Led by the Tides

And the tides have turned toward Lord of the Rings Online ...

O noes!

Three weeks ago, just after I began posting here again, I thought it would be nice to add my old blog from Lord of the Rings Online. I had created the website to have information about the various festivals, cosmetics items and other merry pursuits in LoTRO.
    Our kin, Phoenix Reborn, on the Imladris server, were a variety of people who had met while beta testing free to play. Our mother kin was and still is in existence, Rising Phoenix. A number of our members were very familiar with the general aspects of gaming, but not all were familiar with LoTRO's music system, festival events, deeds and titles. When asked if they would like to accompany us to a festival event, they would ask, "Why? What is in it for us?. Being all about those merry pursuits, myself and a few others of like mind, would begin to explain all the fun that was to be had.
     This happened often enough that I decided to make a guide for kin members that they could peruse at their leisure, to entice them to join us. The result was South of Bree, which is basically now retired. My activities in the kin and the website came to a screeching halt when the second of two horrid graphics cards in a horrid computer whose maker's name begins with D exploded. All my attempts to resurrect the computer were unsuccessful. No more pc, I went to mac.
    I found, to my delight, a few years ago that LoTRO made a mac version. I was ready to return to LoTRO, even got back into the game. I was very happy to return to Middle Earth. Then ... changing winds, changing tides. A gaming friend I hadn't heard from in years asked me to return to World of Warcraft with him. We had played WoW in vanilla, and on and off over the years had played a few other games together. I had sworn off WoW, but the offer to spend time with a friend was more than I could refuse, and I got swept away by WoW. I'm not proud of it, but as many other gamers know, when the Winds of Change rise, we must follow.

So, it was my wanting of a few screenshots from Lord of the Rings online to put on my recently resurrected blog that led me back to LoTRO. I couldn't find my screenshots folder and still haven't, for that matter. More urgent action has been required to save my Middle Earth! Somehow, I missed the notifications that LoTRO was going to shut down a large number of realms, mine being one of them. The migration had started months ago.
    I had always intended to get back to LoTRO. I just wanted to finish what I had started in WoW, which was to complete as much of my pet collection as possible and to level one of each class on the Horde side to at least 85. That whole journey with RAF (Recruit A Friend) is another whole adventure which I completed just last month. Details of that time period were going to be posted here. I may still post some of that.
    All right, then - what was I speaking of? Oh, yes, the need to save Middle Earth!
    For the past three weeks, WoW has been on hold and I've been working every day on trying to save, transfer and put into order my little band of merry travelers from LoTRO. As an archivist of precious things, in game and out, I had massive amounts of preciousness to find places for ... and I'm still striving toward that. I have done enough that I could take time to post this and I hope to return to tell of both my new adventures in Lord of the Rings Online, as well as to document my recent achievements in pet collecting on World of Warcraft.