Lord of the Rings Online Discussion

Man, this festival is awesome. I must have opened about 20 gift boxes already. Found some awesome cosmetic items, some food, marks, even item XP runes have dropped. Turbine has seriously thought of everything when it comes to this game. Get to killing to earn those tokens, it's so fun opening gift boxes.
 
Apparently my brother to a screen shot of those 8 trolls chasing me in Carn Dum. I'll post it :). And yes they eventually pummeled me to goo lol
 
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LOL kind or hard to see me but I'm leading the train (you can sort of see my cape)…

The "strategy" was to kite the trolls off the bridge so my brother could run down it safely and use a summoning flute to pull me to the other side. Didn't work. I was pummeled into a soft goo before he arrived at LZ….

see his message to me? "RUN" lol

ScreenShot00002_zps3c296ad8.jpg
 
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Okay, so I started Moria properly. Well, the intro to Moria I guess. Didn't actually step foot inside the place yet but I did the surrounding quests to help the dwarves open the door. And man, the content so far is awesome. I was completely immersed in the game tonight. I thought my head was going to explode honestly, from the sheer awesomeness. Especially that "session play" that had me running around the Khazad-Dum throne room. That was completely unexpected and cool. I found myself genuinely sad about what happened to the dwarves that day. The story and lore was extremely interesting so far. Loving it.

I also got my first legendary item. A Hunter's bow of the third age. Got a couple relics in it already, a title, and got it to level 8 and upgraded the legacies. Very fun system so far. The customization is awesome. I really can't get over how awesome this game is. It keeps surprising me with great content after great content. And to think I have so much left to do and see, it's mind-boggling really. Anyone reading this, go play this game! You must do it. It's just...epic.
 
Grats on the LI's. Once you absorb the basics lets chat. I just had a looooong conversation on the unite channel with a bunch of folks trying to figure out a replacement strategy for my LI's. Lots of opinions that's for sure. Its an enormous system with 1st, 2nd, 3rd age items and bands of equip levels, relics, empowerment scrolls (tiers), delving scrolls (level cap increases). When to use what, when not to... when to kick your PC out of pure frustration LOL. I'm at that last stage myself ha ha.

BTW just wait until you get inside :)
 
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Spent today exploring the interior of Moria. I really like it so far. The layout is very nice. Made it all the way to Dolven-View, which isn't too far, but there were a lot of quests along the way. Lots of cool locations already. Lots of cool quests, too. It's a pretty interesting place. I look forward to seeing more of it.
 
Cool. Dolven-View is a major hub. Those shards I sent you are usable at those two dwarves opposite the stable at DV. ;)
 
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Yeah, I did one of those quests. Was level 54 and I died quite a few times trying to do it, but eventually was able to craft some sort of infused gem at the end of it. Nice.
 
Yeah, I did one of those quests. Was level 54 and I died quite a few times trying to do it, but eventually was able to craft some sort of infused gem at the end of it. Nice.

You are getting within spitting distance of Grand Stair eligibility. We had a 58 in our group last night. It was a great run. Officially doable at 56 although you'd need some 65+ in the 6 man group to keep the heat off. I do multiple runs a day (daily challenge then full). When the group is composed of level 57-67 like it was last night (and we only had 5 in the group) it really is fun because of the challenge and importance of performing your role. We did wipe once but it was because the healer got in melee range on AoE with a boss troll. 2nd try no mistakes and very satisfying.

So anyway... as soon as you are eligible I'll invite you! BTW I finally gave in and joined a kin myself. http://guardiansoffreedom.guildlaunch.com/
 
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Yeah, that's a pretty bad time to do maintenance, hah.

Dude, Monster Play is insane! I thought it was just going to be some tacked on feature that didn't amount to much, but it's actually deep and interesting. I made a spider. I love it so far, but it's very challenging. I died close to 10 times in the hour or 2 I spent with it. I did manage to do a few quests and rank up a bit, though, so maybe it will start to get easier. I also jumped right into a raid, and wow, was that fun. I was running around with 15 other players killing free peoples and whatever was in our path. That was a blast. My first official raid too. But yeah, pretty awesome game mode. I will definitely spend more time with it.

With that said, I'm going to be taking a LOTRO break for the next week or so while I review Mars: War Logs for the site. Once I come back I will give Monster Play more of a look. The only problem I see happening is the Ettenmoors becoming boring after awhile since it's the only zone you can PvP in. What would be awesome would be to allow monsters to travel to other zones, and match their level to the zone they are in. That would be pretty nuts, but I'm sure it would be a hard thing to manage. But just imagine quest hubs for monsters in all the orc/monster encampments throughout Middle Earth. That would practically be an entirely new game...

Anyway, do any of you guys who play/played have a Monster Play character? Pretty fun stuff...
 
Back to LOTRO today, and what do I experience? Lag. Lots of it. I have no idea what's causing it, but the game ran perfectly smooth before the latest update, now I have severe drops in FPS. In Bree, it even dropped to single digit FPS and is laggy as hell. I understand the festival is going on and all that, but I think something is wrong besides that, because last time I played during the festival there was virtually no lag at all. Not sure what to do about it. I updated my drivers and it helped a little but it's still running poorly. Any ideas? I'm on an Alienware laptop with the 7970m graphics card. Before the update I was getting 60+ FPS on ultra high+ settings. Now it's cut to less than half of that in Bree and Moria, etc.
 
I was on last night and in Bree at one point without an issue. I'm logging on in a few minutes and I'll post back if I see anything. I did notice some warping on Grand Stair the other day but it wasn't terribly unusual.
 
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Probably another issue with the 7970m. I updated the drivers and it seemed to help a little, but the lag is still really annoying. The game drops to like 20 FPS in Bree.

Are you running everything on highest settings possible? And you were in Bree with no lag at all?
 
Thanks for the help in-game Todd. Sadly, it looks like I have the dreaded under-utilization bug that happens to certain users of the 7970m in certain games. I don't think there's any fix to it and I have the latest beta drivers, so I think I'm pretty well screwed. Even lowering the settings has no impact on the FPS. My card is running at 45% load. Mars runs at 90%+ from what I saw. This sucks.
 
Ugh. I saw you tell the utilization number but I was running a group and then you logged. There *has* to be a work around. I went to look it up on NBR only to find your post on the topic. Here is to hoping you get a lead on it.

Meanwhile - this sounds promising and should be investigated:
Alienware’s M17x can be made to work around this problem. How? The notebook has a hardware-based multiplexer that, after a reboot, can turn off Enduro and make the Radeon HD 7970M a standalone GPU.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xotic-pc-sager-np9150-radeon-hd-7970m,3294-11.html
 
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Thanks. I disabled Enduro awhile back, though. I'm thinking maybe I should re-enable it and see if something miraculous happens.

I am in contact with Turbine and they suggested to change something in my user preferences file, but it did nothing. Hope they have more tricks up their sleeve.
 
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