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I've been playing LoTRO again after being away for awhile and something that has bothered me about the game has finally come into focus. My highest level toon (Drachenfutter) is just about to head into Western Rohan, which means I have finished the quest lines in Eastern Rohan save for one: Rebuilding Hytbold. Starting the rebuilding process of Hytbold made me realize that this is exactly what I was hoping to see in the Dunlands and the rest of Rohan. There are so many quests in both of these areas where we are tasked with helping to improve a town's defenses, or assault a nearby encampment, that we're told has done some good but doesn't result in any visible difference. I always chalked this up to the game being old and it just being impossible to do, but with Hytbold they've shown that it was possible. Take Snowbourne or Walstow where there are either gaps in the town's wall or they lack a wall altogether and we are tasked with fixing/building defenses for these spots. Yet moments after we are done doing so those very same defenses despawn and the town is back to looking exactly like it was before. I really don't think this would be bad if it weren't for the fact that if you do it like I have done, you go from doing roughly the same thing in a half a dozen towns in Dunland to Rohan, where I have to gain the towns trust, help them prepare for an attack, defend the town, then rinse and repeat. If it were only a few, or if I had a break between Dunland and Rohan, it might not bug me so much... I guess I'm just wondering if this bugged anybody else? The lack of some visual sign that my questing has had an impact... Heck, look at Mirkwood, I think they did a lovely job with that zone. We start out in an instance where we have to get a foothold, then we capture an orc base, and progress from there until we are invading Dol Guldur. I got a real sense of satisfaction out of that one. I do like Hytbold though, just wish they would have applied some of that to other areas.
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Sep 13, 2017 08:16
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I had trouble with that but over time I accepted via a certain narrative. If you think of yourself as less of a hero, but rather a soldier in a large army composed of players, then it would make sense that all the enemy mobs are also party of a large army, and while you may take out a few for your quest, there are so many that they continue to have need of people to beat them back. This is why nothing ever seems to get better.
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Sep 13, 2017 14:07
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Siddhartha Glutamate posted:I really don't think this would be bad if it weren't for the fact that if you do it like I have done, you go from doing roughly the same thing in a half a dozen towns in Dunland to Rohan, where I have to gain the towns trust, help them prepare for an attack, defend the town, then rinse and repeat. If it were only a few, or if I had a break between Dunland and Rohan, it might not bug me so much... Dunland is, on the whole, terrible. It caused me to quit playing the game for a while. Each little town is so much EXACTLY THE SAME. I've done all the solo questing in the game over the past few years, and Dunland always stood out as super boring and generic. I liked Rohan a lot better even. Siddhartha Glutamate posted:I guess I'm just wondering if this bugged anybody else? The lack of some visual sign that my questing has had an impact... Heck, look at Mirkwood, I think they did a lovely job with that zone. We start out in an instance where we have to get a foothold, then we capture an orc base, and progress from there until we are invading Dol Guldur. I got a real sense of satisfaction out of that one. I don't disagree that it's lame, but as someone who's been playing MMO's for 18 years, I'm very numb to it, heh. GW2 tried to show progress, but then you find out it's just a back-and-forth. WoW does it with phasing, but then that just means stuff fades out as you approach you, and your friends disappear on the map lol. Siddhartha Glutamate posted:I do like Hytbold though, just wish they would have applied some of that to other areas. Note that Hytbold was considered a terrible game mechanic by pretty much everyone. It was a purely a huge dumb timesink grind. They even gated the final bit of the story until AFTER this massive dumb grind. Everything about it was poor. Most people didn't finish it at all. I finished by doing it slowly over various play sessions, but I'm also a masochist. Seeing the town rebuild was indeed cool at least, but the mechanic itself was so bad, most people wanted nothing to do with it after that. But to your overall point (I really just wanted to bitch about Dunland and Hytbold some more) - yeah, it'd be cool if some physical items changed as we helped "improve" some areas. Even minor things.
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Sep 13, 2017 14:15
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBUEJwDEFMk
extra stout fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Sep 14, 2017 |
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Sep 14, 2017 08:11
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xZAOx posted:Dunland is, on the whole, terrible. It caused me to quit playing the game for a while. Each little town is so much EXACTLY THE SAME. I've done all the solo questing in the game over the past few years, and Dunland always stood out as super boring and generic. I liked Rohan a lot better even. I almost want to defend Dunland a little, yes it is killer with its awful repetition, the zone itself has no variation, and the people are all dicks to you until you solve every little problem they have. But I really liked the stuff with the Grey Company, I liked when we get shown the Gap of Rohan and the apparent hordes of Dunlendings waiting to overwhelm us, and then the betrayal of the Falcon clan was neat. Oh! And the one town, I think it's Dunbog, is a really neat town that reminds me an awful lot of The Must Farm Settlement which is really cool. It gave me a sense of what Middle Earth was like in comparison to our own. If that makes any sense. It might not have been intentional, but the Dunlendings seem like they are comparable to those Bronze age people. Don't get me wrong, Rohan's look alone makes it a step above Dunland. quote:Note that Hytbold was considered a terrible game mechanic by pretty much everyone. It was a purely a huge dumb timesink grind. They even gated the final bit of the story until AFTER this massive dumb grind. Everything about it was poor. Most people didn't finish it at all. I finished by doing it slowly over various play sessions, but I'm also a masochist. Seeing the town rebuild was indeed cool at least, but the mechanic itself was so bad, most people wanted nothing to do with it after that. I feel your pain on Hytbold, I am making my way through all of it for the sake of having done everything and getting all of the story. It is a clumsy system, though it might not have been so bad had it not been tacked on at the end.
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Sep 14, 2017 22:42
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For what it's worth, they really sped up Hytbold. Combine that with Reputation Accelerators and you can get through it in maybe 4 days.
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Sep 14, 2017 22:47
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Unctuous Cretin posted:For what it's worth, they really sped up Hytbold. Combine that with Reputation Accelerators and you can get through it in maybe 4 days. Yeah, it's definitely worth going back and doing it if you haven't before. The quest chain once you've maxed stuff out wraps up a lot of the story arcs (so do the various quests in Central Gondor once you've maxed out rep there), and it feels really good to go into the Battle of the Pelennor Fields as the Thane of Hytbold.
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Sep 14, 2017 23:54
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That being said, though, it was a major dick move by Standing Stone to make it required for the Anniversary scavenger hunt.
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Sep 14, 2017 23:59
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Unctuous Cretin posted:That being said, though, it was a major dick move by Standing Stone to make it required for the Anniversary scavenger hunt. More of a dick move then requiring you to complete multiple 24-man raids? The whole Trifles series was pretty BS. I did all of the Tales and Travels but couldn't be bothered to do most of the Trifles (just the solo ones which didn't require instances or skirmishes).
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Sep 15, 2017 00:45
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Unctuous Cretin posted:That being said, though, it was a major dick move by Standing Stone to make it required for the Anniversary scavenger hunt. The scavenger hunt in general was done really poorly.
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Sep 15, 2017 00:48
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jalapeno_dude posted:More of a dick move then requiring you to complete multiple 24-man raids? The whole Trifles series was pretty BS. I did all of the Tales and Travels but couldn't be bothered to do most of the Trifles (just the solo ones which didn't require instances or skirmishes). At least with those though, there were people constantly doing them in LFF. Hytbold is all you and all solo. All for you to complete a 6 minute long instance.
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Sep 15, 2017 00:55
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Unctuous Cretin posted:For what it's worth, they really sped up Hytbold. Combine that with Reputation Accelerators and you can get through it in maybe 4 days. Hahaha holy poo poo... I did that poo poo pretty close to as fast as possible back when it released and it required grinding dallies every day for over a month. It was loving horrible.
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Sep 15, 2017 00:58
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Unctuous Cretin posted:there were people constantly doing them in LFF Maybe that was true on the largest servers at peak times the day after the quest came out? I'm on Crickhollow and have never managed to do any group content; LFF has always seemed like a ghost town.
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Sep 15, 2017 01:16
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flowinprose posted:Hahaha holy poo poo... I did that poo poo pretty close to as fast as possible back when it released and it required grinding dallies every day for over a month. It was loving horrible. For real, I think it was 41 days for me. Then I did another 5 or 6 days after that to get armor for an alt. That poo poo burned me out badly and I took an extended break.
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Sep 17, 2017 05:51
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Hytboltd happening in less than a week is mind blowing to me. Maybe I can actually finish it now... The 1st half of Rohan is prettier than Dunland but you end up in the same bullshit cycles, too: Thane of town is an rear end in a top hat and doesn't like you, you do a million things for the town and then the Thane likes you, maybe a thing happens, then you move on to the next town and the Thane who doesn't like you. I also didn't remember a single drat person from the stories in the 1st half of Rohan, either. So some of things that happened during the Battle of Pelennor Fields had zero impact on me. Like oh, that Thane just got murdered and I kinda remembered him but who is it that did the murdering? Do I know that guy? Who gives a poo poo? Let me get back to the awesome scenery of thousands of people dying and trolls chucking people around like dolls and the feeling of being hopelessly outnumbered and doomed. Captain Candiru fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Sep 18, 2017 |
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Sep 17, 2017 20:08
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I genuinely enjoyed Dunland. Dunno why. I think it's because the mistrust felt justified? It's a different culture that's been largely stigmatized and it was cool to discover it. On the other hand the Rohirrim should be cool with you the second you murder an Orc. It feels super contrived and I hated going through that region. Even doing Old Anorien now has stopped me because I have to work with them again and they bug me so much. It's some dumb poo poo.
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Sep 17, 2017 22:30
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Captain Candiru posted:The 1st half of Rohan is prettier than Dunland but you end up in the same bullshit cycles, too: Thane of town is an rear end in a top hat and doesn't like you, you do a million things for the town and then the Thane likes you, maybe a thing happens, yhen you move on to the next town and the Thane who doesn't like you Quoted for the truth. It is basically Dunland 2.0, without the twist of the Falcon clan betraying you, or the excursion into Isengard which was pretty cool. 100YrsofAttitude posted:I genuinely enjoyed Dunland. Dunno why. I think it's because the mistrust felt justified? It's a different culture that's been largely stigmatized and it was cool to discover it. On the other hand the Rohirrim should be cool with you the second you murder an Orc. It feels super contrived and I hated going through that region. Even doing Old Anorien now has stopped me because I have to work with them again and they bug me so much. It's some dumb poo poo. My main in a Dwarf and I kind of felt that their distrust of me made them seem racist, which was sorta fitting, but also annoying. After putting in so much work to help the Dunlendings, after sympathizing with Wadu and Nona, to be faced with such distrust, and witness the mistreatment of Dunlendings, I was not primed to like the Rohirrim. But the first epic quest line, with the fall of Langhold, and the introduction of Cillan (who I found to be very sympathetic) corrected some of that... But we're still left with a series of quests where we're consistently met with mistrust and suspicion. I can imagine that it would come across far worse if I were to have played an Elf.
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Sep 18, 2017 03:27
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Siddhartha Glutamate posted:Quoted for the truth. It is basically Dunland 2.0, without the twist of the Falcon clan betraying you, or the excursion into Isengard which was pretty cool. I wish I could remember where I read it or if it was just something from the bazillion side notes Tolkien wrote, but Rohan was very suspicious of Lorien, and considered the "Golden Wood" some version of haunted and a place to be avoided.
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Sep 18, 2017 23:52
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That's mentioned a ton in Great River. The Rohirrim are afraid to enter Thingalad, etc.
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Sep 19, 2017 01:52
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Dunland was okay because you could ignore as much or little of it as you wanted without blocking main quest progression. As long as you kept up in level you could say hello at the door and mosey along to the next village. Compare that to second half of Rohan where if you don't go kill 6 deer for dinner and then wash loving dishes you're never getting to Mordor.
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Sep 21, 2017 01:06
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Hytbold should have been something far more interesting than it was. I think to some extent, they lack the resources to continue to create lots of new zones and content and to do it competently, Mordor feels kind of bland and poorly executed with a lot of bugs and oversights. A big part of the problem is most of the content is rendered obsolete, the disposability of entire zones makes it pointless to invest too much into any one particular zone, it is kind of why they put in a minimal amount of effort into the Gondor or Mordor zones and content, just filled them with time sinks, rep grinds and dailies for rewards that last a matter of months and then become obsolete. It just creates an enormous tsunami of poo poo for new players to wade through, they realised that and have dumped a 105 level boost with every expansion but it is a poor bandaid to a far greater design flaw. I think they need to overhaul everything from the ground up, I know it would take a significant investment to do so but I think they have to otherwise the inevitability is a slow, painful death. I doubt they will do it. It is a shame, I really love the IP.
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Sep 21, 2017 03:47
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sassassin posted:Dunland was okay because you could ignore as much or little of it as you wanted without blocking main quest progression. As long as you kept up in level you could say hello at the door and mosey along to the next village. THIS. I really liked the pick and choose style of Dunland (naturally I did it all...) but in Rohan you felt shoe-horned into absolutely every little pointless village.
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Sep 21, 2017 17:25
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Today is the birthday of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins and the quests have already been live I believe, if they haven't changed they involve running some errands and poems around Rivendell. Coupon code for the store is: MMPSYUP I know Mordor grind is probably setting in by now and I still haven't bought it, but does anyone have boosts they haven't used yet? I can get us into raids with other kins once they come out, but right now with the current number of 115s I'm more curious about getting goon runs for the 3 and 6 man content coming out (soon?). We've got what, all loremasters and an RK? My champion will be my first to 115, thinking about boosting a guardian. Three characters is too much, but I'll get my bear to the new cap soon, just not sure in which order.
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Sep 22, 2017 09:26
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im tryin this out as malkdrinker the dwarf
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Sep 25, 2017 03:31
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More questions.... I've been experimenting with the essence gear you get from the easy stuff before Pelennor, but should I even bother at this point with Pelennor instance gear? Or I guess there is North Ithilien gear above that? Or should I just wait to get Mordor stuff? I'm pretty confused about which gear is not going to waste a lot of my time, especially with essence stuff.
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Sep 29, 2017 00:00
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genghispawn posted:More questions.... Unless you're actually stopping at a particular level by using the XP disabler, then everything will be a waste of your time until you get level 112+ gear from Mordor. Before that, just take whatever you get from questing and throw it together the best you can and replace it as you get better stuff from questing.
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Sep 29, 2017 01:23
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flowinprose posted:Unless you're actually stopping at a particular level by using the XP disabler, then everything will be a waste of your time until you get level 112+ gear from Mordor. They also added a level cap to how long the old raid set bonuses work (only the old ones still work at 115, anything dropped now or last month will have a level cap) so level 105 armor is only for collecting or cosmetic uses now Also stat tomes are 20% off in the store for anyone with a lifetime account and the buried treasure event is running now til October 4th
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Sep 29, 2017 19:20
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M_Sinistrari posted:I wish I could remember where I read it or if it was just something from the bazillion side notes Tolkien wrote, but Rohan was very suspicious of Lorien, and considered the "Golden Wood" some version of haunted and a place to be avoided. In "The Two Towers" Eomer refers to Lothlorien as "Dwimordene" - a place of spirits and Galadriel as "dwimmerlaik" - a spirit. Tolkien might have expanded on it elsewhere, but Rohan was deffo not particularly fond of the place in LOTR.
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Sep 29, 2017 20:59
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Eudaimon posted:In "The Two Towers" Eomer refers to Lothlorien as "Dwimordene" - a place of spirits and Galadriel as "dwimmerlaik" - a spirit. Tolkien might have expanded on it elsewhere, but Rohan was deffo not particularly fond of the place in LOTR. Sounds like ironically Rohan considered Lothlorien to be the "home of the ghost lords" Since this is probably a very obscure reference at this point, I feel the need to explain. There was a set of engrish subtitles that became somewhat internet-famous. https://goo.gl/images/NUKoBK flowinprose fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Sep 29, 2017 |
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Sep 29, 2017 21:07
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^ That is beautiful :-D
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Sep 29, 2017 21:30
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Update 21.2 is out tomorrow, I'll update this with a better summary but to be quick about it: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?658914-Update-21-Patch-2-Release-Notes -3 player instance is here -6 player instance is here Hard to care about anything more than that, let's hope they're fun and build up to the raid properly without feeling too grindy. Lots of bugs fixed, and there's some kind of new game or quest at the spooky part of the Fall Festival coming.
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Oct 10, 2017 06:08
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When are they releasing the thing where I can buy Mordor with funbux
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Oct 10, 2017 07:36
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Chairchucker posted:When are they releasing the thing where I can buy Mordor with funbux I think that's still planned for December.
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Oct 10, 2017 19:27
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I just logged in and oh man I am excited by the potential of the new filter system. I can finally free myself from the tyranny of lovely quests and worthless drops. I'm not so sure what sounds I'd want to mute but I'm sure I'll run into something.
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Oct 11, 2017 08:14
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NO MORE HOBNANIGANS
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Oct 11, 2017 15:55
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You beat me to it.
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Oct 11, 2017 17:57
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ArchWizard posted:I just logged in and oh man I am excited by the potential of the new filter system. I can finally free myself from the tyranny of lovely quests and worthless drops. I'm not so sure what sounds I'd want to mute but I'm sure I'll run into something. The big thing I keep muted is the music because I usually have music on from elsewhere. Worthless drops make me crazy. Glad we are getting some control over that.
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Oct 11, 2017 20:39
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I'm not sure why I am reinstalling this
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Oct 12, 2017 16:48
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Because it doesn't have Shelob the Pornstar
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Oct 12, 2017 16:49
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I hope my old characters are still there, I think I had a pretty high level LM.
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Oct 12, 2017 17:07
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