MARKING TIME

Three weeks, more or less, till Mines of Moria is released. Turbine have been very clever about building up expectations, releasing little bits of information here, dropping hints in dev chat there, and generally winding everybody up. It helps, of course, that by all accounts vol.2 of the LOTRO saga will include a mind-blowing amount of content - almost enough to qualify as a brand new game.

In the meantime, we are all - particularly us grizzled level 50 veterans of countless battles with Thorog and Thaurlach - marking time. Useful (and even less useful) traits have been long-since maxed, our complete sets of Rift armour are showing the ravages of time and combat, we peacock about in all-teal splendour and try to occupy our time as constructively as possible. Those who enjoy that sort of thing struggle to reach the dizzy heights of rank 8 in the Ettenmoors, the obsessive collectors amongst us are well on the way of acquiring one of each of the boss trophies (I have all but the two skulls), fishermen curse and spit at the seeming impossibility of ever completing the fishing deeds, while tacticians plot and plan how best to conquer the Rift with a six-man raid, or Hellegrod with a mere dozen.

There is of course always the time-honoured occupation of building up alts, and many players are doing just that - some of them, indeed, creating entire families. Personally, I've always found the idea of alts oddly schizophrenic, but to each his own. I'll be working on taking down Thaurlach with a five-man team of Hunters on skateboards - that should fill in the time nicely till MoM turns up and we have to understand exactly how the legendary weapons system is supposed to work...