A Walk Around Ered Luin

What to say about this area. I myself like the mix of the Elven and Dwarven lands as it helped create a unique starter area. I think the story they develop over the quests has worked out very well and gives the player the feeling that they are actually helping out the troubled lands. The amount of quests keeps you going either as a Dwarf or Elf and by the time you get around 15 you are almost done with the area and ready to move on to bigger and better things, once you complete the epic quest line which I will discuss once I have finished in Ered Luin.

The land is broken up into multiple regions with Dwarves and Elves having their own cities but than having a middle ground which is basically the Hunting Lodge. All the major hubs have quests and trainers which makes it easy to travel and find quests and people to sell and repair items. From the Closed Beta they have added crafters and the items needed to craft in all the major quest hubs to make things easier for the aspiring crafters.

I found the monster selection in the area to be diverse and fun. I could fight goblins in Raith Teraig, or go kill dwarven brigands in their city of Khendul. I found that trying to find wolves and hendroyals to be somewhat sparse and seem to force a little bit of running around, which out of the whole area was the least fun part of the region.

Overall I will give the region an A as it kept me interested the whole time. Now I am off with my captain to see how Bree-Land works out as a starter area.

And That's How I Roll

So I just ran my latest adventure in Deadlands and I have to say it was fun as usual. The party started off their discussion on how to deal with Reverend Grimme, as some members thought what happen was crazy where others just accepted it. The group dynamics in that part of the session was very cool. They traveled on to their mission of investigating General Santa Anna’s army in the Maze. As in any adventure you expect that the players will go in some direction not planned but not as crazy as the D&D game I play. So the players ran past the first clue in essence and moved on to the major part of the game in attempting to recover a lost Chalice that multiple groups wanted to attain. One humorous part of the night was that any random stranger met in the woods was always greeted in the same cold matter of the men in the party being ready to throw down. While the women were not as concerned. After obtaining some information they found that the Mexicans of course have control over the group’s arch-nemesis: Zombies, but these zombies can use guns. One member of our group seems to always have bad dice rolling when encountering Zombies and has decided that Zombies are the toughest hombres in the West almost. So they found the Chalice but encountered a Mexican and Confederate regiments facing off outside the cave and they had to fight their way through.

Not sure I like how I ran it and if I do any battles like this later in the campaign I will probably need to think on how to make it feel more epic. I have a couple of ideas, but I will have to see.

Funny Quotes:

Aieslyn: Gadget that Rocket Man
Harrison: That’s how I Roll

LOTRO Traits

One thing I have really liked about LOTRO is their use of deeds and accomplishments. Instead of a character getting free talents at each level, the player is allowed to run around and acquire Virtues, Class, Race, and Legendary Traits which a player can slot to make their character better at specific actions. This is similar to WOW, but instead of a player straight grinding to level up, a player has a reason to explore and grind monsters because they get a benefit from it. If a player explores the country side in the elvish and dwarven areas they can acquire a virtue just by exploring. If you want to go kill some creatures for XP you can choose a creature that gives you a trait in the end. Plus the use of your class skills can give you class traits you can use also. I find this whole system very well thought out as it not only gives players a reward or the feeling of a reward in taking actions many MMO players do anyway but also the class skills can be used to encourage use and learning how to use specific class abilities and how they interact instead of not using them at all like some skills can be. So over all I have found the Trait system to be a big benefit to the LOTRO Game. Again it allows for people with different play styles to have different options and not be pigeon holed.

Schedule

I hope in the next week or so I can write some quick blurbs about Traits & Deeds, the Epic Story, Ered-Luin, and about the Captain 1-10.

Loremaster 1-10

A review of the Loremaster levels 1-10. The last two nights I have been leveling my Loremaster from level 6 to level 10. So now that I have hit 10 I will review how the journey has been so far. The starter area was enjoyable. The quests built up the story that continues on once you complete the starter area. Currently I am at the point where the elves are getting angry at the Dwarves in what they believe is their treachery, but as we know the evil of Sauron is infiltrating the land. The epic quest has been one of the biggest selling points for me so far and keeps me entertained as I explore middle earth.

So now about the Loremaster. I have found that draining a creature’s power can make a tougher fight much easier and casting debuffs like Fire-Lore can make a large difference in combat, especially with multiple mobs attacking your fellowship. The raven helps amplify the damage from burning embers which is the major range spell a Loremaster has for damage. Along with staff strike they make a good combo.

A great utility spell in case no one has healing has been beacon of hope which has saved our fellowship a few times last night. I find that the wind-lore debuff has not been that useful as I have yet to run into to many range based mobs as of yet. Another area that could use some improvement is the response time and movement of pets. They still seem to get stuck and at times they move like they are in lag while I am not. The worse I find is the response to me telling the raven to attack and it literally takes a second of two for it to respond at times. Compared to WOW pets that I have had, it gets frustrating at times.

Otherwise I have found the Loremaster a fun class to play up to 10 so far and look forward to playing it up to 50. So far I would grade the Loremaster an A in very cool abilities, but a B overall until some of the pet issues are fixed. Even with that issue this class will be my main. I am also looking forward to using blinding flash now that I have learned that ability at 10.

More Lotro Pics

A Stroll with the Captain

So Monday night I tried out the Captain class in LOTRO. I was pleasantly surprised as I was not sure I would enjoy it as when I tried it a few times before the class did not clique for me. But on Monday the class was very enjoyable. I wish the heralds came a little earlier as the Captain is the other pet class, but you have to wait to level 10 to get your 1st pet while the Lore master gets his at level 4. Otherwise the captain has some cool melee abilities like defensive strike which has become my staple attack along with rallying cry.

Once I level the Captain to level 10 I will give my level 1-10 review of the class.

Overall: I give Monday night a B+
It was entertaining but I have not been a huge fan of the Human starter area or the beginning quests after you get out of Archet.

Some Pics of Friday Night

Lotro: Friday Night

So by 8pm I was ready to try out the Lord of the Rings Beta online. I had been looking forward to it all week as many of my friends were planning to play. So i got in and created my Elven Loremaster began my quest in Tolkien's world. The first thing that amazed me was the graphics, at very high they were incredible. Then I grouped my friends and after a little work we got the voice chat working which seemed to be a little buggy as it only started working when Oswynn came online. Maderas and myself could not get it to work. Once we got that working we picked up Tenegrim our token dwarf and we began saving the dwarf and elven lands from the evil of Skhogrim. Overall the quests were fun, gave you the chance to interact with the world, but what made the starter area enjoyable is the time the developers took in writing the quests and making sure there was a strong story behind everything. I felt like I was actually part of the story at momentous events and not just a low level punk killing boars. Than we linked up with Dwalin I think and we freed a stupid elf who got caught by goblins and dwarves. We are planning on disowning him in the future.

Overall Session: A+
Seeing the world in new graphics made the game experience great and along with friends and quick run through the starter in 2 hours to get to level 6 made the session and outstanding start to the game.

Star Wars Saga Rules

It looks like WOTC is coming out with a revised rule set for Star Wars in May 07. The idea is they are reducing the classes and creating talent trees based on concepts first used in Modern D-20. This is supposed to allow players to create the characters they want in the Star Wars universe without limiting choices as the old system at time seem to become cumbersome at times in character creation. I am interested to see these changes in action and see if they were able to simplify combat in the D-20 system as I have found from playing D-20, combat can be time consuming compared to other role-playing products currently out like Savage Worlds. I look forward to seeing how it develops as I liked alot of the ideas of D-20 Modern.

LOTRO Open Beta Begins Tomorrow

Tomorrow will be exciting as LOTRO is in it's final stages before it goes live on April 24th. After pre-ordering I look forward to trying out the Loremaster class again after hearing some feedback on the forums that it is now a underpowered class and needs some tweaks. I would like to see if this is true or not. I plan to play on the Elendilmir server. So here we go to Middle Earth.

I will be posting the adventures of my character as time goes on.