So whilst jotting somethings down for strangelands concept (coming soon) I was thinking of cool things that I would like to see, and it reminded me of a few nights ago when I had an ‘oh shit and holy hell ‘cool moment in lotro.
I was on my guardian (lvl 27) piddling around the lone lands wrapping up some light blue quests when I get a tell from a discerning minstrel inquiring if i had ‘retaken weathertop’ yet.
After checking my bulging quest log i sent a reply back asking if she had room and if so I would be happy to join them and romp our way through … well this romp turned out to be less of a romp more ‘hunker down in the trenches’.
I wont go into the lead up to the culimations of this instance, but will paint you a brief picture of the finale …
lightning flashing and a torrential rain obscured our view of the ruins ontop of weathertop. We rested huddled around a signal fire trying to dry our weapons and clean the blood of many an orc or goblin from our armor. Loud jeering and what we presumed cursing in black tounge drifted, albeit muted on the evening air.
In a few short minutes we would be making our final push to the top and confront what ever terror awaited us there ….
… battle was joined at top the ruins of weathertop, lightning and thunder doused the sounds of battle, the bodies of orcs littered the floor but there champion was holding out, our hunter was down, the dwarf champion was cutting a swathe through the orcs to rescue the minstrel who was being assailed by some goblins ….
… the situation is dire, the orc champion of the white hand had sucombed to our combined assault, but all of us were injured and exhausted … the hunter was still down and our minstrel was nuring wounds that were verging on deathly .. when a heavy blood chilling howl can be heard from behind the pillars of the ruins, OH SHIT, troll …
and that my freinds was the oh shit holy hell moment, not only had we just spent 2 minutes wading through goblins and an elite orc boss, in an epic battle at night within a raging thunder storm we were now facing a troll who dwarved us and whose moral deserved a double take … did we win ?
Hell yeah, with all credit to the minstrel who pulled some rabbits out of her ass to get us through …
Now if only every quest was like this I would be happy lil camper. Any one else had any oh shit holy hell moments recently …..
You know, that quest is now gray for me… I should probably set to doing it this weekend.
its worth it, I still have golin leader, and the last barrow quest to do, and they are almost grey. But they are just so much fun …
It sounds sweet. What are your graphics settings on?
I tried LOTRO in open beta and found it boring (mostly in the ways I find all MMOs boring these days). But after reading your story and seeing Cuppy’s pictures, I wonder how much the graphics play into it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the developers always played it on the top graphics setting themselves, so they didn’t realize a lot of the atmosphere is missing on the low settings.
EQ2 was kind of the same way. I couldn’t keep it on high graphics for long. But when I did, the world was ten times more interesting. For example, High graphics in The Commonlands meant the lions were camouflaged and hidden in the tall grass…but a lower setting meant the lions stood in plain site. That’s not just eye candy; that changes gameplay.
I’m maxed out on graphics settings. I freely admit that I have a beast of a system. Self built, 8800 gts 4gb ram, dual core processor etc etc. have vista 64 bit waiting in wings for when dx 10 takes off …. and is overclockable for when i need to push the system to keep max graphics
… i guess its future proof or as the wife put it. this better last at least two years before you get the I need to rebuild my computer ….
I completely agree with you on this quest Pixie. We started the line at around level 24 I think with the quests grey to us just so that we could do this quest that involved Weathertop.
It was well worth it in terms of entertainment. A lot of the quests I find myself doing in LotRO are not for reward but for the fun.
We wiped on that troll the first time through as there were only 3 of us and at even level 24, it was still a slaughter.
Its like the great barrow quests as well, they seem to feel epic and push you to the limit of your characters abilites.
I’m still having issues with the goblin king one out in the lonelands, maybe I just had bad pick up grps for it though …still keep coming back to it though as I enjoy the challenge