Still doing quests around Lake Evendim, which is still one of the prettiest areas in the game I’ve yet encountered:
The chain of quests revolving around some dude’s riddles, where I had to find specific chests for each riddle, was annoying, but satisfying to finish.
I also see the Fall Festival is back, but I’m gonna skip it. Found many of the quests super annoying.
I generally do the festivals only if I’m playing a character at the time that could use some cosmetic items only available then. One of these festivals had a bunch of quivers which were cool for my hunter, but it is so often just cloaks, and none of my characters wear those.
There’s always mounts, though!
Good old Everswim. Ah, the days when there were no fast travel boats…
It’s a pretty zone, but I dislike playing there – the quest density isn’t that great, so there’s a lot more grinding in the low-mid 30s than is necessary.
I actually LOVE The Yule Festival. LOVE IT. But I tried the quests for this one and found them super annoying, so feh.
The Yule Festival is the best festival; some fun dumb stuff there. I like the rewards a lot, too. The Villian title and the hobo outfit are must haves for me.
Hobo outfit? I must has!
I personally love the play that you can be “coerced” to take part in. SO FUN.
Yeah, it’s the reward for this quest chain: Support the Poor
My burglar wears it because it is fun to be the worst dressed hero in Middle-Earth.
I am so getting that so I can be a high-falutin’ Elf in a hobo outfit. ;)
Shot from Osgiliath, looking across the Pelennor Fields toward Minas Tirith.
I am impressed with how SSG / Turbine has rendered this area graphically. As I’ve said before, to me this game captures the locations as well or better than the movies. It’s what keeps me here.
I don’t care for the grinding that has made its way into the later parts of the game, but it’s livable. And understandable.
Yea, really like the art on the route to Mordor now :)
And as usual the two biggest issues with the game is the horrendous performance when riding warsteeds (give us a new client!) and all the ‘task item’ loot that isn’t task items.
Loving the new loot/sound filter though.
Got 310 shared vault slots now… and its still not enough. :P
Finally max level also… haven’t been max level since the launch of the game. I want to go back to Ettenmoors but I fear it is only really high-level Creeps going around in groups now, and I cant risk my stats. If they offered a way to freeze them I’d go, alternatively maybe I can go on another character if the ‘PVP currency’ is shared across all.
Wonder where I took this picture though, we need “geo-tagging” on Printscreen from games :P
I finally climbed out of Moria today, after nine years of having an account with this game.
Attn lowbies. Almost all the 1-50 content (Eriador quest pack bundle) is super cheap now in the store. You should have enough points to buy it if you picked up the black friday expansions.
Yule Festival is here! Yay! There goes much of my weekend!
Lots of stuff on sale now.
Unfortunately that also includes 50% off inventory slots, something I’ve purchased a lot of during the last month.
Oh well, hindsight :)
I tried one last time to get my level 85 characters back (I think I had 4).
‘We can’t find them, sorry. Thanks for contacting us.’
OK, I’m still playing, and mostly still mostly around Minas Tirith. I’ve only moved forward a bit. I’ve wandered into Far Anorien for a while, but keep coming back to Pelennor because…
SSG has upped the grind big time. Rep has at least 2 more levels at Minas Tirith (I haven’t look to see if there will be more - and at least they give more points for achieving them). Imbued legendary items add a whole new grind to get scrolls and crystals to increase legacy levels. There’s a Minas Tirith grind to get scrolls, and so far I see there’s a festival grind to get crystals.
I hear there’s more to come in Mordor in terms of grind.
It’s a definite change from the 1st part of the game, and I get why. You can buy shortcuts and SSG needs that. But I don’t. They haven’t made it so bad…I only paid extra money to buy a premium house … 1st time I spent real money other than my $100/year sub in 10 years.
My overall feeling is that I remember the Two Towers and ROTK as 2/3 of the story, but now it’s basically 95% of time I’ve played in LOTRO.
In the meantime, I’ve become a Map Groupie.
Some like mounts, I like maps because I can see them all at one time. I still need to wade through the Spring and Summer festivals to get my last 6.
Looks great! I’m on a small burnout break, but I’ll be back soon.
I’ve been playing for a month and a half or so. I got over the fact that my old characters were lost. Having a good time getting back to where I was. My lost characters were level 85 doing Rohan things, and my kinship had long dissolved into the ether.
So I started anew, found a nice group of people, and this weekend should be back up to 85 at least on one character. Having never seen Gondor or Mordor, I surely won’t mind poking around, and the ‘grind’ in LOTRO never really bothered me as it does in other games. Dunno why.
I expect that I’ll reach 115 on this first character, not worry about Mordor so much, go look at it, and then start another character. The trip through the world is so much fun.
I see it’s the same old janky Turbine employees at SSG. They’re still displaying a loading screen ad for a sale that’s been over for 6 weeks.
Having just had an enforced break due to lots of travel I am looking forward to getting back into this… Rohan must be explored!
