Ravalation's 2017 holiday card swap

You know that you're late with your annual card swap when... a Christmas card from a blogger friend arrives in the mail before they even could sign up on your blog. Oops.

LOTRO Scavenger hunt review

Earlier this year, Lord of the Rings Online hit its ten year mark - a respectable age for an MMO. I wrote a lengthy game review in its honour. In-game the feat was celebrated with the annual anniversary, but this time around, something new was introduced alongside it: the Scavenger hunt. At the time of writing, this event is nearing its end (13th of July, 2017). It's time for a review.

Celebrating SWTOR's five year anniversary: looking back through rose tinted glasses

Wednesday was Star Wars: the Old Republic's fifth birthday. I don't know what it is, but this year's anniversary felt more tangible to me than ever before. Perhaps it's because five is nearing that invisible barrier that makes an MMO age from mature to old - I don't consider the game 'old' yet, but it's definitely getting closer. Perhaps it's because the introduction of the galactic command system with 5.0 reminded me how we take things we love for granted, yet they are not. Or perhaps it is that the transition of LOTRO to an indie game studio reminded me that MMOs don't live forever. Whatever it is, I enjoyed looking back at the first year I played SWTOR. And now I'm going to expose you to that, too.

Ravalation's 2016 holiday card swap

If you're a long time Ravalation reader, you know I love snail mail. In fact, I had such a great time getting mail from readers and other bloggers and making my own new year's card last year, that I'm doing it again! As always, I'll be drawing the card myself. I haven't settled on the theme yet: might be Rogue One, might be Fantastic Beasts, might be Knights of the Eternal Throne... anything geeky. If you want to mentally prepare for what type of abomination you might be faced with, check out my Drawing diary entries.

SWTOR's Dark vs Light event: three months later

In my post SWTOR's Dark vs Light event and why it is ill-received by the community, I voiced my disappointment with how this event disregards oldtime players and lacks new content. I still stand by this, but the post came off more ranty than usual. That's what I get for posting it in the heat of the moment without proofreading, I guess (it was late and I just wanted to go to bed). Perhaps this is why people have reacted surprised when they hear that I have created two Dark vs Light characters. Although if they'd have truly read the post, they should not:

"I don't mind casually rolling a couple of characters to level them up through PvP (...). I might go for some of the lower tier rewards (...), but if LOTRO's raid turns out to be good and I can find some people to battle them with, I'll probably head over to there instead."

- Me

And that's exactly what I've done. Yes, I'd have rather seen a new flashpoint or a new raid than this event, but that's no reason to be sulky and sit in a corner doing nothing. I love group content, so that's what I've spent most time doing this summer, but I did find some time to create two Dark vs Light characters I love. So how did I do? (Spoiler: prepare to be not amazed.)

LOTRO's Farmer's Faire 2016 in pictures

2016 Has somehow developed to "the year of LOTRO festivals" for me. Since my return to the game to try out the new raid and instances, I've begun to feel more involved with it again. Never before did I write so much about LOTRO festivals on Ravalation. I find myself participating in festivals I never tried before (usually because I didn't understand them or because they are around for only a short time): first the Buried Treasure event, and now the Farmer's Faire. Here's another photo report.

LOTRO's Buried Treasure rewards

In my guide to Lord of the Rings Online's Buried Treasure event, or Treasure Hunt, I promised to post some pictures of the rewards. Shortly after, I got carried away taking pictures (no surprise there), so I reckoned I could just as well post them in a new article.

So here is all the stuff I dug up, as well as some thoughts on their visual appeal, bugs, BoA and RNG. You will see that the event has some great items for role-players and fashionistas, especially for dwarves, burglars and jewellers. Why then does lore-master Ravanel look so depressed on the picture above? Scroll down to find out.

Guide to LOTRO's Treasure Hunt event

Lord of the Rings Online's Treasure Hunt event is one of the few I had not tried out yet. The event typically runs for a mere few days at a time and is irregular: considering my terrible track record of keeping up with LOTRO's event calender, it's maybe not so strange at all that I missed it thusfar.

Yesterday, I finally found myself hunting treasure in Ered Luin. And guess what, the event has some amazing rewards, especially for dwarf and burglar characters. I had no clue what to do at first, so I wrote this quick guide to help you get started. Don't worry, it's easy!

LOTRO's Summer festival 2016 in pictures

Just one more day and Lord of the Rings Online's Summer festival is already over (4 August). I never used to be such a fan of festivals in MMOs, but as I get older and undoubtedly more boring, I find myself strangely attracted to them. This Summer festival offered pretty new rewards (making to the total amount to pick from absolutely overwhelming) and cute new quests. I'll walk you through them with this Summer festival 2016 photo report.

SWTOR's Light vs Dark Event and why it is ill-received by the community

(Source: swtor.com)

Friday my gaming circles were buzzing with news of my two favourite MMOs. Both Star Wars: the Old Republic and Lord of the Rings: Online announced new content on June the 28th. Or well, let's see about 'new'...

While my LOTRO friends were rejoicing at the news of a new raid coming out in four days already, I suddenly found my SWTOR friends all raging about this new Dark vs Light event. In fact, on my guild's Friday TeamSpeak gathering, people were more agitated about the event than Brexit! To be honest, I had no idea what they were talking about at first. Time to investigate.

Tips for spending your steel tokens (LOTRO Anniversary event)

It's already the last day of LOTRO's ninth anniversary event! Today is the day to log all your alts and spend their anniversary tokens. Maybe you want to get some extra for that one really cool thing. In that case I have a post up with fast ways to gather anniversary tokens that might be of use to you.

Today is also a good moment to spend your steel tokens: you know, the ones that occasionally drop from mobs of all levels around the world - but only during the event. I have some tips for how to spend them.

Life Day greetings from Nar Shaddaa

A belated merry Christmas! Err... I mean, happy Life Day of course! In SWTOR, Christmas is celebrated in true Star Wars style and that means a Life Day celebration. This is what Wookieepedia says about Life Day, or "Wookiee Christmas":

"Life Day was a Wookiee holiday celebrated by the inhabitants of Kashyyyk every three years. It was a celebration of the planet's diverse ecosystem and the many forms of life it encompassed. It also was a time to remember family members who had died, and the young ones who continued to bring new life to a family. Life Day was a sacred holiday, and many Wookiees considered it their duty to return to Kashyyyk in order to celebrate it. Life Day was held once every three local years for many generations, but during the Galactic Civil War, its importance to the Wookiees became more pronounced. Wookiees were spread across the galaxy, either because they had been enslaved by the Galactic Empire or for personal reasons, and they began celebrating Life Day each year as a way to remain in touch with their history. Over time, the holiday found its way into various other cultures." (source: Wookieepedia)

The Female Geek Blogger community is die-hard: what do you mean, Christmas? It's a Friday, so there's 5 Fandom Fridays to be written! This one was themed "favourite holiday decorations".

Ravalation's 2015 holiday card swap

Yesterday, I read an inspiring post by Kayly of My Open Sketchbook. In it, she describes her love for physical post cards, a love I definitely share. Many hours of my childhood were spent writing long letters with glittery pens to penpals abroad, then attaching lots of colourful stickers until the paper was cluttered (I felt my letters should always be filled, otherwise surely it would look like I didn't have enough inspiration!).

Friendship France gathering in LOTRO: a photo report

Sunday November the 22nd, I attended an event called Friendship France on the Lord of the Rings Online server Sirannon [FR]. It was the first in-game concert I attended and a very special occasion: a gathering of LOTRO players to support their French fellow players as a response to the terrorist attacks in Paris. Due to immediate success, the event got relocated last-minute from the Prancing Pony to the Bree-land festival grounds - the population in Bree got divided into multiple layers with so many people logging in.

Here's a photo account of the evening.

Call to LOTRO players: Friendship France gathering on Sirannon [FR]

After the terrorist attacks on Paris, blogging about happy, irrelevant things in games just felt wrong. Twitter was full of shocked reactions, but also of hatred, racism and people who acted like nothing happened happily going on about games. I turned it off for the weekend.

The SWTOR speeder giveaway winners

Thanks everyone for entering my first giveaway! It was exciting for me to do because I had no idea if people would actually want any of the rewards. I was overwhelmed to see so many positive reactions. Special thanks go to everyone who shared my giveaway post.

SWTOR speeder giveaway (closed)

I got a Cantina code to give away five speeders from a guildie. Since I don't know who to give them to, and since you guys are awesome, I thought this blog would be a good place to give them away. In addition, I'm giving away four more speeders from my collection as well as one million credits. Welcome to my first (mini) giveaway!

SWTOR: Jawas don't enjoy the bounty hunter event

I think this is the best part of the bounty hunter event. Have you run into these little jawas yet?

They're in the bounty hunter event area of the fleet, though it seems they themselves have no clue where the hell they are. Presumably that's their ship out there, because one of them continuously bonks his little fists on the window, as if he wants to say: "I want out!" It's the cutest thing I've seen in ages.

For the rest, I'm not very impressed by the bounty hunter event (I mean, "bounty contract week", totally!). This is partly because there are no rewards that appeal to me*, probably because I don't play a high level bounty hunter myself: the armour is clunky, the weapons don't fit my characters. There's a hat with scarf that looks good and a funny bow caster, but I can't think of any of my characters that could wear them.

For the most part it's because the event itself isn't that interesting, though. There's one bounty hunter questline per involved planet, but the quests are very generic and grindy. The cutscenes feign uniqueness, but the fact that you have to repeat the same action over and over again makes them all feel the same. I have yet to collect my fifth data thingy so I can try the next 'tier', but I'm doing it slowly in between things. I'm not grinding the shit out of this event.

These are the things I do like:

• You can get your informants to talk either by torturing them with an interrogation droid (dark side points) or by giving them a cocktail to feed them drunk (light side points) - thought that was a pretty creative idea
• If you don't want to kill your bounty, you can freeze them in carbonite - looks pretty cool to have that carbonite thing floating behind you.
• There's a floating cocktail 'pet' ("drink server probe"), perhaps something for mistress Fárah? Shame you have to have Legend reputation to be able to buy it.

How have you been enjoying the event so far?

---

* There's a good overview of all rewards of the event on Dulfy.net.

LOTRO: Six-year anniversary

I logged in the other day to check out LotRO's sixth anniversary event and saw that I had received two neat little packages in my inventory: one with a range of fireworks and one with the Festive Azure Steed which is given to all five-year subscribers. If you remember, I just missed out on that one last year. I also got the gold leaf portrait, which I think is the prettiest of the anniversary portraits. Yay!

When I logged in, there was this huge quest icon dangling in my screen that I just clicked to get rid of. I was instantly ported to Bree, where I ran into the familiar crowd of pyromaniacs trying to set Bree afire. The fireworks were as beautiful as ever. Despite all the light, it was still too dark to properly admire the new horse, so I had to wait until dawn to get the picture of waving 'queen Ravanel' above.

Riding through Bree, I found the anniversary event to be pretty much the same as last year. I must confess that I was strangely relieved that there were no new outfits or horses to go for. This is probably because I remember how many tokens you had to collect for those the previous years (I'm very grind-intolerant), and how much I disliked the envelope quest. There is a war-steed appearance of the anniversary horse, but if everything goes well I'll get that at next year's anniversary. I rather wait a year than grind or buy it now.

       Anniversary outfit         

• Hat of Deep Lore
• Festive Azure Party Dress
• Festive Azure Cloak
• Festive Azure Steed

The 6-year anniversary festival ends at May 6th (extended by six days). This was the anniversary for me, I hope you enjoy yours!

SWTOR: Ilum event fails: players don't hate enough

Just like everyone else, I went to Ilum to check out the new event. As everyone knows, PvP on Ilum is dead. Just read Shintar's The strangeness of Ilum one year later. Patch 1.7 was going to bring some life into open world PvP on Ilum, though, or so the rumours told us. So how did it turn out?

Ilum PvP

My adventure started with the obligatory polite protocol droid, this time sending me off to Ilum to investigate a strange Gree landing. The Gree are a somewhat mysterious but generally friendly race, or so I thought, but okay, off we go.

On Ilum, I soon found that there were two different areas: a large area to the north where dailies could be completed, and a small circular area in the south where PvP-related quests took place. Off to the PvP-area then, to see what it had to offer. I went with some guild mates in a party. Forming a raid wasn't possible: probably an attempt of Bioware to prevent huge gank fests.

The PvP-quests seemed to revolve around bringing glowy thingies to a pylon, much like in the warzone Ancient Hypergate. Only this time, both Republic and Imperial forces had to bring them to the same pylon, over which, I assume, we were supposed to fight.

The only problem: the numbers of both teams were that large, that a fight would end up being a massive slaughter, and nobody would be able to use the pylon at all. So when I arrived, people were actually peacefully lining up in order to use the pylon. Sure, there was some nagging with stealthers interrupting people interacting with the pylon now and then, but people generally didn't seem to want to fight. Ignoring each other was the fastest way to proceed the quest.

Don't be shy Tiger - crawl into the tauntaun to warm yourself, like a true Star Wars enthusiast!

The closest thing to PvP we encountered, was an oddball that was stealthed next to a quest crystal and attacked us... only to find out that we were with four and he alone.

In short, there wasn't much actual PvP going on on Ilum, although it was nice to get some 'free' warzone commendations for handing in the quests (100 commendations per quest).

Quests and rewards

Apart from the PvP quests, Tiger and I also checked out some in the non-PvP area. They were nothing than your regular dailies - gathering some here, killing some there. Not much interesting apart from the dead tauntaun above (awwws...). There was much competition for quest items and mobs because there were so many people around. Hopping to another layer wasn't really an option - even instance number 13 (!) was full at that moment.

So why do we need to do another set of dailies? What's in it, for me?

These tentacle guys will make your wet Mass Effect RP dreams come true

As far as I've seen, the rewards are mostly cosmetic. There are some cool weapons, among which lightsabers with a special Gree-tech appearance. Most importantly, the weapons are bound to legacy, meaning you can use it to transfer certain items from Imperial to Republic characters and vise versa. I will want this to eventually get myself a purple crystal for Delanee. There are also new outfits that look like they come right from Mass Effect:

From left to right, from top to bottom: Blue Scalene Set, Red Scalene Set, White Scalene Set, Gray Helix Saberstaff and Gray Helix Autocannon. I didn't put on the silly head pieces to prevent making it all look even more ridiculous.

I really like the look of these armour sets, especially the white one, but it looks out of place on a jedi sage. I prefer the dresses myself. The looks are so good that I'd almost consider rolling a trooper for the set only, but I don't know if I can bear the daily grind. I really don't feel that enthusiastic about grinding dailies, and I have little time to play alltogether.

The White Scalene Set and Gray Helix Autocannon on an NPC model, including the 'interesting' head piece. 

Summary

I was perhaps a bit too enthusiastic in my post title, but so far I haven't seen much real open world PvP on Ilum, which is a shame. Perhaps this will change during the coming days, when (if) the areas get a bit less crowded; perhaps it will continue like this for the rest of the event. If the developers would really have wanted open PvP, they should have included a daily quest like "kill 5 Imperial players" - but that might've caused a lot of outcries and drama.

For me, I'll just do a bit of dailies here and there - it probably won't be enough to get me a legacy saber, but whatever. I will try the dailies on other planets as well as the world bosses the coming few days.