes after you’ve killed those guards, you’ll get a warn­ing mes­sage. Some­thing to the effect of, “You hear the sound of rein­force­ments in the halls, they are com­ing..“
 — A minute after that warn­ing mes­sage, you’ll receive a mes­sage stat­ing some­thing to effect of, “Rein­force­ments have arrived, this is your last chance.“
 — At this point you’ve had 40 min­utes of free attempts on Durch­est. Any cur­rent attempts will need to be fin­ished up, after which the gaunt­let will reset.

If you’ve been try­ing to pre­vent a respawn of the gaunt­let, you’ll see the sit­u­a­tion in that pic­ture. Sim­ply walk to the entrance (you don’t need to leave the instance, just walk to the door). You should see the front gate raise, an instance bill­board indi­cat­ing that you will have to reclear the gaunt­let, and then the gate should lower.

This is why most groups aren’t see­ing this. If you kill Durch­est before the gaunt­let timer is up you shouldn’t notice a thing. If you con­sis­tently attempt Durch­est with every­one dying and then reviv­ing at the entrance, you shouldn’t notice this. If for some rea­son you do though, walk to the entrance, let the gate raise, then lower, then reclear.

Hope­fully if you’ve been hav­ing some issues, this will clar­ify things a bit.

Return to Moria: Day 3

Tony posted this on January 26th, 2010. It has No Comments »
Categorized as Editorials and Thoughts, Eluveril in Moria.
Tagged as , , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2622

The dwarves of the Deep Descent seemed pleased with what Elu­veril had accom­plished. A few of them told her she should move on to the Cham­ber of the Cross­roads. This proved to be pretty sim­ple as she’d been there before; a quick pay­ment to the local sta­ble keeper and she was on her way.

The Cham­ber of the Cross­roads itself is a rel­a­tively small area on the far east­ern side of Durin’s Way. The sur­round­ing area turned out to be sur­pris­ingly con­fus­ing, with rises and falls and a mul­ti­tude of dead ends. It didn’t help that the ene­mies that prowled the area, par­tic­u­larly to the north and the east, were still par­tic­u­larly strong. It turned out that the dwarves were sim­ply ask­ing too much of her. While she could take on a sin­gle Mer­roval, she never was able to make it to their actual roost­ing grounds. Sim­i­larly, while she could take on most lone gob­lins in the area, they tended to form groups around the drums she was asked to destroy. It was a los­ing game.

Some time was also spent help­ing Bori, who had me run­ning what appeared to be a fool’s errand: find­ing a leg­endary mithril axe. She’s not had too much luck yet, unfortunately.

It was decided that more time should be spent build­ing her skills and strength. Elu­veril killed a good many gob­lins, bats and wargs. She even man­aged to gather some leg­endary weapons, all of which were quickly iden­ti­fied and decon­structed. While the Frost Rune-stone she cur­rently uses isn’t ideal, a Lightning-based one has yet to pop up.

Moria has offered a nice assort­ment of met­als and ores as well, but in order to refine and smelt, Elu­veril has to find a forge. So far, she’s not had much luck, but the Twenty-first Hall is said to con­tain one. This area is even fur­ther east, but the route so far has been sur­pris­ingly quiet. The halls that lead there are immense, open and bright … Not some­thing orcs and gob­lins seem to pre­fer. Hope­fully she’ll reach her des­ti­na­tion soon.

Next time, Elu­veril keeps help­ing Bori and advances to the Twenty-first Hall.

(My apolo­gies for the short update and lack of images… My com­puter crapped out on me. All is good now!)

To Alt, or not to Alt…

Almazar posted this on January 25th, 2010. It has 1 Comment »
Categorized as Editorials and Thoughts.
Tagged as , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2617

Cre­at­ing an Alt in not a easy deci­sion for me to make. It’s a great respon­si­bil­ity to bring a new char­ac­ter into Middle-Earth, and I want to make sure that I’m going to be able to pro­vide for it. The biggest thing for me is: Will I have the time? Usu­ally the answer is no, and I promptly ignore this and cre­ate the Alt anyway.

So what dri­ves me to cre­ate an alt? There are a few dif­fer­ent reasons:

  • I want to play the game with­out out-leveling the group that I’m play­ing with at the time.
  • I want to be able to play a dif­fer­ent “role” in a group that I’m play­ing with.
  • I want to try out a new game mechanic that is only avail­able with that class.
  • I’m bored/frustrated with what I’m doing with my main at that moment.

I have been play­ing MMOs for so long now that I’ve got­ten fairly good at notic­ing the way in which the game “works.” Each game tends to have a pat­tern that it fol­lows for effi­cient lev­el­ing, and if you fig­ure out that pat­tern, and fol­low it, you can level fairly quickly and with min­i­mal effort. There are some excep­tions out there of course, Star Trek Online and Star Wars Galax­ies being notice­able ones, that fol­low a dif­fer­ent pro­gres­sion path than “lev­el­ing”, but most MMOs have that in common.

What this means to me is that I tend to out-level sta­tic groups that I play with. I’ll get on for an hour while my wife watches TV, or just pop on for a quick skir­mish and oooops, another level. This is quite frus­trat­ing for the other mem­bers of the group, and it affects the group expe­ri­ence that we’re hav­ing. I’ll be over­pow­ered com­pared to some other mem­bers of the group which makes it not fun, as they start to feel that they are not contributing.

So I’ll often cre­ate an Alt because I still want to play the game, but I don’t want to end up 4 – 5 lev­els ahead of the group.

I also find that I like to play ALL of the “roles” in a group. I’m happy tank­ing, heal­ing, dps’ing or buffing/de-buffing. Both of my “main” char­ac­ters at the moment are tanks, so one of my “main Alts” (now isn’t that an oxy­moron!) is a hunter, so now I can expe­ri­ence a DPS char­ac­ter. It changes the way that I approach each encounter with ene­mies and stops me from going on autopi­lot as I play, which I might be known for doing with my mains every once in a while.

One of the rea­sons that I love Lord of the Rings Online so much is that is has a great diver­sity of game mechan­ics in the dif­fer­ent classes. Yes, there are classes that play very sim­i­lar, but most classes have some sort of game mechanic built around them. We all know about the War­den and the gam­bit sys­tem, but there is also the Guardian’s set of skills that only become avail­able after you have par­ried or blocked an attack. There are the dif­fer­ent tiers of bal­lads that Min­strels have. There are the tricks for Bur­glars. And the list goes on. I enjoy try­ing out these dif­fer­ent mechan­ics, and that’s what often dri­ves me to cre­ate another Alt.

I might also have a lit­tle bit of an atten­tion prob­lem. I find myself get­ting tired if I’m “grind­ing” through some con­tent. Some­times, how­ever, it’s just sim­ply that I’m tired of that class. So instead of log­ging on to my main, I’ll cre­ate an Alt.

Just one of these rea­sons is rarely enough to cause the cre­ation of a new alt. I find that a com­bi­na­tion of these sit­u­a­tions leads to my alt-aholism. There are just too many cool new things to try, and you never know when a group might need an *insert class/role here.”

Hi, my name is Chris, and I’m an alt-aholic. And that’s OK.

To Kin or Not To Kin…That Is The Question

Taliesin posted this on January 22nd, 2010. It has 2 Comments »
Categorized as Editorials and Thoughts, News.
Tagged as , , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2612

I’ve been with­out a kin for over 6 months now and while it does get bor­ing talk­ing to myself in chat, I have to say I’ve sur­vived pretty well with­out one. I’ve filled my hours work­ing on craft­ing and doing as many solo quests as I can. I do occa­sion­ally group with a friend or two for the 3-mans or to knock out lower level quests. But lately I’ve been miss­ing the raid­ing I used to do in my old kin and have been look­ing for a new one. What am I look­ing for in a kin? One that has fun and knows how to raid.

Herein lies the dilemma. I’m not a hard­core raider, but I do like hav­ing the bits of shiny for my toons. I don’t need to be the first to down the boss or have the instance on farm sta­tus, but a girl likes some swag, you know?

Then what are the options out there for the “casual raider”? Well, you can try to form a sta­tic group with peo­ple from dif­fer­ent kins, but you might run into some issues with fig­ur­ing out the loot rules as every­one will have a dif­fer­ent take on how to divide the loot.  Another option is to do PUGs, but hon­estly, when do PUGs turn out well for you? Almost never.

Seri­ously though, when look­ing for a group to raid with you can join a kin, but that doesn’t guar­an­tee that you’ll be able to raid with them right off the bat. Many kins these days require you sub­mit a raid­ing appli­ca­tion and then have a visual inspec­tion of your gear and stats. The prob­lem with this is that if you’re new to raid­ing (whether it is in gen­eral or on a par­tic­u­lar char­ac­ter) you might not have all your traits maxed out or have the best gear. With that in mind, it is a good idea to “shadow” a kin if you’re able to. By that I mean see if you can join them on a raid or just go quest­ing with them and get a feel for how they play and how the offi­cers treat their mem­bers. Also find out if there is a wait­ing list for raid­ing and if they have mul­ti­ple sta­tic groups that raid. Larger kins do raids at dif­fer­ent times to accom­mo­date alts, so there might be room for you on their sec­ondary raid group. Check out all your options and be well informed before jump­ing into a new kin. There’s noth­ing worse than being known as the per­son that is a ‘kin-hopper”.  Once you’ve run with the poten­tial new kin a few times you can bet­ter decide if you want to make it your home.

If  this doesn’t work out for you, there is one last option and it is my favourite.  Get two or three friends who will do quad box­ing! Put all your toons on auto attack and auto fol­low and hit those raids!  The only draw­backs to this idea are falling off cliffs when you drag that last toon around the cor­ner or hav­ing your toon run into the insta-death water.  But really, other than that it’s a fine idea. You have 4 times the chance at good loot, you get more coin and more XP. A win-win-win-win sit­u­a­tion for everyone.

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