Glitch

The other game I've become addicted to lately is Glitch. It's a browser-based (Flash) non-violent MMORPG with a quirky sense of humour. It's still in Beta but due to open 'Summer 2011' which I hope means soon (while it's still in Beta it's only up for a few days at a time; we're in the middle of 10-day downtime which is going ever-so-slowly. My only fear about launch and constant up-time is that I might never get anything else done...).

My little Glitchling is called Snowdrop (what a surprise). She's level 26, lives in a biggish house in Kajuu with a pig called Glorious (I caught a pig that someone else named and haven't bothered to rename it yet). Her best skills are in cooking and cocktail making but she dabbles in a bit of everything. She likes working on projects but tends to be eternally broke as a result.

If you play, send me a friend request and say hello :)

Lord of Ultima

My earliest memories of Ultima are seeing my brother and sister playing on the family's communal computer. All that I really remember of it was the gargoyles, so it must have been Ultima 6. By the time they moved on to Ultima 7 I was taking part too (where taking part meant sitting and watching, and occasionally taking notes). I remember thinking that Ultima 7 was an impressive game because it came on 7 floppy disks. When I was a little older, the early Ultima games were rereleased, so we played those too. I even played a bit of Ultima 6 by myself, but then I managed to kill the talking mouse and decided that I preferred computer games as a spectator sport.

Eventually I got into the swing of playing computer games by myself, but by then Ultima had moved past the isometric style that I'd grown up with and seemed to be require a level of coordination that I just don't possess :)

And then last year we discovered Lord of Ultima. I didn't have any experience with the MMORTS genre, although I'd played Civilization and Age of Empires (again, mostly as a spectator sport), so I had some idea of the basic concepts. And I loved the idea of being able to play with virtues and moongates again without needing twitch reflexes. And then... well then I got addicted.

I started on World 7, but after 3 mergers I ended up in a dead-end alliance while another group won. In the meantime I had started on the first Australian server, World 22, which remains my main server. I'm in Crimson Thorn, the third-ranked alliance on the server, and I think we're doing pretty well so far.

I also have an unfortunate habit of starting a new server whenever there's downtime, so I'm also on World 26 and have a small presence on a couple of newer servers, although World 22 is where I spend most of my time (and all my diamonds).

If you play, give me a shout-out (I'm Snowdrop, easy to remember).

Here are some of my favourite resources:

The most important supplements to the game are the two Greasemonkey scripts - LoU Tweak and LoU BOS

A close second would be the LoU Flash City Planner (FCP) which lets you manually plan cities. I used to use LoU City to generate my resource cities (with the options use_slots=90 num_cottages=20 placement_schedule=F,*2,WSI,*100) but recently I've been using the  LoU Optimizer. I find it a bit fiddlier, and it doesn't provide an FCP link, but it seems to produce better results.

For general information, the official LoU Wiki is usually pretty helpful. The forum thread Fundamentals of Lord of Ultima is a very thorough strategy guide for new players, although it's probably a little overwhelmingly technical for brand-new players.

My best tips for new players would be:

• Start on the newest server in your timezone (the game should recommend this by default anyway), otherwise you will have too far to catch up
• Do the tutorial. It's not the best source for information, but it gives great quest rewards along the way.
• Join an alliance run by an experienced player. There's enough people on their second (or third, or fourth, or...) server that letting the blind lead the blind is a waste of everyone's time.
• Ask questions. The wiki is helpful for the basics, but if there's something you don't understand you're much better off asking someone in your alliance (or in world chat, or on the forums) than making mistakes that could take weeks to undo.

Snow Leopard

With the release of the App Store I decided it was time to finally fork out for the upgrade to Snow Leopard. I ordered it on Friday night so I had to wait until Monday before it was shipped but it arrived promptly on Saturday morning (so glad Apple changed to TNT overnight shipping; it used to take a week to get stuff shipped from the Apple Store).

The install was all very straightforward. I'd read some horror stories on the internet so I was a little bit worried but it all turned out fine. The upgrade cleared out about 6gb on my harddrive, which I was very happy about since I'm constantly running low. My only real complaint was that the version on the DVD was 10.6.3 so I had to use Software Update to upgrade to 10.6.6, which involved a 1gb download. Not too bad with our current internet setup but a few months ago it could have been an overnight job.

I was still running iLife '08 so I upgraded iPhoto using the App Store as I was eager to finally try out Faces. While not as accurate as I'd hoped it would be, it's still pretty awesome. I will probably upgrade iMovie as well at some point, but I finished off making a DVD of last year's holiday to Brunei before I did the Snow Leopard install so there's no rush. I haven't used Garageband for ages so I'm not sure if I'll make that upgrade or not. Even if I do end up upgrading all three apps, it still saves me a few bucks over buying the DVD, plus it comes off my iTunes balance so it becomes part of my Christmas present rather than coming out of my savings.

I haven't noticed any speed changes with Snow Leopard; there hasn't been an improvement but it doesn't seem to have any trouble running with the minimum 1gb of memory. I did have a vague hope that it might help my problems with Firefox freezing up while playing Lord of Ultima, but I think that has more to do with the game itself than anything on my end.

I still need to install and try out Facetime, and fiddle around with the other changes that come with an OS upgrade, but so far I'm happy with my upgrade-to-Snow-Leopard experience.

Happy New Year!

So it's been even longer since I last posted than I thought it had been. I decided that in the new year I'd make an effort to post more, but it's been too hot to do much at all (it's still hot, but I've run out of low-hanging fruit so I'm revisiting my todo list looking for things that I can at least do without moving around or thinking too much).

The traditional topic of the first post of the year is to talk about New Year's Resolutions. I haven't made any specific resolutions for this year but in general I'm working on improving/managing my CFS, getting a job, and writing more regularly.

The stuff I still have to post about our trip to America is now a bit out-of-date, I guess, but I'll make an effort to post it soon anyway. After that I'm thinking about using Plinky to get some inspiration to post a bit more.

Hopefully my next post will be in the next few days (maybe if I promise that I'll be more likely to do it...)

Animal Kingdom

Returning to the Disney World posts after a bit of a hiatus... Posting about our trip was making me a bit depressed because it reminded me that I don't have another trip planned. But I think I'm past that and can enjoy reminiscing about it instead.

I've settled on Animal Kingdom as my favourite park. It has two awesome shows (Festival of the Lion King and Finding Nemo: The Musical), a cool rollercoaster (Expedition Everest), and I have to admit I'm a closet fan of Dinosaur. Plus it has animals! Who couldn't love it? And I'm a sucker for Disney theming and I think they've got it pretty much perfect in Animal Kingdom.

Minas Elendúr/Delotham

One chapter in Volume III Book 2 in the upcoming LOTRO content release takes place in the sprawling maze instances Minas Elendúr and Delotham. Now anyone who knows me (in real life or in game) will know that I have terrible direction sense. So I didn't get very far into Minas Elendúr before I realised a map. And this being beta, there weren't any maps readily available. So I made my own. But it quickly became clear from GLFF that even people who don't normally have a problem navigating in LOTRO were having trouble with this one. I hope that my maps will be able to help someone.

For those who aren't familiar with these instances, there are two separate instances, Minas Elendúr and Delotham. However, they are connected by 17 doors. Delotham can only be accessed by going through Minas Elendúr, and parts of Minas Elendúr can only be accessed by going through Delotham. The epic quest primarily takes place in Minas Elendúr, but there is also a deed that requires exploring both instances.

I've posted two sets of pictures below. The first is in-game screenshots of the maps; the second is my hand-drawn maps. The hand-drawn maps aren't exactly to scale but it should be pretty easy to match the shapes up (especially with all those Hidden Mickeys...).

Welcome to Enedwaith

With LOTRO's Free to Play launch in a couple of weeks, I'm going to start posting some of my maps from beta. These are mainly intended for my kinnies in Eventide Revelry, but I'm posting them here so that they are accessible to anyone who might be interested. First up is a map of the new region, Enedwaith and the coordinates of all the POIs I've found. It should be fairly complete but if you find something missing or incorrect let me know. Apologies for any typos; I can't always read my own writing when it's not in English.