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.

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.

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.