podgie_bear

Hi Steve, long time no see! I am afraid that I have been abducted mate, and addicted. That old reprobate, Bondbug introduced me to "The Lord of the Rings Online" and since it is Free2Play I decided to give it a go and started meeting him in game to play together regularly. Now I can't stop playing it and play with him on the French server, some Russians on another European server and now an Estonian on one of the American servers. I have 10 different characters all with different classes and crafting skills spread over the three servers and am never short of people to take on the multiplayer skirmishes, or invade the higher level dungeons with. Why don't you come give it a try mate, it is a fantastic game with loads of content, equipment, skills, quests, raids, 4 races, 9 character classes, 10 crafts, 100's of crafting recipes to produce armour, weapons, jewelry, clothes, foods, beers, tobaccos, potion, furniture, paints, dyes, oh and did I mention you can buy and decorate your own personal house in 4 different regions, an Elven Mansion, Human Cabin, Dwarven Hall, or Hobbit Hole? I am on there all the time now and if you want to give it a try and meet up, then give me a pm and I will intoduce you to addiction LOTRO. PS. If you do give it a try, PM me as there 30 different servers in operation all the time and you will never find me without arranging it in advance.

And me too! I humbly appologise for not remembering in time and will submit to being punished for my selfish inattention.

I always thought it was an infection caught from Facebook. Like, "Hey look at me, I got all these friends!", since it isn't obvious what it actually does.

I was fortunate enough to get to play Mythos in the beta with both the old and new versions and I have to admit that the old one was so addictive I couldn't stop playing it. Unfortunately this new version just doesn't have the same hold on me for some reason and I gave up and went off to play other games. I can't quite put my finger on what was lacking, just that it didn't feel as the original and lacked the 'addictive lure' for me.

To be completely honest, you would be better not using any blank characters and developing your own instead. I found that by using blanks I missed a lot of the fun of discovering things for myself and even after I stopped using them, I never regained it in my impatience to get to higher levels. My advice is to make your own characters from scratch while it is all new to you and if still want blanks later on, then you won't have lost that joy of discovery.

Very nice, would definitely put that banner on my wall!

Maybe I need to download the latest CM as well, I just realised that my CM patch is nearly a year old now. Oops!

Eh.. Excel works too. I'm more comfortable in Word myself... So am I and I made a similar, if simpler (though not better) list myself back when I last did the Epic Office Quest (OMG, it seems like years ago!). But I never managed to finish as there were a couple of employees I 'found', but couldn't reach. I have just reinstalled Sacred 2 after a break playing Dragon Age 2 (not room enough for both on my harddrive), an am looking forward to the 'employee hunt' again, but you have got me wondering how the CM patch effects matters? Does the CM patch make the quest more difficult, or are you saying that it makes the quest easier in some way? Since I am now playing with the CM patch for the first time.

Tunngle huh? Since you are using it, tell us from first hand experience how well it works? Any problems, lag, limitations etc? Reading their website, they always put the best face on it to get you to use it, but you could give us the true story.

I came at this from the opposite direction and played the game with no mules, bargaining or tweeking and I thoroughly enjoyed my gaming. However once I started using the 'convenience' and 'helpful aids', a lot of the enjoyment drained away until eventually I wasn't enjoying it anywhere near as much and gave up playing. I am starting to make a comeback and trying to avoid all that stuff and just play the game straight to try and find that enjoyment that I lost by 'corrupting' the gameplay.

No Gogo, she has had some problems with where she lives. A very unreliable power supply that keeps surging and burning out computers faster than she can afford to replace them. She is currently confined to a Netbook with minimum specs and is unable to play or do much anymore, especially online. I also know that she just started a new job recently and is struggling timewise, especially since her family has some health issues and she is having to hold it all together.

Yes that is the sort of thing, but in a 12 inch "Subway" size, rather than a full "Loaf of Bread" size. As regards the definition of a bun, that is so wide ranging as to be unbelievably confusing. "Bun" covers everything from a "Burger Bun" (ala BigMac) through Breadrolls (Subway) to Donuts and even includes Danish Pastries according to some peoples' definitions. When I visited the USA some years back, I found one of my favourite "Buns", they called it a Bearclaw.

I called it a sub roll for the benefit of our friends across the sea, because I thought that calling it a Tiger Stick, which is what I actually use (except when I use a Granary Stick for variety) would confuse the hell out of them.

Aahhh, the butty discussion. My favourite butty has to be my bacon and egg butty, my Saturday morning treat. A 6 inch sub-roll, lightly toasted, 3-4 bacon medallions, 2 fried eggs and slathered in brown sauce (HP for favourite). After successfully coating my arteries once more and adding one more point towards my scheduled heart attack, I am set up for the day and usually don't eat anything else until my evening meal. And to those who claim my unhealthy lifestyle means I will die young, every man in my family has lived healthily and died before they reached 60, except one, who loved fried and fatty foods, drank like a fish, never exercised and lived until 97. I am 53 and intend to do better than he did!

Although this may be slightly off topic, I have to admit I am very wary of dictionaries and their stupid literalness. I trusted a dictionary once too often and nearly lost a good friend because of it. I thought that at Christmas it would be nice to send a Merry Christmas to my Serbian friend in Serbian. I carefully researched what I wanted to say and sent him "Merry Christmas to my best mate" in Serbian. What I didn't realise is the nuances the dictionary put on my words. It has taken a lot of bridge building and apologies to make up for the dictionary translation of "Merry Christmas to my favourite sexual partner"!

I vote Griffinborough as least favourite as well, I don't think anyone likes that place. Mind you I rather dislike Thylysium as well, it may be open plan, clean and conveniently arranged, but it is a soulless place and considering the accommodations in the lower town where all the servants have to live, it makes the whole place feel rotten and segregated. I vote for Christmas town as well as the prettiest place to live, or the wooden trailer on its own island does have a lot of appeal.

Get yourself an "Invisible Mass Killer", that character is the fastest leveler I have ever seen. Look it up, it is in the Build Guides section and even has a download available now (See Podgie the Bearbarian). But be warned, nothing can stand against it when it is played right. I took it to level 150+ in just over a week, before I scrapped it as being too over-powered.

Shock, Horror! You openly use the "C" word? (LOL) I play Hardcore even in this game, meaning if I die then I delete that character. I even considered not using NPCs that die in my party again, but that seemed a bit too complicated and I could see myself with a party of 1 before the end of the game! I blame Sacred personally, I never even heard of Hardcore gaming before I played Sacred online.

Then be prepared for a Veeerrrryyyyy long wait, since it has been abandoned! Now that Askeron is no more, Deep Silver isn't going to bother, so unless we the players write our own fixes (see the Community Patch) it will never get fixed.

Thanks, I think I need all the help I can get on this game! The combat isn't much of a problem, I am managing quite well there and expect to do even better with later characters as I learn my way around the skills more. However the most frustrating thing is that as I am trying to pursue the romance options, none of the girls have any interest in me at all, but several of the boys keep expressing an an interest in me! (Runs screaming for the hills!) These games are getting too complicated for me I think, it seems that mutilation and mayhem just aren't enough anymore (sigh)

You should be expecting it to take for ever Gogo! The clue is in the name...... MICROSOFT Security Essentials.

I watched the first episode on "Sky Atlantic" here last night and I must say it looks very promising, although you can see the influence of the TV execs in the way that they couldn't manage more than about 5 minutes between sex scenes. Half of which did nothing for the story, or even seemed relevant to it. I think they should have spent less time on that and more on showing who some of the characters are. So far they are just a vague collection of characters who are inter-related in some way that isn't apparent to me. It would be nice to know what the story is about and we shouldn't have to go research that elsewhere to understand what the series is about.

The Hellhound is a very peculiar beast and in all honesty is such a stupid idea for a mount that I don't bother with it. Let's face it, despite the Shadow Warrior fighting from its back in the intro movie, how could anyone manage to hit their target enemy on a beast that can't even move unless it is in ruddy great lurches? It's like trying to fight while attempting to stay mounted on a bucking bronco and would be more at home in a rodeo than on a battlefield. Of all the special mounts in the game, it is the most ridiculous, unrealistic and just plain awful. Even the mount for the Dragon Mage (which looks like something thrown together in a hurry and without any real consideration), looks and acts better than the Hellhound. Rant over, I'm off now to develope my anti-Sabretooth Tiger weapon. Now where did I put that ball of wool? Here kitty, kitty.....

As fantasy adventure films, LotR are absolutely brilliant. As recreations of Tolkien's masterpiece,......well. They are about as accurate as reading the phone book and thinking that you now know all the people in area! Unfortunately, they are someone's personal interpretation of the story and that means that they are not how anyone else would interpret it or how Tolkien meant it. Enjoy them for what they are, but read the book and form your own interpretation. Over the last 50 years of watching films, I have yet to find one that is faithful to the book that inspired it. BY the way I loved the Legolas character in the films, super action hero that he is and far less 'restrained' than in the book.

Thanks, I will definitely keep a rogue in party and bear in mind what you are saying about mages for later. I am playing as a 2H warrior type at the moment to find my way around and I must say that although it seems a very good game, I think Dragon Age Origins was marginally better. It may well pick up as I get further along, I am only half way through chapter 2 at the moment.