Category minecraft

Feb 18 2013

blog moving

I’ve started a new blog at http://www.starandshadow.wordpress.com   If you would like to continue reading, please update your links, readers etc 🙂

I will not be updating this blog anymore, although I will be keeping an eye on it and the posts will remain.

I have transferred some posts over to my new blog – the cook’s guild repast spreadsheet, some useful info posts, the red maid series and the sindarin series.

I’ve moved for a few reasons.  Firstly, I am now getting a lot of spam comments to deal with (even though Akismet saves me from loads), I don’t really want an audience of spammers 😉  Secondly, as this blog is now over 4 years old and was something of a learning process, I have hundreds of posts and screenshots all organised very badly…  Finally, the change from blogging about EQ2 to LoTRO meant I lost focus with what I wanted from writing a blog.  Really I want a place to share screenshots and details of my adventures.  I do occasionally write something that others find useful and I’ll continue posting anything I do like that.  I will also carry on sporadically adding entries to the sindarin and red maid series.

See you all over at the new site 🙂

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Jan 5 2013

2012 roundup

I usually do a roundup of my gaming activities around this sort of time, I suppose I may as well this year too 😉  The 22nd of this month will also mark the 4th anniversary of this blog.  Good grief – 4 years of wittering 😉  anyway, onto the roundup…

Team Orange wearing their spiffy orange outfits ;)

Team Orange wearing their spiffy orange outfits

MMOs
I am still having a lot of fun in lotro (especially with team orange), there are niggles (store + grind) but its where my friends are and its a visually gorgeous, lore rich game.  I expect to be spending most of my MMO time there in 2013.  The only other current contenders are EQ2 and Vanguard on F2P terms.  EQ2 just holds nostalgia and a superb housing / decoration system and Vanguard, well I’d just really like to explore there more.

Single Player Games:
Spent my other gaming time either in Skyrim or Minecraft.  Both great games and this year I will probably also play some Morrowind and I’ve just found Towns (on Steam) which is a fun, addictive, city builder.  There is new content for Skyrim on the horizon and talk of Dragon Age 3 to keep my eye out for too.

The Hobbit:
We went to see this yesterday.  We really, really enjoyed it.  Yes it is a bit long and the addition of Azog did seem a bit unnecessary.  Surprise shock was that I ended up really liking Radagast – bearing in mind I can’t stand Sylvester McCoy as an actor (he ruined Doctor Who for me :P).  As Radagast though, thought he was superb.  Looking forward to the next film.

We do also have Lego Star Wars and Lego Lord of the Rings to play on the PS3 with our littlun.  Both games are a lot of fun, though Star Wars is still his favourite.  We also treated ourselves to new 23″ WS monitors for the desktops, as I was sick of the UI clutter (MMOs) taking up most of the screen.  I cannot believe the difference it has made!  As well as the UI elements taking up much less space (proportionally as well as actually), its as though we have turned the graphics settings up a notch – wasn’t expecting that difference!

Happy New Year 🙂

Oct 15 2012

pirates & horses

I had told myself to not expect to play Lotro today and to just ignore it until tomorrow… but of course I’m patching away and watching twitter like a hawk 😛  I can’t wait to get into Rohan and get my warsteed!

To keep myself amused over the last few days, I’ve been making a pirate island.   Kwyn (on the minecraft forums) had posted an amazing ‘near perfect survival seed’ and it’s just fabulous.  The seed is: -3711951296344799968  The link to the thread is http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1485801-132-near-perfect-survival-island/   So far I’ve made a pirate tavern, some pirate houses and started on the Captain’s Overlook, which is sort of half a ship sticking out of an island…  I’ve added a waterfall to the large cove and jungle trees to the small island cove (I’ve found another land mass to plunder!)

I’m having fun anyway 😛

tavern, with captain’s lookout and waterfall behind
pirate houses
another view of tavern and cove
tavern and cove again
Pirate tavern with a piratey cove behind
erm two creepers and a skelly? right by my house? eeeeeek!
The Argonath viewed from the back
Sep 20 2012

waiting…

Its a funny old time at the moment.  Dimzad had 3 weeks off work, we’ve been away on holiday, the weather is still gorgeous but it is now very definitely feeling rather autumnal.  Our little boy is due to start school next week (first ever day!) and so I’m simultaneously waiting for him to start but at the same time trying to stretch out our last week as well and enjoy these last days before he starts properly growing up 😉

Its reflected virtually too, we’re just noodling about when we do log in, finishing deeds, going through some group content… there’s not a huge point in doing much until the expansion as the gear we have is good enough to level up in and we’ve completed the epic books etc etc.  Roots of Fangorn for the jewellery upgrades is probably the only thing we’re ‘behind’ on but we’re probably going to be getting in there soon so…   I’ve got my lore-master to 73 (though her virtues are shocking :P) and so she will be ready to go for Rohan too (not AS ready as Eldaeriel).   Its very strange but I’m actually enjoying playing her (I don’t normally go for ‘magic’ or support classes).  I like the fact that she has so many tools at her disposal, its a good variety.  I’m enjoying thinking about different things in a fight and its a real change of mind-set from playing my hunter.  Eldaeriel will remain my main but it might be nice to occasionally do something different.

The littlun has also discovered Minecraft and has been having great fun chopping things.  He’s very quickly getting the hang of movement (though I still have to rescue him from very deep holes!), left clicking to chop, right clicking to build.  We’re strictly limiting his play time but its lovely to see him having such fun exploring and finding out ‘what’s over there’.  Anyway, as a surprise I built him a space rocket and he loves it!  Its a creative world type so it was very quick to build (under an hour!) and I kept it simple as I was expecting it to be chopped a lot 😉

 

Aug 1 2012

a shout out to…

… some great sites

MMO Melting Pot:
If you’re not already reading the MMO Melting Pot, you should give it a look.  They showcase the best blog articles on MMORPGs from WOW to EVE, from hundreds of blogs you might not have heard of.  If you want to hear interesting new ideas, discover fun new blogs to read or find out what everyone thinks of the hot new issues – check them out.  They update daily.  This week they’ve covered WoW’s raiding problems and the question of whether attunements should come back, plus the question of whether Guild Wars 2 will be any good, amongst other things! (although by the time I’ve posted this, its probably within the last fortnight :P)

I really enjoy reading this roundup and I like the variety of different games it covers.

Gaming Blog Nexus:
“The Gaming Blog Nexus was created as a direct result of the Newbie Blogger Initiative. It seemed common sense to have a blog aggregation service that collates all the latest posts from the best gaming blogs on the internet.”  Joining is very simple (see this page for details) and they have further information about the site here.  There is a wide range of blogs here, covering many different angles of the gaming/MMO scene, including both well known blogs (such as Bio Break, CSTM) and smaller blogs (such as mine ;))

*EDIT – knew I’d forgotten something – sorry*
Lotro Combo Blog:
This is another great aggregation site, but the focus is on lotro based sites (or a lotro rss feed if you cover lotro plus other games).  If you’re interested see the main page here and information on submitting your site here.

Podcasts:
I really enjoy the following:
Contains Moderate Peril  Too Long; Didn’t Listen  Lotro Reporter  Casual Stroll to Mordor  (Lotro Reporter and CSTM are lotro based whilst the other two are more wide ranging in their topics but do include lotro, MMOs)

Site Admin:
I’ll be putting up an index page for the Tale of the Red Maid series (will be found under the lotro tab above).
I’ve renamed my twitter account to Eldaeriel (link to the right has been updated) as well… its time to move on from the Suzita of EQ2 blogging days.
I do have a Facebook page too, if anyone prefers getting updates from there.

Is anyone linking to me and I’m not reciprocating?  Let me know and I’ll remedy asap.
Talking of the blogroll…  Its pretty unwieldy – anyone got any good ideas on how to organise?

May 31 2012

NBI linkage

OK, so just how fantastic was the Newbie Blogger Initiative?!  pretty damn fantastic if you ask me 😛  I would like to say a HUGE thank you to Syp for organising this, to all the sponsor bloggers for their excellent articles AND to all the new blogs who started up / got revitalised 🙂  I’ve found a ton of excellent new blogs to read (from both the sponsors and the newbies) and I wish everyone the best of blogging luck 🙂

Make sure you check out THE GAMING BLOG NEXUS.  Its a fantastic idea to keep the community created through the NBI going AND to widen your readership AND joining the site is dead easy – go join!!  and thanks to Roger for setting this up 🙂

Ok so here’s the linkage (directly copied from Syp’s post)

New blogs to check out:

Sponsor advice posts:

😀