LOTRO Moria provokes Winter Blues!

Yep, as impressive as The Mines of Moria is (the first expansion to the MMO Lord of the Rings Online) with it's expansive halls and new upgradeable weapons, to me it's all very dark and dinghy!

I know I must sound crazy and it's probably just that time of year that I hate - the winter. But I actually suffer SAD (Seasonal Affecting Disorder) in real life, otherwise know as 'the winter blues', which is caused by a lack of sunlight in the winter. So who's crazy idea was it to release Moria - primarily a dark underground area - at the beginning of winter!??

Now to be fair, the pretty (and sunny) green wastelands of Eregion that were released at the same time of Moria, are actually quite nice. You play through Eregion which takes a couple of levels before you enter into Moria. But once you are in Moria, there is no break from the evil darkness from levels 52-60, which I actually think was a mistake on the developers part. It would have been nice to have had another outside area mid-way, a sunshine holiday if you will, a break from the dark and dinghy grinding.

Now some hard-core players would have had Moria licked (or at least levelled to 60) within a couple of weeks, but I'm not one of those players. Playing at my own pace I got to level 54 in about five or six weeks before the darkness took hold. I took a few weeks off as I just couldn't face loading up the game for a while. I had another go a couple of days ago and persevered with it, but I can't honestly say I enjoyed myself.

There does not seem to be any news yet on the next area, but it won't come too soon as far as I am concerned.

I play as Falin on the EU server Laurelin

Trackmania Experiment

Let's face it, most free games are crap or they are limited demo versions of their proper selves, but TrackMania Nations (which is a free racing game available on Steam) finally has me hooked.

The hook for me is the fact that you can literally play against over 2 million registered players. It is a clever design of the game that lets you watch your world ranking slowly improve that makes you feel like you are actually achieving something worthwhile while playing this fun little game. You can also check your ranking against your own country and even your local region within that country.

But don't be tempted to play the game with the default cursor keys just because it seems like a simple game. I rather stupidly, did this thinking keys would be best. But then after a eureka moment I picked up my analogue joypad and instantly (and rather embarrassingly) gained a whole new dimension of control improving my game by much.

So I've been playing for a few weeks now and would like to think I have a little skill at it so I want to see how high I can get my ranking just by playing the game for an hour or so three or four times a week. Now it is fairly obvious that of the two million players registered, they are not all going to be currently active. Especially when you consider that the game is free, so most people will play it three times maybe and never play it again.

Therefore, it is easy to increase your ranking in the beginning. Just a couple of sessions on multiplayer will allow you to break into the top 700,000 fairly easily. But so far I have found my progress slow but fairly steady and with a little bump I shoved myself past the top 300,000.

My worldwide ranking currently stands around 290,000.

My TM username is Falin