When I last left off I was standing on a hostile planet where I needed to keep maintaining my life support and my environmental protection systems by feeding them oxygen and sodium regularly.  I had been briefly off planet for an inter-system flight from the radioactive planet where I started to the blazing hot planet where I ended up.  So hot the landscape literally erupts in flames.  The place is a constant blaze.

Shit’s on fire, yo

So there I am, fresh from space on a hot planet where just staying alive seems to be a bit of a chore.

This is where the somewhat odd slant of the game comes in.  Or maybe it isn’t odd.  Maybe that is just me.  But it felt, in retrospect, that they wanted to put you in the mind of walking up hill, in the snow… or maybe in the fire… both ways to school every morning before introducing a little relief.  They want you to appreciate the good life once you get there I guess.

I say this because the next thing on my tutorial list was to build a base computer, and a base computer unlocks housing.

Base computer time

The chromatic metal was a bit of a chore… I had to find a copper deposit and there were none close by… but once I solved that I was set.

The base computer actually stakes a claim on the planet which you can then build on.  That keeps others from encroaching on your base.  Good fences make good neighbors or some such, right?

Setting that up kicks off  a series of things to do, the first of which is to choose a base building material.

Base opportunities await

For whatever reason I chose wood paneling… literally the least science fiction looking of the options… for reasons I cannot recall even though it was only a few days ago.  Probably impatience.  It wouldn’t be the first time I made a choice because I was interested in the next choice.  But on a planet that is constantly on fire, wood seemed like the least practical choice I could have made.  Fortunately, it appears to be some sort of synthetic wood simulation that is, among other things, fire resistant, so no worries on that front.

You get a snap-to building mechanic that is somewhat akin to Valheim, though the pieces are bigger.  You can slap together a decent sized shelter on a 2×3 floor grid.  It was a little wonky in that “the pieces move relative to you if you move while trying to place them, but not at the same rate you move” sort of way.  But getting six floor sections, walls, and two doors was easy.  Getting the roof on… that was a bit of a chore.  I had to stand way back from the structure to get the roof to snap into the right location.

But once the roof was on and I went inside, I discovered that all buildings are climate controlled.  The incessant heat was gone.  I could stop worrying about my environmental protections.

Then it was time to build things in the base.  There was a research station from which I could learn more building ideas or addition machinery.  The tutorial pushes you down the machinery path, so I ended up with a generator, some wiring, a save beacon, and a teleporter.

The teleporter is online in my wooden building

The teleporter was intriguing, though it wasn’t connected to anything, so I couldn’t go anyway.  It is like that when you have the first bit of tech.

More immediately useful was the save point beacon which answered the burning question “how do I save the game so I can log off?”  I mean, the game writes a save point every time you exit your ship, but I am not always right next to my ship and at this point in my journey I had not been informed I could simply summon my ship to me.  It is less of a ship and more of a companion, but I’ll get to more of that in a minute.  So you go to the save beacon and save.  Easy as that.

So I ended up with a set of amenities in my base building… though I haven’t bothered to build the signal booster yet.

All sorts of things from the catalog

In part that was because the tutorial path suddenly forgot about my base and was once again hot to trot on my ship.  I had to venture out again to find something.  Somewhere there was a blueprint waiting for me.

The hyperdrive blueprint dispenser

Having found that the game was very keen that I get that hyperdrive built, because how can you see the universe on 30 Altairian dollars a day if you can get to the next star system with your hyperdrive.

Hyperdrives are cool, everybody has one, you should too!

The first item on the build a hyperdrive checklist was to purchase a microprocessor… and there were not a lot of stores on my burning planet.  So I was sent to the space station, there being on in every system, galactic infrastructure being a very important aspect of the game.

Space stations

That means getting in your ship and taking off… which meant fueling the ship, as there is always something running out of resources.  I did that, then took off and pointed the ship… well… up.  That is where space is.  There is a marker to follow to get you there.

Space stations are, but definition, off planet I suppose

Once out of the atmosphere it started giving me time to destination estimates, which were not promising.

An hour? What is this, EVE Online?

However, the game tutorial prompted me to press and hold the space bar… everything is press AND hold around here… to engage the pulse engine, which made for a more comfortable travel time.

Now that is pod racing

Fortunately the pulse engine was fueled.  I was in space and didn’t have it fueled at a later point and was short on an item to make the fuel, so had to slow boat to a station.  Only 20 minutes, but 20 minutes of holding down the W key can be a trial… though I did get to kill three pirates along the way.

Anyway, first space station trip complete.

An hour, 5 seconds, 30 seconds, time is an illusion

The time estimate were done by the same person who did the Windows file copy time estimates.  They are entirely accurate based on the situation at that instant, even if they said something else five seconds ago.

On arrival I needed to land at/in/on the space station, which, much to my relief, just grabs you and lands you when you arrive within proximity of its landing bay.  As I approached I had visions of my run at Elite Dangerous, something else that is almost a decade back at this point, which ended in very short order due to my inability to dock/land in the newbie tutorial baby steps space station. (I understand that is better now, but if you read the comments on that post it is all about getting the right joystick with HOTAS controls and… that just wasn’t going to happen, then or now.)

There I found the marketplace interface… the galactic trade terminal which, giving lie to its name, is a only for local sales.  The market is different in each system.

Insert units to continue

I did not have enough units… the unit of currency is the unit… so had to scrounge around and sell stuff I had to hand, but eventually I got the microprocessor needed to fix the warp drive on my ship.

The game was also telling me to go see the exosuit technology merchant for an inventory upgrade for my exosuit.  But the merchant had no such thing when I spoke to him.

Where is my upgrade dude?

Those who have played the game are laughing at me even now I bet, as the merchant does not have the upgrade.  Rather, it is that blue glowing display taking up the right quarter of the image above.  But it didn’t say go look next to the merchant, so I am still a bit salty… also, I had to Google the answer even though it was right in front of me multiple times.

Upgrade found

That little upgrade is available in every space station every day, so now my suit has more pockets than a tinker’s bag.  I love inventory space.

I also talked to all the locals on the station, but that is a tale for another time I think.

Then, having picked up my groceries and expanded my inventory, the game told me to use the station teleporter to get back to my base… “warp” was the term used, which seemed odd, but whatever… so I found that, opposite the trade terminal.

Not a stargate, don’t start that

Then I realized I had left my ship parked in the docking area.  Well, I guess if I can just teleport back, then maybe all my spaceflight will be done from space stations going forward.  That could be a thing.

So through I went and was back at my base.  Then the game told me to go fix my ship and I was all “GAME! You just told me to leave my ship behind at the space station” and the game suggested that maybe they had considered that situation, because when I went outside I found my ship parked around the back, having followed me home like a puppy or something.

Oh, there it is… also, still hot on Yardo

I get that your ship just always being there is a huge benefit, but it felt like a moment of “we’re just not going to talk about it” as the game glided on, sending me off to the next chore.

Anyway, I fixed the warp drive.  I could now, theoretically at least, travel between star system.  Also, one more thing to keep fueled.  Later I end up on a planet being hounded by sentinels and, in jumping into my ship to make my get away I am informed that one system or another needs to be replenished, like the scenes of the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes back.

At this point, which is not that far into my journey because I’ve been writing about other things, Potshot read my post about No Man’s Sky, which he also bought on Steam back in a past age, and he decided to get it running as well.

So the next entry will be about us trying to play together.

When I checked in the week before last about null sec, the Imperium had just successfully dropped a Keepstar in the system U-QVWD, on grid with Pandemic Horde’s Keepstar, leading to an unprecedented situation, and one with only a single possible conclusion: One of those Keepstars needed to go.  Story about that here.

There goes the neighborhood!

The led to a dramatic call from Pandemic Horde’s leader Gobbins, who declared they were going to… fight?  No.  He called for a general evacuation to the Keepstar in 1P-WGB, ceding the field to the Imperium.

The Imperium Keepstar onlined successfully with minimal Pandemic Horde or Fraternity interference and the Imperium moved into it, making it our staging station in Catch.  The story up to that point here.

But we still had to blow up the Keepstar in U-Q.  The battle over the armor timer happened during the work week, during working hours for me, so I missed out.  We won the objective while our foes patted themselves on the back for actually putting up a defense and inflicting some losses.  That set the final timer, after which their Keepstar could be destroyed.  This timer, as is their habit, was set in the Chinese time zone where PH and Frat are strongest.  That meant an early morning event.  But it was on s Saturday.  I could manage that right?  It was just going to kick off at… 5:00am?

My alarm went off at 4:45am for this fight.  My wife had been teasing me the night before about this, asking, “You’re getting up before the sun to do what tomorrow?  Explain this to me again? There is going to be a big fight?  No?”

The sacrifices one makes to live in California.  But that was 12:00 UTC and the rest of the coalition to the east of me was able to rise at a more reasonable time.  Also, the joke is on my wife, because I wake up between 5:30am and 6:00am on my own anyway, so it wasn’t much of a struggle.  She remembers me when we first met, when getting up before 10:00am on a Saturday was something of a chore for me.

It probably also says something that I know which alarm to use on the iPad to keep from waking her up.

Hillside is a gentle trill

I think I last used that alarm… set for 2:45am… when we beat PH and Frat at X47L-Q in a battle that had to straddle downtime about a year and a half back.  That event ended the same way this one was expected to, without a fight.  For the structure, the battle is always over the armor timer, because the defenders can still evac at their own pace if they need to.  The hull timer, which ends with the destruction of the station leaves you hanging in space with the might of your foes already massed against you.

I got up when the alarm went off and started up my computer and logged in.  The forming up of fleets had already begun, the first being called at 4:09am my time.  By the time I logged in the Raven Navy Issue fleet was full.  I was planning to try and get into that, because you might as well shoot the biggest weapon system you can.  There was a Rokh fleet as well, but I didn’t bring a Rokh because you can only fit so much in a fax SMA.  There were two Ferox Navy Issue fleets, one was full and the other was struggling to find any logi.  I didn’t want to fly logi.  I need to get on a kill mail every month before I swap over to logi… and I wanted to be on the Keepstar kill mail.

Then I noticed there, in the middle of the pings, a fleet on Asher Elias using our Flycatcher doctrine.  That doctrine is an experiment to find out what happens when you give everybody a chance to bubble the fleet.  But I’ll always pick Asher if I have a choice of FCs, and it turned out to be a good pick.

Most people were just going to be sitting around waiting for the timer to down to a point where they could warp over and get on the kill mail.  There is a damage cap, so anything beyond that is wasted effort unless there is a fight.  However, no opposition was expected, and none was offered.  But being a weekend people were piling in to get on the kill.  There were about 3K people in system when I logged in, and that number climbed past 3.7K over the course of the morning.

A mass of capitals waiting for their moment

I did a dscan at one point and counted 641 capital ships on grid.

While so many people were hanging around, our fleet had a job to do.  We flew on out to the gate that led into the system from the far side of Catch where our foes were staged and camped the gate… which, in a fleet full of interdictors meant deploying ALL the bubbles.

That gate isn’t going anywhere!

So we got to goof around and try to put bubbles in dead spots… and we even caught a few people coming and going.  There was an Arazu that was dead set to get into the system.

No more Arazu

There was also somebody in a Jackdaw… who showed up twice.  So it kept us busy while we waited.

When the Keepstar got down to 15% we warped back over to that and joined in with everybody trying to get on the kill.  There were ships all over.

Titans shooting the PH Keepstar

With everybody shooting the tidi ground right down to the 10% mark and then some, but the end result was preordained.

Another Keepstar explosion… with ours bearing witness

So far the kill mail hasn’t showed up on zkillboard.  I’ll link to it when it does, but sometimes when that many people get on a kill… and the server also has to process all the asset safety changes… and a staging Keepstar will have a lot of leftover stuff… it takes time and sometimes the kill mail doesn’t generate at all.  This won’t be the first Keepstar kill mail of mine that was swallowed up by the server, never to be seen again.

There was some cleanup to do after, some bads to chase down, but for the most part it was just a standard structure shoot… where 3.7K people want to get on the kill while the hostiles stayed away.

Also, I already have a lime green Flycatcher SKIN

There were some other things going on while we were focused on that.  Fanatic Legion ran around while all eyes were on the Keepstar and finished off three Astrahus, an Athanor, and a Fortizar on their own.

But we were not done for the day.  Shortly after the Keepstar shoot was done our Flycatcher fleet, now under an alternate FC and Asher had to get on and deliver a special early Fireside address, was bridged over to the EM-L4K constellation where there was a sovereignty contest kicking off for the sov hub in 1P-WGB.

I mentioned that system above because that is where the next hostile Keepstar is anchored.  We went and covered those operations as the coalition turned the system.

Sov change in three images

Out there we were less of a blocking force and more in the traditional role of interdictors, which is warping into the middle of hostiles to pin them down so some big guns can show up and finish them off.

Joining in on the shooting part

I got on a few more kills there.  But, if you’re flying an interdictor you are exposing yourself to the enemy who very often would like you to stop bubble and takes it personally that you’re doing that, so you move way up the priority list of things to shoot.  As such, I ended up getting popped after a couple engagements.  It happens.

That was the end of things for me.  By the time I was back in our staging… because I forgot to move my death clone… the sov battle was over and fleets were just covering the sov hub deployment.  Op success.

The next target is the Keepstar in 1P-WGB, which already had a timer counting down when we passed by it, stopping on the Fortizar anchored on the same grid.

Clock is ticking

That will be another armor timer, so may end up actually being a fight.  We shall see.  However, that fight, which will have kicked off before this post goes live, would require me to get up at 3am… and even I have limits.  However, if it does turn into a contested armor timer, the fight will drag out so I will be able to join a reinforcement fleet if it is still going when I do get up.

Our foes have already set their plan in motion… which was the same as the last plan… retreat.  This time they are falling back to the Utopia system in Curse.

Gobbins announces the advance to Curse

No Keepstar to kill there and no sovereignty to lose.  I guess that is a plus.

Anyway, we shall see what the next operation brings.

Update:  Pandemic Horde and Fraternity opted not to contest the Keepstar armor timer in 1P-WGB.  No fight today, so I was good to sleep in.

So yeah, Stars Reach is kind of a climate change metaphor. It’s a political metaphor. Remember, it’s about different sorts of people learning to get along, and to learn how to steward what we have.

-Stars Reach, What is Stars Reach About

Getting along is less the point for me than enjoying the benefits of an online game without being forced to get along at all.  But I am mildly grumpy most of the time anyway.  Also, I am sure somebody it going to get annoyed about politics in video games, like they were not always that way.

I wasn’t even going to write a post about the latest design vision posted over on the Stars Reach site.  After three rounds of pillars, I was feeling kind of done with a lot of promises and not much substance.

If you missed the pillars posts, you can find my thoughts here.

• Part I  – Stars Reach has Some Design Pillars for You to Get Invested In
• Part II – Stars Reach is Back with More Design Pillars about the Game Look and Feel
• Part III – Stars Reach is Back with a Final Set of Pillars, This Time About the Vibe

But yeah, I wasn’t going to bother.

Stars Reach Announced

And then Raph had to get in there and call the tragedy of the commons a lie and my brain exploded.  I mean, fuck subtlety or nuance or reasoned thought!  This is so incendiary in my head that I am half convinced it was a troll for attention.  I mean, it generated a lot of comments over at Massively OP when Bree decided to lead with that in the headline.  All of which put me in a mood, and the only therapy that works is words.

So op success if it was a troll!

I could write a whole post about why that statement is absolutely NOT the correct summary of the work of Dr. Ostrom, and how a better interpretation might be that people pretty reliably find some solution before it becomes the tragedy, even if those solutions are not always fair or equitable, because survival often depends on it.  Don’t make me go into the communal distribution of arable land in Czarist Russian agriculture.  I’ll post about village level plot allocations and archaic strip farming traditions if you push me!

Anyway, I’ll get to that in a minute, but first let me cover the other parts of the post from Raph and Playable Worlds… I’d like to think Raph gets input from the team before he posts these things, that it isn’t all just “Raph says” because he has Carneros on the team, who I know from EVE Online both as a fellow member of Reavers and as the former leader of a sizable in-game player group, which seems like useful experience, but these posts always framed as being exclusively from Raph so it is hard to tell… which goes through Raph’s four questions exercise.  Those questions are:

• WHAT IS THE GAME ABOUT (THEMATICALLY?)
• HOW DOES THE PLAYER DO THAT (THEMATICALLY?)
• WHAT IS THE GAME ABOUT (MECHANICALLY?)
• HOW DOES THE PLAYER DO THAT (MECHANICALLY?)

Seems a pretty reasonable set of questions, to the point I wish a few titles that went to Kickstarter for funding would have given them a shot.

Raph’s short answers for the four above questions were:

WHAT IS THE GAME ABOUT (THEMATICALLY?)

After ruining our homeworlds, we are given a second chance to learn to live in harmony with one another and with the natural world as we venture forth into the galaxy.

So we have messed up our home world and are being given another shot to do it again!  There is always an element of fantasy in science fiction I suppose.

HOW DOES THE PLAYER DO THAT (THEMATICALLY?)

Diverse groups of people with very different ways to play come together to build new societies, and grapple with the problems of building sustainable space settlements.

Sure, but how?  That is very nebulous.  I guess “how” is next, but this seems pretty light even for a thematic response.

WHAT IS THE GAME ABOUT (MECHANICALLY?)

Players work together to maximize their economic standing and in-game investment without destroying the resource pools they draw from as they build up their in-game investment and social groups.

Making the line go up.  Progression of some form or another along with resource management.

HOW DOES THE PLAYER DO THAT (MECHANICALLY?)

Players form economic dependencies on each other’s characters by advancing in diverse specializations and skills, all of which draw from the common exhaustible resource pools available in each zone, thereby creating a Tragedy of the Commons problem to navigate as a group.

And here we get to Raph setting up the strawman so he can knock it down and call it a lie.  Why even bring that up in the answer only to turn around and say it isn’t a thing?  I don’t know why.  It is an outcome that people work hard to avoid because their lives depend on it, yet we can find some examples in the real world all the same.

I would argue that the well water situation in the central valley of California, the state where both Raph and I live, where the law is that you can pump all you want, has led to a situation where large almond farming concerns have been motivated to drill deeper, plant more trees, and pump all the water they can to irrigate them before the water runs out… to the point that during the last major drought the water table dropped enough that older wells to ran dry and even caused some areas of land to collapse, might be somewhere in the zone of tragedy of the commons.  It has the classic hallmarks.  The water in the ground is the commons and the industrial almond farmers are abusing it to the detriment of all… even themselves in the longer term.  But when does business think about the long term these days?

However, we don’t need to go to the real world because we are talking about a being online and virtual worlds.  One might be tempted to bring up Ultima Online and the whole natural spawning mechanics that were supposed to populate the wilderness so that if you killed too many prey animals then the predator population would drop off due to lack of food, a concept totally demolished by players harvesting resources in a way that pretty much clear cut anything in site.

But let’s go to a big obvious one.  Let’s talk about Usenet!

I wrote about Usenet earlier this year, so I have some links to hand.  Some old fart out there probably thinks I am going to bring up the September that never ended.  But that was just elitism, a bias against anybody new showing up and upsetting the established order.  That was practically a purity test… no, not that one… as to who deserved to be able to access Usenet.  Students and faculty of universities were good, AOL users were bad, simple as that.

Usenet dealt with that.  It was no big deal in the end.  What killed Usenet were the Green Card Lawyers, Canter and Siegel, who discovered it was extremely cheap to spam ads on Usenet, such that even getting one response after cross posting to thousands of groups was a complete financial victory.

And Usenet was then made unusable by spam bots.

This was facilitated by the fact that Usenet was designed to be a distributed system with no central authority who could do things like ban or block offenders.  Everything had to be done at the local level.  Your local sys admin had to care enough to subscribe your local serve to cancel channels that would remove know spammers, though there was always discussion as to who counted and what threshold had to be crossed to be worth of the list.

In the end people just left because unlike the real world, you can just walk away from any part of the internet you don’t find value in.

What else has been described as a distributed system with local authority setting the rules?  Why, Stars Reach!

To be fair to Raph and team, they know there is a potential problem and they at least acknowledge it in the post with this:

All that is needed is for the players to have the tools to collectively manage their space. We as a team definitely need to nail that aspect. And then, yeah, it gets hard, because trying to solve for everyone’s competing needs and desires means a lot of compromising and negotiation and tough choices.

It is my long time policy to dismiss as garbage anything that starts with a phrase like “All that is needed…” which is then, in the style of the underpants gnomes, is followed by a vague proposed fix to a tough and possibly insoluble problem, but at least they admit they have a problem.  First steps and all that.

The problem is, how much power do player groups running planets need?  Too little and then Usenet is your destination.  But too much power and it becomes petty tyrants and and in-groups and tribalism as those who show up first impose their system on the late comers.

Imagine if you will all those indignant Usenet denizens in 1993 if they had the power available so that they did not need to merely whine at you that you needed to read the group FAQ that is published on the first of every month, before you post because your question is off topic or already answered but could, instead, set up rules to make you adhere to the arbitrary group rules that a few zealots and try hards came up with back when the group was created automatically?

Well, Usenet might have been saved, but at the price of it becoming the domain of a host of online exclusionary clubs unwilling to welcome anybody who wouldn’t toe the line.

Likewise, Stars Reach will face problems if there is too little control given the free ranging ability to modify just about everything on a planet.  Sure, “we’ll spawn more planets” is a possible answer, but given enough latitude some will seek to tear things up just to annoy other players.  Griefing runs deep in some gamer’s DNA.

While on the other side of the equation is the homeowners association view of the world, which ideally keeps chaos at bay through common sense rules agreed upon by the community… but which can often turn into an irresistible attraction to those who seek petty authority and love to tell people what to do.

Do I even need to expand upon homeowner’s associations?  They’re not all bad, but when they’re bad they can be really bad.  I recall a guy on the association board in the for the condo development we lived in way back when my wife and I first got together.  He would dig through people’s garbage can’s and send nasty notes with threats of fines if he found anything that was possibly recyclable in the trash.  He would literally staple things like grocery store receipts pulled from deep in the trash to his notes.  We used to call him the garbage nazi.  That is the sort of person often attracted to such positions.

“We‘re not obsessed by anything, you see,” insisted Ford. “And that’s the deciding factor. We can’t win against obsession. They care, we don’t.  They win.”

Ford Prefect – Life, The Universe, and Everything

I am more Arthur Dent than anything.  I don’t want to run the homeowners association, I just want them to leave me alone.  Likewise, in online games I don’t want to run the guild, fellowship, or corporation, except occasionally as an administrative function with some friends.  Usually so I can spend my own in-game currency to expand the guild bank or hand out medals to corp mates.

It is those who do want to run things, those who are obsessed with a level of control, that send me packing online.  I see the need for a homeowners association in real life and in the vision that Stars Reach is pitching.  But I can see it going wrong.

There is almost a dichotomy of Raph where, on the one hand, he can promote ideas like “the client is in the hands of the enemy” on his rules for online world design while also espousing an vision where players… the people who are “the enemy” in that scenario… can be given responsibility to run an online game, to be the literal governing body that dictates how you will be allowed to play in a given space.

We’ll see what happens… but nothing will be happening for quite a while yet.

Related:

• Stars Reach – WHAT IS STARS REACH ABOUT?
• Massively OP – Raph Koster on designing and defining Stars Reach

We’re back for another round of special servers for Lord of the Rings Online.

The Legend Returns

The team at Standing Stone has been very casual about building up excitement for the return of the legendary server idea.  Up until earlier this week it wasn’t something that warranted a spot on their main web site or the launcher.  They have felt content to mention it in YouTube videos that I would bet most of the LOTRO player base doesn’t even know exist.  And not even in a video dedicated to that, but one of the chat and update shows where they talk about a lot of things… and those mentions were not exactly informative feasts.

This feels like something they should be getting players hyped about and they have not done a very thorough job on that front.

Anyway, enough of that.  It is happening.

The original Legendary servers, Anor and Ithil, launched back in late 2018 with an eye towards recreating a bit of the original LOTRO experience, albeit mostly by tinkering with experience gains to set pacing closer to how it was back in 2007 and by gating content into the expansions. The game was still the modern version with added zones and class changes and content updates.  It was explicitly not a “classic” experience save for the pace.

That went pretty well.  Lots of people jumped in, including myself, and played through at least the original content.  As these things go, the further along the unlocks went the fewer the people willing to stick it out.  I didn’t make it out of the far end of Moria.

The second round of Legendary servers, Shadowfax and Treebeard, landed in mid-2021, with the gimmick being one was a fast leveling server and the other a slower pace.

This time around with the Angmar and Mordor servers, they are back with a new plan that involves battling the Nazgul and lesser minions of Sauron, which includes finding twelve lesser rings of power, which gives the whole thing the tag line “The Veil of the Nine.”

A new legendary appears

And that is about it.

There are some special aspects to the servers, aside from the fact that you will need to be a VIP subscriber in order to access them.

They are the first pair of 64-bit servers out of the box.  It will be interesting to hear if this alleviates the ongoing lag issue that has plagued the game for the last couple of years.

The Angmar server is located in the US while the Mordor server is located in the EU, though you can play on either one so long as you are a subscriber.

When the servers end their run the plan is for Angmar players to be transferred off to other servers while Mordor will stay as the EU 64-bit server.

Otherwise no monster play, no level boost, nothing that one would have if one were starting out fresh.  But all the current options, including skirmishes and landscape difficulty.  They even take a paragraph at the end of the announcement to be clear that this is not a “vanilla” or “classic” server experience.

There isn’t even any mention of the experience curve that I saw.  Is it the same as live, cut back for better pacing through the content, or accelerated because everybody is impatient?

I am in favor of this sort of thing, even if it isn’t a “classic” server… in fact, in the case of LOTRO, it is probably better that is isn’t a “classic” server.  Things were pretty rough back in 2007.

And, as I mentioned above, I was all in on the 2018 run through.  There are sections of the 1-50 experience that I can play over and over again… with the Lone Lands being a particular favorite.

Now I am less enthused.  As I have said too many times, the game isn’t really viable for me on my 34″ widescreen monitor.  It is a fine game at 1920×1080, but the UI gets pretty bad beyond that.  And I am not exactly feeling the call of Middle-earth at the moment.

Still, I wish those who are off on a new adventure the best of luck and hope the new servers… and the 64-bit aspect especially… are a great success.  There remains no equal out there when it comes to a digital recreation of Tolkien’s work.

Related:

• LOTRO – Two New VIP Legendary Worlds Have Arrived

The first day of Blaugust has arrived!  Welcome to the 11th annual running of the blogs!

Blaugust – 2024 Edition

I haven’t been very good about the build up to Blaugust this year.  Fortunately the event doesn’t rest in any way on my shoulders, and others, Belghast especially, have been out there spreading the word and getting things ready.

There are currently 75 or so blogs registered to participate in the event, but that doesn’t mean that you are left out.  It is a month long event and you can join at any time.

So how do you get involved?

Here is everything you need to know about Blaugust but were afraid to ask, in easy link form.

• Blaugust initial Announcement – All this info in a longer format
• Blaugust 2024 Eve – Last minute event updates
• Blaugust Sign-Up Page – Get yourself officially on the Blaugust list
• Blaugust Discord Server – Come hang out with fellow Blaugust participants
• Blaugust Mastodon Account – The official social media organ of Blaugust
• The Blaugust Prompt List – Post idea central
• Blaugchievements – Achievements you can claim during Blaugust
• Blaugust Media Kit page – Where to find the Blaugust logo in various sizes
• Blaugust Participants List – A Google sheet of who is in it to win it
• Blaugust OPML File – All the RSS feeds for participating blogs

What is in the event for you?

That is sort of up to you, really.  We do have a community that has been hanging around on Discord for a few years now, a community that persists between each annual event.

If you think it will boost your readership by 10,000%, perfect your SEO, and get you a job in publishing then you might be a bit let down.

If you want to rub elbows with other bloggers, see how they approach things, trade tips and recipes, and find yourself mildly perplexed as how several curmudgeons like myself with days jobs still crank out a thousand words a day… this is the place.  I’ll even let you in on my person secret:  Low standards.  Nearly 7,200 posts in to this it is quite clear I’ll push the “publish” button on just about anything.

If you need structure to help you write, you can find that.  There are prompts above and people will riff off of each other’s post ideas and the various weeks of the event each have their own theme.

• Welcome to Blaugust Week (August 1st – August 3rd) – The idea behind this week is to give a specific time to be actively talking about Blaugust and welcoming new members to the fold. This could also count as promoting Blaugust for the “Spreading the Madness” achievement. The hope is that drumming up some heavy activity of talking about the event might allow us to pick up a few more stragglers.
• Introduce Yourself Week (August 4th – August 10th) – The idea behind this week is to have some structured time around getting to know the other bloggers. I realize that those of us who are veteran bloggers might have already written half a dozen introduction posts by now, but it is a great time to share anything interesting you might have in your arsenal.
• Creator Appreciation Week (August 11th – August 17h) – Developer Appreciation Week or the D.A.W. was an event that took place in the blogging community independent from Blaugust but eventually died out. The more modern idea is to show appreciation for the things and creators that we love. This could be authors, musicians, developers, artists, or even other bloggers, with the focus being on sharing something that we love so that maybe others might appreciate it as well.
• Staying Motivated Week (August 18th – August 24th) – As we get towards the end of the event, the activity can often trail off a bit. The goal of this week is to share some of your own tips surrounding how you keep motivated and stay focused on creating content. If you are new to the event, you might share some of the things that have helped you stay engaged during Blaugust.
• Lessons Learned Week (August 25th – August 31st) – This week is a reminder that the goal of Blaugust is to refresh the content creators out there for the coming year, and not to burn them out in the process. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant and others will want to process their thoughts about the proceedings. This space is reserved as a bit of a cooldown lap so that you can share your own experiences.

I am kind of bad at Blaugust, more because my ability to write about any particular idea is very much influenced by my mood.  So the prompts tend to be right out unless somebody tackles one in a way that inspires my own riff.  I do try to at least do one post on each of the weekly themes, often during the designated week.

I wrote in my previous post about the 2024 event, there are achievements and awards and shiny badges to be displayed when all is said and done, on the other side of things when we reach September.

We do have quite a few blogs here on day one.  Here are all the participants so far.  Please try to take a bit of time to visit as many as you can.

1. 2TonWaffle Community
2. A Boy and His Computer
3. A Hobbits Journey
4. AI MMORPG News
5. Alexs Review Corner
6. Alligators And Aneurysms
7. Alvans Digital Garden
8. Amerpie
9. And So It Goes…
10. AppAddict
11. Aywrens Nook
12. Beats and Skies
13. Beyond Tannhauser Gate
14. Bio Break
15. Chasing Dings
16. Contains Moderate Peril
17. Cotswold Diary
18. Cubic Creativity
19. Endgame Viable
20. EVE Online Pictures
21. Exposition is Inevitable
22. Flamingo Flix
23. Gaudete Theology
24. Geek on a Harley
25. Heartless Gamer
26. In An Age
27. Indiecator
28. Inconsistent Software
29. Inventory Full
30. Juha-Matti Santala
31. Just Text
32. KayTalksGames
33. Kellys World
34. Kluwes
35. Lameazoid
36. Linkage
37. Living Out Loud
38. Mailvaltar – MMOs and other stuff
39. Martins Notebook
40. Monsterladys Diary
41. Mormoroi
42. Mutant Reviewers
43. Nathan Friend
44. Necoco loves stuff
45. Nerd Girl Thoughts
46. Nerdy Bookahs
47. Notes by JCProbably
48. OwlBlog
49. Peridotlines – A Place Where I Write
50. Ramble With(out) A Cause
51. Riels Nest
52. rscottjones.com
53. rsjon.es
54. Rumors Matrix
55. SamJC
56. Scopique
57. Select Star Studio
58. Shadowz Abstract Gaming
59. Sharon A. Hill: Strange Claims Adjuster
60. TAGN
61. Tales of the Aggronaut
62. Tart Darling
63. The Chip Bag
64. The Dragon Chronicle
65. The Everjournal
66. The Friendly Necromancer
67. The Last Chapter Gaming Blog
68. Time to Loot
69. Uncountable Thoughts
70. Unidentified Signal Source
71. Valentines Days
72. Vicissitudes
73. Wand3r
74. WAWAWA
75. Words Under My Name
76. Yordi

And off we go.  First post in.  Just 30 days left.

Other Blaugust first day posts to look at:

• Inventory Full – Good Grief! It’s Blaugust! Again!
• Chasing Dings! – Welcome to Blaugust, 2024!
• Monster Lady’s Diary – Welcome To Another Blaugust
• Time to Loot – Blaugust 2024 is Here!
• Words Under My Name – Blaugust2024 Day 1 – An Introduction
• The Friendly Necromancer – Welcome to Blaugust 2024! Life is crazy!
• Many Welps – Re-Introductions
• Indiecator – Blaugust 2024 is here!
• Living Out Loud – Blaugust Introduction
• Cubic Creativity – Blaugust 2024: The First Post of Blaugust
• Juha-Matti Santala – Blaugust 2024: Batteries included
• Nerdy Bookahs – Blaugust 2024: Here we come!
• Wa Wa Wa – Introduction, Because of Blaugust
• AI MMORPG News – Unleash Your Inner Blogger: Dive into Blaugust 2024!
• Shadowz Abstract Gaming – Welcome, Hello, Glad you’re here #Blaugust2024
• valentine’s days – welcome to blaugust 2024!
• StarShadow – #blaugust2024 Introduction ~ Day 1
• Aywren’s Nook! – Blaugust 2024: First Post of Blaugust
• The Dragon Chronicle – First Post of Blaugust 2024
• Kelly’s World – Motivation for posting more- Blaugust 2024
• Notes by JCProbably – Birthday Month with a side of Blaugust
• Heartless Gamer – First Post of Blaugust