Ding 30 RL!

Today I hit 30 years old and I’m running down some of the new skills I have attained recently.

Passive Skills:

• Back Hair – You no longer shiver in a cold breeze, but your companions may.
• Nose Hair – You gain a +2.0 to disease resistance, failure to meet the weekly upkeep will result in a morale debuff for your group.
• No Hair – Your demand for faster run speed is rewarded by an aerodynamic upgrade to your head. This effect also increases swim speed and luck when rubbed obnoxiously.
• Roundtuit – The time needed to complete crafting actions has been increased.  A success on starting a crafting process will now be limited the closer it come to completion

Activated Skills:

• Grandeur – You’re chance of making lots of money are still out there, you use this to jump on any opportunity of making it. This skill has a 99.986% chance of failure.
• Glutton – By summoning a previously unknown power, you are able to eat large amounts of really bad food to increase your energy. This skill replaces “Gorge” which had a 30 minute increase to your encumbrance. Glutton has a 30 year static increase to your weight and can only be removed by Jim.
• Jim – You summon an overly enthusiastic NPC that increases your endurance, vitality, and strength. This will temporarily change your appearance and lower your intellect to the point that running in place actually sounds like a good idea at 5 in the morning.
• Housing Repair – You can now engage in regular household repair and perform small projects.  This skill is affected by Roundtuit.

Well, they are definitely not all upgrades or beneficial but I’m holding out for “Retire” and “Golden Years” which I hear to be excellent end game skills.  Seems like a grind though to get them.

-Brackish

The One Ring to fool them all?

Over at MMO-Gamer, there is a second part of the review for Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online. This review covers the post level 25 game and goes into a lot of detail as to how Turbine does not deliver. The writer is blunt, honest and in some cases quite funny about the disappointment both he and his guild feels. However, is this truly a fair assesment of the state of the game of LotRO?

Lets just fire right off and nail his first point that he is level 50. He is in an established guild and has obviously been putting in more time than the larger portion of the player base. Turbine appealed to the crowd who were more akin to a casual style gameplay and I attribute this to the large amount of quests that remain uniform in difficulty throughout the levels. When he said this in the first paragraph, I just got the feeling he was going to be hard to appease.