LOTRO: Lord of the Revenue Online

Money money money…..MONEEEY!

According to Rock Paper Shotgun and Develop Turbine has scored another
success with their newly turned free to play MMO, Lord of the Rings
Online. Apparently since the game went free to play they’ve
increased their revenue three fold.

I have to
imagine the guys at Turbine are both extremely pleased and very
angry at the same time. Sure, they’re making much more money now
with their two free to play games than they ever did before, but
now they’ve used up all of their MMOs. What are they gonna make
free to play now? Perhaps we’ll see a relaunch of the Turbine
website in the near future. They could add a cash shop to purchase
forums, help, game information etc. They’d probably also make a ton
of money doing it.

I’m personally pretty happy
about this. I only have so much money, but I have a ton of MMOs I’d
love to play. Turbine succeeded this well with both of their games
could lead to many more MMOs going free to play. As long as they
aren’t SOE I’d say there is a good chance I’ll enjoy any of the
MMOs I’m interested in going free to play.

Well,
back to gaming.

Game Updates!

I’ve been playing many a game lately. These are a few updates from some of them.

 

I’ve been playing mostly Fallen Earth lately and I’ve finally made my ATV Key. The way mounts work is you craft a key, but when you use that key it spawns the mount in the world. It can NEVER again be mailed, or put back into your bags or the bank. You can only stable/garage it, and you can only have one active and in the world at a time.

I have not used my ATV Key, as it was a requirement to research Motorcycle building. I’ve since researched and learned that, and I’m on my way to making my first Motorcycle key. I’ll keep that one around until I can make a Cargo Motorcycle, since that’ll be the first thing that has more storage than my horse. Not to mention I got a free regular Motorcycle from the Clan I joined, which is really nice.

My character, Connor Toth, is a melee crafter with healing capabilities. I haven’t grouped yet, but at level 14 I’m about the right level to get a group together for Kingman Prison. It’s not an instance in the classical World of Warcraft style from what I understand, but I’m looking forward to getting it done and getting some AP for it.

Darkfall is having a welcome back special, a free 14 day’s for anyone who had an account. I read about it on Hardcore Casual and just as I thought “Maybe I should give it another try” I got an email from them. Now when I played (See not very long) it was back when the game only had an EU server, my internet sucked, and my PC couldn’t really handle it. I switched my EU account for an NA account free of charge and created a character. I’m still not sure what the race is called, but if any game allows me to be a Werewolf, the only thing I would ever choose over that would be a rat person. So naturally I am the games Werewolf-ish race.

Sadly, because of the age of my account, I do not have the newbie protection. Luckily, after eight hours in the game, I haven’t died to a player yet. I HAVE died to several goblins, especially those damn Goblin Shaman. I’ve followed the tutorial video’s that are linked to on Hardcore Casual and it’s been a blessing. I’ve since abandoned following it, and I’m getting most of the low level quests, but I doubt I would have been able to get my bearings without those videos.

I’ve made a lot of progress, having gotten an OK set of armor, a two handed sword from the vendor, a really nice quest bow that has allowed me to start three shotting Goblin Scouts, and a magic staff. Well, many of the staffs, which I keep in the bank.

I’ll make another full post about Darkfall at a later date, but I’m having a blast so far. I’ve run and escaped from several decked out players so far, and the adrenaline rush of just fighting a newbie area goblin is such a strange feeling that I can’t help but log in and keep going. I’m also a simple steedleaf (I think that’s the name) away from getting my first mount, which will be kept in the bank until I can get a few more mounts.

I haven’t mentioned LOTRO much since me and the wife resubbed to WoW, but we’ll be back in Middle Earth this weekend! We’re going to hopefully turn in our tokens to get our Spring Horses and maybe get a couple of levels and enjoy the festivities. The wife is really looking forward to it. She hasn’t had much time to play games lately, so she’s itching for an MMO fix.

That’s it for now, expect more on Darkfall tomorrow. And Fallen Earth.

New Rank and the Death Rattle of a Computer

That’s right, Amuntoth is now Commander 2. I only had about an hour to play last night after classes but I managed to get in a really fun mission. It was a raid on a Romulan planet that started with my team infiltrating, taking out some space resistance, transporting to the surface to rescure some Starfleet officers, one of whom you will see at some point on here. We then had to destroy some weapons they were making, then transport back to the ship and join over 15 NPC Starfleet ships against the same number of NPC Romulan ships.

Overall I had a blast with the episode and it reminded me why I am playing Star Trek Online at the moment. I’ve also started playing World of Warcraft again with my wife (probably going to switch between this and LOTRO, which is what we tend to do). I usually have one MMO I’m subbed to with my wife, usually WoW or LOTRO, and then one for myself, which at the moment is STO. You won’t hear much WoW related from me on here, unless it is in relation to another topic, as that is pretty much covered in other blogs and I’d hate to run my readers away.

Sadly though her computer is having some serious issues and may not be around much longer. I’ve done most of what I could and it MAY or MAY NOT be fixed, depending on the whims of whatever spiteful deity that has decided to house itself in our computers and cause all kinds of problems.

In the past three years I have had two different computers ignite in flames, both in different houses with different power cords and different everything. Hopefully that’s not going to happen this time. We’ve done all the usual and it appears it might be here graphics card. I currently have hers in my computer and mine in hers. I’m hoping that it’s just some weird conflict with her other hardware, but I’m pretty doubtful. I expect the dang thing to die any minute now so if you don’t hear from me for a day or two and then I upload a huge rant, that’s probably what it is.

That or the penguins HAVE risen up and started their invasion of human occupied lands. In that case may God have mercy on our souls, and our computers.

This is the only thing I see when I close my eyes…

Giving LOTRO another chance.

The wife got pretty angry at LOTRO last weekend, and truth be told so did I. We tried the duo skirmishes, something we have been excited about for a while now. We spent about four hours respawning, yelling, cursing and having one of the worst times I’ve ever had in an MMO. Are we undergeared? Not according to our guild mates. Are our skirmish pets underpowered? Maybe a little but it’s hard for us to tell. Do we have to wrong pets for our class combination? Again hard to tell.

Anyway this led to us both ragelogging. My wife needs an extra day or two more than me when this kind of thing happens so I was left feeling kind of bored and I decided to roll a new LOTRO alt. This time I picked a hobbit burglar and got him up to level 20 in just under 24 hours played. This is by no means a speed record, but I did complete every quest and deed in The Shire before I moved on, which is part of the reason it took so long.

I had a really fun time though. Me and the wife have been at levels 35-40 for about four months now it seems because every time we log on we try Skirmishes and are completely obliterated for hours until we quit, having gained very little of anything. It was nice to just level and have fun in the game again. Even the pie deliveries were enjoyable. I think once she’s ready to play again we’ll abandon Skirmishes for good and just level, quest and have fun.

Below is a link to my Burglar on Landroval, Undor. Feel free to send me a text in game.

Undor.

A day at the Festival!

LOTRO is a unique MMO for me. I enjoy playing it but it’s never grabbed me like other MMOs, never made me want to stay and play for months on end without thinking of other games. Sadly I never bought the lifetime subscription as that would alleviate my guilt about being subscribed for months at a time without playing.

Another thing that limits my LOTRO playing is that it’s become the MMO I play with my wife. She’s played games all her life but only got into MMOs with World of Warcraft. Since then we’ve tried them all. For a while we playing WAR together, then we bounced around and finally we landed on LOTRO. We don’t have tons of time to game together like we used to so LOTRO ends up taking a back seat as we mess around with our other games/projects.

We decided to load up the game today and maybe get to level 40 (we’ve been 38 for a while now). Then we discovered that it was the Spring Festival! I have to get something out there right up front. Me and my wife are event whores. If there is a holiday or special event in an MMO we want to be there and we want to enjoy it. This started for me in Ultima Online with their developer run events, and moved into WoW with it’s holiday’s.

Sadly it seems the racial dances are the same as the Winter Festival dances so we didn’t bother doing those, but there is a version of Whack-a-Mole that is hilarious fun. You run around a yard and swing boots at these mole like creatures. There’s three versions of it with the regular one requiring you to stomp three Shrews, the medium giving you a time limit to stomp said Shrews, and the final version which requires you to stomp ten Shrews AND plant 5 seeds. I was lucky and managed to do this first time, while also getting the huge Shrew. Doing the hard one was the final bit I needed to get the title “Spring Dandy” which I will never use, for obvious reasons.

There are actually several really fun Spring Festival challenges including an entire quest hub built around a hedge maze which I found particularly enjoyable. Another notable quest was Bullroarers Challenge in the Shire which required you to get drunk and them walk/jump along a crooked fence top to get to another platform. That would be a multiple manslaughter count in real life but it was a blast in the game. Except for one little detail.

I HATE THE DRUNK EFFECT! I hate it in every game I have ever played that has had it. It makes my eyes hurt, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m unsure if I can turn it off in LOTRO but I’m hoping so because it’s terrible, especially the more drunk you get.

I’m writing this while waiting for the Shrew challenge to start over, and after I finish this I should really try and get at least the last 15% of the level.