Profile: Talyn
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• • Entrance into the Mines

  • I haven't been reading beta info because I'd rather discover it for real while playing, but:

    Eregion is southeast of the Trollshaws, and the Trollshaws map does show a big "to Eregion" on it. Riding into Giant Valley, there's a path that dead-ends at a closed gate; Eregion lies beyond that.

    Book 14 includes a swift travel from Rivendell to Mirobel in Eregion. Currently that is only a tiny instanced portion of the zone and I do not know if it will lead to the "real" Mirobel or not once the servers come back up or not.

    I'm also told you can swim/walk down the Bruinen river in the Trollshaws, which flows into Eregion as well.

    I'll be trying all three tomorrow. In fact I logged my lore-master at the gate in Giant Valley so I'll be ready to roll when the servers go live.
    

  • Posted: 11/17/08 4:56 PM
    Lord of the Rings Online
• • Hireling system

  • At the risk of shameless self-promotion, I wrote a somewhat more in-depth article of my Preview Night experience last week if that would provide any additional information for you...
    

  • Posted: 11/16/08 4:48 PM
    D&D Online
• • Hireling system

  • I've only used a level 6 hireling so far, the first Preview Night. They control with their own hotbar. 6 standard controls to tell them to follow, stay, passive, active, etc. then the last (up to) 4 slots on the hotbar will be class-specific skills. You can manually have them cast spells or on active they'll do it when they think it needs to be done. The current cleric AI won't cast a heal spell until you dip below 75% HP, and then it only gets you back above 75%. If you want to get topped off, you'll have to manually tell it to cast, or use potions/wands of your own.

    If you've played GW, they're controllable like Heroes, but their "builds" are pre-configured like Henchmen.

    The AI is still being tweaked this month during a few more events before they go live next month.
    

  • Posted: 11/16/08 8:25 AM
    D&D Online
• • DDO compared to Guildwars pve wise?

  • They're only similar in the sense that both are designed for groups not soloing (DDO does have a solo difficulty on some quests, and in GW you have to work up to a specific build to solo certain zones or certain mobs) and both use towns as public lobbies while the actual adventure/quest/dungeon are all private instances for your group.

    DDO is kinda a mix between normal Diku-MMORPG and console-ish action RPG with some Tomb Raider on the side. You have to make each swing, each dodge or block, and it's very fast-paced. (I guess you could consider the pace another similarity with GW.) Jumping, climbing, grabbing ledges, detecting and disarming traps (or using the traps against the mobs) all come into place here.

    Most quests are dungeon crawls, though some are in pretty big outdoor areas with smaller dungeons located within them. There are several "wilderness landscapes" which would be similar to any world zone in GW.

    Wait til Turbine puts the new trial out with the brand new starter area they released a few weeks ago and give it a shot then. Occasionally they run promotions to get DDO for $10/month too.

    I play both DDO and GW but other than the technicalities of being instanced with public lobbies, they both are very very different games and each plays very differently from the other.

    If you enjoy the dungeons in Eye of the North, and/or if you enjoyed dungeons/raids in normal MMO's you might like DDO. There's no travel times, everything is similar to "map travel" to get where you're going, but all the adventures take place in hand-crafted dungeons or zones kinda like EOTN.

    Both games also offer a ton of customization. GW is all about how you put your skills, gear, and attributes together for a specific (or general) purpose. DDO is D&D so it's all about the levels, but like GW you can multi-class (up to 3 classes I think?) and there's a ton of customization available. A lot of DDO players get really into creating new builds, just like GW players do.
    

  • Posted: 11/14/08 2:18 PM
    D&D Online
• • Soundtrack

  • I'd thought the game's original soundtrack was available but Google isn't coming up with anything.

    With a few updates, more music has been added to the game, and I wouldn't mind loading some of the better ones onto my ipod but the filenames don't give any clue to the actual song titles.

    I don't suppose anyone has actually listed out the titles of the current soundtrack to each file have they?
    

  • Posted: 10/29/08 11:41 PM
    ArchLord