The Riddermark : All New Fields and Forests of Rohan ~ Summer Sun
Author: Aodh Hammerhelm
Subject: All New Fields and Forests of Rohan ~ Summer Sun
Posted: 21/Nov/2008 at 6:56am
For long hours he lay, watching intently as the moon swung low in the sky and the night grew older. At last, satisfied that the occupants of the house were sound asleep, he slunk across the yard and seized a bulging sack which stood besides the building’s front door. Back across the yard he flitted and into the gloom of the forest.
Of an evening, five days after his mindless flight from Whispering Pines, Rustbucket found himself in dense woodlands that crowded around the feet of the White Mountains. He was disorientated - near mad with hunger and exhaustion - a condition not helped by frequent and copious draughts taken from the kegs which hung about Stew-pony’s straining neck.
The thought of another night lying exposed to the elements brought bitter tears to the crusty seadog’s rheumy eyes. His stomach heaved as they coursed down his grimy face, stinging his chapped lips and invoking memories of roasted pork crackling dusted with a liberal dose of good sea-salt.
Oh la! To sit besides a warm fire… to smell and taste a warm, hearty meal and, when his belly was filled, to roll up in a thick blanket and sleep long and deeply. He would do anything to regain such simple pleasures; would roll back time and undo his wantonness if it were possible. But it was not! And to yield to such fancies would place him in worse circumstances then he already found himself in.
Nay sai, he would hold his nerve and endure this suffering even if it meant the end of him. It was better to face possible starvation in a cold and hostile world than incarceration in some dank and chilly dungeon. Aye! Better by far indeed, than feeling a coarse rope around his neck and facing the long, terrible step into deep and eternal oblivion.
Rustbucket squawked suddenly in alarm and tugged frantically at Stew-pony’s tattered reins. A light ahead in the trees! His wool-gathering had caused him to be careless; he had almost stumbled into the yard of a rustic smallholding.
He sprang from his mount and led Stew-pony into the deep shadows of the wood. When his steed was safely tethered, the old mariner crept silently forward and lay for a time surveying the small house and its outbuildings. A thin tendril of smoke rose from the home’s stone chimney, faint light spilled through a chink in one of the near shutters.
“GACK!” An explosion of disgust burst from his withered lips as the crusty seadog tossed the empty keg with reckless pique across the road.
The ale was gone then, and Bema knew how much wine still sat within the second barrel. He would have to be frugal with his supplies, for where he was headed there were few dwellings, let alone taverns. Aye, the lands north of the Entwash; the barren hills of the Wold, were scantly populated. He doubted whether any inn or hostelry lay along his path.
Turning Stew-pony eastward he galloped away, riding hard along the King’s Road whilst the night hours still held sway.
Isengard : The Isengard Halloween Pub
Author: EruvÉrdË
Subject: The Isengard Halloween Pub
Posted: 21/Nov/2008 at 6:52am
NPC: Karendil
Karendil’s cold twilight eyes flicker with softness upon hearing the female wizard(Missy) saying what he is thinking is to be true. The female wizard(Missy) then gives him a hug, to which he is very surprised. Open his heart , she says , to love and he shall be rewarded and richly. Love may be in a form he least expects or foresees. Such is evident between her and the one she has married(Ult).
Karendil’s twilight eyes have earlier observed how this female wizard(Missy) and her newly married husband(Ult) are together, celebrating their joy together. He then recalls how the wizard and him used to be happy together until she wet away. Of Elara he accidentally took the life of. He did not mean to for he was not himself that night . He begged for her forgiveness but she shunned him there after. Tried he has these many years to seek her forgiveness and sworn to protect her he did. Vanquishing those who would cause her harm. Sometimes this scared her for he has grown cold his heart for avengence against his kin and for those who threatens to separate him from her and those who grow close to her.
Karendil finds himself quite rooted to the spot where he is standing. What manner of spell has this female wizard(Missy) on him? Of course he means well by her. He would never hurt her. The female wizard(Missy) also places a kiss upon his forehead which he also least expects. * Release me wizard….*He tries to move. His twilight eyes look towards her who is with Eosar. She too is looking at him but rather fear as she looks slightly away.* I have come so far to find her….I have…* He pauses. Would she ever accept him?
The wizard’s twilight eyes then turn towards the direction where Missy and Karendil are. Missy is speaking with Karendil. Karendil’s twilight eyes seem to have softened. The wizard wonders what Missy is saying to Karendil. Just then, Missy gives him a hug and a kiss upon his forehead. The wizard’s twilight eyes observe with interest and then she sees him looking at her…she shies away by looking aside. What would he be thinking?
It would be seem that Karendil is rooted to where he is standing for he tries to move but could not. The wizard wonders what Missy has done to him. As Missy gŒs over to Ult and Amalric, the wizard too gŒs over to her and asks her.* What happened to Karendil dear Missy? He seems to be rooted at where he stands….*The wizard then also nods to Amalric in greeting.*
Eregion
I am not one for hyper-realism in 2D art generally, I recognize the craft involved but it always strikes me as the perfection of essentially, well, paint-by-numbers. My mom taught me to identify paintings that were done from photographs as opposed to those painted with the object in from of the artist, once you start seeing it, it’s hard not to have it overpower the painting.
I don’t know how to tell if the world team works from photos and how much time is spent going places and sketching, but the result is overwhelming and wonderful. With as little as I have seen so far, I am profoundly impressed.
I was riding around Eregion this morning before work and wound up riding through the wolf den, picking up aggro, enjoying how much it looked and felt like Enchanted Rock (Texas) one of the few places on earth the Mantle comes up through the crust.
The arroyos are wonderfully done, and the whole transition between Tal Bruinen and Gwingris is epic.
I understand that gameplay requires many things things to be made patently unrealistic, so the real skill is in making the patently unrealistic feel realistic and to not be so realistic as to be monotonous*
To my eye at least, you have completely succeeded, and on a massive scale.
Very well done, and thank you.
Caelavin,
Landroval
*From Next Week’s Inbox: Attn,World Team… The next area we are going to do will be modeled on Nebraska. Please present your ideas for keeping the experience constantly fascinating without losing the “Nebraska” feel. By next Tuesday. - Mgmt**
**My apologies to all those in Nebraska I may have just offended. I promise to make a camping tour of the state as soon as I can to show my support.
Eregion
I am not one for hyper-realism in 2D art generally, I recognize the craft involved but it always strikes me as the perfection of essentially, well, paint-by-numbers. My mom taught me to identify paintings that were done from photographs as opposed to those painted with the object in from of the artist, once you start seeing it, it’s hard not to have it overpower the painting.
I don’t know how to tell if the world team works from photos and how much time is spent going places and sketching, but the result is overwhelming and wonderful. With as little as I have seen so far, I am profoundly impressed.
I was riding around Eregion this morning before work and wound up riding through the wolf den, picking up aggro, enjoying how much it looked and felt like Enchanted Rock (Texas) one of the few places on earth the Mantle comes up through the crust.
The arroyos are wonderfully done, and the whole transition between Tal Bruinen and Gwingris is epic.
I understand that gameplay requires many things things to be made patently unrealistic, so the real skill is in making the patently unrealistic feel realistic and to not be so realistic as to be monotonous*
To my eye at least, you have completely succeeded, and on a massive scale.
Very well done, and thank you.
Caelavin,
Landroval
*From Next Week’s Inbox: Attn,World Team… The next area we are going to do will be modeled on Nebraska. Please present your ideas for keeping the experience constantly fascinating without losing the “Nebraska” feel. By next Tuesday. - Mgmt**
**My apologies to all those in Nebraska I may have just offended. I promise to make a camping tour of the state as soon as I can to show my support.
It’s the Hard Rock Life, For Us
For the past few days I have been working on the fabled harvesters cloak while I eagerly await my copy of TSO. It got to the point yesterday that I was so close to finishing it, I decided after doing a few TSO quests (more about that later) that I would finish the new cloak first, and get back to the content later.
This quest was by far the most difficult crafting related quest that I have ever done. Of course it made the reward all the sweeter, but I think it will be quite some time before I decide to dust off an alt and finish the cloak for them. Thankfully it’s not essential.
It took me approximately three hours to finish my harvesting in Rivervale yesterday. The dens were exceptionally rare, and if it were not for that Gnomish Divining Rod and the ability to track them - as well as logging in right after the server had been taken down for an hour, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have even finished when I did.
Whoever designed this cloak had a FANTASTIC sense of humor, and you can tell they are a large part of the crafting community for one specific reason.
There is a player joke that has been around since the game released. Crafters far and wide complaining that they just about harvested a badger. From behind these little pudgy creatures look like ore nodes. This is especially apparent in the smaller zones like Antonica, and a few of the 1-9 zones. On the craft channels it was (is?) quite common especially on Antonia Bayle, to hear people moaning over the lack of ore nodes and the abundance of badger bottoms.
I quickly put my new cloak on, and transformed into the small rock pictured above. The illusion is great in itself, you roll along the ground and there are some faint sparkles that tumble off of youl. While doing the quest I managed to gather a LOT of rares. It figures that the one time I really want commons and not rares I end up getting 15+ rares in one harvesting session. The guild bank is happy at least.
I decided to zone home from Mara, after the long (long, LONG) day of harvesting when suddenly - it was ME with the badger bottom!
That’s right, randomly (not every zone) you will turn into a badger when you’re sporting this illusion. Not only a badger, but you will turn into a 35% bigger badger then normal. What a fantastic quest reward. It’s may not be considered ‘essential’ for players out there but if you’re a hard core crafter (such things DO exist!) then you WILL want to get this cloak. The only down side I saw to the quest item itself is that you can’t mount it on your wall like other fancy cloaks. That would be a great option. I’m not sure how often I’ll actually *wear* this cloak with the surplus of other cloaks I have. It boosts harvesting skills, rather then crafting skills.
Aside from working on the harvesting cloak for the past two days, like I mentioned earlier my copy of TSO finally arrived. Two copies in fact. So my main account and alt account are now sporting dire bear mounts. I’ll talk about that more later. One thing I wanted to get done right away is that the crafting instances require you to have worked up a little bit of faction with the new Far Seas Trading Division. This is different then the old Far Seas faction that we all have. There is a chain of 6 quests in the Moors that starts with a happy little crafter on the landing platform. The quests reward a LOT of coin and the aa was pretty nice as well. It gives you a tour of the Moors. You *may* want to look up this quest on EQ2traders first or on the EQ2Wikia once you’ve gotten it because it requires some supplies and if you carry them with you you’ll be much better off. Or at least take along a form of evac (or be a druid).
Eyenstein, Albrta, Shadowgeist, Kasul and I all headed off to work on this quest together. Once we completed it Kasul and I told the group we would be unable to do the crafting instances quite yet. It was only fair, Tipa had been waiting to do a Nostalgia run and my late polar bears had prevented any of us from going yet. So tonight after EQ1 Nostalgia, EQ2 Nostalgia will attempt their first group crafting instance.
Maybe by then the issue with the invisible wood working machines will be solved..
WoW NOT a Success?
If you ask me, Maplestory was actually much more sucky than WoW. 2 Two reasons: 1. Quests are nothing but kill X and Y, collect Z and return to me. I killed so many pig at Pig Beach it would be considered a homicide… 2. 2D Graphics are a no-no in todays market. Sure the game may run quite well and the whole class/job idea is a sort of reused, but working, thought but if all we can do is go left, right and jump while casting spells/throwing stars/chopping then why play? WoW has: flying mounts, interesting quests (mind you the beginning part has the Kill X, Collect Y, bring to me. Later on quests get much, much more interesting.) and a whole hell of a ton of spells that look superb. Maplestory only has I believe as I am typing 4 attack spells that you use like a worn big Red button.
Gaia online can’t even talk about WoW because they are completely opposite games. Gaia is a social network with some avatar aspects BUT no pew pew. WoW is a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing GAME).
If free-market games are the future then there will be either a future with uber-rich companies that can dish out money to make a free game or it will be a company that holds their programmers like slaves and doesn’t pay them. Free games, more often than not, don’t work in a large community without some sort of “pay” method. Maplestory isn’t free completely. If you want some real neat items you have to pay thru the Cash Shop. Gaia online has the Cash-to-Coin exchange system. In part truth, yes their game is “Free” b/c you don’t need to use their system but the experience is a lot more exciting with the extras.
Now, I’m not trying to advertise WoW and say “It’s the best MMORPG in existance and you would have to be a blind hobo not to play it.” but since they are dissing WoW then they REALLY need to look at what they are saying. Also with Wolfkin, not every teenager on Earth plays a MMO. To say that, “oh hay, you only have 11 million players when the total number of teens in 800 million, thats not much” Like there is more players playing your game?
The MMO Report: ‘Mines of Moria’ Launch Special Part 1
Oh great. They have a cave troll.
This week, Casey and The MMO Report bring you a very special episode focusing on the new Lord of the Rings Online expansion The Mines of Moria. We visited Turbine Studios to get the inside scoop on just what it takes to bring Middle Earth to life in the metaverse. This new expansion brings 10 additional levels, the Runkeeper and Warden classes, and a new Legendary Weapons system that’s sure to add countless hours of tweaking and customization to your daily grind. But the big news is the Mines; a massive Dwarven kingdom that trumps any underground dungeon we’ve seen before. Oh yeah, and you get to chill with a Balrog. Sweet. Don’t forget to come back next week for Part 2, we promise it will be worth your time.
So pour a few pints, pack some Old Tobey, and unsheathe your Weta Lord of the Rings replica sword. This is…
The MMO Report
Send your love letter (in elvish) to TheMMOReport@G4tv.com
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Second Life 1.22 (RC0) now available
Filed under: Bugs, Patches, News items, Second Life
The Second Life viewer dev team has been working furiously away for some time now, and you may be forgiven for wondering where the fruits of that labor are. It has, after all, been some time since we’ve seen a new viewer other than emergency security fixes.
There are lots of little things in this viewer, mostly bug-fixes. What is particularly peculiar is that whispering seems to be back. Whisper was a short-range chat option that was discarded from the Second Life viewer back in 2005 due to it being confusing both conceptually and in the user-interface. Whispering has a 10 metre range and…
Continue reading Second Life 1.22 (RC0) now available
Second Life 1.22 (RC0) now available originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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New set of LotRO videos show more of Moria
Filed under: Fantasy, Video, Lord of the Rings Online, Education
Even after the launch of Lord of the Rings Online’s Mines of Moria expansion this last Tuesday, Turbine is still pumping out the video previews for each of their new areas of the mines themselves.
A few days ago, they released a video for the Redhorn Lodes in the central Moria region, and The Great Delving, which is the first section you encounter when entering the mines. Then today, they’ve released yet another video depicting Zelm-melek, which is smack dab in the middle of the mines, above Redhorn Lodes. If you’ve reached any of these areas in game yet, you know that these videos don’t quite do them justice, yet they’re still worth a look. Check them out embedded just after the cut.
Continue reading New set of LotRO videos show more of Moria
New set of LotRO videos show more of Moria originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Cottage of Lost Play * : Ultimate Narnia Crosscountry Adventure (Game)
Author: ~Obsidian
Subject: Ultimate Narnia Crosscountry Adventure (Game)
Posted: 20/Nov/2008 at 7:23pm
Once again I was thrown into a chaos of flashing light and shadow. I shut my eyes tight, remembering the dizzying effect of the teleportation. I wonder where the ring would take me this time. If only I understood the ring better, I would know how to control it. When everything felt back to normal, I opened my eyes again.
I found myself standing knee deep in water. I was in a marsh shrouded in eerie silence. It was the biggest swampland I had ever seen. The marsh was a messy patchwork of pools of water and clumps of wet soil covered with weed, and over it hung a ground hugging cloud of silence, which was broken only by the occasional bug’s buzz, or the wind howling at the top of its voice. What dampened my spirit most was that I could not see and end to the marshland. Closing my eyes, I tried rubbing the ring again but nothing happened. Resigned to my fate, I began trudging forward in the mud.
Stepping on the soil was useless as the wet sludge collapsed the instant I placed my weight on it and I had difficulty pulling my feet out of the mud, so I began navigating the marsh by following the water instead. My trousers were soon soaking wet from the top of my knees to the bottom. The air was stale and the wind did nothing to change it. I thought I would be lost in the marsh forever and was feeling increasingly frustrated. A gust of wind blew again and suddenly the mist in the distance cleared. I thought I saw trees, possibly a forest. As the wind died the vision was veiled by rolling mist once more. I began wading in the direction of where I last saw the trees in the hope of finding dry land again. As time passed, the ground beneath my feet became more solid, and the pools of water disappeared. I realised that I was making progress. Sure enough, I eventually reached the forest. It was incredibly thick, and since the sky was turning dark, I decided not to enter the forest for fear of getting lost again. I felt hungry, and gobbled the last sandwich from my bag before I began walking along the boundary between the forest and the marsh.
Pretty soon I heard the sound of running water. I reached a shallow bend in a river, and waded in to allow the flowing water to wash away my filth. I was glad to be out of the marsh at last. I began walking along the river downstream hoping to find a ford that I can cross, and from there, I hoped to find someone to help, or directions in finding the Stone Table. My mind wandered down memory lane while I thought about the books that I had read long ago. It would be good if I can meet Aslan, like those characters. He had probably meant for me to be in this world, as everything to come in Narnia runs under his guidance. Whatever quest lay in store for me, I hope I would not fail. The task appointed to me was still unknown, but right now I only know that I had to find the Stone Table. Problem is, I did not know the way, and there was not a single soul in sight. If only there is wireless in Narnia, I could search the internet on my laptop for a map or something. The sky grew gradually darker, and I used my handphone to light the way. Pretty soon, it was near pitch-black and I sat down to rest. If I ever got back home, I would need to preserve whatever fantastic memories I experienced in this world, so I took out my laptop and began to type out my story.
Fords of Beruna
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