What 24 Lore-Masters do when they're bored

This is what a raid of 24 Lore-Masters looks like. Eye-blinding whiteness. A raid of 12 LMs had tackled The Rift earlier yesterday, and I was lucky to get into the second, larger raid to Helegrod. 24 LMs, 24 pets = 48 players. This story is very image heavy, so be prepared.

Old harp?

I've got an on-off relationship with this old man. Over a year ago, when I started playing LotRO, I thought "hey I'll make this old grey guy who runs around the world, killing things with a banjo". I wasn't thinking "hey I'll make a healer because I want to help people/get into groups easily/get tells asking for rez plz", because that would have just been boring. Come on, the minstrel is a healer class that can kill things with a banjo!

He was my first proper 'main' (which didn't, of course, stop me from playing a horde of alts - more on that later), and playing the game a squishie (also known as the hard way) for the very first time really taught me a lot. Well, at least about dying. But once he hit the old level cap I just switched to leveling my alts, and when Moria launched last November I took my Lore-master to see the mines. Poor Wakey was left home to tend the garden.


Look at me, coming back to res a nearly-wiped raid!

Recently, however, I've started to bring him to Turtle raids because we always seem to lack a minstrel - and when not running with the kin it's easy to fit into a pug. And when I do raid as a minstrel I start to miss the class and especially the character. I love him and playing the class, but somehow I always tend to forget that when I go back to playing alts.


And yes, the character is called Wakefield, and no, I don't live there (or anywhere in the UK, for that matter), and no, it's not my last name either :D.

Home sweet home

I went to Goblin-Town on my hunter last week (mostly just to look around), and found this cute little goblin-home. The door is very small, maybe up to her chest at most. I just love finding these little details in games.

Little Nanu

Tonight, we found something most... curious after a very hectic fight in Moria, and brought it with us back to the kinhouse for examination.



A... shrubbery?


Suddenly, something's moving beneath the leaves!


Ai! It's a miniature Giant Turtle!


And now we have a new pet in the garden. I hope it doesn't nibble too much on the garden gnomes.

(Kinhouse address: 8 Long Street, Herbroke, Bree-land homesteads, EN-RP Laurelin)

Return to Lórien

These pictures are old already, but I haven't gotten around to posting them here. Book 7 finally opened Lothlórien in LotRO - and area I'd been looking forward to ever since the launch of Moria. My main character is originally from Lórien, and she was also the first one I brought there to enjoy the scenery, quests and avsdadfagdafgdagca endless rep grind. Ahem. Pictures, yes, pictures.



As soon as we could, we went and bought these pretty robes. Mine's the blonde, the dark lady is my bf's rune-keeper.

We also found the shore of the great river Anduin, and decided to risk swimming across. No harm came to us, and we returned back to Caras Caladhon - only later to learn that most people end up with an orc-arrow through their troat if they set foot on the other side of the river.


Looking back - the whole world has turned dull and grey, and the light of the golden wood has all but disappeared.

Quite a difference between the two shores. I can't wait - I want to visit Mirkwood already!

Hyborian adventures

A local game store is selling Age of Conan for just 9,90€, so my bf suggested we'd buy the game, play the 30 days you get for free and see if it's any good.

It is.

Unless you count the community.


Mm, I love the smell of sun-ripened carcasses in the morning!

Okay so AoC is pretty. The landscape is just breathtaking with dx10 graphics on (and I was playing with pretty much maxed settings), and the beginning actually felt like playing some good single-player rpg. I haven't actually played that many rpgs, but I did get these pleasant NWN and even Dungeon Siege vibes. The tutorial island, which comprises the first 20 levels, was fun and exciting though I got lost all the time and felt like a total noobcake when it came to combat (I'm not used to moving around! I'm not very good at anything fast-paced), but luckily I had my bf to save my skinny little ass over and over again :D.


My personal healbot and lil' me.

I created a Dark Templar, which is like a I cut myself to feel alive kind of tank. She's as short as you can get, with a really goofy-looking face and extrawide hips. Later I found out that DTs are generally considered to be the worst class for pvp, and that each patch tends to break their effectiveness as pve-tanks even more. I'm not surprised.

We rolled our toons on a pvp-rp server (Aquilonia), hoping it'd be some kinda nice mix of exciting pvp and the friendliness I'm so used to on Laurelin. After I'd got used to it, I did start to enjoy the feeling of danger when venturing out in the wilds, but lack of any limits actually lead to asshats ganking people who are 50 levels lower, talking to npcs (= player is inside a cutscene and can't leave), loading into an area (only to find out you're dead even before the loading screen goes away) and general griefing during questing. There are even guilds there that are dedicated (and proud of it!) to the sole purpose of griefing new players on the very first pvp map. Luckily the worst gank spots are pretty easy to avoid, and generally I had a good time when just playing with my friends.


The emotes are awesome though! I've got tons of really goofy screenshots of Kro and Agi doing stupid things.

Maybe I shouldn't have read the forums that much and kept the global chat turned on, but on the whole the community "feel" on Aquilonia was so negative I didn't quite feel comfortable there. There was only talk of ganking, griefing and hurt e-peens on every channel and forum topic that I started to miss LotRO enough to go back to my sweet circle of friends on Laurelin. I think I might re-activate my AoC account some day, but not before they fix the pvp 'exploits' (though I might still pick a pve-only server, if I ever returned there).


I never got around to checking out the actual rp on the server - the game sure is more fitting for rp than LotRO.

Bye Rags

Rags was my short-lived (well, he made it to 42) hobbit Warden. He was fun to play (love the class!) but I just didn't quite "bond" with the character, so he had to go. Here's he the last time I saw him, enjoying his landlady's garden.



After Rags ran back to the Shire to woo some sweet hobbit lasses, a new boarder arrived to the house:



Incidentally, Breny the elf-lady is currently as 'old' as Rags was, 42 that is. She's travelling together with a suspicious-looking man called Reny:



Together they've proved to be a quite invincible, surviving many encounters that would have left entire fellowships bleeding (or maybe we're just way too good at the game, hah!).