TheWeeJenny.net

I wanted to be really sure I wouldn’t be violating the NDA before posting anything, but it looks like I’ve been over-cautious as that was lifted in February. The new header image is my current main (level Silmewen (if you’re reading this on Vox you won’t see the header, but it’s just a crop of the screenshot below).

She’s a “Loremaster” which is a bit like a Wizard, think Elrond or Gandalf. Eventually I’m supposed to be able to dual wield a sword and staff. Can you say rwaarrrrr? They’re also a bit like Hunters or Rangers in other games because they’re the ones who have pets. There is a Hunter class in LotRo, but it doesn’t look like they get to have combat pets at all, which is definitely different. For a better description of classes and such than what I’m likely to provide, check out the official site.

I recieved my invite a little over a month ago, but I had a bit of trouble getting bootcamp going here on the Macbook, leaving me with just the slightly older Toshiba laptop. It didn’t run very well on that, so I got discouraged and stopped playing after a few hours in the January stress test weekend (or was it December, maybe it was a bit longer ago than I think). It wasn’t until last week that I tried again to get a windows partition set up, and lo and behold all I had to do was repair some disk permissions and it all went without a hitch. I’m not sure how I missed it but I was using the wrong repair option before, understandable since I haven’t really used a mac full time like this since the ’80’s.

Long story short, I’ve been playing pretty regular for almost 2 weeks and I’m really loving it. The Hobbits are absolutely fantastic and Hobbity, and I love the way the Dwarves let out a mighty roar when they’re in battle. The Shire is f-ing beautiful, and I actually found my way to Bag End from the Gaffer’s house based on what I remembered from the books. The members of the Fellowship do make cameo appearances, as do characters from the Hobbit. I don’t want to give away too many specifics (NDA or no, I don’t want to ruin the surprise) so I’ll just say that unless your the sort of Tolkien purist that hates all adaptations of the books, you’ll probably fall in love with this thing. It’s definitely being created in the proper spirit, with a reverence for the source material and a loving attention to detail.

One of the best features however, is the fact that there is a /smoke emote. I really, really dig being this tall ethereal Elf chick with Gandalf-esque powers and a pet raven standing around in pubs smoking a pipe. It gives me fanfic like thoughts of one of the ladies of Mirkwood having a wild affair with Mithrandir himself, the result of which would be this willowy tomboy. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t write fanfic.