Where?

Summarizing this week:

1. I did my World of Warcraft Karazhan duty. For all the post-Karazhan zones, I rationalized that my guild didn’t need another rogue anyhow and/or feigned real life obligations. If I still had a soul, I might feel guilty about that, but y’know …

2. I enjoyed the rise and the beginning of the fall of the fourth Guild That Hates My Guild. (Again, if I had a soul …) This fourth guild is something of a conglomeration of the previous Guilds That Hate My Guild, which all faltered because it’s kinda stupid to form a guild solely to hate another. Hate isn’t as self-sustaining as one might think.

3. I joined a roleplay-ish type guild in Lord of the Rings Online. Briefly. I was curious how the other half lives.

This is what I discovered: they live well. They’re not coordinating tradeskills throughout the guild (excuse me, KINSHIP) for maximum efficiency. They’re not pigeon-holing their WoW main healer into a LOTRO main healer role. They’re not scouring message boards and wikis to map out their endgame assault.

What they are doing is forming a traveling band (with the player-controlled instruments) to entertain at The Prancing Pony, Staddle and Combe. They greet each guildmember with a “hail and well met, kinsman!” They organized a guild event to run to Rivendell. (I did that run solo. When there’s level 30+ mobs along the way and you’re only level 15, trust me, it’s best to go solo and hope for some luck on mob pathing.)

Sadly, I couldn’t stay and wait around for one of them to roleplay a homosexual transgender with his (or her) real life spouse. There’s a tradeskill plan to draft and a quest/zone guide to post and our main healer wants to be a TANK, of all things.

By the way, I discovered one of the best ways to torture the more serious Lord of the Rings scholars in the game. You either know the type or can imagine, they’re always in /ooc correcting the rest of us about Tolkien lore.

As soon as they refer to the books in /ooc, (and they always do), type back /ooc what books? I like to do that about four or five times per gaming session — it never gets old. For me.

This one assnerd reamed me for it one day, and I explained that ya, I had read the books but I didn’t take notes, ffs.

Anyways. Where in the WoW is this:

Where in WoW (04-20-07)

And, can you recognize this LOTRO location, which was featured rather prominently in the first LOTR movie (AND BOOK), The Fellowship of the Ring?

Where in Middle Earth (04-20-07)

Lights Out

Doesn’t seem right to tell a light-hearted story today about my World of Warcraft guild.

With that latest example of man’s inhumanity to man out at Virginia Tech, I’m just not in the mood. Maybe Raster will feel like writing about how he’s a rich tobacco farmer in Lord of the Rings Online, I dunno.

So for a few days, it’s lights out around here.

P.S. When I return, I have news about the former guildmate I nicknamed BabbleOn. Refresh your memory with Part I and Part II.