I've decided it's about impossible to join an endgame-related kinship on Silverlode. I'd rather not have to transfer somewhere just to see what the instances look like (and I won't.)
I've been in Sons of Durin on Nimrodel for almost three years now. It's a large, fairly casual guild that for me has the right level of organization. They're not hardcore, they prefer members to sign up for scheduled raids, but not a big deal if someone doesn't show, not a big deal if the raid wipes, and no mandatory this or that. And no hardcore raid leader acting like someone's life hangs in the balance (we've all encountered the type). I enjoy raiding once or twice a week, and getting a /roll crack at the good stuff is always fun, but the guild's relaxed attitude fits my attitude toward MMOs really well.
I've got my main on Nimrodel in Sons of Durin as well. Joined it after leaving the (totally dead) QT3 kin. Seems like a pretty chill, if a bit anonymous, kinship. Definitely better than some of the other mega-guilds. One of my other toons is in a kinship called "Flock of Moosen"...I don't recommend it. Buncha freaking drama queens.
"Flock of Smeagols" is, of course, the best guild name in the history of guild names everywhere. Don't recall which server that was on though.
Hunter hit 85 earlier today. Had 6-7 pieces of jewelry waiting in my vault, equipped a 85 3rd age bow that has induction and focus crit multipliers, induction and focus power reductions, mercy shot cooldown reduction, and crit %+ on swift bow. I'm almost afraid to go for a 2nd age bow, its dps will only be 150 vs 143 of my current and no way I'll get as lucky with its legacies.
Now I'm cooking with gas. Found a Kinship that seems like good people, halfway through 84 and should be 85 tomorrow with a little work, finished up the epic quest for the 2nd age bridle, caught up with woodworking, it's smooth sailing now. Until I level my mini too. Ugh.
Heh, I got some exceedingly bad advice from a guildie yesterday. Was talking about how my hunter hit 85 and my mini is still grinding the Hytbold rebuild stuff, but the end is in sight. And then after that another 5-6 days of those 5 daily quests to have the tokens to buy my hunter a new armor set. So a guildie told me to buy the premium wallet, which would allow my two 85s to do the 5 dailies each and thus earn 50 tokens instead of 25. But I didn't have 995 store points, so I loaded my cc and bought like 1100 for $10. And then bought the wallet and immediately noticed that the 5 tokens my mini had in her inventory got sucked into the wallet was visible only to my mini and not my other 85. The guildie told me maybe it bugged, maybe my hunter wasn't ready to earn/see these tokens (despite being 85). So I asked in glff and immediately got like a half-dozen replies that no, Hytbold tokens are landscape items and thus cannot be shared between toons. Kind of annoying, though I'll get some practical mileage out of the wallet since it frees up quite a bit of storage space on all of my toons. But a lesson learned, one I thought I'd share. One a somewhat more positive note I bought a tarnished symbol for 135 gold on the AH and turned around and sold it for 150. . .should've priced the buyout at 175-190.
Apparently Middle-earth is caught in the middle of upgrade hell. The servers have been down for roughly 40 hours now and the most recent official update is that they might remain down throughout the rest of the day. On the plus side Turbine is crediting premium/vip players who've logged in during the last 30 days 250 store points and subscribers 1 day for each lost day due to server maintenance.
Wow. As a lifetimer, guess I'll go see my bonus points after it all settles out. It's been a while since they broke something that good...
Arrrrgh still down. And here I just bought a skirmish pack and never got to play all 4 of the defensive ones. Looking forward to the 3 man legendary item skirmishes though.
DDO has been down since Thursday too. Just ducked my head in over here to see if LOTRO was having the same problem. Something bad is happening over at Turbine in the server room. Or something...
LIs make me sad. They are the worst game mechanic. The thing they did with combat mounts is, IMO, somewhat better. If they threw the whole LI mechanic in the trash can and started over i would cry no tears.
Gave up the day before the downtime. The kin I finally managed to join was 90% hunters. Then I looked around Snowbourn for a while and realized all of Silverlode is 90% hunters. There's no way I was progressing unless I leveled my mini to 85 too...and just no thanks. Uninstalled. Only regret is dropped enough for three months of VIP and used less than one.
Why are hunters so popular? and because I can ask 2 questions due to the dearth of traffic in this thread Why are legendary weapons so bad?
Hunters are so popular because they can port, and are the highest DPS (usually) class. And they're ridiculously easy to play. Legendary weapons are no fun because you have to grind levels on them with XP, they have random legacies (skill boosts) on them, and are a chore and half to maintain and keep track of.
Personally I think the legacies are the main problem with LIs, just too random. I wouldn't mind seeing something like 3rd age ones being entirely random and then 2nd age LIs letting you pick the majors and 1st age letting you pick all legacies. My RK hit 75 today, upgraded my lightning rune-stone, Electric Bugaloo, with a 2nd age I named Ride the Lightning. Got very lucky and have damn near perfect legacies at tier 4+ on all of them and it's not yet lvl 70.
Turbine has wonderful timing for me. The latest update nerfed the Hytbold armor sets a bit, and of course this week I'd finally finished the Hytbold rebuild grind and another 11 days of dailies to have the tokens for two alts. So 55 days of doing the same quests over and over. But I still picked up the armor for my hunter and RK, though I can't get the pieces to them yet because Turbine hasn't dropped my monthly 500 pts for Feb I need to buy shared storage (account cycle is the 24th of each month, so they're over two weeks late). Checking in glff gets lots of responses from other VIP/premium players too. Thought about putting a ticket in but Turbine's website wants cc info just to submit an account/store ticket. F*ck that noise, they've been hacked more times than I can count (and the card info I fed them in 07 is long expired).
A new expansion on the way: Helm's Deep, with no specific release date yet (just 'Fall 2013') Highlights: - Level cap raised to 95 - What sounds like skirmish-like battles in Helm's Deep starting around level 10 - New zones in western Rohan I came back to do the anniversary quests and managed to push through the vague dissatisfaction I had with the higher-end Moria stuff, so now I'm finally able to get out and start looking around Lothlorien. Finally, fresh air...
New content dropped today, new quest area with new rep faction and some other goodies. Currently down though. As if I didn't already have enough toons I started a hobbit guardian a few months ago and got him to 34th level over the weekend.
