The Journey Continues Online

  How has it taken me this long to discover Lord of the Rings Online?? There I was, trawling through the internet as I always do on my days off when I'm not in my usual sloth state of relentless sleeping and eating, when I decided to look for some LOTR related stuff to put on my Tumblr. After doing an initial Google search it didn't take me long to come across a link which has changed life as I knew it. 

  For anybody who doesn't know, Lord of the Rings Online is basically a huuuuggee MMORPG based on J.R.R Tolkiens writings of Middle Earth coupled with the movies directed by Peter Jackson. You basically choose your class out of men, dwark, elf and hobbirt, create an avatar and away you go completing quests, earning deeds and titles and fighting any monsters that cross your path. And obviously you can interact with other players you come across in the game which is always pretty fun. What I find so brilliant about it is literally every town, village and city ever written about by Tolkien is accessible in this game. I've only been on for less than a week but already I've travelled from the Shire, to Weathertop, to Thorins Gate. I even attemped to reach Rivendell and Rohan but my character isn't levelled up enough to survive the journey :( 

  Ok so it looks a bit like RuneScape at first. When I started playing my initial reaction was like "oh no, this looks like a waste of my time", but as I've got the hang of it I'm amazed at how addictive it's become. In a similar way to The Elder Scrolls games such as Oblivion and Skyrim, there is a main Quest storyline you can complete at your own leisure, and you're not tied down to it once you start, you can pretty much come and go as you please or go off and do other quests alongside it which is always pretty handy.

  My only criticism of this game is that in order to have certain things such as horses and houses or to acquire the majority of skills you need to really be successful when playing, you need to actually buy them with real money from the LOTR Online store rather than use in game currency, making it much harder for anyone playing purely for free to level up or get very far in a short period of time. Aside from that, this gets a solid 8/10 from me :) .

Going to see my boyfriend last week I decided to take along my Lord of the Rings DVDs to complete his Middle Earth education. He'd already been put through nearly 5 hours of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, so it only seemed right we ended things right there and them with The Return of the King.

  It all seemed to be going well at first. In the beginning he sat there with this patient look on his face that let me know he was finding it a bit boring, but as it went on and got to the siege of Minas Tirith and King Theoden's army riding to the rescue of Gondor (oh come on, don't start with the whole"spoilers" thing. How could you not have already watched this), it was evident he was getting more and more into it, because you know, that was the aim.

  However, when his flatmate walked into the room just over halfway through, he clearly forgot I was right there and let slip he'd found the first 2 boring and even with this one he only liked it. Yeah, that's right, "LIKED". Not "loved". Just "liked". If looks could kill the one that I shot him would have had him dying a long drawn out painful death. And to add insult to injury, I only went and left my DVDs at his flat SO NOW I HAVE NO TWO TOWERS DVD TO WATCH AND I'M GOING TO CRY DIE!