So, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft is coming out November 13th – a bit less than 2 months. With it comes another 10 levels added to the level cap, and something like 10 new zones and stuff to do. Siege warfare, with big weapons. Et cetera.
Hot on its heels, Lord of the Rings Online is releasing it’s first expansion, The Mines of Moria, on november 18th. That expansion also adds 10 levels to the level-cap, a ton of new areas to explore, and a metric ton of new content for the ‘other’ heroes of Middle-Earth — things that, per usual, surround the events of the second ‘book’ of the Fellowship of the Ring, without directly focusing that.
So. Two Months left before the current content in both games becomes… well, not obsolete, but merely a bump in the road that leads to the new end-game.
Two months to tie up some loose ends. What loose ends? Well, let’s look at a list or two:
WoW
- Titles for your character in WoW (unlike most games) are INCREDIBLY rare and hard to come by. Grezzk needs to run two more “hardcore-difficulty” dungeons and defeat one of the easier 25-man raid bosses to become a “Champion of the Naruu”. I would dearly, dearly like to do that.
- Grezzk is also capable of improving his reputation with the “Netherwing Dragons” faction to the point where one of the Dragons actually volunteers to be his mount. This is an entirely soloable effort, and simply requires that I put in the time necessary to do the daily Netherwing quests for a couple weeks… and then I’d have a FLYING DRAGON to ride around on.
- I’d really like to get enough gold together to get the maxed-out riding skill for Syncerus, which would then let me start/finish the questline that would give him the ‘epic’ druid flight-form. This requires more than a little grinding of daily quests — about the same amount as what I need to do on Grezzk to get the dragon. With that said, there’s no reason I can’t do this particular goal AFTER Wrath comes out.
- There’s no gear or anything I really need for either of my main characters — Grezzk is pretty much geared to the nines until he’s close to level 80, and Syn’s stuff will be replaced relatively quickly by questing in the new zones.
LotRO
- Finish the Books. There are epic questlines in LotRO called ‘books.’ Basically, these are the story arcs in the game that specifically hover around the storyline of the actually Fellowship of the Ring story, either directly or obliquely… regardless, they bring you in contact with the main characters of the books a lot. There were eight “Book” story arcs in the basic LotRO release (with books 7 and 8 pretty much aimed at level 50 characters), and since then they have released… six more Books, all designed for level 50 characters. Kate and I have finished books 1 to 8 on our main characters, and we want to finish the other six books before the expansion comes out. If
weI don’t manage to do anything else before Mines of Moria comes out, I’ll be quite happy. - Kill that Balrog. I’ve written about him before. We’re close to figuring out how to beat him, and I’d like to do that before the level cap rises and he’s not as much of a challenge.
- Again, I don’t really have any gear I feel I must have before the expansion comes out. What I have now is working for me really well, and will no doubt be replaced as we venture ever closer to Mordor.
- Just for Kate, I’ll add that we need to get her character’s reputation with one of the factions up high enough for her to actually make use of a very nice item that she accidentally bought LONG before she has high enough rep to USE it.
- I’d like to get one more character to 50 before MoM comes out. I don’t know if that will happen, but I think it will for Kate, especially if she works on Tirathien while I’m doing my dailies in WoW.
Finally, I’ll note that I really only have about a month and a half to do this, not two months, because NaNoWriMo starts November 1st, and MIGHT cut into my play time a bit…