We can take a stab at it.

Got any suggested times?

Liar.

And I may return to LOTRO. I'm wavering in my desire to play The Old Republic, as I don't have a ton of time and paying a monthly fee for a few hours a month is a little weird. So we'll see. I don't want to download anything again, though, and I don't want to pay for an expansion I probably won't like.

I will likely be on tonight, if anyone's going to be around.

I'm willing to bet anything that overall SWTOR is going to turn out to be LOTRO II. Its one of the huge reasons why I've never been that interested in that game.

They've got the same class imbalances and everything built in already.

I'll let you know if Isengard is any good.

They are saying they will be rolling it out a day early...so that would be tomorrow.

Shades of Tyrn Gorthad is now recruiting Barrow-downers for fun, casual gaming on the Silverlode server.

I, Reprimand, am the owner, and Frarr and Crabannan are seneschals. If you see one of us online, let us know and we'll add you. :D

It's a fact.

Every multiplayer game, and most singleplayer games, that have classes have class imbalances. It's the nature of class design, skill design, and how players use those classes and skills.

In any case, I am reinstalling LOTRO. Today is a sick day, so re-downloading everything doesn't bother me so much. We'll see if I actually play, or if the icons sit unused on the desktop like so many other games.

Okay, seems they just revamped stuff with the release of Isengard. That should have been expected, I guess. Well, nothing that drastic - at least it seems on first sight.

And great to have the kinship up and running. I think I could join with both of my characters, so that we fill the quota...

Which is why classes in MMOs are obsolete! :D


Wow...you didn't pick a good day for that. It was like first release in how hard it was to find the servers up yesterday.

However, so far I like the new expansion. The mob spawn time has been set very high so that doing the kill quests, even in spite of the very high number of players in the area, was really easy. :)

The only thing that bugs me slightly (so far) is the area feels very small.

All right, I've added Legate's characters Gimifril and Curufinwen to the kinship, which puts us at the minimum eight members.

I don't pick my sick days, they pick me. And besides, I had to do a completely new install, so it took awhile.

And you are certainly preoccupied with the size of things, Kuru. Must be a dwarven thing. ;)

Darn tootin'!

I have now officially joined Shades of Tyrn Gorthad!

Woohoo! We are nine strong now.


Today I made it to Rivendell, whereupon I immediately slapped Legolas and Frodo around for quite a while. I highly recommend it.

Well some of the changes are (even more) discouraging...

:mad:

And all my outfits are ruined because Minstrels can't wear medium-armor anymore period... Hmm single-track much...

Should've read up on the changes, logged into my lvl 14 minstrel and the entire playing style has changed...yikes! :eek:


Now as to the kinhouse, do we have any preferences as to the location? Near Manfield, Elftown, Dwarfville, or Hobbitchestingtonfieldville-on-Shire?

What? Noooo! My tailor had a full outfit planned for her! :(

Now I think THAT is rather horrible. I mean, surely people must complain. Lots of people must have spent a long time getting their "perfect outfit" and suddenly this...

I already have one Elven house, so I would be up for a change if people want it. Dwarven housing is quite nice and attractive to me, but well, they are underground (and also for personal reasons, my two characters are so much "Ered-Luin-ish" that I wouldn't mind having the kinship house somewhere else, just for the sake of traveling convenience). I haven't seen the Man and Hobbit houses yet, actually. Might do that in my spare time to get some idea.

Minstrels can't EVER wear medium armor? That seems like an unnecessary limitation. I was able to work around the newly excised ballads and anthems - my new attack order works just fine - but I was really looking forward to wearing something besides stupid hats and purple shoes at some point in the future.

I think either a Bree or Shire homestead makes the most sense. Ered Luin is waaay out there.

Obviously, as a dwarf, Ered Luin seems good, but a Shire or Bree homestead sounds good. I think that Breeland would probably be the best thematically, since it contains the Barrow-Downs. On the other hand, I haven't seen any of those two yet, and I suspect that the Shire homesteads will be nicer.

Also, is anyone currently online? I'd quite like to join the kinship some time soon.

edit: Ok, Legate's added me to the kinship.

I think you can earn a return-skill to your home location anyway (even though it takes time). That's what I am planning to do, anyway. And you can buy your own personal house in Ered Luin, if you wish that (that's actually a lot easier than earning the return-skill to Thorin's Gate). That's basically what I did and that's why I wouldn't mind the kin-house being somewhere else. Let's be "cosmopolitan".

I might be now for a short while still, if it's in my power to add you.

Yeah exactly. I think having a house in Ered Luin would go well with my character, and then the kinship one should be somewhere else (and I like the idea of Shire or Breeland).

Housing? (Gramsfoot.)
 

Okay, so we just spent some time with Eönwë reviewing houses and actually we both agreed that we'd prefer the Shire housing most of all. To sum it up: it is nice, round, has funny corridors heading down, the surroundings are pretty, the setting is really beautiful (and to me it looks rather Hobbitton-y, with the lights twinkling over the water if you enter the neigbourhood at night). I think there is a really nice kinship house situated always near the entrance, near the huge waterfall (forgot to check the address, might do that later sometime if need be).

Otherwise, for the rest of the neighbourhoods, like I said: with Elven/Dwarven characters and housing more or less already there, and with Bree/Shire being a lot more "cosmopolitan areas", these would be preferrable - and out of them, Shire definitely leads. Human housing is... well... I called it "too square-shaped", not that visually appealing in general, sort of having a bleak look, reminiscent of vacant saloons from old Westerns (even if it was, of course, going to be decorated). At least in comparison to the Shire, it really pales. Eönwë had said the same, so at least when it comes to our suggestions, here you go...

I could go for the Shire. I think the aesthetics should probably be our foremost consideration, and it sounds like the Shire gets very high remarks in that regard.

I have a personal house in Bree, it's functional but not fun. (I need more thin furniture spaces to store my songbirds, heh.) The Shire sounds spiffy.

I have tons and tons of decorative items sitting in my vaults that can be used for the kin house, just let me know when we get it.

Just let us others also have a chance to contribute to the decorations, okay? ;)

I think it would be really great to just decorate our house with purely things of our own craft (or special "gifts" we've acquired, such as the Sinister Keg or whatnot). I think I've been crafting chandeliers all my life (thinking of that, my main character seems to be obsessed with light, then again, what would you expect from an Elven jewel-smith) and I have some stuff that I didn't manage to stuff into my otherwise rather small personal house.

By the way, there is one more thing which we found hilarious in the Shire, and that is, what you can see if you go into the fields at night...

As promised
 

As I promised...a few weeks ago I admit...

Here is a picture of a beardless Kuru caused by a graphical glitch.

Eonwe, Gwath and myself had a fine old time chatting in kin today and Eonwe visited my house and somebody else's and he discovered one of the games more quirky little features. ;)

What, you mean something like The Keg? ;)

That is exactly what he means. :smokin:

Also, it's festival season.

What is this..."festival season"?

Is it? I was wondering why nothing was taking place this year yet, with the 22nd Sept gone and all.

These are the festivals (usually, I believe, they are in autumn, then later around Christmas, in spring and again in summer) which happen every year, once in a while, there are special activities in the main points of the country (like Shire - resp. usually Hobbitton and/or Michel Delving, Duillond, Thorin's Gate, Bree, or in winter in the sort of special city; now that's just speaking from personal experience) and you can win special festival prizes and stuff (like horses, weird artifacts, clothing, and so forth - my main character learned to dance a lot of really nice dances also there, for instance. You can also join all the drinking-guilds, doing all the "opening quests" is a lot of fun, I have enjoyed it a lot the last year in the autumn). Sometimes they might have something special, I don't know what special stuff is there this year... gotta check.

Haven't done much in the festivals, except for the Yule one last winter. That was awesome. I hope they have the theater again, because you get to participate in a play. By participate, I mean stand on stage and constantly flirt with the audience. :D

I played a while ago and the Yule festival was the best part of it. I might reactivate my account just so I can get drunk on food again and stagger around the town.

I wish I had thought to find out who on here played. Maybe I would have had more fun.

I think we should probably do a kinship moot at some point during it.

Indeed, that sounds like a good idea. If we could come up with some good time for meeting, that'd be great.

And I definitely agree that the Frostbluff theatre last winter was one of the best things I've experienced in there :) The Mad Baggins play was just brilliant even by itself - the idea was really commendable, and very canonical, too! (Just for those who don't know - there was this theatre play describing The Long-Expected Party and Bilbo's disappearance, but from the "realistic point of view of the public" - i.e. Gandalf and The Evil Dwarf being the villains who make Bilbo disappear ;) Great stuff.)

A moot would have to be during the weekend for me.

So what day and time would people be able to make it?

I'll be around intermittently throughout tomorrow and in the afternoon/evening (US time) on Sunday.