Trying to rev up the interest to go through Corsairs of Umbar again after spending the last six months crawling through it for the first time is a daunting mental challenge. It’s not impossible — it’s just a game, after all, and one quest at a time, you’ll get through all of it eventually. But beyond the mechanical operation of the player is the will of the player — Do I have interest? Am I enthusiastic about this? Will I be able to go the course?
And that… I don’t know. I’m certainly not going very fast on this character just yet. She’s not even in King’s Gondor as I write this.
All I know is that out of my roster of LOTRO characters, my Captain is my most no-nonsense figure. She gets the job done, usually very direct and straight to the (sword) point.
We recently got word of what’ll be in this summer’s Update 41. While the PvP and crafting event doesn’t interest me at all, the new Birding hobby may be an amusing diversion. I like the idea of collections and touring around the old world, but it’ll have to be more engaging than annoying to keep me involved. So it’ll come down to the mechanics and ease of the hobby, and that remains to be seen.
Started work on a new outfit for her, deliberately going with a more intimidating, bulky presence. Most of my wardrobe skews to lighter leather-type gear, so this was a bit of a challenge.
I love taking pictures at dusk in this game — the lighting is usually just the best.
In light of all of the other MMO releases lately and a very long, unbroken stint in LOTRO, I can feel the fringes of burnout around this title. It’s not enough to make me stop playing completely, but I’ve throttled back so much that I’m pretty much just idling until my interest renews. That means my lowbie Lore-master is in mothballs right now (I’m also not too keen on the LM changes that are coming). If I can get my Captain through the epic and to level 150 by the end of summer, I figure that’d be enough for me.
I’m still only starting to scratch the surface (deeps?) of the Neaths, but thus far I’m very impressed. It’s so wonderfully atmospheric with many great details, and the whole layout is very explorer/questing friendly. In fact, it feels far less cluttered than the surface city. I might have to set up shop here for a while.
Dang but these crocs grow big down in the Umbar sewers! I bet they’d give regular drakes a pretty fierce fight, if it came to that.
I spent an evening poking around all of the sub-zones of the Neaths and came away quite impressed with the variety and overall ease of navigation. I still need to fully dive into the questing, but I feel that there’s no rush.
I don’t know why this whole region feels cozy and calming… maybe because it’s structured and quiet. Lacks the chaos and organic landscape of the above-world.
So this was funny — I was cruising through a giant camp of smugglers and ended up aggroing about 15 of them. I ran into the nearby safe area and did the trick where I used one of my flops to drop aggro. However, this time around the guards aggro’d the smugglers and started this epic fight… a fight that the smugglers WON. And so about eight smugglers kept running toward me through the camp, so I went to the other side and dragged five more guards into the battle until justice prevailed. It was fairly amusing.
Bio Break 