Creating Characters: What's In A Name?

"My name is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story."

          -Treebeard, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

I've been told that I'm very good at coming up with names. Having given names to dozens of MMO characters, and more than three times as many characters, creatures, and places I have written about -- I suppose that's a fair statement. This entry is a (generous) handful of my favorite character names and how I came up with them.

LOTRO Executive Producer Letter: Classes, Festivals, Dwarves, and a Spider

Today's letter from Executive Producer Rob Ciccolini (aka Severlin) left me with some mixed feelings, but overall pretty excited!

Classes

If you play LOTRO and keep up with the notes for Bullroarer, then you've likely already seen some of the initial plans for tweaking classes. I am generally not happy about the proposed changes to Hunter and Lore-master, and admittedly don't play enough of other classes to weigh in on them -- but some people are happy and others are not. I just hope all the people who can actually access Bullroarer and give quality feedback will do so! The good news about this process is that they plan to stagger it and work in gradual phases instead of massive, sweeping changes across the board all at the same time.

Update 23

This part doesn't really get me excited because I haven't even made it to Mordor yet, but it still sounds very awesome! The Lonely Mountain, the Iron Hills, and the Grey Mountains will get the dwarf fanatics pumped up -- and the instance cluster, promise of a new raid later in the year, and level cap increase to 120 will take care of everyone else.

Minas Morgul & Shelob

I am sad this has been pushed off to 2019, but also kind of happy they want to devote more time and size to it. Anyone who's played Shadow of War but is also a LOTRO player is probably twitchy with anticipation of this part of the game.

Festivals

I'm intrigued by the Seasonal Instances that will accompany the Summer Festival. It reminds me of the special raids in RIFT during the Anniversary event, as well as Instant Adventures. I just hope SSG does it right (so far, their track record is pretty good). The fact that they mention the instances being able to be done solo is a plus in my book. Group content in the game is plentiful (especially with Mordor, I hear), so giving some love to the solo/duo players is great to see.

Tidbits

• The ability to see sheathed musical instruments? I'm on the fence here. I hope they make the visibility optional, or set it up with cosmetic options the way they have standard weapons. Not all instruments look good dangling from your back or waist!
  
• Harvestmath additions? I hope this isn't just talking about the continuation of the Bingo Boffin quest they started last fall. That was great, and I look forward to the next leg of it, but something new that can be done every day of the festival would be great!
  
• And all I can say about tying off loose ends in North Rhovanion, including Gundabad...

Weekend Update: LOTRO, God of War

That was remarkably nice and gentle, Elrond. 

Good job with the bad news for Snarkqueen.

When you've spent weeks grinding the Anniversary Scavenger Hunt, it can definitely feel like a few thousand years have passed in the blink of an eye! But those sweet, sweet rewards were very much worth it, and I feel very accomplished for having completed the vast majority of it with only a little help.

In other news, YES -- that is a character named Snarkqueen. She is on the Arkenstone server, and I hope to use her for future LOTRO-themed blog entries. She is a High Elf Warden and probably won't get as much game time as I'd like simply because I enjoy playing alongside the Away Shall Fade kin on Landroval. (You guys are awesome.) I just didn't have any open character slots over there.

The monthly feature entry is on schedule for the 18th, though the cough/sniffles/sneezing I've developed may or may not interfere with that. This is what I get for going to a doctor's office for an annual exam.

My husband has also asked me to play God of War so he has someone to talk to about it, so I'm going to give that a go in the coming days, too! He said it was hard for him to play on Normal, and that I should play on Easy. That worries me because he usually likes hard games. Anyone out there have experiences with the game to share?

RIFT: Four Years Ago Today

Look at that beautiful Bahmi rogue! Her name is Kantri, and I created her four years ago today in the game RIFT. The nice people at Trion Worlds are big supporters of Extra Life, so they offered up a few freebies to the participants. I took the incentive and marvelous things happened!

Alright, not at first.

I had fun putzing around in the game on my own for a while. A friend told me she played and I swapped servers... and then I never saw her in the game again. (You know who you are. *scolds*) But then I felt really lost and couldn't seem to figure out where to go by my lonesome... so I stopped playing for a really long while.

I returned to the game in early 2015 and found myself in the middle of a zone event. For the first time ever there were a few people giving instructions to us clueless players and it actually helped us get the event done successfully. I caught the name of one person's guild and promptly asked for an invite. It ended up being a HUGE, disorganized guild... but was better than being all by my lonesome.

(Spoiler alert: RIFT, the guild in RIFT, and my Extra Life streaming on Twitch brought me closer to another RIFT player in the guild -- I am presently married to him. Yes, in real life. Just another reason why Extra Life means so much to me!)

I was very active in the guild for the rest of that year, even scooting all the way up to an officer position where I helped lead the raids and was also in charge of the RP (which was a lost cause unless all the kids were on summer break). I left the guild in late December with a few others because we disagreed about how some things were being handled.

Three months later, after having quit my job and moved 800+ miles to Mississippi, I went back to RIFT and created my own little guild called Spectral Gryphon. It's still there, and not very active, but I maintain it anyhow. I don't want to return to a crazy, large guild, and I hope to one day play some more with my friends and husband.

Let this be a lesson for you: Good things may just be waiting for you to take a chance. Oh yeah, and use those freebies you get if you're an Extra Life participant! They're a complete game changer, if you know what I mean!

The Right to Bear Arms

Demantura exercises her right to bear arms.

If you're looking for information about the Second Amendment, this is not the right place. If you're looking for satire about the Second Amendment, this is still not the right place. [Jedi Mindtrick] The places you're looking for are here or here.

As my readers know, this blog is a place to read about my gaming misadventures, and this past week has been no exception! I have the pleasure of telling you all about my rediscovery of the beorning race-class in LOTRO.

Race-class? What on earth is THAT all about? Well, in Tolkien lore, Beorn (that bearish skinchanger who gave aid to Thorin's company in The Hobbit) was one of the last of his people. He appeared as a huge man, but could shapeshift into the form of a monstrous bear. If you're going to make that kind of powerful creature into something playable for MMO gamers (who are notoriously fickle about balance between races and classes) then you have to make sure you strike that happy balance right from the start. The easiest way for the LOTRO devs to do that was to make the beorning race also their class. Changing into a bear and laying the smackdown is kind of OP, so it's hardly fair to let them also cast rune AOEs or utilize gambits or fire off a dozen arrows in a wide swath against foes.

Man form

Bear form

Now, when beornings first came into play in November of 2014 with Update 15, I was as excited as anyone to play one. I bought the race-class the day it came out and made one. I was captivated by the detail and beauty of the Vale starter area and dove into it with aplomb. Much to my intense dismay, after only a scant few levels I was ported away to Archet in the Bree-lands. Some people might disagree with me, but I happen to feel that the Man starter area is the worst, with the Shire as a close second. Not only is Archet a pain to get to, but there's hardly anything there and the quests are scattered over a large area -- far less linear and flowing than if you started in the Elf or Dwarf areas. As a rule, if I make a Man character, as soon as I'm out of the intro I hoof it to Celondim. Not only is the story more palatable, but it takes less time to level because of the better-organized quest chains.

But then I really started having trouble. The swap between man form and bear form was anything but smooth, and was especially awkward with the different skills on the skill bars. I hadn't quite become accustomed to using my keyboard for the first skill bar (that lessoning would come after playing RIFT for a while and learning how to make the in-game macros), so it was that much harder to keep the skills straight. Disheartened by the struggle that it was to play, I left the character alone at around level 18. Thereafter, I would only run him through the Yule festival for easy XP -- and I did him the favor of putting a Horned Snowbeast Cloak on him as well as giving him a Snowbeast Steed. It completed the rugged look, and that in itself made me satisfied.

My beorning, Hiraeth, on the Arkenstone server.

Fast forward 2 1/2 years to last Friday. I had no idea what character I wanted to play in LOTRO, aside from wanting to play on the Landroval server with my favorite kinship, Away Shall Fade. (You guys are perpetually awesome.) That left me with 7 characters to choose from. Deciding to be arbitrary about it, I asked a friend on Steam to roll a d8 for me, with 8 being a beorning since I hadn't played it in so long and many of my kinmates seemed to enjoy it. Sure enough, his die landed on 8 and I set to work to create a new beorning character.

Demantura seeks out Gandalf in The Prancing Pony.

I ended up with Demantura Vindurel (diamond wind) whose cosmetics ended up looking vaguely like she belonged in Assassin's Creed instead, but still seemed entirely appropriate for a rough and gruff woman who turns into a bear.

Demantura out on the barrow-downs.

The difference in gameplay was amazing.

I learned that Update 16 (if I'd only waited for it!) had brought about an amazing edit to the beorning race-class: an auto-swap of the skill bars when you shifted forms. That in itself made the beorning more enjoyable to play, but it was clear that they had also tweaked a lot of the skills and the trait trees along with it. To anyone who still has gripes about the beorning, you have no idea how good it is now compared to how it was on its first day!

I took to questing with Demantura like a duck takes to water. As soon as they were able to, Away Shall Fade took me into The Great Barrow, a group of instances that are part of one big dungeon. What I hadn't anticipated was that I'd end up being the tank for the group. My usual favorite classes are all ranged dps, support or healing. Tanking was never something I planned on doing -- or rather, I anticipated it with my guardian and possibly my warden, but forgot that the beorning can be a furry bulldozer with the right build.

Beorning trait tree options.

It was a bit awkward at first, especially since I didn't entirely remember how the dungeon instances went, and my healers didn't exactly keep me alive. (It's okay. I forgive you. You know who you are.) We've run it a couple more times since that first time, and I can safely say that I'm very happy with how the race-class plays. I prefer the blue trait line, dabbled with red and didn't care for it, and am trying to learn the yellow. Beorning is hardy, diverse in the way you can damage and heal with the same build, and seems to make a good meat shield for other players. The bear form is very strong (especially if you use the red line), but the man form is just as strong if you use your skills well.

  

So if you stopped playing beorning years ago for the same reasons I did, I encourage you to give it another try. If you've been playing recently and have the notion that it isn't a viable class, I implore you to think about how bad it was when it was first released and appreciate the work the devs have done and all the feedback the community has given. Maybe it still has its issues, but it's come a very long way!

Now I bet someone out there would love a free game. Who doesn't love a free game? My beorning on the Arkenstone server, Hiraeth, was not originally known by that name. I began playing him on Elendilmir before the World Consolidation. Upon transfer, someone else already had his name and I had to rename him. Knowing that I made him in 2014, and that he is a shapeshifter, what popular (and relevant) name from that year did my unoriginal self give him? Comment with your answer! Your chances are pretty good given how few people comment.

And as always...