Leaving the relative safety of the Shire, the road to Bree is dangerous to low-level adventurers. Wolves, bears, and boars wander along the road, while bandit camps are on either side. This area is for players of levels 13-20ish, with many quests that will allow players to explore the area.
It turns out FRAPS is limited to 32-bit file size, so long captures are broken into several files. This tour leg resulted in 2 files, so I had to use VirtualDub to join them before uploading.
Now I purchase a ride from Hobitton to Stock on the East side of the Shire. I pass by lots of places whose names are recognizable from the Lord of the Rings books. Next up: on to Bree.
In this segment, my Hunter rides around “the Hill” suburb of Hobbiton. The Hill contains the Party Tree and Bag End where Bilbo and Frodo lived. As you can see in the video, the Sackville-Bagginses have moved in already.
I’m disappointed by how much the compression by YouTube muddies the textures. The game is quite sharp and generally looks good, as do my source videos, but YouTube needs to save bandwidth, so re-compresses quite a bit. I don’t fault them, but it does blur things quite a bit.
This time, I am using my Hunter to take the tour because Hunters can easily zip between the major Middle Earth locations.
This video shows the path from Michel Delving, where the last part of the tour left off, to Hobbiton, with a short detour to the Great Smials in Tuckborough. Again, no loading screens along this path, nor will there be any for quite a while.
Based on the tour videos so far, you would think it is always night in Middle Earth, but it is just bad luck. The night views are good and I should show more of the stars and sky in them, but generally the daytime views are better.
This video was captured with FRAPS at half resolution and 30FPS, so what you’re seeing is a quarter of the pixels and half the frame rate I see, but it gives you a pretty good idea of how large and well-done Middle Earth is in the Lord of the Rings Online.
I downloaded and have played just a bit of Age of Conan, just to try it out. I don’t actually need a new game to play at the moment, but I had been told that Age of Conan (AoC) was a nifty free-to-play MMORPG. AoC is certainly prettier than Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), and is very similar, so took almost no effort to start playing.
I decided to play a Priest, a class that has one-hand weapon attacks and spells. The only spell I have at the moment is a Smite spell, but that is quite powerful, though easy to interrupt. As I gained in level, I earned points that could be put towards various abilities, like running, jumping, healing, and most importantly, concentration, so I could cast spells without being interrupted so often.
The game starts with a shipwreck and you being marooned on a beach. The player needs to fight to rescue a girl that cheers as we kill things, but is otherwise not helpful during the fights, and get to the city. It took an hour of so to fully explore the starting area, kill everything, and get to the city. I nearly died a couple of times, but managed to survive.
The game is a bit racier than LOTRO, with skimpy outfits (and yes, my dude looked nasty in a thong), lots of blood, and violent conversational options. For mature audiences, it seems like it could be lots of fun, though the story so far isn’t nearly as compelling as that of LOTRO.
If you’re looking for a fun, free-to-play game, check out Age of Conan. It seems like it will be quite engaging.
It has been a while since I posted any LOTRO news, and my video upload project is stalled because I’ve been busy.
Most of my characters have left Thirst for Power, which couldn’t seem to gain critical mass in terms of having enough active members online at any time. Most of the kin members jumped to Exiles, which is an active kinship with many high-level members and a pretty fun group.
My main character, Tallborn, is now level 59 and has done some missions in Moria and lots of instances, like the Grand Staircase (in order to get Moria Medallions to get awesome armor). I’m working through the Epic story missions, but they are a bit tedious and have lots of FedEx quests. I should not have waited so long to do them, because I don’t get much experience from them at my level.
Several of my characters got fancy new Spring Festival horses, which are not faster than normal horses, nor cheaper, but have better decorations (saddles and gear). To get them, we had to win races and earn tokens, in addition to paying for the horse. While in Moria, you need to ride a goat, but outside, I like my festival horse.
I can’t emphasize enough what a compelling game Lord of the Rings Online is. It supports solo and fellowship play, excellent crafting, skirmishes, and more. If you have any interest in role playing games, swords and sorcery, or the Lord of the Rings, give it a shot. You’ll have fun!
This video continues my Middle Earth tour in LOTRO. I start at the entrance to the Shire from Ered Luin (see the first video) and the ride to Waymeet and Michel Delving, ending at the Mathom House.
This video was captured using the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle using an HDMI connection. While the sound was set to the HDMI connection, it apparently was not recorded, so this video is also without sound.
This is the start of my tour of Middle Earth as envisioned by The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). LOTRO is such a huge game that I thought it would be worthwhile to show people how amazing it is. I decided I would ride from end to end and post the video, but I will do it in segments, because it may become boring and I don’t have access to all areas yet (at least not without being killed quickly).
I’m also experimenting with capture approaches. My GTX280 video card failed, and in the process of diagnosing that, I built myself a new Sandy Bridge Core-i7 rig with 8GB of RAM and a GTX570, all in a nice red mini-ATX case. Unfortunately, the new GTX570 doesn’t have component video out, so I can’t use the Hauppauge HDPVR to capture anymore, at least not directly. The video below was captured using the HDPVR, but after the HDMI signal fr0m the computer was converted to component by a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle. Why not use the Shuttle to capture directly? Well, the software is a little unforgiving (ok, horrible) and when I did this video, I didn’t have it figured out. I did use the Shuttle to capture the second part of the tour, but have so far been unable to get it to finish uploading to YouTube (it’s failing for the 3rd time as I write this).
Unfortunately, just as I was experimenting with video capture, I was experimenting with audio capture. While the audio capture approach I used here worked in tests, it failed in real life, so this video doesn’t have sound. This is a shame, because LOTRO music is great. The soundtrack is varied and generally excellent – one of the best game soundtracks out there.
This video shows me leaving Thorin’s Hall on my goat (you need a goat to ride in Moria, but you can ride it elsewhere and it is as fast as a normal horse) and riding past Gondamon, through Duillond, then into the Shire gate. Sadly, it’s at night, so the colors are muted, but LOTRO has a great night sky, which I show off a bit during the ride.
I’ve really been enjoying the story missions in LOTRO recently. I had neglected them for a while, because I was having so much fun in skirmishes and generally exploring Middle Earth. I had completed the missions in Lone Lands and North Downs (Esteldin), so was sent to Rivendell for more.
Elrond had me running all over the place talking to his sons and such, but that led to some really cool fellowship missions that could be done solo because I got a buff that gave me thousands to HP (Morale in LOTRO). Killed a bunch of trolls! All of this was to look for a Nazgul that escaped the flood at the Ford of Bruinen.
Two days a go, I got to take a long, boring walk with Frodo, at Gandalf’s urging. Not very exciting, but nifty nonetheless.
Yesterday, however, I got some fun missions! In one, I chased Gollum and nearly caught him (and killed an orc escort). In another, I went with Legolas to hunt forest trolls and their minions. In the end, we ran into the Nazgul commanding a boss troll, which we quickly dispatched. The Nazgul escaped, however, so I’m sure he will be back to cause us trouble.
I also completed a Legendary Trait that allows me to use a sword as well as my Lore Master staff. This trait, based on Gandalf’s sword usage, makes me slightly tougher up close, though I can still die too easily. I’m also discovering that my Lynx pet seems to show more threat that the Bear that I had been using as a tank. The Bear (BigGrowly) is slightly tougher than the Lynx (Slynxy), but the Lynx keeps the enemies at a distance for longer. Plus the Lynx has the awesome sneak attack that can take down some enemies in one shot!
Note: as I write this, LOTRO is down. There is big activity on Twitter where everyone is telling which server they’re on. Look for the #Servername hashtag. I posted mine.
I have been enjoying Lord of the Rings Online a lot recently. I have 4 characters (the natives call them “toons”) on the Gladden server, one a mid-level Lore Master, a lower-level Hunter, a similarly low-level Minstrel, and a very low-level Rune Keeper. There are several more classes that I have yet to try. Each class is so different that it really makes the game very interesting and not boring to replay the missions (mostly). For example, the Hunter is quite the badass at low level, and has only died about twice, and then only when mobbed. The Lore Master can reach out and touch the enemy and has a pet to help, but dies pretty easily when approached. The Minstrel can play music that does damage and heals, but can also use weapons. I haven’t played the Rune Keeper long enough to be able to comment on him.
The crafting system in LOTRO is very good (and much better than in Star Trek Online, though that has improved a lot). To craft, you need materials and recipes, which you either need to gather or otherwise get. Being in a Kinship is great help here, because your kin will send materials and recipes to you (as well as give you other goodies). Then, when you make something nice, you can send it to appropriate kin. Essentially, you don’t need to be self reliant. One of my characters is a jeweler and a cook, while another is a farmer and woodworker, and a third is a scholar (potions and scrolls) and weaponcrafter. With crafting, you can often make better stuff than what drops from your kills.
If you this sounds like fun to you, check out LOTRO, create characters on the Gladden server, and, when you decide you want to stay, look for members of the “Thirst for Power” kinship and join up!