I Never Promised…

Did you notice how directly after saying I’d come back to the blog, I kind of vanished down to London? Ha ha.

I’m at Spinks’ house overnight though, reading through Vampire: the Requiem (it was the Masquerade in my day!), and thinking I need my own copy. But that also I should update as to what I’m playing and where, before I get back to commenting a little on MMOs.

I’m playing LotRO exclusively now. I tried WAR again for the 10 days, and didn’t do much more than play Nordenwatch and Gates of Ekrund. Both very enjoyable. There’s a lot of fun around the game, but without my old guild and the people I wanted to say hi to, I found it tricky to stay for a long period.

Plus, our LotRO kin has finally started on DN (the new end raid). We did pretty good, I think. Got the first bosses down in few runs, and they cleared them again on friday (though I was in London!). They’re doing exploring tonight, and I fully expect another one or two bosses to drop. And next week I’ll be back with them again.

I kind of like new raids. I like learning the encounters, and try to go to them as clear of spoilers as I can. Often I might try and find out if I need anything specific to watch out for as a Captain, but I do try and stay fairly clear of direct discussion of fights. I like to see a boss drop for the first time. But I can make do with it being MY first time. I don’t much like loot and loot distribution, it stalls the raid a little – but I appreciate it’s there and has to be done, and I don’t mind the system we’ve gone for in-kin, so it could be worse. I like the familiar chit-chat, hanging out with more than a group of kinmates. But I’ve also been in a very dark place recently and found the first return-to-raiding night a bit shouty for me. I think it’s because I wasn’t joining in, or felt unable to.

Which is something I’ve noticed about myself. I used to be one of the loud ones in TS, and would be shoutier than anyone during raids. I feel something is holding me back, and it’s probably myself. I’ve gone a bit reflective and insular to deal with my mourning. And I have a liability to snap that previously I had under far better control. So I try and stay quiet to avoid it. Even though I hope people understand. Yesterday I snapped at two people I didn’t 100% mean to. And one I did!

Anyway, digression over. We’re raiding DN in LotRO, as well as the Turtle (or Filikul). We may even return to the Watcher when we can be bothered and have the right people together. And in the meantime I want to get back into grouping with kinmates and helping them through content.

I am considering the refer-a-friend WoW trial Spinks sent my way. But then I remember I’d have to buy the game AGAIN, and I have cold feet. I’d like to return to the familiarity of the game in a way, but I don’t want to buy it. I could just resub on an old account, but then I lose the 3x xp. And I’ll probably get bored by level 20!

All my excitement is based around World of Darkness and Rohan.

/update.

Update

Ok, so I haven’t come back and blogged properly. I almost certainly will at some point.

But right now I’m home and feeling a bit down in the dumps. But thanks for all the kind thoughts and comments, they really do mean a lot, even when I don’t reply. Which I do a lot.

Am playing LotRO almost exclusively. It’s where my main kin/guild is. It’s where my closest online friends play, and they definitely distract me from the blah-ness of everything else at the moment. Except, I know I’m starting to self-fulfil my despondency by being less than enthusiastic about things.

We raided. We did ok. I enjoyed bits of it. But not perhaps the traditional bits. And it made me feel a bit pointless in the grand scheme of things. Even though, I know I play an awesome Captain with a remarkably good sword (thanks to friends who got it for me while I was away!). I’m lucky, they’re a good bunch. And I treat them pretty shoddily on the whole.

Which makes me feel bad too.

And I know it’s all just a cycle of grief from my dad, and stress from having to think about his belongings, and wanting to go outside and scream a lot, but knowing it won’t help all that much. And they’re there for me, I just don’t want to push them away, and yet I can feel myself doing it as a defence mechanism.

Sometimes we’re strange alien people. And sometimes we blog about it.

Beware: Idus Martias

After all the excitement of Pi Day (3/14) in the US, Europe now brings you the Ides of March!! A time to beware, if your name happens to be Julius Caesar…

…which is quite appropriate as Spinks is introducing me to the Rome miniseries, something I always meant to watch but never really got around to.

And you might gather from this that this weekend I’m away from home, away from my computer and haven’t picked up a computer game at all. You’d be right. It’s always strange to be away from my normal routine, but it’s also quite relaxing.

That being said, I can’t wait to get back to WAR. I hear from KIASA that the Inevitable City is being attacked fairly regularly on Burlok, but I still don’t feel any draw to the endgame, instead I’m missing levelling with my pals. Tomorrow, I intend to steal Spinks’ husband’s computer and play a bit with her. A bit of WAR goes a long way.

And since I now know Book 7 for LotRO will hit Europe on 27th March, I know I have some time before I get back to my Captain and explore her new lesser skills.

Looking forward to being home, but also enjoying the break!

In-Between Travels

I spend my time getting my new netbook ready for travelling. The trip to Dublin and GOA went well and was really fun, hopefully when we organise a London one we’ll get to meet some more players, but Dublin was always going to be a bit of a dice roll in that regard.

Other things have been happening so I’ve had a few days hiatus from gaming.

I left my LotRO kinship, and am now exploring a slightly quieter path. For the moment I’ll be playing some WAR with the new Slayers, so will re-examine LotRO with Lothlorien and Book 7, but I might also try and edge my weapons closer to 50. One of the problems me and the friends who also quit the kin now have is how we go about raiding now without causing too much drama or fuss. We still want to do it, but obviously leaving the kin has made things a little trickier. I’m sure we’ll find a way before the interesting Book 8 raid though, somehow. And if not, well.. maybe LotRO will become a more casual game for me. I’m fairly certain I’ll be doing all the main questing stuff with my pals anyway, and that matters a lot more to me.

And the Slayers land later today. I’m supposed to be at a beer tasting for Natural Selection beer (created for the Darwin Bi-centennary). Beer and dwarfs, it’s quite fitting, really. I should be home in time to see the Slayers in action though, which is good enough for me!

More gaming-thoughtful posts when I’m away from home from Friday-Tuesday, right now I have a ton of stuff to set up on this little computer that’s going to be my home from home.

A Day of Many Amusements

[As I write this post, my youngest cat is transfixed to every movement on the monitor, and fighting the words as I type them. Like I said - nerf the cat!]

My plan yesterday was to get in some stellar gaming time, as I had the day off work and felt a little under-played from having worked on monday as overtime. Instead I had a riot chatting to Ardua (from aforementioned Echoes of Nonsense blog, see previous post) and Spinks. This led to a long search for flights to Dublin, which I gave up on, for the moment.

I also fiddled with both blogs and added all the new Warhammer Online blogs to my feed reader, as promised. Once I’d done the first read-through, it wasn’t too unmanageable, but it was sad to finally take off a couple of links due to inactivity. It was lunchtime before I realised I hadn’t had breakfast, so we moved straight to lunch instead. Boo! One day my husband will learn all about second breakfasts.

In the afternoon, I allowed myself to get distracted to chat about my EeePC and what operating system we should install, and it led to all manners of holy hell of geekery. In the end, we gave up and watched 24 instead, then watched the last 3 eps of BSG series 4.0 so my husband was caught up and ready to watch the new episode (we have a friend coming round to watch it so is important to be all caught up). Remembered what a damn good show it is. As if I needed reminding.

Gamewise, I have to admit I defaulted to LotRO again, as my friends were expecting me. If I’d played during the day, it would have been Warhammer, but I’ll get some RvR action in real soon. We did a couple of instances, and I got very down. Not because of anything specific, I think I just wasn’t in an MMO frame of mind – the rest of the day bore that out. Considering I usually spend every evening gaming, it’s blindingly obvious on those rare occasions when I’d rather be elsewhere, and last night was one of them. But we did have some  laughs, and we saw a new instance and beat it up.

Coming soon – my thoughts on each of the new Moria instances and some thoughts on my Tier 1 time in Warhammer, before my Knight reaches rank 12!

Quiet Sunday

I spent far too long trying to farm 2nd Age weapons/items in LotRO yesterday. I won’t be doing that again. We also did some hard-mode Skumfil runs which involves lots of running and lots of spiders. Hrrm – so THAT’s why spiders were on my mind?

I had a bad dream about a giant spider trapped in a box. I now blame LotRO for that. Spider dreams are not cool.

Also played my Knight, read up on Slayers and missed my mohican haircut for a moment. Would I do it again? Probably, but not orange ;p Plus, I wouldn’t really want to put pics up, so that’s out also.