Planet Sillicon

Match made in Heaven

By blog on Jul. 27, 2009.

It’s just great when you land on something that works out perfectly, when you have a match made in heaven sort of thing going on.

I mentioned that we tried out some Hobbit Burgs and had then switched over to a Dwarf Champion and Hobbit Minstrel combination, and we are now a bit further into that. My Dwarf is level 21 at the moment, whilst my SO’s Hobbit is level 18. At first we missed that sense of solidarity because we couldn’t run together the whole time, her in the Shire, me in Ered Luin, but once we were up to that point where we could run around together, so Bree-Land, we have had a marvellous time!

The Dwarf Champion is such a fun class to play, your essentially a moving wall of blades, and that’s just a heck of a lot of fun. When you play as a Dwarf, you have a greater sense of your character, too, because you don’t just get a generic human character model, you get a sense of being a part of a mythos, being part of the story, you watch your Dwarf fighting through hordes of Orcs, and you feel like you really are a part of Middle Earth… It’s a much more accessible feeling when your playing as a mythological species, rather than a human. Of course, that only works with something that has always been a part of myth to you, if someone had never heard of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or any of Tolkien’s work, then they might pick up the game and think playing as a Hobbit would be utterly rediculous, and what are these short fat people? But nearly anyone would still find a Dwarf accessible because recorded myths of Dwarves have existed back into the 12th Century, and probably before that too.

Because of Tolkien’s work being so well known today, Hobbits have become a part of today’s Western Mythos, so when my SO plays as a Hobbit, she too gets that feeling of being part of the mythology of the world of Middle Earth. It’s a great feeling, and it’s terribly fun to watch our two stunties running hell-for-leather across Middle Earth.

Playing as a Burglar

By blog on Jul. 21, 2009.

Well hasn’t everything been a mad house of late!? It has, I can attest to that, which is why my SO and I have had no time for LOTRO in the past few weeks, but this weekend that all changed, and we decided to kick back in with something new.

In this case, I finally dropped my ‘No Hobbits’ rule, and created a Hobbit Burglar. Cute little fellow, that I had a surprising amount of fun with. He played well, the Burg skills were fun to use, interesting, and just something a little bit different. I duoed this character with my SO’s Hobbit Burg, and we had a lot of fun stealthing around the place. Good times! The combination of the two Burgs meant we knew what the other was capable of, and that can make all the difference.

The going was pretty quick, surprisingly so, actually. In just a few days my SO and I had hit level 19. Alas it couldn’t last… I saw all those awesome Dwarves running past and I felt less than thrilled with my tiny little Hobbit. I have to say, though, that even though I am no longer playing that Burg, I do have a much greater appreciation for the Hobbit folk, not that I didn’t like them before, but I like them more now.

Like this fellow here, he has a blog, he is a Hobbit, his blog is The Hobbit Herald, and I think that’s funny. Whilst I am at it, another LOTRO blog I have found useful is The LotRO Follower – very handy for when the servers are down, as this site has that sort of info listed up to date on there. And just because I like some of the comics, and lots of the maps, here’s a link to The Brasse, another LOTRO inspired blog.

Anyway, so I’m not playing a Burg anymore. It is good, but not what I want, in the end. So I am playing a Dwarf Champ and my SO gets the Minstrel she always wants to play. Now we’re both content with our characters!

I’m being annoying

By blog on May. 2, 2009.

I am being annoying, I know I am. Really, really annoying. I shall explain my annoyingness now. My SO and I had gotten out of playing Lord of the Rings Online for a while. But recently, I had expressed the desire to start playing again. Right from the beginning. Fresh and new.

Okay, first stumbling block was that my SO didn’t want to play the same class that she had previously played. Fair enough, but I did want to play as the same class that I had played in the past, which was a Minstrel. My SO decided that she wanted to play as a Lore Master, all well and fine, good choice. As a rational human being, I am aware of two things here. One, any class will work well with a Lore Master, and two, the Hunter seems to top the list of duo classes with Lore Masters for a number of reasons.

The Hunter and Lore Master both work best at range, and with the Lore Master’s mezzes, roots, and holds, the Hunter can do some extreme damage without having to close to melee combat, which they really aren’t good at. So we figure out names that aren’t taken, make our characters look just how we want them, and then start playing.

It’s alright, but I feel awkward in my new role. Since the early parts of the game have been adjusted to be easier, the Hunter’s best attributes don’t really shine to begin with. The Hunter deals the most damage of any class in LOTRO, but in these early levels, you don’t really feel it because everything is so easy to kill anyway.

My poor SO has been struggling with my annoying attitude about this. She’s just getting back into the game and here I am, seemingly unable to be pleased about my class choice. I feel so frustrated, I know I am being irrational about this. I get all excited to play, and then once I am playing, I keep thinking that I liked my Minstrel more, or that I am not really doing all that much more damage than my SO’s Lore Master, and that I don’t have a heck of a lot to do except the same few shots from with my bow. I am being sucked into the ‘grass is greener’ mentality, and I hate it. I know with my rational thinking brain that there is a reason the choice of shot is limited… I am not even level ten yet!

So I am going to play my Hunter, and I am going to enjoy it. I am just going to relax, play well, and stop being so annoying.