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 🙂

Advertisement

exploring Telon

As I’m in a bit of a pre-update 10 lull with lotro (and the server downtime), this week I’ve been playing some Vanguard again.   To get back into the game, I decided to roll a new character (a shaman halfling) in their racial starter area rather than go to the Isle of Dawn.  Although the Isle of Dawn is probably the best all-round newbie experience, I’m preferring being out in the open world, especially as they have revamped the racial starter areas to be more in line with IoD including the rewards.  The Bracelet of Lucky Charms is now available from the questlines found in the Cliffs of Ghelgad, Tursh and Dallerjuba Village.

the zombies

naughty brownies and constructs

naughty books

the tower and the sunset

I began by helping a farmer to deal with zombies afflicting the village graveyard.  The animation on these is great and zombie slaying was a fun way to start.  I was next sent to a guard post where I was asked to deal with some brownies who were creating constructs in another graveyard and some books who were misbehaving and causing a nuisance in the absence of their wizardly owner.  My next objective will be to deal with imps emanating from that tower…  So far, so fun 🙂  The shaman seems to be good fun so far, the damage capabilities seem ok though I don’t know how this will change as I get more into the game ‘proper’, she will get a pet at level 15 so I guess that will be when I start experiencing the class more as it is.  It is refreshing to be in a new world, especially one which is so full of magic – good and bad.

I’ll be picking up some other characters as I’d like to explore Qalia, Kojan and Thestra as much as I can and the continents are huge, so much to find and see!   So I’m looking to have a good soloer on each continent, I have a Dreadknight on Qalia, a Disciple on Kojan and I’m not sure whether to play my Shaman or my Paladin on Thestra.  My Ranger is waiting patiently for Dimzad to pop back in before she gets to go out and play 😉  I’m also hoping to find time to play regularly, although lotro will remain my main MMO for now at least.  If I do manage to play at least somewhat regularly I will resub too.

On a side note, I’m considering starting up a new blog address (and moving some posts over if I do) as I am getting hit by spam comments quite a lot and where this blog is now over 4 years old, it is quite messy and unorganised behind the scenes…  I’ll keep you all posted 🙂

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

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 🙂

Breaking News via The EQ2 Wire — Euro SOE players can stick with SOE

Smed: ProSiebenSat.1 Forced Migration is Dead — Euro SOE Players Can Stick With SOE

Written by Feldon on Tuesday, October 16, 2012 at 10:27 am

Well, this should change the tone and tenor of the ProSiebenSat.1 Panel at SOE Live a bit.

From SOE President John Smedley’s twitter:

[I] wanted to thank our players for continuing feedback. We’ve been listening along with our European partners at Prosieben.

We’ve found a way to let existing players of our current games that are migrating over to Prosieben (EQ, EQ II, Planetside 2) keep their SOE accounts and stay with SOE. Down the road we may offer an option to move over to Prosieben.

Just to be clear after these games launch on Prosieben’s service new accounts will be created on their sites. However all US and EU players can still play together no matter which service they are on.

I want to be clear that Prosieben will have better European CS and payment options IMO. That’s why we went with them in the first place. Also Prosieben has done a great job of listening and is working on changing some of their CS policies. More to come on that soon.

UPDATE

Just going back and forth with our partners at Prosieben. I can confirm that we WILL offer the ability to migrate to Prosieben. No word on timeframe just yet but shouldn’t take too long.

[I] want to make sure I’m crystal clear – after we launch Planetside 2 – new EU accounts can only be created on Prosieben.

This has subsequently been posted on the EQ2 Forums.

via The EQ2 Wire — EverQuest II News & Commentary.

 

Huzzah!!!!  Fantastic News!!!!!

go team orange!

So Aeowulf, Dimzad and I finally got going and decided to finish the Isengard 3-man challenges.  We had completed the Dargnakh T2 challenge back in Spring but we took a break and didn’t complete Fangorn’s Edge and Pits of Isengard on T2 challenge.  We actually found the T2 challenge to be easier than the T1 deed in that instance, although in T2 I am relegated to be on ‘watch’ duty as there no point (and more chance to feck it up) with dps when you need the light to defeat him.  T1 though, we thought would be quicker and easier, but as Aeo (warden) got stunned a lot I really had to watch my dps and keep it low and steady…  It is actually very frustrating to do this and I was close to developing dps tourettes but I managed to resist and we finally killed him 😛

Last week we did Pits on challenge mode and the other night Fangorn’s Edge 😀  Go team orange!!  Its good to have finally finished those although for some reason we did it in reverse order of difficulty…  Pits is sort of a fun zone, the first boss is a very hectic but quite fun fight and the last two bosses are easy in comparison.  Fangorn’s Edge ended up being our nemesis for a while, I just couldn’t get the trolls burned down quick enough as normally I’d get one dead, one nearly dead and then it would all go pear shaped…  We ended up having Dimzad go in dps specced and then he switched between heals and dpsing on the trolls which worked.  So anyways, we were really chuffed to have done those and we now plan to finish the T2 challenge mode in Halls of Night, the final deed (not counting the riddles!) outstanding for the Forsaken Inn instance ~ Perfect Fellowship and maybe progress the In Their Absence chain while we’re waiting for the expansion.  Soon we should have our minstrel friend join us and I think we’ll be able to start doing some 6-mans which should be a lot of fun.

Dimzad and I also finished our Limlight Gorge reputation and deeds.  We ended up duoing them!  I’m still not sure how Dimzad kept me alive 😛  but it actually didn’t take very long, though obviously far quicker in a group.

Just a nice shot 😉

We stood next to our ent-equivalents – I got the tallest one as we thought Aeowulf was cheating with his hat

Team Orange with our icons

T2 Fangorn’s Edge 😀

Pits T2 challenge (I still wasn’t allowed my star!)

My icon got changed after a hunter pull 😛

Other news:

I’m still fairly busy with RL and levelling up Mallendis, my lore-master.  She’s currently lvl 64 and I’d really like to get her to lvl 75 before the expansion hits.  I’m not sure I’ll quite do it but I shall try.

As I’m quite busy, I’m getting some posts scheduled for the next few weeks, hopefully including a new elvish place names post and the next instalment of the Tale of the Red Maid.

SOE…  I’m in a real quandary here….  I had logged into Vanguard and really enjoyed just noodling around (its a beautiful world to noodle in) but then came the news that Prosieben sat is now getting the EU subs for not only EQ2 but EQ AND Vanguard as well 😦  The DCUO transfer doesn’t seem to be going particularly well with some customer service horror stories.  I’m just not happy with the provider so I have cancelled my Vanguard sub in protest.  I really want to play Vanguard though (where I’ll get the time I don’t know!) so I really don’t know whether to risk transferring my account or not… I’m leaning towards not

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?