Lord of the Rings Online

Ding! Level 60! I win! (3/29/09)

And as with every MMORPG, the Level Cap having been reached, it is time to reflect on the journey and ponder what comes next now that the biggest of all carrots has been removed and leveling treadmill grinds to a halt.

Having played EverQuest, it is impossible not to compare any other game’s post-level-cap mechanics to the gold standard that was EQ’s Alternative Advancement system. There was, for all intents and purposes, never an end to the value of additional xp, just (very slowly) diminishing returns.

So when I take stock of Dirkalas (Hobbit Hunter – err, just to be clear he is a Hobbit who *is* a Hunter, not a Hunter of Hobbits) I find quite a bit still to accomplish:

1) Epic Storyline – I’ll gladly carry water for the Fellowship if they let me play an Extra in the Movie.
It’s one of LotRO’s more unique elements and greatest strengths. Yet I’m woefully unadvanced. I am currently stuck in two different Books of Volume I (Shadow of Angmar). Both were tried and failed as recently as two levels ago with Blackberri (Sheila’s Minstrel). I think we need one more person to get us through both quests. That’s only Chapter 8 of 14, I think. Even though we’ve witnessed the Fellowship leaving Rivendell, there is much work (questing) yet to be done before we can meet up with them again in Lothlorien.

2) Faction – They will *learn* to love me!
Speaking of Lothlorien, those Elves are a trifle prickly about who they let into their Forest. Unless you’ve gotten on good terms with them from questing outside of the Golden Wood, you’re liable to become be-feathered, as in transfixed by arrows…as in 1-rounded, if you try to cross their borders. Other factions, such as the Miners and Guards of Moria are still far from maxed, though the Dwarves are far less Hobbicidal about it.

3) Traits – Bravely Bold Sir Robin Rode Forth From Camelot…
I’m a baaad Hunter. My Trait levels are embarrassingly low. Because I was pretty much always “behind” others in levels, I never focused on the Deeds required to raise the various Traits, choosing to work instead on leveling mostly through quest completion. Now I am faced with the task of spending time going to older zones and (for the most part) slaughtering trivial mobs to acquire the requisite “slayer” titles. This is probably the most “grindy” bit of business in my list.

4) Finding and Leveling Legendary Weapons – Why did those Second Age Smiths Even Bother?
The Moria expansion added the mechanic of Legendary Weapons which accumulate experience in a way similar to characters. They increase fairly dramatically in power as they level. Legendary Weapons are not exactly scarce, but the “good” ones are. So finding a Hunter weapon with the right “Legacies” is an ongoing and perhaps never ending mission.

5) Class Quests – It’s a Moral Imperative (Chris Knight, circa 1985)
Gotta do them. ‘Nuff said. They will take some hacking away in a full group through some of the Angmar instances…

6) Angmar-Era End Game Content – A Bal-what? Here?!? Now where did that Gandalf get to???
Because I came rather late to the LotRO bandwagon, I pretty much missed out on the end-game Raids and Instances from Angmar. Having experienced my first Angmar Raid (partial), I can only imagine how brutal they must have been when the level cap was 50.They say there’s a Balrog in the Rift. Self-preservation instincts aside, I must see this for myself.

7) Group Instances in Moria – A Note on Gear and its Acquisition. (Yes, I’m Gimp. And your point is?)
Just getting started here. Been in a couple runs but so far successes are still outnumbered by Defeats. But it’s back to the mines (quite literally) where more Defeats await, I’m sure. But that’s where you need to go to get the Shinies. And that’s what you need to exchange for Radiance armor – a requirement for Raids. Why? Well, if you don’t want to spend your time cowering in a little ball of frightened Dread, it’s what ya gotta do.

8) Raiding in Moria – But Gandalf Already Solo’d Moria’s Balrog…
It’s True, the Balrog is gone from Moria, but there are still *other* “older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world.” And well…you just don’t get much deeper than Moria. The Watcher still waits…and others.

So… Yep. Still tons to do here in Middle Earth.

BSG Series Finale Rant

(Spoilers? I could hardly rant without them, could I?)

Unfortunately, my single overriding thought at the conclusion of the BSG Series Finale was: I don’t frakkin’ buy it.

You know…I’ll give them the mysticism and prophecies. I’ll give them individual cases of psychosis and even suicide. I’ll even (grudgingly) give them the corporeal Deus Ex Machina that Starbuck represented and the non-corporeal versions of Six and Baltar.

But the big Shark Jump for me was at the end when Apollo declares that, seemingly by fiat and without objection, no we’re not going to build a city. Instead, we’re going to scrap our entire technological civilization and voluntarily enter a more primitive state, ie. Cultural suicide.

Huh? And his rationale that they would try to avoid the perils of technology run amok by providing the “wisdom” of their experience rings obnoxiously hollow.

First, there’s the glaringly obvious issue that returning to a primitive state would necessarily condemn them, their children and so forth to lives that were “nasty, brutish, and short.” Yes, please save us from the ravages of antibiotics and the prospect of actually surviving appendicitis.

But I’ve also got a problem with the idea that practical wisdom can be preserved without the tangible context from which it was earned/learned. Perhaps my view is far too shallow, but how exactly do you expect a pre-industrialized peasant to take to heart warnings about the dangers of technology and Artificial Intelligence (other than by irrational religious dogma)? And how are you going to afford to share this “wisdom” when you’re busy toiling in the ground, or hunting/gathering from sun-up to sun-down. Ah the restful joys of pre-industrial agrarian society!

To my mind, the great irony here is that they *had* finally broken the cycle by actually having a hybrid civilization that incorporated both artificial and natural intelligence co-existing peacefully (at last!) and then turned their backs on it – guaranteeing those lessons would need to be relearned, and thus INVITING a repetition of the cycle.

Over the course of the series there were very few instances that rang false. Alas, this was one of those and more importantly, the loudest. It is doubly unfortunate that its counterpoint now underscores (for me, at least) the entirety of the epic journey. Bah!