The things I love about LOTRO

As the last day of DAW is upon us, I find myself writing a love letter to Turbine. A disclaimer: you might grumble that this post is very optimistic and free of critique, and you're right! After all, it's Developer Appreciation Week, the one week of the year in which the gaming blog community gives game developers some time off from being under constant fire of their customers. DAW is about the people behind the company, despite all the vitriol from the playerbase hardworking persons with a passion for gaming - of this I am convinced. So yes, fangirl mode is engaged once more; better save your whining for tomorrow!

Four years of Ravalation

It's already been four years since I started this blogging adventure! In good Ravalation tradition, I'm a few weeks late for my blogoversary, but that's not going to stop me from celebrating. Blogging takes a lot of my spare time, and I find myself so busy writing new articles that I forget what I've written in the past. So it's a lot of fun for me to look back and see how my blog has evolved, and maybe even learn something from it.

For this special occasion, my friend Marinka and I went all "for science!" and have used Ravalation's statistics as a test case to explore if there is a scientifically verifiable connection between the amount of posts written and the pageviews received (nerd alert). The best part: we found the answer! Yup, it's another of those posts where you'll have to suffer through reading about the woes of a blogger girl before you get to the part where you find out!

LOTRO's ninth anniversary (2016)

I quite enjoyed this year's anniversary event. Unlike the earlier editions, the rewards are not too expensive, which makes for a less grindy experience. The quests have been streamlined, with regional announcements when an event starts and swift travel horses to the festival areas. I was also surprised to get level appropriate XP for participating. My level 101 lore-master gets 41k XP per quest! At this rate, it looks like she'll get to 102 just by doing the anniversary event.

In this post I'll show you some of the cool stuff you can get this anniversary. I'll also share some tips on how to get anniversary tokens.

Fandoms that I never thought I'd like (but did)

Today's 5 Fandom Friday post was enthusiastically called "Fandoms You LOVE But Didn't Think You Would!" I usually try to keep an open mind and not dismiss things without knowing them. I obviously fail at this, though, because I managed to come up with this list of five anyway!

Fashion Friday: a shadow tank's armour

The Female Geek Bloggers want me to name my five guilty pleasures today. I only have one (watching MLG videos), so that wouldn't make a very interesting blog post; instead, I'll provide you with another outfit for Fashion Friday!

When a character gets caught in a web of memories

In honour of ARPil, Pizzamaid wrote about her beloved World of Warcraft character Alicara and how negative game experiences made her disband her. My first thought was "I would never do that". I've had my share of stress and drama in MMOs, but I perceive them separately from my characters. My characters represent parts of me, but the quarrels were with me, not them. But then I remembered my rune-keeper in Lord of the Rings Online, Ravalinde.

Fashion Friday: a sporty togruta

When I was queueing for baby lowbie PvP with Shintar and Traitine some weeks ago, I found out I had not unlocked my ship on my level 29 togruta sage Ashrava. Bad Rav! Off to Coruscant I went, to find my ship and, hopefully, many pretty screenshot opportunities for my newest SWTOR character.