PSA: Weatherstock 2013 – Update LOTRO Today!

Friendly reminder to all those interested in the greatest player-run music festival / concert to ever evolve in an MMO.

And it’s on a Free 2 Play game, so it won’t cost a cent to just log in and listen.

Weatherstock will be happening in some five day’s time. They even have a Twitter account going.

It’s at an insomniac timing for my part of the world, but I think it’s doable. It’s a Saturday weekend so I just need to nap between GW2 WvW reset and wake up in time. Wish me and my alarm clock luck!

From last year’s experience, expect the event to stretch a little, just in case. Don’t go scheduling a raid at 5pm EST if you want to attend the whole thing.

Venue is, of course, Weathertop or the ruins of the Tower of Amon Sul, on the Landroval server.

You want to hit the human town of Bree by whatever means you have, and then jog or ride down the southeast road until you zone into the Lone Lands. Very nice people will be waiting by the inn there to escort your squishy self up if you are insufficiently leveled.

This time I’m going to be prepared and updating LOTRO beforehand.

So who can beat me in the number of iterations to sit through?

I’m actually impressed, the launcher hasn’t crashed or stalled. Stay away this length of time from an NCSoft game like Aion and rest assured you will never be able to log in again without deleting it all wholesale. (Makes me tempted to also update Turbine’s DDO and peek in too, but argh, I have no more time for multiple MMOs…)

I may or may not be able to diagnose and solve last year’s black screen screenshot issue in the time remaining. Let’s hope all these updates just magically fix the problem.

Thank you to Beorbrand for the tip-off in my comments!

GW2: Not Quite Weatherstock, But There’s Potential

I’ve written about Weatherstock in LOTRO before – a huge concert gathering of bands, a player-created social event made possible through the emergent property of having a really good music system in an MMO.

Ever since the choir bells made an appearance in GW2’s Wintersday celebrations, I’ve been hoping to see or hear a small echo of that in the MMO where my heart is.

Evidently, I fail to walk the same circles as those who have been sneaking it in under the radar – wrong server, wrong forums, wrong timezones, wrong hang-out locales (I’m still uncomfortable in Divinity’s Reach, I’m a Charr, dangit… and who the hell goes to the Ruins of Rin on purpose?) perhaps.

But courtesy of a guildmate who did catch a glimpse of a production by the guild Harlots and Harlequins [HaHa] and recorded it, I am thrilled to say that there is hope.

We apologize for the quality of the stream, which is not great, but you can catch the Lady Fularr’s three songs, beginning at 0:12, 8:40 and 24:12.

The Charr skit at 2:14 is really somewhat pointless so feel free to skip it over, but the Silence of the Dolyaks starring Dr Lekktor (I knew which race he was going to be right off! Mwahaha!) at 13:47 is moderately amusing.

These guys are amazing in working with what limited tools they have in GW2 so far. It’s pretty much RP walk, a few emotes, jump and one measly choir bell…

I especially like the use of the mesmer blink by the presenter / introduction person / I can’t think of the proper word for him right now (I shall blame the lingering flu.) It gives a magician’s showman quality to the performance.

Here’s their guild’s recruitment page that Google-fu brought up when trying to learn more about them and what they do.

Now what we need in general are:

• MORE INSTRUMENTS
• MORE EMOTES

And we might actually be able to match what LOTRO has been doing for ages…

I would really love to hear bands in GW2.

Please, ArenaNet, make it happen one day.

P.S. While you’re at it, please fix Ebonhawke pipe organ. I was sad when I was map exploring Fields of Ruins, found the pipe organ, tried to play the song and got no open door.

Googled to find out it apparently broke a long time ago and never got better. Very very sad. Sad sick charr has awful snuffles.