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!)

Upcoming Changes to the Dastardly “Hounding Fear”

Tony posted this on January 22nd, 2010. It has No Comments »
Categorized as News, Patch.
Tagged as , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2607

Hound­ing Fear is one of those mob skills that has always been a cen­ter of debate. In the past I would say it was overused, but Tur­bine has made an effort to change that over var­i­ous updates. Today I came across this post on the forums from LOTROSys­tems with some clar­i­fi­ca­tion on how Hound­ing Fear cur­rently works and what is planned for the future:

Hound­ing Fear.

This has been the sub­ject of many threads, com­plaints, frus­tra­tions, and argu­ments. We’ve responded in the past to some of these threads try­ing to explain things a bit (feel free to hunt them down if you wish). We also made a sig­nif­i­cant adjust­ment to Hound­ing Fear with Moria: reduc­ing the chance of it land­ing on you when fight­ing mobs lower level than you. Cur­rently, you actu­ally have a 0% chance of get­ting hit by Hound­ing Fear when being attacked by mobs that are gray to you.

The rea­son we’re respond­ing to this (newest) thread is because the game has changed a bit: Skir­mishes, specif­i­cally sol­diers. We want sol­diers to be able to pro­tect play­ers the best they can, and we also want play­ers to be able to pro­tect their sol­diers the best they can. Hound­ing Fear ham­pers that a bit. If you’re able to heal your sol­dier and try­ing to run over to him but get slowed by Hound­ing Fear, you might not get in range in time to save him. Therefore…

The effect “Hound­ing Fear” is being removed from Skir­mishes AND from Landscape.

Now, you might be say­ing: “Pro­tect­ing your Sol­dier? That is your rea­son for remov­ing it when there’s so many bet­ter ones that have existed this whole time!?” What it comes to is that this was the final straw. We’ve debated back and forth for a long time now about the mer­its and flaws of Hound­ing Fear: what we were try­ing to achieve with it, how we were suc­cess­ful and unsuc­cess­ful with our goals, what the con­se­quences will be if we remove it.

We hope this change will be for the bet­ter in the short term and the long term. We feel this is the right choice to make (though, to be fair, we always make the choices we make think­ing they’re the right ones). Should it have been made sooner? Maybe. Will it back­fire hor­ri­bly because of some unfore­seen con­se­quence? Hope­fully not.

Thank you for all of your feed­back. We do pay atten­tion to your con­cerns and try and act upon them when we are able to (assum­ing we agree with you, of course ;) ).

So things appear to be chang­ing for the bet­ter for all you Skir­mishes out there.

Welcome Back Weekend: This Time with Free Stable Travel!

Tony posted this on January 21st, 2010. It has No Comments »
Categorized as News.
Tagged as , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2600

It’s another Wel­come Back Week­end in LOTRO, but this time there’s some­thing dif­fer­ent going on. The bonus XP for mob kills has been reduced to 5%, but to make up for this all sta­ble travel is free. FREE!

I hon­estly like this a heck of a lot bet­ter, as it’ll ben­e­fit every­one across the game. It also encour­ages return­ing and new play­ers to see more of the world and the things that have been changed.

The event starts today and runs through Jan­u­ary 25th.