Whirly: good to go

We had a good evening in LotRO. We began with a visit to Agamaur, it was close so we popped over to take a look. We picked up a few quests and even killed a few mobs. It’s a higher level zone and we didn’t stay long. We then tried to explore Harloeg, but it was higher as well. We don’t mind fighting mobs four levels higher than we are. Five levels doesn’t seem worth the effort as it takes longer with little increase in experience.

We worked the eastern part of Lone Lands completing five quests. We also decided to leave LotRO, returning to WoW. LotRO is a GREAT game. They’ve done so many things right. Our problem may be unique to us. We play twice a week for two hours. Wandering around looking for something to do isn’t very productive and feels like a waste of time. We enjoy hard combat that is just on the edge of doable. Where you are surprised when you pull it off. WoW can get boring, I’ll admit. The same content over and over, but we’ve not played post 60, and from what I hear, level 80 is coming.

We discussed Vanguard and EQ2. Lots of good word coming out of EQ2 these days, but we gave it two tries and it never grabbed us. Vanguard was much like LotRO as far as finding good challenging content. We do like the idea of a Fellowship though (where everybody in the Fellowship shares experience even when solo). Fellowship is only on the Test server.

Mark wanted a two year commitment to WoW if we returned, he wants to hit max level. I’m not sure that’s possible. There is always something greener over the hill for me.

We tried to to force our way through an instance in the Great Barrows, what a pain. We died again and again to overwhelming number of mobs. I think we had eight at one point. When you die, you rez back at the entrance, inside. The experience was terrible. We were in there for an hour and I gained only one bubble. When we ran into a group where we couldn’t kill even one before dieing it became clear we weren’t going to make it through. The biggest problem was aggro management. With so many mobs on us, Mark was required to heal fairly quickly, which gained him the attention of all mobs except for the one I was fighting. I used everything I have for gaining aggro, Mark used everything he had to lose aggro, nothing worked. I don’t know how big the place is or how close to the end we were, but we did the best we could.

With our tails between our legs, and a very expensive repair bill, we headed back to Lone Lands. We wandered a while killing what we found. We went as far as The Last Bridge finishing two quests along the way. We’ve got the Harloeg area to explore next.

I don’t play first person shooters. I’ve tried a few, but didn’t like any, except maybe Doom. I have no idea why I purchased Bioshock. I guess the PR was just too much for my feeble resistance. It’s good. I’m sure I won’t finish, I never do. I get stuck, unable to play through some obstacle, and lose interest. Bishock is a great shooter though. The soundtrack is awesomely creepy. I’ll play as long as I can.

Monday was a waste. I was stuck downloading the patch and then had network problems. We had to move fight-night to Tuesday. We were headed to Mithrenost when we ran into some npc named Barthr Dourhand that Mark needed to kill for a jewelry quest. We killed him three or four times before Mark realized he didn’t have the quest. He headed off to town to pick up the quest while Mike and I poked around seeing the sights. On Mark’s return, we killed old Barthr again and, ta da, success.

Up to Mithrenost, we had a quest to kill the boss. There was a larger group ahead of us, we wandered off to give them some room. We eventually fought our way back to the boss. The mobs were re-popping quickly, but we killed the guy needed, twice. More popping and we decided to evac by jumping off the cliff. 2/3s of us survived. Not Mark. Mike and Mark dinged 24 turning in the quest. I’ll have to solo a bit this week to catch up. My Guardian received a nice chest piece upgrade from the quest. We called it an early night. Mike had some chocolate, I could hear him unwrapping the tinfoil over Skype. Punk.

It’s been a week and a half since our last LotRO outing, I missed playing with the boys. I’ve been soloing quite a bit, it’s not as fun. We started in North Downs. Our first quest of the evening was to scout some camps without being seen. We had no idea how to pull that off. Wandering around the camps didn’t work for us as we were eventually spotted - failing the quest. We killed everybody in the camp as revenge. Morally it was probably wrong. Oh well.

At 23, we tried the quest “The Black Fire.” We killed a lot of mobs looking for one of the fires, but were stopped by two elite 27s we couldn’t get past. We ran into trouble following a group of higher level players when we couldn’t keep up with the elite re-spawn (the mobs popped faster than we could kill them). We were eventually overwhelmed and died. North Downs wasn’t working for us, time to move on.

We returned to Lone Lands and ran “Weavers Beneath the Ruines.” I correctly guessed the locations of the needed spiders who died at our pleasure. It wasn’t all easy though. Our excitement for the evening was when Mark lagged-out at just the wrong place. We had to fight a group of the spiders on his return. Odd that our biggest fun was caused by a network glich.

It wasn’t a very successful evening. LotRO is starting to wear on me. We are fighters not wander-around-ers. We need epic stuff to work on and I’m not feeling that in LotRO. I’ve talked to Mark about returning to WoW and it’s instances, but haven’t worked up the nerve to mention it to Mike. I’m always the one dragging us from game to game. I’m not proud of it. I see the games Pirates of the Burning Sea and Tabula Rasa on the horizon. I’d like to try them both, but most people like to settle into one game and play for a long time.

I felt the need for a new start in WoW so I moved to a different server and created a brand new Blood Elf Hunter. I found and purchased Joana’s 1-70 Horde leveling guide. It’s a different play style from what I’m used to. Mostly running quests instead of grinding. It keeps me on my toes and moving. In the last six days I’ve worked my way back to the Barrens and level 22.

I’m pleased with the progress so far. Joana is a bit more aggressive than I and I’ve gotten myself in tight spots more often than usual. My Hunter has died eight or nine times when normally I seldom die. While I still have to do all the work, Joana lists what to do next, with maps, and I just follow along. There has been a few frustrations in my understanding of what I’m supposed to do, but I’ve worked them out, or abandoned the effort, and moved on.

I also created a level 5 priest as my Auction House mule. He’s slowly starting to make some cash, I’ve around 10 gold total.

I won’t be able to play for the next six days. I’m headed to sunny Anchorage, Alaska. I’m taking my MacBook Pro, but it doesn’t have WoW installed. I’ve been tempted, but I can’t find my disks.

I re-activated my WoW account and chose to solo a level 18 Horde Hunter instead of my 60 Alliance Hunter. That could change, but I prefer Horde, and I’ve got around 3000 Horde gold on that server. I’ve grinded from 18 to 22 in three evenings play. The Hunter is great for that. Send in the pet, Hunters Mark, shoot arrow, repeat. I’m not even pausing to loot. What could a level 20 mob have that I need?

At 22 I’ve started to run a few quests just for entertainment. I know everybody likes quests for leveling, but I’m not sure it matches power grinding, experience wise, at these levels.