LOTRO-less in DK

Wow its been a long time since I added to this blog… needless to say a lot has changed. My application to stay in Sweden was rejected even though I had found work in Denmark which gave me an income to support my family there – actually I was technically accepted and was provided with a Swedish social security number the week after I left Sweden for Denmark but this in no way helped my family situation as the authorities, those happy smiling faces that are swedish bureaucracy, had already rejected my Argentinian wife and more shockingly denied the Britishness of my British passport carrying children. There is something wrong in the state of Sweden me thinks, don’t worry Sweden I hold no grudge to you personally… NOT that I will endevour to stick the knife in from time to time… as you greeted my family which turned into a full blown grating!

DENMARK

So now working and living in DK again after over 10 years away. Odd to be back and to be honest happy to be back. Still not plain sailing – the global traveller that I am is now finding that the world has changed and its harder to move around especially with family in tow. But super nice apartment in super expensive Østerbro has served us well and now moving again to Frederiksberg for I hope the last time this decade. My kids have settled in to a fantastic school and are even speaking danish already. My wife has struggled with the language but never deterred is getting there and has landed FT work so we are in the Danish system and here to stay. HU-fucking-RAH… its been a funky trip!

GAMING…

Still no LOTRO 😦

I did try to install it on the cheap laptop we bought in DK (EVERYTHING is done ONLINE here without a computer/smartphone you cannot even communicate with the school or Kommune (local council)) but it did not work… not powerful enough 😦

But I am still casually gaming on my phone…

MCOC

Yeah still GRINDING but no way as much as before. I joined a local Danish alliance which turned out to be too time consuming and after yet another shitty 5 star crystal pull… Spidergwen …duped, my second after Ant-Man I decided enough was enough and I quit but after a day I was back in my own alliance with my son’s accounts as fellow team members and there I still am but things are more relaxed, we dont grind, no-one bitches at me and most of all win or lose in alliance events all that matters is having FUN!

The alliance has grown, it certainly has alot of deadweight but as long as they pop in every 10 days it dont matter and we plod along growing a little every day, suits me fine.

I now have 35 five-star heroes, still only 2 dupes but SpiderGwen has been revamped and kicks butt, she is best champ fallowed closey by my Venom and Blade. So now armed with more potent champs I am able to handle the trickier content if I can be bothered and occaisionally I have a little push and I am getting better slowly.

Most importantly without the BULLSHIT stress I really do like this beat-em-up, its a nice generally balanced game.

COC

Had over a year away and only recently came back … some improvements put in by SUPERCELL but nothing amazing. My clan kept me in which surprised me and they were all happy to see me back which is the main reason I have stayed and now I am nearly finished with upgrading all my walls and will move to th11… maybe it will get truly ENJOYABLE again… or not… but I am willing to try and find out now.

CR

Its an on and off thing… still think it could be better but meh I pop in every so often and sometimes I have nice match ups and then other times I can have long runs of meeting up with OP opponents which just bore me… so many people must have spent a fortune on this game!

MINECRAFT

I have regular co-op games with my nr2 son who is still so good at this game but cant say I find myself drawn to it… it lacks a raison d’etre… 

I did try to build an old school D&D dungeon in it for my kids but found it so frustrating and slow and that populating the dungeon was just impossible so it died a death!

FUTURE…

PS4 is on the horizon but aimed at the kids rather than myself but I am hoping with my kids growing and now with 2 incomes we will find more leisure time so that I can get off the casual (ish) mobile games and get some proper gaming done again. I may even save up for that GAMING PC! I dream of LOTRO’ing again… I do, I really do!

But what with biking around with the wife and kids, swimming, and work I dont have that much time to spare.

TIME the nature and progression of events and the enemy of the busy gamer! 

Oh and dont get me started on politics, populism and the ongoing fucking BREXIT!

Lot of catching up to do…

Last post 15 feb… oh WOW update needed!

MOVING/MOVED

I suppose the big news is that I am NOT back playing LOTRO! But I did get to leave Argentina and take my family to Europe… I am now slowly sinking into Sweden… yeah it’s not been as easy as I expected and the Swedish bureaucracy has been much worse than I ever imagined. The last 2 years has literally overwhelmed Sweden with a tsunami of immigrants, which has not left much of a welcome for Tsuhelm n family. Me, EU citizen (Don’t get me started on the ominous BREXIT and the possible future ramifications!), with newly Britished sons and non EU wifey. Swedish friends have slapped their heads in disbelief that I chose to move to Malmo, which was the main entry point, and most affected city in Sweden. I just wanted to be close to my beloved Copenhagen; I also hoped that my network of friends would be there to smooth my return. Well they have certainly helped me but nothing has clicked into place so we have ended up in expensive accommodation, have only a limited right to remain in Sweden and I need a job like YESTERDAY. I did cheekily force the authorities to take my kids into the Swedish schooling system and my wife is busy studying Swedish everyday and wanting to kill me every other day for my unpreparedness… just another of the harsh realities of life of a EU jobseeker in Sweden.

Tsu and Sons in Malmo.

So you can maybe imagine that I have no time for gaming right? Well that would be way too sensible…

LOTRO

Still no working computer… we dismantled my wife’s old oft fixed computer and brought the harddrive along with the 100’s of gigabytes of family pics which we gave up trying to backup in the cloud. I had always promised myself a new gaming PC when I finally returned to Europe but jobless and living on the edge in Sweden maybe now is not that time. So the 10^th anniversary has gone, Turbine has become Standing Stones Gaming – with all the pipe weed in game its surely should be Standing Stoned Gaming. I just hope they do a good job as the vociferous fanbase will Stand (them up and) stone (them for spoiling their) gaming… Little snippets of news that have reached me have indicated that it’s still going… and indeed one can simply walk into Mordor… or not!

Do I still play with my COC…

Yes I am still playing… I have been super close to packing it in at times and yet again another clan has slowly died… we are hanging on just and hoping that after the long absent leader popped up and handed over the reins that we may be able to turn it around. But does anyone really care?

I have reached th10 and boy if I thought upgrading walls at the end of th9 was slow this is downright tedious. I cant be bothered to grind out the farming for wall upgrades so I just slowly plod along. The introduction of a new base to build and slightly skewed raid dynamic offered a brief respite but that has now sunk into even more of a time sink. SUPERCELL still know how to introduce the occasional buzz into play with events and odd happenings (builder vanishing was great!) but overall does not remove that lingering stale taste in the mouth after you realize that you have spent years licking a time sink!

And BR?

Nope I quit… I didn’t rage quit, or decide to stop playing, it just stopped being opened, it is still installed… Nr2 son was massively into CR and I left my big active clan (Supreme Cream – WOOT!) to make a family clan with him. We plodded along slowly, we LOVED the 2vs2 which they removed… then added back and then removed. And I notice it’s back again! But for fucks sake make your mind up! I think the 2vs2 mode is a proto Bridge. It plays so well this way, getting to know your partner and his playstyle and then factor in the opponents and their game. Maybe with the massive amount of permutations now available BR’s complexity becomes its undoing. I was enjoying myself so much that I was on the verge of recommending friends (non-gamers) to come and play with me… but the effort (or cash!) required to build up decks is just too much and I simply fell off the cliffs named ‘NOT BOTHERED.’ Now I don’t even miss it.

MINECRAFT

OK not really my addiction, but my nr2 son’s favourite game and his skills just keep growing. He constantly amazes me and I can see that he isn’t cheating, he’s not copying from YouTube vids. He really creates his own amazing structures. Our new apartment in Sweden weirdly came with an Xbox 360 and the State library rents outs games for free. I have had to rent out Minecraft continually (I keep trying out LEGO games, so far nothing has beaten the LEGO movie game.) and I will keep doing so until I find a cheap second hand version somewhere or until I start earning again and then I will buy a new version. Both boys love playing together, something they were not able to do with the PE edition on their ipads (without getting Microsoft accounts!) And do I play? Well of course I get sucked in every now and then. And boy does this game suck you in … I once spent 2 days working out how to get pistons and redstone to manipulate lava flows over a secret cave… why? The mind boggles! I built a waterslide to bedrock to speed up mining for my son who promptly found diamonds and was over the moon for days! I then installed a water lift with signs and airpockets to quickly rise back up again, which my son ignores as he prefers his own staircase!

What a game!

And yet more MCOC

Yeah I have come close to packing this in as well, especially when the original alliance I was in, started to die. An in game friend introduced me to his new alliance and they accepted me, and I have been there ever since. For a game that sucks in so much time, they are surprisingly undemanding. I mean they want you to meet targets but they do not demand arena grinding or full participation in all events, which I imagine would quickly suck in every minute of every day. It is that GRINDY!

I keep promising myself and alliance mates to get better at fighting but it’s slow (for me at least!) I cannot justify perfecting MCOC while looking for work, I do try by explaining it away (to non gamer wifey) as stress relief but to be honest if my work drought continues I may well have to let it go. I am already letting ride the daily arena grind (just for milestone prizes) and it shows in that I struggle to earn enough to level champions. Talking of which MCOC has done a great job at maintaining the MARVEL universe throughout, It manages to hit every long dormant MARVEL nerve I have ever had and it keeps them lit and throbbing for more.

My roster is continually growing… now 5 five star champions, and a plethora of 4 stars too… some of them maxing out. Next year 6 stars will be introduced, as the power creep sets in, surely without new gameplay this may be the first death knell sounding.

Like every cash gobbling mobile game MCOC has an interesting back story Korean giant Netmarble bought out Kabam in February and it has been far from smooth sailing since. A couple of fluffed updates has managed to introduce fractures into a once solid group of hardcore players. Update 12 was a costly fiasco and even the latest update introduced changes that were clearly not well thought out. A bug got passed quality checking that has managed to corrupt in game gold for many players. Interesting read here.

FUTURE

Nr1 get a JOB

Nr2 get a gaming PC and catch up on a lot of gaming…er LOTRO!

Nr3 get a PS3 and 4 (yes both) as I have missed out on some amazing games… Dark Souls, I offer you my still pulsating heart to chomp on and spit out!

Nr4 start surfing and swimming again (maybe swim then surf is safer option.)

Nr5 if non of above kill me (or wifey) I hope to start blogging again… let’s see what the 2^nd half of 2017 brings Tsu’s way.

Mordor Second

Never political me…

Love it!

TSU minus LOTRO = unhappy TSU

I can’t remember the last time I played LOTRO…

I think we had just repaired my wife’s PC and I spent over a day to get it reinstalled, I had been busy over the anniversary event (Update: Gaming draggin! – 1^st Jun) festival and thought life was going to be rosy but my disillusion with LOTRO quickly reappeared, I think I basically have lost my way and don’t know where I want to take my lv65RK.. I had taken him out of Rohan where to be honest he was enjoying himself (except for the ‘my-little-war-pony’ bits) for the anniversary event, after which in LOTRO: Gettin INTO LOTRO again… 26^th APR I decided to go to Great River where the game quickly got boring again…

On the 29^th of July (GAMING: Pokémon GOne?) I again tried to play LOTRO due to my nr1 son wanting to play… I even created an account for him but he is too young and even with my coaching and help he quickly lost interest… and that was that…half a year later I have not played again, not helped that for 5 month’s my wife’s computer has been out of action I blame the installation of MINECRAFT for the kids which I reckon has permanently damaged something in the motherboard as now every couple of weeks it just crashes again… and MINECRAFT itself is unplayable!

The MINECRAFT adventure was amazing though, I am a late comer to it, and the kids both got hooked straight away, I liked the more lethargic survival approach but found it got too easy too quickly with nothing to really keep me pushing forward… My nr2 son turns out to have the ability to create huge and complex houses… not bad for a 4 year-old! Nr1 son used it mainly to create ingenious machines he had seen on YT and indeed we have had to curtail their YT watching habits away from the same old MC videos… especially one episode of Lucky Blocks pistols…  which has 3.3+million views… which my wife and I felt were mainly from our 2 kids…

As the PC (when working) cannot run it anymore we installed it on the ipad and nr2 again started doing remarkable things, nr1 was quickly found to be sneaking back to YT all the time! Presently they are both fighting over the new Mario Run app (which is having problems with a lack of free content I gather…)… when not being banned from any access due to bad behavior…

So back to MY gaming… and my thoughts of coming back to LOTRO, somehow the news (I popped back to LOTROPLAYERS to check if true… LOTRO Players News Episode 182: What What Whaaaaat??) that LOTRO n DDO will be spinning off from TURBINE awoke this desire to play again…

I then stumbled on Malaysian Gamer’s YT video ’10 Reasons to play LOTRO’… and oh boy was desperate for my wife’s computer to be fixed… it has been and I am still itching to install LOTRO yet again… it will probably take a day… so maybe over the new year holiday (we got the 2^nd of JAN free from work for some weird corporate reason!) …I just wonder how long it lives this time… surely 2017 must bring a new PC into the household?

Oh another nice YT video byThomas Huayra: ’10 lifehacks for LOTRO’, some stuff to try out here:) Also great to see Nakt is still LOTROing and blogging, and he mentioned our old clan leader Taltoz is still also in game 🙂

Undoubtedly if I start playing again I will probably start blogging again, you have been warned… TSU’s mad ramblings could be coming back soon… unsubscribe now… ur last chance to preserve your sanity.

So sans LOTRO what the hell have I been doing?

Now having moved back into Buenos Aires (6 blocks from Congress no less, sounds good it’s actually not that nice an area…) I have been swimming more than I did when I actually had my own pool, but am still not in body-surfing form… I ripped a calf muscle playing Frisbee with myself 😦 that didn’t help but hope to get back into chucking plastic again this summer, I walk to work most days now – 15 blocks so a little more activity and a HUGE saving in time. (I saw a BMX for sale yesterday…so tempted!) Work has been a huge focus for 2016 which contributed heavily to my blog’s demise, simply no time to spend at work in blogland! But 2017 looks very quiet, to the extent that my job (the whole department’s in fact) looks in danger which could  impact quite negatively on future gaming plans… touching wood it works out, although being made redundant in Argentina is quite a generous process and would easily fund my family’s return to Europe. But being jobless anywhere is not good at this time and OMG 2016 has been bad for politics and world travelers such as myself, especially as I am married to a non EU citizen 😦

Wife n aforementioned kids of course eat up lots n lots of my time, I have really enjoyed Stranger Things, Happy Valley, The Night Of, Game of Thrones, WESTWORLD, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Preacher and Star Wars Clone Wars (all episodes seen for first time :)) . I survived a plethora of others, notable mentions to How to get Away with Murder, Gotham, and Night Manager!  Started and gave up on quite a few too, the biggest disappointment being 2nd season of Mr. Robot.

I half-heartedly started a TSUISM project for blasts of creative madness, incorporating some of the LEAN culture work is attempting to instigate (I won’t go there…):

So no gaming then?

Computer basically out of action (so no EVE online either!) or in use by others so I continued my casual gaming on my phone(s*) in the shape of CoC, CR and MCOC. All of which I am submerged in to differing degrees.

*Why phones…I was always suspicious of geezers with more than 1 mobile, now I pack 2 myself (and I am not counting the ipad which is best for MCOC!) Now I have 1 phone for CoC, CR and phone calls and my wife’s old phone which runs MCOC, mine did not, it’s kinda laggy, a little too small and has a tendency for the screen to come off but it’s my fall back for when nothing else to do or I need to play MCOC and family ipad is in use.

CoC – CLASH OF CLANS

th9… just before…

th 10 🙂

Backdoor is painful!

cmon get it front door!

2016 Xmas tree on my border 🙂

oh events 🙂

I left my dead Philippine clan and joined a British Clan. It’s super-active nowadays but unorganized and unsettled. The leader is permaAFK! So we have a constant stream of new recruits and we are struggling to maintain a core of good players; we had a huge fall out and lost 2 good factions – one of which is continually inviting me to follow. Funnily one of the newer members is also one of my best friends from GB who reached out over FB as a fellow CoC player and he decided to join the same clan :). Notice I start by talking about the alliance and other players, in the end the longevity of this (all?) casual game is about the people u play with not really the game itself…

I recently reached th10, always fun starting a new level, I should have kept levelling my walls n heroes but to be Frank (who I am not!) it was SIMPLY BORING! So th10 antics ahead… its early days as u can tell by the pics… not even done a new base design and my bastardized WAR base which was a Clash Tutor th9 thumper design is a truly weird beast. I am now nr1 base in WAR which is quite a daunting role as to be honest I am too casual a player to hold that position… but I suppose I am the most consistent donator so I get away with it 🙂

CR – CLASH ROYALE

I have come so close to stopping playing this game… I got invited to Supreme Cream’s CR group and it made a huge difference initially with the then ‘NEW’ tournaments (which turned out to be crock!) and the constant donations of cards which still help a lot 🙂 But recently actually playing the game became a bore, there was simply no necessity to play… as a f2p player gold costs are too high to contemplate nothing less than monthly goals! Then during the last update SUPERCELL introduced the Clan Chest and suddenly the game came alive. There is a 2 week on off cycle but I missed the thrill of piling up crowns after only a day of rest… I even started to mess around with Mortars just cos I wanted to. I have used a cheap deck since day 1 and only really changed it recently with the addition of the Black Knight (Monty Python sketch)

So it goes, soon I will reach lv10, so tougher castles… maybe by end of 2017 I will have all my cards that I use raised to level 12… I doubt it but I suspect I may still be playing.

MCOC – MARVEL CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS

My 4* (and 1 5*) heroes

Act4 …story mode is HARD! Great measure of where u r in abilty 🙂

Arena… Grindier than LOTRO!

GOLD realm … xmas generosity 🙂

LUCKY opening…cat4 basic

Event completed for another cat4basic

Wish I had more days like this one…

And last but not least the game that has consumed my idle moments to the ire of my wife! Our alliance has grown to full size and it’s become more stable but it’s such a DEMANDING MONSTER! It’s a casual game that sucks up your life… and of late for pitiful rewards… as the core mechanism for progress is the chance opening of hero crystals for better n better heroes (or using to improve those you already have) and in which I have had the longest streak of crap… so why is it such a TIMESINK…again it’s the people! Yes being in contact with 30 other players 24hrs a day in game and also via FB and now LINE, who are constantly pushing u to log in, do something, reach yet another target for another reward which may help gain another crystal… Can you tell I am close to my limit? It was fun and when I was busy at work it was actually useful, I was applying and practicing team building ideas which I could replicate as best I could in my workplace (My department works in 2 sites, one in Buenos Aires another in Manila, and the company is Global. The alliance has members in Europe, US and me in Argentina!)

But I do love beat em ups and I grew up on MARVEL so this game hits those buttons hard 🙂 When you do have a row of good fights (when the special button on teeny tiny touchscreen works!) the adrenalin kicks in and the RW simply vanishes – all focus is in the game, those are the sublime moments when you realize that you LOVE this game.

There is always something to do in game as well, it may be tedious and repetitive (aren’t all Beat Em Ups?) but each fight is practice and can lead to improvement, I have found that I can even win some fights without being able to see the screen… they recently introduced an AI mode for the most basic quest fights which does an OK job of removing some of the tedium. The main alliance focus is the Alliance Quests and Alliance Wars which have the biggest rewards (much of which is hidden behind shitty RNG) but working as a team is essential to attempt the harder maps(AQ) or beat the harder opponents (Wars). And the whole alliance is needed, all 30 players, to really make it work which is why it can get quite stress inducing 😦 Arguments flare up, no shows and wrong paths end in dissension, its all quite dramatic at times. Maybe too much so, and I am seriously questioning how much longer I can soldier on, I helped start the group up and the leader understands I have a wife n kids and a busy work life too so I do get by.

I reckon after the new year I may get some luck that should drive me onwards, if not a break could be coming… maybe a LOTRO break (not away from but BACK to!)

So TSU is back maybe for just this quiet end of year day at the office… I wish you all well in your lives be they real or virtual.

GAME ON

COC: HEALER SLAMMIN!

Once upon a time a long time ago, healers triggered air traps… before I played COC! Now they will again in the proposed changes coming soon…

http://forum.supercell.net/showthread.php/1238065-Upcoming-Healer-Changes

 

I am surprised by this planned nerf…

In a game where SPAM is coming to dominate the only real training for strategic play since you first get her is the HEALER. Yeah the QW is OP but in quite a different way to a SPAMMED bowler/miner army which is mindless OP! I like the variety the healer adds to the attack, a unit that has no attack herself… more of this kind of unit please!

But as many have pointed out the Queen Healer combination should still be doable, just not so OP, clever spacing of those air seeking mines to prevent QW! I was even thinking it may be possible to trigger them by sending out scouting minions… new nick name CHAFF!

Even if it does end up workable, here I is crossing my fingers, I still think it is a simplification of the game, another lurch to the dumbing down of COC… I am finding as I progress in the game (now on the road to maxing th9) that it drags and drags, if I hadn’t changed to a more active clan I would seriously be slowly letting my COC fall off!

FINAL WORD: SPAM is still the order of the day!

 

GAMING: KABAM!

KABAM! make MARVEL CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS which is sucking in more and more of my free time… The CEO of Kabam, Kevin Chou, wrote about ‘Traditional Retention Metrics in Mobile Gaming’ in an article for VENTURE BEAT  (VentureBeat describes itself as, ‘the leading source for news & perspective on tech innovation.’ )

With regards to retention:

‘We now think exclusively in terms of years — not days, weeks, or months.’

And words to make any gamer’s heart melt:

‘The simple fact is this: if optimization and monetization are the driving focus behind a game’s development, that game is set up for failure. ‘Today, mobile gamers need developers who passionately create games that people who love games love playing.’

Well I hope he truly does practice what he preaches because I really think THE MCOC formula really works for me… MARVEL SUPER HEROES, BEAT EM UP MECHANICS and ever more complicated ALLIANCE related BATTLING.

And that social pull of helping one’s fellow gamer, your teammate that really sticks. At WORK I am struggling to create better bonds with our Manila office, in GAME I am now trying to foster connections over half a planet with total strangers and then help communicate instructions in the heat of battle! Putting into place lines of communication, getting to know all the members and creating standard operating procedures…

I am not sure which is harder, but both are helping develop skills that are quite interchangeable between both worlds of WORK and PLAY!

 

 

GAMING: Pokémon GOne?

‘I just don’t see the appeal, is it some kinda mass hypnosis?’

Not even having arrived yet in Argentina and already some reports are stating the NEW GAMING CRAZE that is Pokémon GO! may already be on the decline… cor arn’t we a difficult crowd to please, us modern gamers? Fickle we is…

I have to be honest with you all I am desperate to have a go, and will rush out to play (if my phone can handle it) as soon as it does officially arrive. BUT I do hope (eventually) there is some implementation of the original Pokémon gaming that I so loved the first time around. Although even then I was on the mature end of the Pokemon gamer and missed out on the social side then!

Until then I will keep trying to get back into LOTRO – kids permitting – they are even asking to play themselves (more on this strange development in an upcoming post)…

I will keep hammering away at MCOC, now developed mastery skills in evade and parry and finally the actual fighting game is more fun as well! My Alliance is getting more and more serious in being competitive and that’s going to take quite a bit of energy.

COC is slowly going nowhere fast, but I still am attached to my TH and want to see it prosper…

And finally CR has picked up slightly in my GameDAR as I was accepted into my fellow bloggers clan: Supreme Cream and life in a busy clan is so much different to a dead one…more on this as well in coming weeks 🙂

Have a great WEEKEND all 🙂

 

 

 

 

LOTRO: Gently Holistically Improving Community

3rd version due to spelling mistakes…oops!

A reworking on the comment I made on the LOTRO PLAYERS Article, which I found linked on the LOTRO FB page – go and like it 🙂

Turbine Reaches Out to the LOTRO Community 

Cordovan, the new LOTRO Community Manager (Looks like Frelorn went during the last TURBINE cuts :()has been posting on the  LOTROCommunity forums, an alternative forum to the official LOTRO forums. WOW this is a great step forward.

I arrived relatively late to the LOTRO party and I think the LOTRO community shine had started to wane. Don’t get me wrong it was then shining brightly, it is still, now 4 years later, an inspirational force to be reckoned with but it is far from the multi-faceted and connected happy family it had once been 🙂

Any attempt at stimulating interaction between the many diverse LOTRO community groupings can only be praised 🙂

Because of its ‘mature’ nature (age not content!) of LOTRO it has led to the creation of many diverse groups with varying opinions and points of view upon almost all aspects of the game… finding a common thread and unifying them all maybe impossible but at least approaching them and starting the conversation is amazingly positive 🙂

There are PVP’ers, RPG’ers, solo’ers, PVE’ers, cosmeticers(?), film makers, musicians, hardcore and casual gamers, bloggers, podcasters and twitchers, youtubers and every spin-off and combination, among others we cannot even imagine (I did once imagine of an in game LOTRO Acting Troupe – Commedia dell’arte!) And they all have vested interest in LOTRO, they all have strong opinions and nowadays they all voice them separately.

There are so many creative LOTRO blogs, websites, resources out there, some may have gone to sleep and some (like my own) ticks along slowly but they are still useful and incredible informative. Having others to share creative gaming ideas, not always LOTRO ones, I found so inspiring and many a time it incentivated me back into LOTRO to try something new or different.

Their creativity, leads to our creativity which can be feedback into our LOTRO gaming 🙂

It’s a positive vicious circle, or a virtuous circle even!

Cordovan’s post:

“Hello! I wanted to create an account here just to introduce myself, and see what’s going on. I know there’s been some animosity between the community folks and this forum in the past, but AFAIK it didn’t involve me (much?), so I figure this new era of sorts is a good time to say hello. I’m the current Community Manager for LOTRO and DDO (and to the extent AC is still supported, Asheron’s Call.) I’m an old-school gamer and pen and paper nerd. Ask me about my THACO!

There’s a lot of work to do in the LOTRO community in the coming weeks, and I plan to do it. If you have a short bullet-list of what you feel is most important for the community (not development, that’s a different thing), lemme know.” – Cordovan

And leading on from that, as it does so many times with Tsu’s LOTRO blogging, I found something that sparked a memory; the use of holistic by Cordoven led me to instantly remember Douglas Adams’ – ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’. What an awesome book, please read if it passed you by, if you laughed out loud to Hitchhikers, like myself, you will love it!

Holistic: ‘characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.’

Well I can get behind that and I hope it is possible to apply to the LOTRO community 🙂

And as I digress down Tsu’s rabbit hole of a blog post I found another quote from the same book:

“Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!”
“The what?” said Richard.
“The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a …”
“Yes,” said Richard, “there was also the small matter of gravity.”
“Gravity,” said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, “yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered.” … “You see?” he said dropping his cigarette butt, “They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap … ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

I just had to investigate further: to find out if Newton really did invent the catflap?

But as always Wikipedia provided the answer: ‘In an apparent early modern example of urban legend, the invention of the pet door was attributed to Isaac Newton (1642–1727) in a story (authored anonymously and published in a column of anecdotes in 1893) to the effect that Newton foolishly made a large hole for his adult cat and a small one for her kittens, not realizing the kittens would follow the mother through the large one.[6] Two Newton biographers cite passages saying that Newton kept “neither cat nor dog in his chamber”.[7][8] Yet over 60 years earlier, a member of Newton’s social circles at Trinity, one J. M. F. Wright, reported this same story (from an unknown source) in his 1827 memoir, adding: “Whether this account be true or false, indisputably true is it that there are in the door to this day two plugged holes of the proper dimensions for the respective egresses of cat and kitten’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_door

An old girlfriend of mine used to crack up telling a story of how a friend used to keep her keys in her cat flaps… I suppose you had to be there!

So Cordovan has flung open the door (and maybe the catflaps!) to the community and I hope it grasps his outstretching hand to work together and put the communal house in order. LOTRO community was the GREATEST, is GREAT and can be the GREATEST again.

“Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” 
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

TURBINE, Cordovan and LOTRO Community please don’t eff it up again!

LOTRO:More Doors Opening…

Good news from TURBINE (not as oxymoronic as I thought!): Its official LOTRO is going to MORDOR, the land of shadow!

NAKT was the first to bring it to my attention 🙂 : https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/5185802/posts/1095437140

SO I jumped over to LOTRO PLAYERS to confirm: http://lotroplayers.com/2016/07/22/turbine-planning-something-big-for-mordor/

AWESOME 🙂

Good news wakes me from my LOTRO snooze…

I dug up my old Mordor Brewery idea and decided that they would would like to celebrate by whipping the slaves of Núrn into overproduction of the finest special edition beer ever fermented in a MMO – I do wish they would do more brewing in LOTRO! So here it is:

SORT PORT (Danish translates to Black Gate)

The Darkest Stoutest pint ever conceived of, so dark that it glows blackly in the shadows.

Ingredients: Mount Doom roasted barley and volcanic rock flaked barley, and so pale a malt, it’s almost ghostly, complete the mash. Common yeast and the most pungent hops round off the brew. Additionally some of the unfermented wort is soured in the sulfurous doomy airs to be forced back into the beer just before bottling, carbonation was found not to be needed, it has a peculiar chemical perculation or its own!

This really is a pint where we can say it is, ‘Warts and All!’

Something BIG is coming …Hurray for LOTRO and oh my I must get busy…my highest leveled Char is Tsukuld my lv85 RK!

 

 

 

GAMING: COCMCOCCR

COC

Nine whines on and on…

Strange times in COC as my th9 base is finally nearing completion with only 2 archer towers (1 ongoing) air defenses and teslas (1 also ongoing)  needing their final upgrade before the long wait while maxing walls and other buildings… barracks for troops I don’t use… and of course maxing out all the troops I should be using…my Golems are still lv1 and If I want to start goblin Knifin I will need to lv gobs to 6…

And Queenie is now lv12 and king lv11 …a lot of work to be done here too!

Been shaky time in the clan as leader went off scoutin without tellin us and it was a scary experience… we are down to about 10 active members… and only 3 of them are th9 or above… and one of the most active th8 players left while leader was away! So looks like we will start to have to recruit or the weekly WAR at the weekend which I enjoy will become hopeless! It’s a tough time and if it worsens I may have to start lookin for a new clan!

Other than that I think I have been with the same base design for too long and I am now in the process of a major redesign…which generally involves a lot of online searching and then a lot of modification. And 9 times out of 10 me settling for a variation on my old base design…

My raiding consists of cookin up 20 giants, 3 healers, 11 wizards,  6 hogs, and 4 archers or variations of that backed up with 1 rage 1 heal 4 earthquake and a poison spell. As stated above 99% of time clan castle is empty!  I normally start with a mini queen walk then blast a hole and drop in giants, king and wiz to get to the core… I cross fingers that they either stay with Queen or Giants…HOGS are to go in and take out air defence in the hope of saving healers… Overall is works as in I earn loot but the strategy only hangs together 50% of the time!

Finding the rich dead bases a constant pleasure has become a rarer treat, I actually miss them!

I try to keep my resources used to avoid being too tempting a target but can see as I get to the point of upgrading to th10 I will need to toughen up the base as I am not convinced at its ability to protect my loot!

MCOC

MARVEL contest of champions MCOC is also very busy at the moment and as we have now quite a tough alliance its startin to get serious… been given officer responsibilities and the minimal ingame tools to carry out the duties are quite frustrating as is my sons and wife running off with the ipad at inopportune moments! If I am to get more serious about MCOC I will actually need a dedicated tablet for it…  and I can’t see my wife falling for that just yet!

Have now a small rooster of 4-star heroes headed by a Rank 3 Black Widow (duped) and the rest all ready to get there but the dreaded grind for alpha crystals is needed. I was even tempted to spend $30 to get one the other day (due to frustration!) but quickly came to my senses! I am still F2P, not spent a cent!  Will upgrade my colossus next to have 3 heroes at 2000+ rating… and am tempted to get my Dr. Strange to R3 as well… My 3-star heroes and starting to get maxed out and are stronger than my yet to be upgraded 4 stars… And my 2-Stars are over half way to being maxed! – this is important as it enables me to actually progress much more easily (maintain a x3 bonus for longer) in the 3-star Arena battles where I basically earn Gold for upgrading… 4-star arena battles are still tough and time consuming, I am able to get to the ranking stage (200,000+pts) but its not easy or enjoyable…

CR

And finally my last game is Clash Royale, I still play daily but the frustration is building in that I am at level 8, all my deck of normal cards is maxed at 9 and my skeleton horde and knight are stuck…I simply never get any new cards and I don’t even see them up for sale at 2000 gold per pop! And when I do get to the inevitable level 10 upgrading point each card will cost 8000GP!

The battles I take part in are frustrating in the most part in that my opponents generally have much higher cards and I have grown to loath HOGS and Witches… even dropping back down to arena 4 has not improved my chances… And even worse are the spawner matches with an emote totting idiot! Wish there was a surrender button cos its so tempting to smash my phone after one of these…

And I will not start on the insane, inane and idiotic tournament system they introduced… in a game where you sometimes have to wait for half a day for a reason to play… SUPERCELL u dropped this one badly!

I can see me stopping playing sooner rather than later and it’s a shame as there is a simple great game hidden under all the P2W fluff!

So casual gaming continues as the long drought of LOTRO continues.