Quick Update

Haven’t posted in a bit, between the holidays and the new baby, my gaming time has been severely limited.

I’m popping into Eve every couple of days to queue up another skill.  I don’t have a real goal in mind just now, so I’ve been using the new certificates to fill out some of my level 1 and 2 skills and get them up to 3-5.

The rest of my playing time has been devoted to LoTRO.  I’ve completed the entrance quests to get into Moria, but before I got too involved there, I decided to go back and clean out some of my old quests.  So I went back to Forochel and finished off the zone.  Next is Angmar where I’m still on Book 7.  I want to finish the rest of the Books before I really focus on getting into Moria full-time.

I hope to get a few more posts in before the end of the year, but if not Happy Holidays.

Why I’m Not Playing Lich King

I have considered getting Wrath of the Lich King several times and resubscribing to WoW.  Each time I do, I think about what level my characters are, and that kills the impulse.  Se, my highest level character is in the mod 40’s.  So I would have to slog through 30 levels of original and Burning Crusade quests to get to the new stuff.  No thanks.

So, how many former WoW players out there are in the same place?  Given the scope of the player base past and present, that number has to be pretty large.

When Burning Crusade came out I snapped it up and re-activated my account.  I was interested in the new races and rolled up a Draenei Mage.  The first 20 levels were great, and I thoroughly enjoyed the new zones.  But after 20, it was back to the same old same old.  To understand how sick I am of the early game content let me point out that I shifted servers from PvP to PvE once and had to restart my main.  I’ve also played quite a few alts to try out some of the different classes and races.  All told, I’ve played through the 1-30 levels nearly a dozen times, and I just can’t bring myself to do that again.

So as well as Wrath is doing, how much better would it sell if there was a way to pull new players or lapsed players with low-level characters into the new content?  Some way to allow players to create a new character at say level 68 so they can jump straight to Northrend?  Blizzard could charge a small fee.  There could be an unlock quest in the 20’s somewhere.  Blizzard could just limit characters created this way to the Northrend continent, or require a quest or gold fee to unlock the other continents.

None of this is unprecedented.  Guild Wars allows players to make a max level character, but only allows access to some basic skills and requires you to play through the game to unlock additional skills.  Dark Age of Camelot developed a similar problem where 98% of the player base was max level and the lower half of the content was empty.  They allowed players to auto level alt characters via a slash command once they’d leveled at least on character to max level normally.

I may get back into WoW eventually, but with the expanding level cap and the way Blizzard has been consistently abandoning old content I doubt it.

Moria D2

After a great first day, I was looking forward to playing again.  While I did spend some time with my hunter, I did not get a chance to play my Warden any further or create a Rune-Keeper.

With my hunter I did finish the Dwarven Expedition quest line, which is gone once you unlock Moria, and several more chapters of the Book 1 quest.  My initial encounter with the Watcher was fun, and the session play flashback to the fall of Khazad-dûm was excellent.  I also received my first legendary item.  When you get your first weapon, in my case a bow, you have to get it identified.  For me, this involved a trip to Thorin’s Hall.  I’m hoping that other classes don’t have to make that same trip, since it is about as far away from the Walls of Moria as you can get.

In Thorin’s Hall, I identified and equiped my bow and then slotted some settings, gems, and runes to add some different bonuses to it.  Slotting these items into the weapon is semi-permanent since you can’t get them back out without having the weapon reforged, although you can slot someting new but you’ll lose whatever is currently in that slot.

After your legendary weapon is ready, then next step is to get it to level 10 by fighting anything that will give you experience.  I mapped back to Echad Dûnann and picked up several quests to get started on levelling my bow.  Like with a new character, the first few levels with a new item come pretty quickly, then the experience curve gets a little steeper.

Moria D1 – Play Experience

You can read about the UI changes for Moria here: Moria D1 – UI Changes.

As a hunter, anytime a new area is opened I check around for the fast travel intro quest.  I was in Forochel so I got the quest to travel to Eregion from an elf wandering the frozen city of Sûri-kylä.  Next, I went to Bree to the Prancing Pony to turn in my preorder tokens for items.  The preorder items were ok.  Mostly just cosmetic but in-line with most of the previous bonus items.  Finally, I travelled to Rivendell before getting on my horse for the short ride through the Trollshaws to Eregion.

Riding into Eregion initially, you come over a ridge into Glad Ereg and the elven camp of Gwingris.  Glad Ereg looks much like any other hilly woodland in Middle-Earth.  I wasn’t sure how packed the new area would be, especially given the fact that Moria itself must be unlocked, although I was hoping that it would be heavily populated (meaning that the expansion was selling well).  Eregion was heavily populated, but not so much that I couldn’t complete quests. From Gwingris in Glad Ereg I explored south into High Hollin and Low Hollin, finding the camps of Echad Eregion, Mirobel, and Echad Dûnann.  Echad Dûnann became my new base camp, as that’s where the fast travel quest giver is located as well as the entrance to Moria and the dwarf who gives the Volume 2, Book 1 quest to open the gates.

While Eregion is a beautiful zone, it wasn’t until I entered the Gates of Moria area to start on the Expedtion and Book 1 quests that I had a Weathertop moment.  Basically that describes anytime that I see a landmark in the game that I loved from the books.  Early on in the game, I enjoyed visiting Hobbiton and similar places, but it wasn’t until I entered the Lone Lands and first saw Weathertop in the distance that I really had an emotional involvment in the game.  I had a similar moment the first time I rode around a mountaint corner and saw the valley of Rivendell layed out in front of me.  With Moria, it was climing the stairs to be confronted with the Black Lake.  Even before seeing Durin’s Door, just seeing the lake and the darkened atmosphere was a great moment for me.  Turbine has completely nailed the feeling of these iconic areas, and it made me even more excited to open Durin’s Door and see the interior of Moria.

After working my way through most of the Expedition quests and the first three chapters of Volume 2, Book 1, I decided to try out one of the new classes.  I created a Warden and played through the introduction and the first two quests in Archet (created a Man of Rohan).  It’s wasn’t long enough to know whether or not I’m going to enjoy the class, but it is enough to know that I might.

My next play session, I plan to get through a few more chapters of Book1 and then try out the Rune-Keeper.

After the first few hours, I’m extremely happy with the Mines of Moria expansion, and judging by the chat conversation on Landroval last night, it will only get better.

Moria D1 – UI Changes

Weeks ago I pre-ordered the digital upgrade from Turbine and registered both the pre-order and expansion keys.  Once it became available, I torrented the Moria update patch, and then on Monday installed it.  So, when I got home from work on Tuesday around 6 pm I was able to launch the client right away with the intent of getting some time in on the new content.

Unfortunately, Turbine was in the middle of an emergency patch and the servers weren’t scheduled to be back up until 7:30.  Oh well, that gave me time to do some stuff around the house and take over baby duties from my wife for a bit.

After checking back around 7:30, I found the servers were up and I logged in.  First thing I found out was I was overdue for my housing upkeep, so I pushed enough silver into escrow to carry me through the end of the year.  Then I was ready to play with my level 50 Hunter, who was currently in Forochel.

There were some small UI changes to accommodate the new trait and legendary item buttons.  The icons on the left-side of the bottom-bar were staggered up and down instead of in a straight left to right line.  I liked how Turbine reorganized the bottom-bar without making it any bigger.  I’m always trying to minimize the UI as much as possible so I can see more of the world.

The Legendary Items window is going to remain a mystery for a while since I haven’t yet completed the Volume 2, Book 1.

I like the new Traits window.  It’s a much clearer presentation of the information and it makes traits easier to manage.  At a glance I can see all of the virtues I have slotted and with a quick mouse-over to see what each one does.  I especially like the ring icon displayed on any virtue which has an available deed linked to it.  So I can click on a virtue I’m interested in advancing and jump straight to the deed I need to work on.  Awesome.

There are also quite a few new deeds.  It seems like every time I used one of my abilities I was getting a new deed popup.  Most of these new deeds unlock new class traits.  Also all of thetraits have been reorganized into three sets along with set bonuses.  So, now if I slot two or more traits from a set, I get an additional bonus.

A UI change I wasn’t expecting was moving a lot of the quest item junk from my bags to a quest bag.  There’s really no bag space to look at, but the items show up in the quest log for which ever quest they belong too.  Unfortunately some items didn’t move, since anything that needs to be used or traded needs to be accessible.  Overall a definite improvement and one of the features from Warhammer that I was hoping other MMO’s would copy.

Another minor change was upping the number of active quests from 40 to 43.  Not a big increase, but still appreciated.  I constantly have to cancel quests to make room for new ones.  If only there was no limit.

That’s it for the initial UI impressions; I’m going to break my initial play experience out into another post.

Moria T-7 Days

Only seven more days until Mines of Moria goes live!

Unfortunately, I have had no time to play games recently.  My son, Lukas, was born on October 31st (yup Halloween baby), so my evenings have been dominated by diaper changes, feeding schedules, and anything else I can do to support my wife.

This means that any games I play cannot require more than one hand and must be pausable, so no MMO’s.  We’ve also had a lot of company staying with us, so no Xbox for me since the living room is always in use.

I did get to play World of Goo (which I got through Steam) for about 45 minutes on night.  I was trying to get the baby to sleep and needed something to keep me awake.  But that’s been it for the last 12 days.

My son will only be 18 days old when Moria releases, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can get a full hour of play-time during the first week.  I may not be able to do much with my Hunter, but hopefully I can get some time with the new classes.

Moria, Moria, Moria

I’m really looking forward to the new expansion, especially the new areas.  I’m primarily an Explorer, so any new area is going to interest me.  But, I’m looking forward to the day when I can explore Long Lake and the Lonely Mountain, and this it the first major step closer to that day.

The current game does a good job of giviing the impression of distance.  The world feels big.  If I see a mountain peak or a ruined castle, more often than not I can get to it.  Once there I can look out and see out to the horizon.

Also the new classes look pretty cool.  I’m excited to try both the Warden and Rune-keeper.  The new play mechanics introduced for each of them are interesting.

Max Level

I’ve play a lot of MMO’s.  I started with EverQuest way back with the original release and played about six months, but I never got past the teen levels.  Next was Dark Age of Camelot.  I played that game for longer, but never reached the max level.  World of Warcraft?  Level 45 on a PVP server.  I rerolled on an RP server to play with a friend, but never got past the twenties.

My goal this past year, ever since the Moria expansion was announced, was to hit max level in LoTRO.  Finally accomplished it yesterday.

Warhammer Impressions 2

In case you missed it, in Warhammer Impressions 1 I talked about the launch and the high-level zone/quest design for the first two tiers

My initial class was an Elven Shadow Hunter.  My primary in LoTRO is a Man Hunter, and in WoW was a Night Elf Hunter.  I have a thing for archery classes.  So I tried out the Shadow Hunter first.  Unfortunately, I absolutely hate the shooting animation.   No bowstring.  No arrow.  The character aims for the sky like he’s firing an English longbow, which would be okay except the 90% of the time he’s shooting at something much closer.   Sometimes you see an arrow fly out and hit the target and sometimes you don’t.  I may be spoiled by LoTRO’s animation, but after about five kills the Shadow Hunter got deleted.  I didn’t even complete the first quest to kill sprites.

My second class was a Dwarf Engineer.  The animations were much more enjoyable, and I really liked the feels of the Dwarf areas better than the Elf starting zone.

Combat overall is good.  A little slow, but not too bad.  I always feel like I have something to do.  PvP has been great fun in the couple of scenarios I’ve tried.

Crafting.  Mmmmm, no.  Crafting seems really last minute to me.  I tried a little bit of both alchemy and talismans and didn’t like either.  Also, there’s no quest introduction.  So far I think both LoTRO and WoW handled crafting better.

Perma-EULA

Accept the EULA every time.  Really?

I have to scroll to the bottom, check a box, and click accept.  Everytime I want to play.  Every time.  Really?  Why.  Who that that was a good idea?  I have enough minor but necessary irritations in my work life, why should I accept a minor but unnecessary irritation in my gaming life?

WoW only requires you to do it after a patch.   Presumably because something changed in the agreement.  I wouldn’t know, I never read it.

That may be why Mythic is handling the Warhammer EULA this way.  But I don’t read this one either.  Why bother?  It’s not like I’m going to disagree with a section and decide not to play the game.  I’ve already opened the box and registered the key.  It’s too late to return it.  It’s also not going to make the EULA any more enforceable in court.

All it does is irritate me whenever I want to login a play a bit.  Which I do too relax.   Always nice to have a relaxation activity that is begins by smaking you in the back of the head.