Level 30 and a Horse's Ass

As I had hoped I was able to log onto LotRO for about an hour or so last night, enough time to clean up a few old group quests and hit level 30. It's happening a lot faster than I expected, the leveling. Without even really trying, I've been raising a couple levels each week, I'm guessing because of the rest experience. I'm not complaining though. It's very likely that the rest experience is the only thing keeping me from having to grind a few levels here or there.

There's still a lot of solo content, but it's getting dwarfed by group quests right now... it's sort of like the late 40s gap one runs into in WoW with solo quests. Only in WoW you can travel all over, and while it's time consuming, you still can find solo quests to push you to Ungoro Crater and Western Plaguelands level. I'm hoping the same is true of LotRO right now. That once I push into Evendim in a level or two, I'll be greeting with enough to get me into my 40s at least, and hopefully by then it'll be Update number 2 with more content for the 40-50 bracket.

Time will tell.

But anyway, back to the matter at hand. I hit 30, ponied it back to Bree and got me a new skill. Can't recall the name right now, but it's a 30 minute cooldown heal, that converts half of my power into morale. Certainly will come handy in dire situations. But the 30 minutes seems a bit excessive since in LotRO 30 minutes is about 60 fights or so if you're in a hostile area (30 seconds-ish per fight depending on the strength and number of the mobs).

I shouldn't really complain though. The fact that I even got a heal at level 20 that I can use every 30 seconds, plus one at 30 that I can use every 30 minutes, is such a nice feature that I should be thankful, and I am. Turbine went out of there way to make most classes soloable, even giving them all some form of combat heal or another. It's very nice.

Anyway, after getting the skill I received the level 30 Champion quest, which had me head back into Ost Guruth in the Lone-Lands to talk to a fellow champion there. It seems the orcs holding Ost Cyrn really pissed the guy off, and now he's put it to me (and him also) to go there and whoop the crap out of them, and reap the glory.

What I dug about this quest? Private solo-instance.

What I undug? So short it made me cry.

Here's the run-down of what happened. We "ported" to the base of the Ost Cyrn stairs, fought our way through some easy green and light blue orcs, took a rest at the top, fought more easy orcs, and then fought a dark blue signature, and a white signature. The last fight would have been tough if the NPC guy wasn't there to help me, but for the most part it was an absolute walk in the park.

Cool for the theatrics, but lame compared to the search and destroy quest at level 15. My only wish is that there were more solo instances available for repeating. I could do the lower levels ones from the epic quest line now, but aside from trash loot, there's little to no reason. I'd like to have a few solo instances, as EQ2 has, that could be repeated just for the fun and experience of it, even if only once a day.

There's something very fun about instanced scripted encounters, and EQ2 was smart enough to capitalize on this for the solo-ers, and I think LotRO's guys can see that too. I mean, in EQ2 they were so popular people were spending all their time in them, apart from the real world, just leveling up through the dungeons. I'm not saying I want that. A once a day or every 2 day lockout is fine with me, but being able to go into a private encounter like that is one of the best aspects of LotRO. I'd love to see them do more with it than just dungeons and epic chapter quests.

Anywho, below you'll see some pics of me in action last night, as well as the titular horse's ass. It's a damn fine ass... er sunset, I must say.

Getting ready to kick some orc booty. Need to smoke before the battle sometimes, you know?

Maybe he won't realize I just stabbed him in the back? I mean, if he would just stay out of my way, it wouldn't be a problem... stupid humans.

And they say there's no magic in LotRO. How do you explain the laser-beams then?

What Mosal Ruk didn't know is that he was fighting naked. Apparently that's not safe, as he quickly found out when my axe gave him a 2nd and 3rd buttcrack.

Lastly, some Palomino ass for all you furries out there. All kidding aside, I love the skies in LotRO. They're soooo purdy.