So I didn’t get to play as much as I’d like today, but the day is still young.  However, I wanted to get out a post and an un-edited video for everyone while it was fresh.

My first few moments in game were a little more hectic then I wanted, but I was able to get some things accomplished on my warden and captain.  I got my UI all squared away, which did take a couple of re-loads per toon to get them all squared away but I’m pretty happy with it for now.  Hopefully there will be a rush of updates and my previous skin will become available again with all the new Mirkwood stuff.  I then took both of them to their respective crafting guilds to get those recipes such that I can craft the items as I go.  After that, I pretty much focused on my warden getting her set up with skirmishes and starting on the Book 9 quests.  It did take me a bit to get my legendaries squared away, but that was more me trying to figure out what I wanted to spend points in.  I still have to wrap up Book 8, but I at least know how that story ends as I have finished it on my captain 🙂  I’m working to get to at least 9.4 as that will open up the other skirmishes which are quite enjoyable and happen to have the marks needed for the ranger mask.

Overall thoughts:

  • launch was pretty darn smooth, laggy in 21st and a bit in the Mirkwood starter area but that’s about it
    • If you have lag issues, I would suggest NOT going to a forge-master as those areas are PACKED!!
  • Mirkwood starter area a bit tricky with mob competition – but that was also handy as there are some really ugly spots in there.
  • Warden combat feels great, although I am rather rusty as you’ll see from my video.
  • I keep on trying to use the horse masters while mounted – figures that’s the one thing you CAN’T do while mounted

I’m also putting up a video of me running the Stand at Amon Sul (Weathertop) skirmish on the 2nd tier of difficulty.  It was a little dicey in one spot when I had an encounter, lieutenant, and wave all hit at the same time – and you’ll see me blow all my cool-downs and pots.  But otherwise a good pace for my first real in-game action in a while.  This will be really nice for me in that I can crank up the difficulty if I want a challenge or to test myself, but can also tone it down when I’m more in the mood to cruise through.  The video itself is pretty big (20 minutes to clear the instance and there really isn’t any down time) but I did speed it up by 50%.  I’m still working on video making, so please any suggestions?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgx9mzSW6zw&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

And I did decide to tweak my theme a bit for a darker feel to tie in more with Mirkwood – plus I wanted a bigger custom image as my header.