Leaving for Vacation to Middle Earth

Having completed Eternally in the Vale and the Barrens stuff just in time, I am feeling much less pressure to play WoW.  With about 2 weeks of solid effort I was able to hit exalted with Nat Pagle, the Anglers, the Tiller and the Golden Lotus.

It felt good to get them all done, it presents me with more options.  Initially my thoughts turned to gearing and having finally clawed my way up to the required ilevel despite having not done any dungeons and only the scenarios required to open up the 5.1 content, I plunged into an LFR.  I had grand and sweeping plans for the gear grind, and mapped out how to spend my Valor before 5.4 hits. Then, as I considered my gemming and enchanting plans I rather fell out of love with the idea. 

That's the part that really sucks, the thousand upon thousands of gold you need to spend, repeatedly, only to have all your hard won, lovingly coddled and pampered gear rendered utterly irrelevant once you earn your first quest reward in the next expansion.  So, I'm not doing it.  I utterly refuse to spend the next 12 months on the gold grind and gear grind, I have better things to do with my time Blizzard, thank you very much.

To really make sure that this mindset sticks, and because I am rather bored with dailies and Pandaria as a whole, I am taking a WoW-cation.  I am going back to play Lord of the Rings.

To me it's novel and fresh.  The graphics are different.  The music is different, with nary a Kazoo to be found.  It presents new challenges and unlike WoW I don't know every single corner and facet like the back of my hand.  There also lacks the dearth of information that is available for WoW.  WoW has been dissected, examined, played and written about by so many people that there is simply very little to write about it, bar op ed pieces.  Even new encounters and things that come with patches are stale as everyone and their dog plays the PTR and writes about it.  Hell, even the speculation is stale.  Truly my only remaining interest in the game is seeing where the story goes.

LotRO on the other hand is new (for me).  Not the main story, of course.  I've read the novels 3 times a year, every year for the past 20+ years.  I could almost quote it verbatim.  What is new is the game world and quests and characters that populate it.  Adding to the novelty is the fact that there is no 'Lotro-head' or 'Lotro-Insider'.  There aren't 1,000 bloggers writing about it every day.  There is information to be found, but you really have to hunt and search for it, and it's not always complete.  The game therefore presents the opportunity for learning and experimentation.  You cannot simply spend a few hours reading and preparing and then barrel to level cap within a week.

If and when I do return to WoW, anything WoW related will be posted to the Inveniam Blog.  In the meantime I have resurrected a once started, then abandoned site, Tales From the Green Dragon which is expressly for LotRO.  This site will be, going forward, a general site, tied to no game in particular.

So, if you're a LotRO player or are interested in getting to know something about the game, visit me at Tales From the Green Dragon.

Cheers,
E

Inveniam

Thank you all for your patience.  Page and article migration is complete.  Inveniam is shaping up quite nicely and I've made introductions there today.

Cheers,
E

Strange But True

For those of us no longer in our honeymoon period with WoW, the game can feel a bit stale at times.  You've seen it all, done it all, and now you're doing it on your nth alt.  You know every corner of the game world, every snippet of lore, every chord of every sub-zone soundtrack.  Or at least you think you do.  Occasionally on our travels through Azeroth something  catches the corner of our eye.  You can be traveling through a well known area and for some reason, something just seems ... different.  You can't quite put your finger on it, but it you pause for a moment and just wait, you'll see it properly.

I had just such a moment yesterday while questing in Feralas.  I was out zapping giants for Zorbin on the Forgotten Coast when I could have sworn I saw a giant farting.  "Nah", I said to myself, and carried on with the zapping. "Couldn't be.  I must just be tired tonight".  Then I saw it again. 

I stopped the zapping and sat and watched the giants, and this is what I saw.

Fart Bubbles

The giants crouch down and fart out a great dirty bubble.  The fun's not over there, though.  Then they do this:

Pop!

They turn round and pop the bubble with their finger.  Farting has consequences, though.  One more thing to be done.

P-hew!

They wave their maces back and forth behind themselves, as if to waft away the stink.

So there you have it folks.  Just when you think you've seen it all, you'll find something you haven't seen (and sometimes wish you hadn't).

Happy Sunday.  Cheers,

E

A Bit of Housekeeping

Today marks the launch of a separate blog for my current pet project, Inveniam.  While drafting a new post and creating some pages, I quickly came to realize that I have so much information I want to share, not only updates on the project but also information I have gathered and insights I have, that this place was going to get very untidy very quickly.

Henceforth general topics will be addressed here and anything specifically related to my big fat meta-goal will be covered over at Inveniam.  I've put a link on the sidebar of each blog for easy navigation.

I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce a new blogger, Lankybrit.  Lanky is well known on the Wowhead Forums as a fellow inveterate altoholic and I am very glad he has finally dipped his toe into the blogosphere.  Lanky has probably rolled and deleted more alts that most of us have ever started, and his skill in the arena of leveling is legendary. 

He has recently decided to start completely fresh and deleted (gasp!  I know!) all of his old toons (to completely remove temptation) and bought a shiny new account.  I look forward to watching his progress in his new venture.

I am in the process of sorting out tables and whatnot to post on Inveniam, so I beg your patience in the interim.

Cheers,
E

Guilds and the Solo Player

The idea of a guild might sound counter intuitive to some soloers.  A guild connotes grouping and socialization and while that might hold in most cases its not true across the board.  I find a guild to be extremely useful.  I speak of course about Vanity Guilds although there may indeed be guilds which are home to soloers exclusively.

Guilds provide numerous benefits to the soloer

An Ounce of Preparation ...

I am a pre-planner.  Not obsessively so, but slightly so.  When I go on vacation I like to have a list of possible restaurants to visit, sights to see and places to go and I like to have the basic information on hand of hours of operation, ticket prices etc.  I do this not to spoil the holiday air or to remove any possibility of impulsivity, but instead to define my choices, make the best use of my time, and increase my opportunities.  If for example a particular event occurs only on Wednesdays at 7pm I can keep that in mind instead of finding out on Thursday that I've missed that opportunity.  As I outlined already I hate wasting my time or having it wasted.

Unsurprisingly this habit of mine extends to gaming.

Reboot

Starting is always the hardest thing to do. 

If you have previously visited this blog, you will have noticed that all the previous posts have been expunged.  I was tinkering with the idea of doing something totally different with the blog.  I wanted to use my adopted pseudonym of Eccentrica Jones, but didn't want it associated with gaming.  I've since changed my mind back.  So here we go.

I've flip flopped in the past about how I play the game.