Bohemond

Yep I started playing on the legendary server fully intending to stop well before any essence grind. I'll most likely get to 50 (no rush, 19 now). Possibly stick around for Moria if they manage to sufficiently un-neuter it from its horrible revamp. Tiny chance I'll be around for Mirk. At a huge stretch I might be able to endure RoI to enjoy Great River. Zero chance I'll be around for Mounted Combat or the grindy garbage beyond.

Just because something could happen doesn't mean it has or will or is even likely to. I've been away from the game for a while now, but even when I played, I don't remember ever seeing 1500+ players all using the stone of the tortoise to remain 1-50 (oh hang on, that's because it has never happened) I've barely posted here since my auto attacking champ thread, but from what I've read from you, you appear remarkably bitter and disdainful towards any players who don't hate SSG with the same burning passion you do. You also don't seem to be very bright: I'm getting a very strong Dunning Kruger scent from your posts. That's not your fault I suppose, you can't helping being who you are. That said, I'm enjoying the server and knew full well what I was getting myself into: except perhaps the OP bleeds which were definitely an added bonus that increased difficulty enough to add to my enjoyment. I've been the last one to mindlessly accept all the rubbish that has been released since the decline began back in SoM. I still hate the trait trees and always will, but they are more bearable on a 50 cap server without the boring battles or do every single quest in west rohan grind to get them all. As a founder, I lost nothing by trying out the legendary server. I'm certainly not a whale - but without going into too much detail, I'm financially comfortable, run a successful business, and am debt free. Once I found I enjoyed it enough, I had no problem subbing for my partner for 3 months. The fee is a pittance. And I really don't care if the server shuts down before it gets to Moria, or if the minimal challenge is nerfed tomorrow, I've already got enough value for the single tiny payment I've made.

I feel very similar. It's light years away from the early SoA legacy server I'd prefer, but it's closer than anything else they've come up with for years. I'm enjoying the slower pace and have only just hit 15 on my champ and 14 on the cappy I duo with my partner. With such a short distance from 1 to cap, I'm not feeling any rush or impatience to get there. One side effect of no PvMP I hadn't anticipated was that it gave me one less reason to hurry to cap. I'd definitely prefer well balanced PvMP (such as late SoA or SoM) but no PvMP at all is preferable to poorly balanced rubbish. I'm quite enjoying the weird challenge of OP bleeds and discovering the new scaling gear. Knowing that I don't have a massive LI grind looming above me helps with enjoyment dramatically. Even then, there's a chance I might stick around for Moria if they can manage to make it able to handle a large population (I have my doubts given how utterly gutted it was during the easifying revamp a while back) Very unlikely I'll stick around past Moria though, unless they enable PvMP and accidentally manage to balance it well.

True for some, I'm sure, but a bit of an over generalisation. It'll never happen, but I'd love to return to an early SoA difficulty when I sure as hell wasn't king anything. In the early days, I floated between my hunter champ and burg. I remember once when I was back on my early 30s champ, after playing burg for a little while. A little rusty, and spoiled by my burg's avoidances, he pulled a couple too many worms in the ram duath, messed up his fervour gen and with N/A for BPE was shredded in no time. That is the kind of time I'd like to go back to.

This sure does seem like a troll thread. I'm hardly the biggest fan of lotro these days .. but there's nothing wrong with Vastin's post. Especially in the context of the handful of whingers on the forum making repeated assertions with nothing to back them up. I was actually following the blue hunter whinge fest closely enough to debunk some of the entitled easy moders' absurd claims. No surprises, but I found the new supposedly "broken" blue hunter still wrecked its way through landscape like a hot knife through butter.

A common refrain I've seen is "I'm a casual. I'm nowhere near cap because I'm not one of those loser power levelers. I'm patient, taking my time, enjoying the story. NOW LET ME GET MY ANNIVERSARY STUFF NOW!!"

​That was pretty much the final nail in the coffin for me with the moors. Audacity started the decline - I went from playing every creep class and 2-3 regular freeps, to just 1 creep (never max aud) and 1 or 2 freeps. Add in the effective removal of kbs and the trait tree fiasco, and I was done. (Hmm... I just realised it's been so long since I've played the moors that "freep" is starting to sound silly again!) Everyone and anyone who PvPed understood and accepted the titles were just a bit of fun - and fully understood titles on different classes had different "values." A cappy or defiler getting a kb was worth way more than a hunter doing so. Ruining kbs was probably one of the stupidest decisions Turbine ever made about LOTRO. Not only was it perhaps the least asked for change (I never recall seeing it once) Their "but it was always a bug" bs spin was a blatant insult to our intelligence.

​I was definitely skeptical when it was first announced. I enjoyed the novelty at first but that quickly wore off and I was back to wishing they had skipped it entirely or just ripped off Mount and Blade. Ultimately I knew this wasn't an option, as the engine really can't handle mounted combat at all, and certainly not M&B style. But now my hatred for mounted combat is almost up there with trait trees. For me, MC added to the trivialising of landscape content difficulty and further damaged immersion and any sense of place in a simulated Middle-earth.

Mirkwood intro completed ... including Hilltop Assault This was another tough one. Took me about 4-5 attempts. First couple were not even close, but I soon realised why: going into the boss fight, Fuirgam and Agorin were almost out of power and not quite full morale. I addressed this by waiting on top of the last spawn of orcs (which appear when the second troll dies) to grab aggro and running them past the elves, down the hill and out the gate as far as I could. The elves gave chase, and with the last orc dead pretty much as far from the boss as possible, the long walk back gave them ample time to regen to full morale and power. Still wasn't quite enough - but very close, Fuirgam dying with the commander at 3820/54495 (Note he still has his +50% damage corruption up) Now, because I don't know the right way to play modern LOTRO, my first recourse was not to flee to the forums and demand it be nerfed down to my chosen play style. I was instead encouraged by progress and tried again, this time staying on the boss the entire time instead of trying to pull the adds he summons during the fight. I even swapped out my off hand with an armour rending weapon, figuring every little bit counts - especially with a whole bunch of friendly npcs beating on him. It was still a near thing. With the boss down, there were 4 adds all targeting Fuirgam. Fortunately he had yet to hit any of them and I was able to grab all but one with a quick tap (helped here by the other elves too) then focus on his target to whittle them down one by one.

​lol thanks for that - someone shared that with me a few years back but I had forgotten all about that "game" ... sadly it's far too similar to my auto attacking experience.

So that means Boemond has basically finished Moria. Not entirely unscathed, but it was overall far far too easy. His third ever death (at 57) occurred fighting the Watcher at the end of the looooonnng arse book instance The Drowned Treasury. Poor Boemond took a beating fighting the tentacles, but made short work of the squid once he ran all the way back with a single tentacle remaining. It had been a while since I had last done that instance, so I couldn't recall how high the Watcher's health was when it fled and the fight was won, or whether you could just ignore the tentacles and focus on the body. As it turned out, he fled at around half health, so if he had simply focussed on the body, he probably could have avoided death #3 Two more deaths before he was done with Moria, both from being rather careless. The first in that poison orc area where he was fighting 3 blues and left it too late to flee - 2 were defilers, their heals extending the fight and their range ensuring I couldn't get away. The next was in the foundations of stone which - sadly, is really very easy now. I was a little distracted (I do a lot of multi tasking when playing my auto attacker) while fighting the Rock Warden sig and made the double mistake of accidentally pulling a ranged respawn and not noticing for a few crucial seconds. Tried to flee, got falling damage and pulled another. Boom. Overall, I've enjoyed Moria just barely enough to stick it out. This is the first time I've played through the revamped Moria and frankly it's horrible. Far too easy. Spawns have been shredded. It feels mostly empty. Questing is all sterile and artificially streamlined from hub to hub to hub in a misguided attempt to be "user friendly" but screw any sense of danger or immersion. I also noticed a large number of bullshit click on a bunch of crap quests while not in any danger - I'd love to slap whichever idiot who thought they were such a great gameplay idea. While SoA has certainly been nerfed in many places, Moria was an even more neutered experience. It really was one major disappointment after another. Even Balin's Camp - which used to be HARD - was face roll easy to auto attack well under level (Most of it done at 54 vs 58s)

1. My last reply was to Amenhir, not you. 2. If you truly felt I was "slamming" you then I apologise. It was not my intent, and I was unaware you were so fragile and sensitive.

Except that wasn't what I did at all. Not even remotely. ​ ​My points were address to his - I'll say it again - idiotic assertion that Turbine must have previously just spelling things correctly in the past due to luck His comment was obviously and intentionally idiotic. The implication of course was that (since it couldn't be true) that it somehow disproves the current misspellings were due to incompetence. Except that requires the (as I said - moronic reasoning) that standards have not fallen. That the quality of Turbine's current work is just as good as it was in the past.

​Nice hypocrisy, genius. And I didn't refer to him personally as an idiot or moron. I referred to his suggestion and reasoning as such. It's entirely possible for smart people to make idiotic, disingenuous arguments.

My guess is the surprise take on the Siege of Gandar is that we'll get to session play as Gondolf...