Category Archives: news

Playing Lord of the Rings again

16 Jul
Playing Lord of the Rings again

It’s been a long while since I wrote anything about this game. There has been a lot of changes. My last real article I wrote was back in 2009. I played a few months in 2010 which I started recording some videos of my adventures. I thought it would be cool to see how my burglar at level 40 could do in PVP. You can check them out at my youtube channel playlist. I have to finish a few more videos to catch up where I am now. It was fun doing it and lot of people enjoyed watching the progress. I saved all the videos I made last year for this project so it’s just editing things together. My burglar is now at 65 so lot of the video is old and no longer a representation of the game now.

My main character used to be my minstrel, Johnsono.

Johnsono (Minstrel)

My main character is now my burglar, Johnnyboi.

Johnnyboi (Burglar)

I am going to be recording videos again soon because I’ll be getting my next rank in a few weeks probably. It’s been so much fun playing again and trying to remember everything. I don’t play to be the best at 1v1’s. I am thrilled when I can win a fight against a 1v1 but my main focus is to defend others and help our side. If I die in the process then that’s fine. If I have to die 100 times just to keep a few creeps busy while we take some keeps then I see it as a win.

My hunter is Johnboi in LOTRO

Johnboi (Hunter)

My runekeeper is named, Johnlandir.

Johnlandir (Runekeeper)

My small guardian with power is Johnsmall

Johnsmall (Guardian)

I recently got a new video card which I thought would make things go faster and allow me to play at a higher graphics level. Well I found out I was able to play at a higher level with directx11 but was really slow. Either my memory or motherboard is causing this problem. I recently went back to directx9 and I am able to log in very fast compared to directx11. I didn’t try directx10 which I might later. I want to see how well I can play with directx9 at different settings. Last night I got into a raid and had no problems but this was at the lowest settings. I will be posting more about all my characters and continue my burglar adventure in the game.

My warden is called Johnlangard

Johnlangard (Warden)

My Loremaster is called Johnmoth

Johnmoth (Loremaster)

My captain is called, Johnborn

Johnborn
(Captain)

My champion is named, Johngnaw

Johngnaw (Champion)

I Bought a new CPU this week which I’ll be getting next week. It should make things a lot faster. I am hoping this will allow me to play at a higher graphic settings. I am running right now with AMD Phenom 9850 Quad-Core Processor 2.50 GHZ. I have 6 GB of memory. My video card is a Radeon HD 5850. I don’t need my computer to be the fastest. I just want to play this game at a nice looking setting. Wouldn’t mind if I could play at a medium setting with no slowdown. The new CPU I bought is AMD Phenom II X4 840 3.2 GHz. Shouldn’t have to change the Motherboard.

 
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Posted by on July 16, 2011 in characters, news

 

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Lotro – The Road to Moria

17 Aug
Lotro – The Road to Moria
First expansion of this game is Mines of Moria

It’s been more then a year that LOTRO has been out. I’ve been playing ever since and I am still having fun. In the fall there will be an expansion to this game. All the free updates to this game has ended with book 14. Out of all the free books I enjoyed book 14 update the most. I’ll be reviewing the other books soon but with this new update the live events really made it enjoyable for everyone!

Now that the last free content update has happened everyone is looking to the first expansion. From some of the press releases this expansion seems it will be very good. You can already pre-order this expansion which should be released sometime in November.

 
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Posted by on August 17, 2008 in Mines of Moria, new content, news, Uncategorized

 

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Turbine, We have a Problem

29 Nov
Turbine, We have a Problem

For months now I have been playing Lord of The Rings Online (LOTRO) and been posting about my experiences. This is my first major MMO to play so haven’t had many experiences with downtime’s. On Monday they had a scheduled maintenance which should have lasted for 6 hours. That’s usually the average time they go down for updates or maintenance anyway.

There was a problem and the downtime lasted more than what was expected. In fact LOTRO, Dungeons and Dragons Online and Asheron’s Call were all affected by this problem.

The SAN upgrade that went awry was intended to reduce the length of downtime’s during future patches, by a pretty significant amount.

The games were down for almost 24 hours and there were plenty of angry people. Most were understanding and were patient. I went on our monster play ventrilo server to find out what everyone else was doing. We all just shared fun web pages and talked about what things we liked to see changed in the game. Most everyone else waited for any word from the developers about the status of the game.

On behalf of the entire staff at Turbine we would like to apologize for yesterday’s extended downtime. The outage was a unique occurrence involving a combination of the hardware and software that supports our login servers and other related web services. This problem prevented players from successfully logging into the games, although the game servers themselves were unaffected and remained up.

Most everyone was happy that the servers finally came up and wasn’t expecting anything from Turbine but an apology. We were surprised with a free day and some special items. Very nice way to make their customers happy. Hope this never happens again and I have heard of other games with longer downtime’s so this one isn’t that bad. One big mess-up their first year is good for a new mmo game I think.

 
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Posted by on November 29, 2007 in downtime, news

 

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Virtual World Marriages Bring Real Life Debates.

29 Apr
Virtual World Marriages Bring Real Life Debates.

I found this interesting article reading some forums and really thought it was something to share. It had all the major virtual world and games mentioned on this blog and brought up a subject which is in the current news. You see all this debating about same sex marriage in real life but I never even thought about it in a virtual world. Social interaction in virtual worlds is a big part of why people like them.

The article mentioned that LOTRO decided not to add a marriage feature into the game. The reason stated was that they couldn’t decide to allow same sex marriage or marriage between different races. WOW, Everquest and NannyMUD were mentioned allowing any marriage. Second Life was mentioned for having no rules on marriage too.

I never thought of getting married in a virtual world. I actually remember some friends from the bbs days in the 90’s getting married online in a chat room. I believe most online games right now do allow marriages for anyone. When LOTRO brings in a marriage option I hope they will allow it for anyone. A hobbit and a dwarf could be a perfect couple to battle the evil forces.

My take on this is marriage in a virtual world should be allowed for everyone. It won’t harm other people and it will make the social interaction even better. Leave the silly debates for the real world. But it is a good read to see what other games have decided. The only thing that gets on my nerves with these games is the constant name calling, harassment and stereotyping. Using the word gay to call something lame is still offensive.

 
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Posted by on April 29, 2007 in drama, news

 

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