Friday 28 October 2011

Lord of Ultima Tools Part 1: Script Installation and LoU Tweak

There are lots of tools out there to help with Lord of Ultima, and some of them become almost indispensable as your empire grows. But some of the most useful of them are quite complex to use. So here is a guide to the basics.

Monday 24 October 2011

Countdown to NaNoWriMo: Resources

NaNoWriMo can be done with nothing more than a pen and a big stack of paper (although unless you're planning to sit there and count 50k words by hand you probably want to use a computer, and to officially win you'll need a computer with an internet connection at the very end). But there are a multitude of other resources out there that can help you along the way.

Saturday 22 October 2011

Countdown to NaNoWriMo: Looking Backward, Looking Forward

It's now just 9 days until NaNoWriMo begins for 2011. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month. The national part is a bit of a misnomer, since it's been international for a long time, but the rest of it is pretty self-explanatory - it involves writing a novel in a month, specifically in November.

Thursday 20 October 2011

Rise of Isengard: Northern Dunland

Rise of Isengard has been out for a few weeks now so I thought I'd share my thoughts on it so far.

First, a bit of background. I've been playing Lord of the Rings Online since launch and I played regularly for the first couple of years. I moved to Sydney around the time I hit the original level cap of 50, and since most of my kinmates were also on the east coast it was easy for me to group up for end-game content. Around the time Siege of Mirkwood came out I moved back to Perth, which made the timezones more difficult. And a large chunk of the kin moved to a more raid-oriented kin, which didn't really interest me. So while I still played regularly, it was mostly solo.

Last year I was in the beta for Free to Play, and I tested a lot. I ran a few characters through the new introduction. I did every new solo quest in Enedwaith, as well as grinding out rep and deeds. It was a lot of fun, but by the time the content launched on live I didn't feel like doing it all again, so I pretty much just ran through the epic on my main. Since then, I've played intermittently, mainly on my alts. But I've decided to return to regular play with Rise of Isengard.

Sunday 9 October 2011

Pottermore

Pottermore has been in Beta for a while now, but public opening is fast approaching, so here are some of my thoughts on the experience.

Like many other Potter fans, on the 31st of July I sat hitting refresh on the Pottermore site until my chance to find the magical quill came. I was lucky enough to only have to wait a week or so before I was allowed access to the site.