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LotRO Stress Test

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This weekend is the Lord of the Rings Online stress test. I’ll be posting my experiences as I play through it.

LotRO Stress Test Notes: Intro Part 2

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Ah, Captain Brackenbrook wants me to kill stuff. FINALLY.
Browsing through character window, come across a family tree. I wonder if this would let me form relationships among my characters? That would be cool. I can change my generation here but that doesn’t seem to affect anything.
Loading window tells me that the first player or fellowship to hit a monster gets credit. Powerleveling technique?
Amdir directs me to my trainer and gives me more copper. What a guy. Maybe he could just give me all his copper now so I could stop bugging him.
Minstrel trainer says hello and lets me buy a new skill, which I then must drag to my hotbar. Yup, WoW. UI problem: The cost for my other skills is listed in silver and copper. The little icon for a copper piece is… silver. I check out the merchants in the vicinity but I can’t afford anything they sell yet. I need to shake Amdir down for more money.
I bank into my turns while running like an airplane. Wheeee Zooooom! Ah, now Celandine will talk to me! She wants me to gather kingsfoil with which to treat Amdir’s wound. The finished potion will heal “morale”. That’s Amdir’s problem? He just needs some cheering up? I have a song that adds 51 morale. Why can’t I just sing him well?
Sigh. Didn’t work. But it should have. Dangerous looking guy with a wicked pike needs ME to kill the wolves attacking his flock. Okay! Kung fu wolf killing action! Oops, sorry, I thought your sheep was a wolf in sheep’s clothing! HAHAHAHA! Huh, no exp….

lotr-wolfbaiting.jpg

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LotRO Stress Test Notes: Introduction

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I’m writing these notes as I am playing the game. They may be a little scattered 😛
Character creation: No female dwarves? I suppose they could be male or female and you just don’t know. Hobbits look decent. The Hobbit movie makes hobbits look too long in the torso and short in the leg, but the character models in the selection screen look good. All the races look good in character selection.

lotr-create.jpg

Hobbit class choices are Minstrel, Guardian, Hunter and Burglar. At this screen, I don’t know any details about the classes. Those would probably have been described in the manual. Years of MMOs have taught me that I like support characters best, and since Dina on EQ2 is a hobbit bard, I’m going to make a hobbit minstrel here.

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EQ2: Waiting for Kunark

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archers.jpgRumors have the next EQ2 expansion as “The Rise of Kunark”. That’s a small surprise; I was expecting them to follow up “Echoes of Faydwer” with another adventure pack, not something as grand as a whole ‘nother expansion, especially one that opens the lands that really launched the original EverQuest into MMO history.
The job SOE does here is so critical to EQ2’s future… so many people from EQ1 and EQ2 are off trying Vanguard. Guilds all over EQ1 are imploding; I expect the same from EQ2 soon. Vanguard doesn’t cost anything extra for people already on the Station Access plan, so it’s never been easier to leave EQ.
SOE has to do something so mind-bogglingly original with Rise of Kunark that it defines the EQ2 experience the same was Ruins of Kunark did for EQ1. That was the expansion that made the game a raiding game, that set players apart, and gave real goals and enough of them to keep people always working. Epic weapon quests, a whole new race, dragons and enough lore to choke a historian, Trak and VS and KC and OS and HS and LoIO and Chardok…

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