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.

Ugly? Yeah Probably.

I read MMO Gamer Chicks recent post about her characters and how they all have certain things in common (Adventure Historian made a post on the topic as well!) . It got me thinking and I decided that I would do my own write up with my characters, and man are they ugly.

1. They are all male.

Oh I’ve tried a few females here and there, mostly alts, but I just can’t get into them. I think it’s partly because, while I hardly roleplay in games, I am a roleplayer at heart and I just can’t put myself into the shoes of a female avatar. I know the general excuse guys make, that extreme macho B.S. of “I’d rather look at a girls butt” but I think that’s all to try and clear up any worry of them being “gay” for playing a female toon. Sure, women look MUCH better than men, usually in video games too, and it’s fine to say that you like the aesthetic of a woman toon over that of a man. But when you use the “If I’ve got to stare at a butt” argument it just makes me wonder why you find one or the other sexually arousing. I think MMOGamerChick has it right when she says “I’ll admit the smooth curves of a female avatar are easier on the eyes when you’re staring at a game interface for extended periods of time.” It’s not sexual, or not supposed to be, it’s just fact for some. How did I make this such a long paragraph? Why am I still typing? Oh God this needs to stop.

2. They’re mostly ugly.

Some games require that I play a human, and in those games I generally make myself gruff and “woodsy”. The type of person you probably wouldn’t sit next to on the bus, but choose to stand instead. Others let me pick darker or just strange races, such as giant cow people. The really nice character creation lets me make whatever I want, such as Star Trek Online, and anyone who has seen my character on STO knows that it’s not pretty.

I think the main reason I tend to pick “ugly” races is that I LIVE in this world. I WORK in go to school in this world. I’ve SEEN humans, and they are boring to look at. Give me the option to play something vastly different than the usual and I’m going to jump at the chance.

Another reason may be that I don’t want to blend in with everyone else. Sure in real life I want to remain as anonymous as anyone else, but in game I want people to stop and say “Woah! Let me get a screenshot of this guy!”

The final reason is that it’s harder to come up with stories for strange species, and I really enjoy doing that.

3. They are tending toward the same name.

In this I am the exact opposite of MMOGamerChick in that, while her characters used to be named the same things and are moving apart, mine used to have unique names, each and everyone one of them contemplated on more than their appearance. Now though they all tend to have Amun or Toth in the name, such as Amuntoth, Amunkodo, Connor Toth, etc. I always try and work it in and make it fit lore-wise, at least a little, but I’m trying to make it easier for people to track me from the blog into the game and say high.

After the break will be pictures from some of my characters, so if that doesn’t interest you then no need to wait on the loading. If it does, click away!

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.