Summarizing this week:

1. I did my World of Warcraft Karazhan duty. For all the post-Karazhan zones, I rationalized that my guild didn’t need another rogue anyhow and/or feigned real life obligations. If I still had a soul, I might feel guilty about that, but y’know …

2. I enjoyed the rise and the beginning of the fall of the fourth Guild That Hates My Guild. (Again, if I had a soul …) This fourth guild is something of a conglomeration of the previous Guilds That Hate My Guild, which all faltered because it’s kinda stupid to form a guild solely to hate another. Hate isn’t as self-sustaining as one might think.

3. I joined a roleplay-ish type guild in Lord of the Rings Online. Briefly. I was curious how the other half lives.

This is what I discovered: they live well. They’re not coordinating tradeskills throughout the guild (excuse me, KINSHIP) for maximum efficiency. They’re not pigeon-holing their WoW main healer into a LOTRO main healer role. They’re not scouring message boards and wikis to map out their endgame assault.

What they are doing is forming a traveling band (with the player-controlled instruments) to entertain at The Prancing Pony, Staddle and Combe. They greet each guildmember with a “hail and well met, kinsman!” They organized a guild event to run to Rivendell. (I did that run solo. When there’s level 30+ mobs along the way and you’re only level 15, trust me, it’s best to go solo and hope for some luck on mob pathing.)

Sadly, I couldn’t stay and wait around for one of them to roleplay a homosexual transgender with his (or her) real life spouse. There’s a tradeskill plan to draft and a quest/zone guide to post and our main healer wants to be a TANK, of all things.

By the way, I discovered one of the best ways to torture the more serious Lord of the Rings scholars in the game. You either know the type or can imagine, they’re always in /ooc correcting the rest of us about Tolkien lore.

As soon as they refer to the books in /ooc, (and they always do), type back /ooc what books? I like to do that about four or five times per gaming session — it never gets old. For me.

This one assnerd reamed me for it one day, and I explained that ya, I had read the books but I didn’t take notes, ffs.

Anyways. Where in the WoW is this:

And, can you recognize this LOTRO location, which was featured rather prominently in the first LOTR movie (AND BOOK), The Fellowship of the Ring?