None of my accounts are there to lie or be very different from myself. All are aspects of my life that I like but don’t blend very well. That might not be clear but it feels comfortable to me. Each avatar has their own place and groups they like. One loves to dance at clubs with DJ’s. Johnnyrs plays zyngo and looks for games to make money. Another looks for fetish places to have fun. Then there’s the one who is usually found in an adult area.

 Two of my accounts can make money every day. Zyngo can bring in some good money daily if I’m lucky. Some people are making thousands of lindens a day. I don’t make that much. I am starting to use the profile picks camping system to make some money as well. Regular sim camping makes money too but the money is so small that I’d rather do something else now. Dance clubs, tipping and special contests are other ways I’m making money too. In the future I want to describe some of the different ways of making easy money in a future post.

 Lot of money trees and other camping systems now check to see if you have credit info before paying. I found a few that will check to see if you have used that credit info to buy something yet or if you are a paying account before paying. I didn’t find any problems with this stuff. Age verification was easy for me. Soon SL will restrict access to adult areas using the age verification which could cause some problems with others. Right now it’s the owners job to restrict access.

 The one thing I find different from LOTRO and SL is the community. For me at this time I like a community with very little drama and changes. LOTRO provided too much drama and changes that drove friendships to fall apart. I found some small issues ended up to be bigger then it should be. It also got boring after doing the same raid over and over again. In SL I am finding very little change and less drama with the groups I am hanging out with. Lot of support from groups for many issues which I needed. Something different to do when I want a change. I will go back to LOTRO one of these days but only when I’m ready. I resubscribed to runescape this month also for another form of entertainment. Lot of changes in that game which I’ll be posting about.

It’s been a very long time since I wrote about LOTRO. I thought I should update on my adventure in this virtual game. Recently the game came out with the first paid expansion called Moria. It brought 10 more new character levels and a huge area to explore in Moria. This post isn’t going to be a review of this expansion or the following update, book 7. I want to write about my experience in this game and how it relates to real life.

I started in this game playing with my best friend. We played and supported each other for a whole year. I enjoyed the PVP side of this game a lot more then the PVE side. Since Moria came out things have changed in friendships and groups. I have joined two Kinships since my last post and both have had some great moments and some drama. Recently some of my new friends I made in the game have decided to leave the game or leave the kinship I’m in. This new update, Book 7, has brought changes in the PVP side that doesn’t match my style of play too. I found myself not logging in as much due to these changes and missing my friend and the new friends I had.

With all these new changes I am going to take a break from the game and try to work on my business, life and new friends. I already lost my best friend to this game which I really feel bad about. I never knew a virtual game could make people so emotional and change lives so fast. Maybe I’ll have some time to make a real review about the new updates to this game. I still really feel this game is good and the updates have made some things a lot better.

But when you look at the back the map is there:

I love little easter egg type art things like this in games. I learned a number of other interesting things about Mines of Moria:

- The Mines of Moria expansion is about 35% of the size of the existing LOTRO world

- there will be no wait times between zones in Mines of Moria (although you will still zone out to the original. Turbine was toting this as a “first” for any MMORPG. I haven’t doublechecked if that’s accurate, but I saw some pretty impressive depth in the demo. IE. a character dropping from high up to his death below (actually during the demo the Turbine rep had ‘god’ mode and couldn’t die). 12 expansive areas in total
- Lord of the Rings license extended for 9 more years virtually guaranteeing plenty of LOTRO gameplay well into the future
- level cap increased by 10 with “hundreds of new quests and monsters”
- Turbine plans to release one new expansion each year and has been working on the expansion following Mines of Moria
- the level of customization for individual items is being ratcheted up considerably with the ability to forge legendary items.

Meaning players can name their own items like say “TD Goodliffe’s Doomsword” and it is unique to the server you are on so nobody else can take your name. These customizable legendary items will level up with players. Customizations include: advancing the item’s virtues, adding runic legacies, modifying titles and forming fables.

From the Turbine PAX 2008 press kit

- 2 new solo speciality classes: Rune-keeper and Warden. The Rune-keeper can heal in one battle and hurl magic spells in the second while the warden is a medium fighter that uses combo maneuvers to unlock more powerful abilities
- There will be 3 different editions sold:

1. Complete Edition. Includes original LOTRO, all content updates since launch (books 9-14) and Lord Of the Rings Online
2. Collector’s Edition. Everything in the Complete Edition plus:
   - 3 exclusive tokens that can be exchanged for player’s choice of 8 different in-game items
   - 22×22 premium quality cloth map of the Mines of Moria
   - Special gold-plated replica of The One Ring complete with chain and pouch
   - Mines of Moria poster
   - The Lord of the Rings Online Art and Music Collection with the official Mines of Moria
   - A full color Collector’s Edition Starter Guide
3. Mines of Moria Digital Expansion. A digital upgrade with the Mines of Moria upgrade only. The press kit doesn’t indicate pricing, but this one will be the cheapest, I’m sure.

Mines of Moria game screenshots

This looks like a sweet upgrade for both new and existing LOTRO players.

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.

• My Previous Article about Moria
• Mines Of Moria Release Products
• Article about the expansion

LOTRO, Lord of the Rings Online, is having a special weekend for previous players. If you have played this game before you will be able to log on with your account and play free through May 8th to May 12th. There’s been plenty of new updates since this game started a year ago. They also have a special new pricing for this month. You can pay for a 3, 6 or 12 month plan and get the special pricing of $9.99 a month! You can also pay for a lifetime subscription for $199. I’m sure there will be new players trying it out but I think AOC, Age of Conan, beta will still be a big draw for ones who have their key. I was lucky enough to get a key and I’ll be reviewing it soon.

• LOTRO Welcome Back Page

With this new announcement they have also created a new web page. It will have previews and info about the new expansion. To gain access to the special area you need to register and play games. Looks like a good way to get people excited.

• LOTRO Expansion Announcement

Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) has been updating their game almost every 2 months with new changes and areas. Book 11: Defenders of Eriador! was added on October 24, 2007. This book brought a new smaller 12 person raid called the Rift with a balrog to fight against. I haven’t done any raiding in this game yet but I have heard this raid is very challenging. I also have reached level 50 with my minstrel and rank 7 with my spider in monster play. I’m the first rank 7 spider on the server I play on so It’s a big accomplishment but I get no new skills so that’s a disappointment.

This update also allowed players to buy houses for themselves and for their kinships. Players can decorate their houses with brand new items and some crafted items. There are 4 different housing areas for each race: dwarf, elf, hobbit and man. I picked the hobbit housing for my characters and kinship house just because that is my main race and my kinmate liked the houses.

The misty mountains was expanded with a new area which includes the goblin-town. Trollshaws area was expanded too. A lot more quests for the higher levels were added with some great items with good stats. You might also meet gollum in one of these quests. It is a fun quest when you finally find it and doesn’t break the lore at all. Gollum’s cave in the Goblin town area is a a great place for fans of the Hobbit book to visit. It’s not easy to get to unless you are a high level character.

Lore masters and minstrels got some new skills which really was a great addition. Lore masters can rez (resurrect) a fellow player and have more pets. Some of these pets are passive and only for looks. Lore masters can lay tar down on the floor which makes mobs slow down to a crawl and vulnerable to fire. Minstrels can now do some good damage if they sacrifice their healing a bit. Minstrels get some better healing too but the best part is now they have better dps for solo play.

Some changes to other classes didn’t play well with players. Hunters biggest damage skill now places a big x mark on a creep in PVP so it’s a warning for the creep to get out of the way. When hunters track players in PVP the creeps get notified of being tracked now. Burglars didn’t appreciate the 10 second timer on their sneak skill which didn’t have any before. But Burglars are still the best at PVP and can still survive easily.

Monster players can now use warband maneuvers which allows a stronger attack within a group. This only used to work on the freep side but only to npc characters. Now both sides can use it on any player character or npc’s. In my opinion this was not the right thing to do. The attacks were too strong and it pauses the fight which is not good in a PVP setting. I’ve suggested to keep the group attacks but not allow them on player characters. The creep side got some needed skills for higher ranked players which allowed for better fights. There were plenty of silly bugs that got though testing but I felt these were not as bad as the last update.

This update provided a lot of content for high level characters. The housing was the best due to the chests which allowed players to save more items. The rift seems a big success from what I have heard and read. It’s challenging, entertaining and gives great rewards. The new skills for minstrels and lore masters were great and it made players have more choices on how to play their class. The new skills made PVP more difficult in some ways with the tar being the most hated update skill.

I give this update a 8.5 out of 10.

Activision and Blizzard are merging into one company called, Activision Blizzard. From reading the press release it looks like a big deal in the gaming world. I haven’t played WOW but I have played Diablo and many activision games. I have read some concerns over the merger but mostly I haven’t seen anything that would cause me to worry. It seems like nothing major will change with the current games or with the franchises. I am still waiting for the next Diablo but it seems this will have to wait.

For new and previous players of the Lord of The Rings Online, they now have a special pricing for the holidays. If you sign up to the new holiday special you can get LOTRO for $9.99 a month. You have to sign up for 3 months at the $29.97 deal. You will then get billed every 3 months for that price unless you cancel. A nice deal for the holidays! This offer ends January 31, 2008. The next update to this game is coming in January and I’m still having fun!

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.

Here’s the official statement from turbine

On August 20th, 2007 the second free content update was added called “The City Of The Kings” which features book 10. Read more about it Here.Watch the trailer here.

The book 10 quests start in Evendim and occurs mainly in Annuminas. I haven’t started on this book but the quests look challenging and interesting. Annuminas has plenty of hard enemies and instances for the higher level players. Other quests have been added throughout the world for all levels. This new update also changed the user interface. Players can resize the controls and icons to fit better on their screens. Some of the classes got more skills like the captain and hunter. This update seems like it gave some needed stuff for the higher levels but not enough to satisfy some.

Players can now play as a chicken in a separate session. You have different quests to do and you can gain a new cape and some destiny points. As a chicken you can walk among the other players but you can’t attack or talk to them. A chicken starts at level 1 and can not gain any experience. This is actually a fun little side part of the game and I hope they expand on this idea for the future. Trying to run in places where wolves and bears try to kill you is hard! At least a chicken can evade and run really fast to get away.

Reputations have now been added to the game which allow players to gain some nice rewards. A player can do quests for a particular group to gain points. These points will gain favors and rewards which can be bought or traded. The amount of stuff you need to collect is a lot and becomes a big grind to get more reputation. I find the hobbit reputation the hardest due to very rare drops. More vault space for your items have now been added for a price at certain levels. This was a needed addition but they still need to add more bag space either from crafting or buying them. With all these quests, players need more space to hold items.

Crafting has also been updated with jewelers making earrings and bracelets. I hear that jewelers are making lot of money from these new recipes by selling stuff at the auctions. Scholars can now track their resources which was was very much needed. So this update gave some nice stuff for crafting including plenty of new recipes to find.

Monster play had plenty of changes implemented. All the keeps can now have defenses like boiling oil. This could have been a great idea but in my experience it isn’t working as it should. It kills too many people all at once when it should at least slow the attackers down. The creeps had some of their damage increased and health increased. It actually makes ranked creeps a bit better at fighting freeps. The biggest change is that they allowed players to play as a troll and a ranger. Now this could have been great for some great battles but the trolls seem like they are just too powerful. The trolls have massive AOE attacks which scatter the players. The rangers on the freep side can stealth and kill creeps with one shot. The rangers can be handled if they have no backup. The trolls can be taken down easily with a really good group of players. Before this patch the freeps could easily take the map when they wanted to. Now they can only take keeps with good tactics and less creeps around. This patch needs to be fixed so it becomes a bit more balanced for monster play.

In my opinion this update introduced more bugs and less needed content. Some of these bugs were awful and easily should have been seen on the test server. Having a whole building disappear with lower graphics on is one example. The game is still fun and the higher levels have some new content but I am hearing that they are getting bored. I have paced myself and don’t have plans of getting to level 50 any time soon. So for me this game is still entertaining enough for me to continue playing. The next update might happen in October or november. I’m hoping they will add more quests for us solo players and better stuff for the players at level 50. They better fix monster play or this part of the game might not entertain players anymore. I give this update a 6 out of 10. The bugs and poor planning with pvp really brought me down. The next update looks promising with player housing! Fun Fun!