FundinStrongarm

For California, with 40 million people, it's a difference of 14 million bucks. The total budget for California is over $250 billion. I think States will be okay.

Yeah. Mitt Romney in the only member of a party to vote against their party's President in an impeachment trial. Very decent person. Of course, reviled by Trumpistas, and also 8 years ago reviled by Democrats. The world would be a much better place if he was wrapping up his second term right about now. 😟

Yeah. Sort of a Smeagol version. You're supposed to have a soft spot for the dumb-as-nails little goblin. Fits in well in a Pathfinder RPG setting. I even had a goblin like him in my own D&D LotR campaign. But lore-break for sure.

It's extra bad because if you don't do the landscape quests in North Central Mordor at level 114ish, you have no idea wtf/why this goblin shows up at level 127 in Minas Morgul.

To be fair, the goblin in Mordor is not part of the Black Book of Mordor Epic quest chain until very late in the Minas Morgul expac. It IS part of the landscape and IS dumb. Straight out of Pathfinder RPG. And, yes, the servant animals at Grimbeorn's house are very extra dumb. That they go to the wedding is stupid icing on the cake. Such a variety of issues for people. Not a hiccup for me. Ran the 9, MM and Limlok dailies on more than 1 character.

As an aside, I missed about 5 years worth so not sure how the Mordor dailies work or how to get going in them. Is it tied to Allegiance system somehow? Are their Motes available?

Not a big fan of that one. People need to produce things or civilization degrades.

Funny also because Biden said something in April about Trump wanting a delay and his Trumpistas jumped down his throat. Now the backpeddling begins...

Not saying others aren't having problems. I've played all day today without a single lag issue. Strange. 0.0% packet loss. Odd how that works.

Whatever happened on the normal maintenance last Wednesday, the 15th, messed something up. Been crap since then. Mornings weren't too bad but by evenings virtually unplayable. Then they'd bring down all the US servers for a restart. By next evening really bad lag again. Then Laurelin. Ithil wasn't too bad for a while. All worlds down since yesterday afternoon.

Sounds about right.

He's clearly a moron.

I started back up 3-ish months ago when everything became free, after 5 years off. Previously, had given up because of lack of end game - epic battles were it and didn't seem to be much coming during each Gondor area in updates. The story went to the destruction of the ring and going through Mordor about 3 years ago. Black Book of Mordor started there and went to Elves of Thranduil/Dale/Erebor/Iron Hills/Grey Mountains and finally back to Minas Morgul expansion last November. End game is Remmorchant raid in Shelob's lair. Reasonably hard raid that I've yet to complete. Still gathering gear. I just did the the level 120 endgame raid, Anvil of Winterstith, which seemed good fun. Tier 2+ runs is the only way to get the single BiS crafted relic for your LI since Helm's Deep. Crafting effectively died with Helm's Deep/Dol Amroth. Recipes are mostly locked behind different area's reputation and isn't all that good. They added a new crafter's guild level with Morgul but not really sure (still) what one gets from it. There's a number of ways to get SoE but a grind nonetheless. The Mordor area/gear gives Motes of Enchantment so can still be fairly useful. Newer areas give Embers of Enchantment that you can trade for better SoE or other end game gear. They recently opened a 3-man in Moria of all places. I haven't done it yet except at level 50 just to see it.

Hopefully, yes. But better to at least try to appeal to a broad section of America than just 6 populous States or 8 populous cities. Look up why the Electoral College came to be. There wouldn't be a nation without it.

...and, as a Constitutionally Limited Republic, the Electoral College is working as designed. Limits the power with States with high population to control those with low population. It forces the President to appeal to a broad swath of the country.