LotRO – Left Angmar For Eregion

• MMORPG

• Lord of the Rings Online

Due to a heat pump failure, my normal schedule of writing scintillating posts (ha!) was totally borked. But lucky for you, I found some posts that I have previously rejected as being totally lame and irrelevant, pulled from the dregs of the barrel of mediocrity.

My LoTRO Hunter reached level 48. Normally a level like “48” doesn’t seem like that much of an achievement, but in LoTRO I feel like it takes an eternity* to level, so each new number is a major milestone. Asian grindfests TERA and Aion are the only two games I can think of that level slower right now.

I was going to hang around in Angmar until I reached level 50, but I just don’t like that place for some reason. It’s all dark and red and there’s spooky music and weird noises everywhere. I finished the “Fen” quests that gave me a nifty set of Hunter armor, and then I left to check out Farochel in the hopes of getting to 50 there. I spent a little time with the eskimos, but that place was somewhat depressing too so at level 47 I decided I was “close enough” to 50 to head to Moria. (I’m hoping I don’t need to finish the Shadows of Angmar epic quest line to start into Moria.) The only way I know of to get there is via. the old-fashioned “walking” method, so I headed south from the Trollshaws into Eregion, where I discovered a bunch of quests around the level 48-49 range. So now the plan is to hang out in Eregion until I reach 50. There’s a bunch of crebain and worms (the dragon kind, not the wiggly kind) and half-orcs around there that need to be dealt with for the helpless folk of Middle Earth.

I don’t know why I think level 50 is an important goal. That’s, what, a little more than half the level cap now? And people wonder why they let you buy your way to the level cap. Not every part of these long-lasting games is actually fun. I kind of wish they would sell tiers. Like pay one amount to get to level 50, another amount to get to level 70, and another amount to get to level 85. Something like that. Or hell, just pay X amount per level, so you could buy 1 level or 5 levels or 50 levels. Then you can choose where you want to start. Why not?

* Note: The leveling rate of “eternity” is defined as more than one or two days of casual gaming time per level. And yes I know it used to take weeks or months to gain a level so I should shut up and stop complaining.