Again. After burning out on hidden object game demos at Big Fish, I just happened to one night be browsing through my wallpapers because I was tired of the one I had and while scrolling through the list I found an old beta screenshot from LOTRO and thought hmmm … I wonder if there’s a free trial of that game? So I looked and I’ll be jiggered, there is! So I tried it out again. At first, I tried a couple servers and found that my old beta name Brambleberry was taken! No! So I made a character and called it Malberry because it was the only thing I could think of after an hour downloading and installing the game late at night. Anyway I toddled around the newbie areas, and it looked pretty much the same as beta, only far less crowded, I only saw ONE other player during my one hour or so that I played the newbie area. And there was no lag either! Of course I have 1 gig of RAM now too which I’m sure helps, the game was nearly unplayable for me in some areas in beta (Bree anyone? Ugh.)
Anyway, the memories of the Shire caught up with me and I wanted little Brambleberry back.
So after sleeping, today (erm actually yesterday now, damn I need to get to bed hehe) I rolled through more servers and found one with the name free and resurrected wee little Brambleberry the Hobbit Minstrel! Hurray! I haven’t played her yet though, because I spent most of today trying out the new Rune Master class, which they added in the most recent expansion pack. The elf starter area is quite a bit different (in a good way) than it was in beta, actually most of it wasn’t even finished in beta until really, really late. Anyway, tomorrow, erm today I shall restart anew as Brambleberry.
Here is a screenie of the old Brambleberry:

and the new:

Notice any family resemblance?
Also, even though I’ve only played a few hours so far again, I’m beginning to remember why I hated LOTRO hehe. BUT I do have to say they’ve fixed some of the stuff, like the ugliness of elves, and some of the quests are a bit easier. Oh and they have houses now too! But the instanced quests … I know it’s a good idea in concept but man I hate those things … I’m a wanderer and explorer by Bartle type and I hate being forced to finish an “epic questline” in order to get to a new area. Fortunately though, once you get out of newbie hell, you can wander a lot more. But being forced to do those spider quests ONE MORE TIME after doing them oh I dunno, about 5 or 6 times in beta was horrible but at least they made them easier, and since I’d done them before I knew them. Oy. And I’m gonna have to do them again tomorrow, erm today. ::sobs::
Another thing too that kind of bothers me is that my old Turbine account doesn’t show any of my old “stuff” on it, my old Asheron’s Call account and my old beta stuff, I know I couldn’t re-activate my old beta account (at least I don’t think so, they supposedly wiped at the end of beta.) But what if I wanted to reactivate my old AC account? I won’t, but what if I did? Unless I’ve completely lost my mind and didn’t merge my account, I’m pretty sure it was there back when I beta-tested LOTRO. Oh well, I had to start a new account to do the LOTRO trial anyway because you can’t add it to an existing account unless you PAY first, so since I didn’t play retail I figured there’s no point in that. But it kind of bothers me that they either wiped my AC account off my Turbine account or I’ve completely lost my mind and imagined merging my old Zone account over to Turbine, and writing it down with both account names.
I also could have sworn I remembered seeing both the AC account and the LOTRO beta account listed there in my account manager back when I was beta testing LOTRO.
Anyway, more LOTRO adventures and maybe screenshots tomorrow! I’ll probably make her a Yeoman again because farming pipeweed was fun. And Hobbits like to eat so cooking is a good skill to have.