Bread and Butter

So I'm reading the Fellowship of the Ring again.

And like all the writings of guys that were cool kids in their day, like Shakespeare and the Moby Dick Guy, its a slow read, y'know, to catch all the little whip cracks and slick drifts, to isolate the well springs of future thoughts and their influences, you gotta compare it to what was going on in the brain of a regular guy of their day and all that crap.

Yah, I used to say that Tolkien was the Definition of Ponderous when I was younger, but he's actually not even half as ponderous (or hilarious) as the Moby Dick Guy.

Anyways, no matter what kinda ghouls and junk are eating at them, these damn hobbits stop like every five minutes and have a feast in that book, man.

There's almost as much eating going on in there as there is in the Sopranos.

"And then Frodo and his stalwart companions ate a delicious selection of Pastries with Assorted Colorful Spinkles On Top, and it was like a starving man biting in to a loaf of fresh white bread, and there was much pancakes and bacon, crips and sizzling in the maple syrup, and the wine was flowing golden, like honey, and refreshing..."

So, y'know, I had to go shopping and buy tons of bread and cheeses and cranberry juice and stuff 'cause the stupid book was makin' me all hungry and frickin' jealous heh.

Yah, I ain't got very far in the book yet but man I'm starting to get pretty damn fat in real life ahaha.

Brave Little Hobbits

So I'm playing LotRO, and I'm a hobbit warrior-guy with a shield, y'know.

And I need to do my 15th level class quest.

So I truck out to the land of the Big Folk over there by Bree and I go and find this farmer-guy I need to protect from bandits and suddenly four bandits show up shooting arrows and stunning me and tearing me to shreds with DOTs heh.

So I wake up in the Circle of Humiliation and Heavy Armor Repair Fees and I truck back out to that farmer-guy and I try to do the quest again, figuring this time I'd use more ghetto-dawg kiting strategy and stuff, y'know, and split the bandits up at least.

Boom, back in the Ring of Defeat heh.

I was starting to wonder if my armor was completely broke or something 'cause these guys seemed to go right through it.

So then I quit out of the game and I read the forums and apparently everybody has a pretty rough time with this one but they had all sorts of strategies to try and so I promptly tried them all a few times and absolutely none of them could ever work for me at the rate I was getting smashed (to say nothing of the farmer-guy npc I was supposed to be protecting who did his best to make it impossible to kite anything heh), besides "getting some help" or "outlevelling the quest a bit."

So I got some help.

Which was no problem, really, 'cause there was a dwarf nearby and they seriously are all heroic and big brotherly to hobbits.

And me and the dwarf (who was also a guardian like me) totally destroyed the quest no problem.

So then he's like, hey, wanna come with me and kill some orcs?

And I'm all like, sure man, even though I didn't really need to kill orcs for anything, y'know, I figgered I owed him for helping me and stuff and killing orcs is fun anyways.

So we take off running north on our tiny little legs across miles and miles and miles of golf course and we pick up this Elven Champion along the way (he's a guy who dual wields swords if ya din't know), and we all start tearing up this army of orcs.

And then this "signature" boss mob gets on us.

And then this "elite" boss mob gets on us.

And we got like four other little blue orcs mobs shwacking away at us, too.

And the elf dies right off the bat fighting one of the little blue orcs off somewhere all by himself while I'm tanking all this other boss mob junk 'cause the dwarf is using a two handed hammer instead of using a shield heh.

And the elf quits the group without a word, and the dwarf doesn't say anything when he does 'cause we're too damn busy with way more scary life-and-death stuff ourselves.

And me and the dwarf manage to kill all the rest of the stuff, including the little blue orc that killed the elf who came running over once he plastered the pointy-eared freak heh.

But the dwarf doesn't even miss a beat, he just runs right into another huge pile of orcs, and there's archers all over the place shooting the hell outta him and I'm trying to run around and gather up all the archers before he croaks but he was dead before I could get back to him and get the two guys that were beating on him off of him (he generates as much aggro as I do with his moves 'cause he's the same thing I am).

So now I got this huge pile of dudes beating on my poor little hobbit and I'm all alone with this giant mess the dwarf made (plus two more adds who wandered through while I was gathering up archers) and he's just sticking around his corpse to see how I do.

And I beat them all, oh hellyah, baby, sword and board all the way.

Plus, hobbits recharge really fast once a fight is over, so I'm pretty much full health a few seconds later, which just adds insult to injury I think.

So he says "sorry bye" and heads off to the Circle of Defeat in a typical Dwarven Funk and quits the group.

So my total kills for all this is like twenty little blue orcs, a signature boss, an elite, and two players heh.

I dunno why I had such a hard time with those four damn bandits in that 15th level quest, they must've been using like Radioactive Ammo or something ahaha.

By the Flaming Sword of Aradune!

Hey Brad, don't take it bad.

You can always come play LotRO with me!

It has some forced grouping, I think you'll like it!

And we need a healer!

Raph totally sucks, man, he never pays attention to our tactical situation 'cause he's always doing grabass emotes with the Elven Emos or trying to figure out how to play Charlotte the Harlot or some damn Paul Simon thing on his guitar!

And then whenever there's a quest npc he makes us wait while he "fetches his glasses" and reads the whole thing out loud to us on voicecom so we'll know what the story is for roleplaying purposes!

Jeff has got like 22 silver in repair bills and he's broke!

Yah, he wants us to give him money, y'know, says we should "tip our guardian" for taking all the damage for us, but screw that man I need my money to buy me s'more Purple Toys that I'll outlevel in like thirty minutes.

I'll even reroll as a stupid looking human guardian and join you in the newbie yard 'cause I'm tired of trying to fight against all the statistical mental conditioning and "population control" systems.

You just gotta, y'know, pass on all the juicy purple loot rolls and let me mine all the nodes so I'll have enough moolah to pay for own repairs heh.

Yah, well, unless you wanna tip yer friendly neighborhood guardian for soaking up all your repair bills or something ahaha.

My Precious

So... I've been playing Lord of the Rings Online.

Yep.

Mmm, I'm supposed to complain about stuff so let me think here for a second.

Hmm.

Nope, can't really think of anything.

Oh wait, my armor is pretty Greg Brady-looking.

Yah, they have that Asheron's Call Crayola Crayon thing going on (again).

And you need the help of a Grandmaster Historian and some Hair of Newt and Snail Feathers to make black dye.

And I don't even think you can make white dye, 'cause, as y'all know, bleach requires Griffon Spit from the Moon (in the Next Expansion) and a Nuclear Powerplant.

All I want is a dude that looks like a regular guy, y'know, and not one of santa's elves or one of their blasted christmas presents heh.

I dunno who does all the models for these games but its like the same damn guy every time and I'm just so fed up with getting leotards and scarves and curly-toed shoes and pope hats with jingling bells for quest rewards ahaha.

Ain't Hobbits s'posed to look kinda like little Huck Finn slash Angus Young guys in school boy uniforms?

With suit jackets and vests and pocket watches?

Or at least like Amish dudes with suspenders and stuff?

What the hell happened there?

I wish I had one of those nice, boring, monkish deathrobes from UO man, now there was something Raph did right fer once AHAHA.

Other than that, the game is pretty damn fun, but y'know, I only been playing it for a little while, so there's that whole "its shiny" thing.

Don't try the game and quit without checking out the Shire if yer a Tolkien Fan, its level of detail is fricking amazing.

And Weathertop is kickass too.

That's all I seen so far that really blew me away, the human and elf-dwarf areas were kinda ho-hum and blah, y'know, not enough to really suck or anything but it din't exactly make me tingle all over.

But then a lot of places in WoW didn't make me tingle all over either, and that game generally kicked the ass out of most of the other games heh.

You know what it reminds me of most is the first days of EQ, which is kinda weird, I guess.

I think its 'cause a lot of people are trying to roleplay and stuff 'cause the source material is so deep and junk or something, I mean, I seriously see a lot more true-blue Sindarin names than anything else, which is really not what I expected, especially 'cause there ain't no automatic name-generator for LotRO.

Yah, it actually makes me a little self-conscious about how bad I am at roleplaying and stuff, and that ain't happened since the first days of EQ.

That's a good thing, I guess.

And I know there's a lot of folks in LotRO that ain't never played a MMO before, so mebbe that's part of it.

Oh sure the servers are overcrowded and overcrowding breeds serial killers and everybody starts acting like nasty little human rats and stuff, especially around primetime, but if you get to a place where there ain't too many people, folks are actually pretty damn cool.

Its the first game in a very long time where I'm actually glad to meet a dwarf 'cause I know he'll do his best to keep me alive 'cause in this game they're all noble and filled with pride and stuff heh.

So that's kinda interesting.

Elves are still a bunch of horrible twits, though.

Yah, its apparently the Official Race of the Ninja Looting Cracker-asses and Delicate Flowers heh.

And the Human's newbie lands are a lot like Barrens Chat in Wow *shrugs* y'know, sometimes that crap is a laugh and not just an eyesore.

Yah, uh, sometimes.

So stick with the Hobbits, man, trust me, a Hobbit can always get help from folks, if there's any help to be had.

We look up to the dwarves, y'know, and the dwarves like that a lot, believe me, they're all like Big Brother Bodyguard Guys at heart or something.

And we remind Heroic Humans of small children, so its their genetic duty to help our hairy little hobbit asses.

And yer better off without the world-hating folks who won't help a Hobbit, so its not like yer losing out there.

Just don't name yourself anything you think is really "clever" and give yerself white hair or you'll kill what little amish cutie pie factor you have going fer ya and you'll remind people of annoying-ass gnomes.

"Yah, I'm roleplaying a hardass bald-headed Hobbit from the Hobbit Penal Colony Center For Burglar Rehabilitation and in Elvish my name means Ball-Bearings."

Yah, pick Hobbit (see above), Hunter (although you can solo with any class in the game... that doesn't answer the question heh), Explorer for a tradeskill (not picking Explorer is like choosing not to have keys to seventy-five percent of the treasure chests in the game ahaha), there you go, there's the LotRO No Bullshit Game Guide.

Or be a human champion if you wanna Rock Like Viggo Mortensen and you think you can handle all the Barrens Chat and lag over there in the human lands.

Or be a dwarf guardian if you think you can handle the gloomy place where those poor guys come from, compounded by all those horrible freaking elves running around everywhere.

But don't say I didn't warn you heh.

Oh man, I almost forgot, they got this thing where you get a special title for not dying, like Yoho the Undefeated, and Yoho the Immortal and stuff.

Yah, it sorta reminds me of Brave Brave Sir Robin, actually, y'know, like Yoho the Coward Who Runs From Battle To Fight Another Day heh.

But its interesting the way it affects people.

See, if they die, they lose the chance to get any future title, 'cause they get progressively more "awesome" (or whatever) as you go up every five levels without dying.

And so a lot of folks actually delete their characters and start over when they die.

Or they at least get kinda bummed out when they die the first time heh.

Even though most of them don't even use that title, or titles in general, I mean, its just kinda like a worthless badge.

It is very interesting though.

'Cause its almost like a self-enforced permanent death system, y'know?

For something so silly that nobody would've even thought of it.

Bah, whatever, here I go with that shiz again.

Its not worth worrying my pretty little head about, that's for sure heh.

Oh man, this weekend is my birthday party, I'm turning like nine hundred and eleventy-seven, but I can't wait to get me my Birthday Pancakes.

I'm telling you, those damn Hobbits know what its really all about, man.