Pumping Irony

August ended up being mostly a LOTRO month. I did put a little time into other games, Guild Wars getting the most of my secondary time this month, though it was mostly spent doing a little Lightbringer point grinding and a couple runs with Van Hemlock’s Tuesday Noob Club. I missed the last two weeks due to Real Life obligations, however. Sorry, Tim.

In LOTRO, obviously the biggest achievement this month was getting my Lore-master to level cap! A few of the crafters in the kinship hooked her up with high-end (teal) armour and jewelry. The armour didn’t crit but that’s fine, I just appreciate having the basic set. I’d love to be able to upgrade to one of the reputation or raid armour sets, but not sure I’ll be able to pull that off in the few months before I’m adventuring in Moria. That doesn’t mean I’m not giving it a go, however! She’s also kindred (maximum) with the Elves of Rivendell reputation now, which gives a few more scholar recipes and the gorgeous long-sleeved Elven dress, which I dyed black for her. She’s also up to Ally level with the Lossoth from Forochel, Kindred inching closer and closer in case she wants the Tundra horse. I’ve been getting with some kin-mates to run the Annuminas daily quests for Wardens of Annuminas reputation as well as the armour barter items. Still debating if I’d like the Dark Chestnut horse available at Kindred reputation with the Wardens of Annuminas. It’s nice-looking but for some reason the Council of the North’s Dapple Grey horse has been on my mind. Arwellyn looks great standing next to it (a shame we can’t “test drive” them before buying) but I’m certainly under the impression that it’s a slow reputation to build. Many kin-mates have returned to the game this month and we’ve recruited several more awesome and fun people (including a few couples, how fun is that?) and I have arranged an alliance with another kinship roughly the size of ours so we should be getting more players to run instances and hopefully raids soon.

Otherwise, I’ve been spending a little time with the 360 as well. Crackdown has been getting most of my attention. It’s just plain fun, especially in co-op play. I’ve gotten several more achievements this month, and hoping to get them all eventually. I have two real-life friends with the game, and Oakstout recently picked it up also. I tried hosting a co-op game with him a few days ago but he didn’t have the DLC packs yet. I’m still plugging away very, very slowly at Mass Effect. It’s a great game but it’s when playing an RPG that I get that “lonely” feeling and wander back to the PC for an MMORPG, so it’s having trouble keeping my attention. I can play shooters or action-RPG’s just fine on the console, probably because there’s enough action to keep my mind off the fact I’m alone. Finally, Halo 3 was this month’s new purchase. First impressions haven’t been great. I’ve only played the game twice the whole month and I’m kinda regretting getting it. The main reason I bothered with Halo 3 at all was to play with my friend Daniel. We’ve been in practically every MMO together since SWG, we raided together in WoW, we did GW together last year, even some Vanguard but he is computer-less right now so the 360 is our only means of getting our game on. I’ve seen Hudson on XBL playing Too Human. If I had enough XBL friends to play co-op with, I’d consider getting the game, but I don’t have any interest in just playing through the single-player game.

Finally, DDO. I logged in several times this month but only played a single adventure. Level 7 is a difficult place to be. I’ll constantly see groups asking for levels 4-6 and 8-10 but very rarely inclusive of level 7 itself. The guild I’m in has gotten smaller (well, at least during the hours I most often play, which has always been a problem population-wise in every game, even WoW) and Buzzsaw’s episode of “Guild Life” from DDOCast #76 has been in the back of my mind. I have always put some effort into finding guilds in each MMO that fits what I’m looking for and where the personalities or personas of the members gel with each other. In DDO I feel like I’m on the other side of the coin and I’m one of the “problem children.” I login to the game, can’t get a group, have no patience to sit on my thumbs forever with the LFG tool up, so I logout. I never get to really know the guild, and they don’t get to know me. They often offer to login some of their lower-level characters to run with me, but I don’t let them. I login a certain character in the games I play because I want to get something accomplished on that particular character, and I presume most other people are the same in that regard. I immediately feel selfish — or worse, pitied — when someone had obviously logged on their high-level character for a reason would get a lower-level character just to help me out. It’s almost a Catch-22. I very much appreciate the generosity of that sentiment, and I know it’s more than just words, they’re quite serious about wanting to help. But I’m so overwhelmed with feeling selfish, that it’s “all about me” even though I never come off that way that I refuse to let them actually do it. If they’d already been playing their lower-level characters, that would be a different story and I’d group with them in a heartbeat. I’ve considered finding a bigger guild which has more players available during the times I play, but isn’t that being even more blatantly selfish on my part?

/sigh

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 11:21 am and is filed under MMO Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.