Lord of the Rings Online Europe – going to Turbine

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So, for the last four years or so, Codemasters have run the Lord of the Rings Service in Europe, on behalf of Turbine, but Turbine are taking it back.

http://www.lotro.com/news/latestnews/1157

1. What’s happening?

Turbine is taking over full operations of The Lord of the Rings Online™ throughout Europe starting June 1, 2011. We’re merging the US and EU services into one mega-service we’re calling the LOTRO Global Service.

This includes the servers used to present the EU service being hosted in the US.  Lots of change, I hope the game I know and love survives.

Confessions of a Raid Leader – Death!

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You can read part one of this series, and the general background here.  But in summary, I played EverQuest, I ended up being a co-leader of a most excellent raid alliance, and these posts are about remembering some of the madness that entailed.

EverQuest was brutal about death, right from the outset.  You lost XP, you had to go and find your corpse to get your gear back, and that meant getting to it, without any existing gear.  Eventually you could get resurrected, and over time they added ways to summon your corpse to you, but they never got rid of the XP penalty.  In groups, you could expect to die a couple of times per night if you were doing tough content, in raids, depending on your role, you could expect to die 10 or more times.  Over the course of an evening, that’s a reasonable amount of lost XP even if you are getting 96% resurrections.  But that was the job, if you were a tank, puller, healer or crowd controller you were going to die more than anyone else.  Of course, everyone else was going to die as well ….

The tanks on our raids had their own channel, and death was a common topic.  Our tanks were fearless in the face of death and gave it the respect it deserved.

Confident

[Sat May 05 21:03:27 2007] You tell tnftank:7, 'i'll take dref too for ramp in case I die?'
[Sat Jun 02 23:20:38 2007] You tell tnftank:7, 'i usually go to shit when i die'
[Sat Jun 02 23:47:38 2007] You tell tnftank:7, 'but at least let me die first'
[Sat Jun 30 21:02:43 2007] You tell tnftank:7, 'no furious, expect me to die ;)'
[Sat Feb 10 21:51:02 2007] Zorblag tells tnftank:6, 'This last fight is mean.  Aaddx will likely die.'
[Sat Mar 17 22:43:06 2007] Zerblag tells tnftank:6, 'But expect to die.'
[Sat May 05 21:52:55 2007] Tinyface tells tnftank:7, 'hehe i cant wait to give mine a shot but ill probably die :)'
[Sat Sep 22 22:20:39 2007] Zerblag tells tnftank:7, 'About to die.'
[Sat Oct 06 20:03:08 2007] Nevarna tells tnftank:7, 'I'll die anyway so it's all good'
[Sat Jan 26 19:57:51 2008] Glutious tells tnftank:7, 'a good day to die '

Callous

[Sat Mar 22 21:57:11 2008] You tell tnftank:7, 'if tinyface dies, just laugh at him and then step on his corpse to take over tanking'
[Sat Apr 28 21:31:23 2007] You tell tnftank:7, 'If Cheichn is still afk he's about to die'

Encouraging

[Sat Oct 13 19:41:04 2007] Sidyenai tells tnftank:7, 'ok, nev, you go to mirror and look yourself into your eyes and say: i wil not die this raid, i will not die this raid .. 20 times .. :D'
[Sat Jul 19 20:31:51 2008] Zerblag tells tnftank:7, 'AE ramp on Nightshade.  Don't die to it or you get laughed at.'
[Sat Mar 15 21:22:17 2008] Tinyface tells tnftank:7, 'Dont fall off the walkway, you will pop to the middle and die a horrible death'
[Sat Aug 04 21:39:58 2007] Zerblag tells tnftank:7, 'It'll be faster just to die Aaddx.'

Overly Confident

[Sat May 19 21:08:49 2007] Tinyface tells tnftank:7, 'hehe i NEVER die :)'
[Sat Apr 07 23:30:50 2007] Drefaen tells tnftank:6, 'whee, day off, Aaddx nevr dies'

Draefen was Always Ready

[Sat Jan 20 21:32:22 2007] Drefaen tells tnftank:7, 'sure, I haven't died yet, I'm starting to get worried'
[Sat Jan 20 22:50:14 2007] Drefaen tells tnftank:7, 'I haven't died yet, feels odd'
[Sat Jan 27 23:18:06 2007] Drefaen tells tnftank:7, 'should I be in NW corner? or only when Brich dies? I mean if Brich dies'
[Sun Jan 28 00:17:58 2007] Drefaen tells tnftank:7, 'I suspect I'll die here, I've only fell over once so far'
[Sat Feb 03 20:16:09 2007] Drefaen tells tnftank:6, 'I recon I shouldn't get one, I always die 8)'

And of course as co-leader of the raids, it was up to me to remind our most excellent raid force of the critical strategy regarding the stuff we were killing. This mainly revolved around not dying.

Basic Survival

[Sat Sep 22 22:15:31 2007] You tell your raid, 'the important thing - just don't die'
[Sat Sep 29 21:27:48 2007] You tell your raid, 'DO NOT DIE NOW NOT THIS CLOSE'
[Sat Oct 13 20:58:40 2007] You tell your raid, 'then we kill stuff, and don't die'
[Sat Oct 13 20:59:22 2007] You tell your raid, 'ok south - don't die this time :p'
[Sat Aug 09 22:12:05 2008] You tell your raid, 'DO NOT DIE'
[Sat Aug 09 22:39:01 2008] You tell your raid, '1. don't die'
[Sat Aug 09 22:39:10 2008] You tell your raid, '2. friends don't let friends die either'
[Sat Feb 05 21:32:24 2005] You tell your raid, 'nice - don't die while we do loot'
[Sat May 07 23:14:51 2005] You tell your raid, 'we WILL NOT DIE HERE TODAY'

As you can see, I really liked this ‘not dying’ as a strategy …

[Sat Sep 22 21:24:46 2007] You tell your raid, 'so everyone tanks, no one dies'
[Sat Jan 06 20:35:03 2007] You tell your raid, 'oh and don't die'
[Sat Sep 08 19:29:38 2007] You tell your raid, 'ok same deal - only this time we don't die'
[Sat Sep 08 23:24:46 2007] You tell your raid, 'Do NOT die'
[Sat May 28 20:26:22 2005] You tell your raid, 'follow Aaddx we're charging the arena - don't die'
[Sat Jun 11 20:22:10 2005] You tell your raid, 'don't die :p'
[Sat Nov 26 23:09:25 2005] You tell your raid, 'stay focussed don't die'
[Sat Dec 03 20:53:53 2005] You tell your raid, 'don't die'
[Sun Jan 29 00:42:41 2006] You tell your raid, 'oh key thing - don't die'
[Sat Feb 11 22:35:48 2006] You tell your raid, 'NO ONE dies'

It worked for our raid team, so I stuck to it, who would have thought ‘not dying’ was the most powerful weapon a raid team could have?

[Sat Mar 04 22:21:51 2006] You tell your raid, 'don't die'
[Sat Mar 04 23:10:20 2006] You tell your raid, 'and don't die'
[Sat Apr 01 21:28:47 2006] You tell your raid, 'don't die, it's a long fight'
[Sat Oct 21 22:24:20 2006] You tell your raid, 'groups 1-3 will kill it and they won't die'
[Sat Dec 09 20:59:23 2006] You tell your raid, 'stay focussed, don't die, and we can do this'
[Sat Dec 16 23:23:37 2006] You tell your raid, 'don't die that's silly'
[Sat Feb 17 22:52:24 2007] You tell your raid, 'here we go, no one dies'
[Sat Mar 10 22:50:19 2007] You tell your raid, 'we must not die'
[Sat Mar 24 19:57:47 2007] You tell your raid, 'do not let my 3rd favourite SK die'
[Sat Apr 07 23:19:28 2007] You tell your raid, 'DO NOT DIE HERE I WILL BE UPSET'
[Sat Jun 16 20:17:40 2007] You tell your raid, 'oh AE Rampage - don't die'
[Sat Jul 21 20:58:07 2007] You tell your raid, 'All you have to do now is NOT DIE'
[Sat Jul 28 22:47:13 2007] You tell your raid, '20 mobs at a time - don't die'
[Sat Jan 05 20:17:45 2008] You tell your raid, 'off-tank, don't die'
[Sat Jan 05 21:52:17 2008] You tell your raid, 'pull him - don't die'
[Tue Dec 11 20:25:29 2007] You tell your raid, 'no one die, everyone win, easy victory'
[Sat Dec 15 21:20:11 2007] You tell your raid, 'Hold on then - refuse to die'

Positive Thinking

[Sat Mar 08 22:14:40 2008] You tell your raid, 'try not to die, but it's an UGLY raid'
[Sat Jul 02 21:40:50 2005] You tell your raid, 'we have *not* tried this before, so we will probably all die horribly'
[Sat Sep 08 18:46:19 2007] You tell your raid, 'Ok - Oly gets to die later - thanks Oly'
[Thu Sep 07 23:30:54 2006] You tell your raid, 'tank order is - all tanks form a queue and die for your country - followed by weaponshield rangers'
[Sat Apr 21 21:59:12 2007] You tell your raid, 'we have to trigger these two mobs, normally we make Aonia die, but today it's Moone's turn, I need to talk her through it so it'll take a moment longer than normal'
[Wed Aug 22 22:26:26 2007] You tell your raid, 'that's the voice of a man who expects to die again'
[Sat Dec 15 22:39:49 2007] You tell your raid, 'each week someone thinks that, and they die'

Travel Tips

[Sat Oct 29 23:28:14 2005] You tell your raid, 'we're going to kill a Dragon - don't die on the way'
[Sat Feb 25 20:23:25 2006] You tell your raid, 'please don't die in BoT it makes me sad - get invis'
[Sat Nov 04 21:47:22 2006] You tell your raid, 'and die, at Noit's feet, to provide him something to stand on'

Complex Strategy

[Sat Dec 08 22:54:51 2007] You tell your raid, 'we assist Nlaokx, we mezz the snake pops, and we refuse to die'
[Sat Jul 29 20:29:12 2006] You tell your raid, 'Fake Rallos - AE Rampage - fight at max range, do not die'
[Sat Jul 29 20:29:23 2006] You tell your raid, 'Real Rallos - AE Rampage, adds, shit, etc. do not die'
[Sat Dec 03 20:43:20 2005] You tell your raid, 'on the next named - no swarm pets, no hammer pets, no sword pets, and don't die'
[Sat Dec 03 20:49:54 2005] You tell your raid, 'Named inc with adds - do not break mezz - do not die'
[Sat Jan 14 22:15:38 2006] You tell your raid, 'ok we're going left - follow - tank 3 mezz rest - assist aaddx easy - don't die'
[Sat Feb 10 20:53:53 2007] You tell your raid, 'next mob is archetype again - we do it the same only this time, we don't die'
[Sat Feb 10 22:34:01 2007] You tell your raid, 'biggest train of undead wins - go get some - don't die, don't bring anything that might be ugly'
[Sat Mar 31 21:02:17 2007] You tell your raid, 'aggro on the snake will bounce like hell - just kill her and don't die'
[Sat Apr 14 22:54:14 2007] You tell your raid, 'there'll be a load of mobs outside the instance - just zone in - don't die :p'
[Sat Jun 16 20:15:21 2007] You tell your raid, 'i can't remember what his AE's are, what cures them, how bad they are, or anything else :) so let's pretend they don't exist, try not to die'
[Sun Sep 02 00:11:03 2007] You tell your raid, 'everyone will be in south except 7 and 8, you will burn south, you won't die'
[Sat Jun 28 20:52:29 2008] You tell your raid, 'your job is to aggro your mob and bring it into the cubby and then not die'
[Sat Jun 28 23:36:41 2008] You tell your raid, 'going to do this the same way, but not die as much'
[Sat Jul 05 22:38:17 2008] You tell your raid, 'stay on your feet - too close to die now'

Positive Encouragement

[Sat Jul 19 22:41:25 2008] You tell your raid, 'you're not allowed to die until you have no mana, no endurance and then no hitpoints'
[Sat Jul 19 20:24:12 2008] You tell your raid, 'if tanks get out of range for heals, just let them die, /tell [tankname] laugh you were out of range'
[Sat Feb 09 20:49:05 2008] You tell your raid, 'don't die, it'll be embarassing'
[Sun Oct 28 00:04:54 2007] You tell your raid, 'if you die it's your own fault :p'
[Sat Jul 29 21:23:29 2006] You tell your raid, 'if you die because you're not invis i'm gonna be really unhappy - 2 people last time'
[Sat Nov 27 23:26:24 2004] You tell your raid, '500pp to let him die'
[Sat Jul 30 23:22:28 2005] You tell your raid, 'anyone in plate who dies including clerics gets laughed at ok'
[Sat Aug 06 13:03:39 2005] You tell your raid, 'if you die, we laugh at you'
[Sun Feb 12 00:28:37 2006] You tell your raid, 'Hail the PP - if you died we laugh at you'
[Sat May 20 23:10:43 2006] You tell your raid, 'don't die to enrage or I'll kill you right after we rez you'
[Sat Feb 03 20:07:46 2007] You tell your raid, 'if you die, it will trigger a chain reaction of death and we will wipe'
[Sat Apr 14 20:59:02 2007] You tell your raid, 'every mob in here ENRAGES - based on our new policy - anyone who dies to ENRAGE buys me something nice in the bazaar for 10kpp+'
[Sat Jul 28 20:23:30 2007] You tell your raid, 'if you die to ENRAGE today, you get to clean my toilet with your toothbrush tomorrow'
[Sat Aug 04 20:23:53 2007] You tell your raid, 'ok follow please - anyone who dies does the dishes'
[Sat Aug 11 20:08:58 2007] You tell your raid, 'don't die in WoS, or we point and laugh'
[Sat Mar 08 21:56:00 2008] You tell your raid, 'if you can't cancel magic, don't bother, you're probably just gonna have to die ;)'
[Sat Mar 22 21:22:40 2008] You tell your raid, 'aug mobs inc soon, don't die to them, it's embarassing :p'
[Fri May 26 20:35:54 2006] You tell your raid, 'Jae died, we can laugh later'
[Sat Jan 07 23:42:20 2006] You tell your raid, 'which tank didn't die?'

Exasperated Encouragement

[Sat Mar 10 21:52:58 2007] You tell your raid, 'WHY DO YOU DIE TO ENRAGE?'

Confessions of a Raid Leader – Burned!

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Introduction

The guild I was a member of in EverQuest was a ‘family’ guild, as they were known.  It existed for social reasons and to allow us to enjoy the group/casual element of the game.  We were also friends with a few other guilds in a similar position.  The thing with EverQuest is that it sucked you in, and so a few of us, starting small, began raiding things with a small alliance of guilds.  Over time the raids grew, but we prided ourselves on casual raiding, we enforced as few rules as possible and we avoided big raid style loot management (DKP).

We ended up beating some of the toughest content in the game, and boy, did we have fun.  These posts are random memories I have about raiding in EverQuest, both with my own raid team and with other raid guilds and alliances.

Burn!

My first experience of large scale raiding in EverQuest was with the Blood & Guts guild.  They were in a raid team formed from two European guilds so they raided pretty much in my timezone.  I’d had almost no raid experience, joined them with my wizard, and went on a learning curve that looked more like a cliff.  As a wizard, my role was simple.

  • don’t die
  • don’t get anyone else killed
  • don’t break mezz
  • nuke the mobs until they’re dead

This should be pretty easy, and to be fair, it’s one of the easiest raid roles in EverQuest.  One of the most colourful raid leaders with Blood & Guts was Kasstou.  I was always amazed that one German guild and one French guild used English as the primary language in their raids, which certainly made it easier for me, but must have made it a nightmare for them.  Not only were they typing in a foreign language, but they were doing so in a high stress environment trying to convey critical information.

Anyway, Kasstou had a habit of shouting ‘burn’ into the raid channel.  Here’s a few examples,

[Sun Jul 11 23:17:37 2004] Kasstou tells the raid,  'BURN HIM'
[Sun Jul 11 23:56:41 2004] Kasstou tells the raid,  'BURN INNO DOWN'
[Sun Jul 18 20:17:30 2004] Kasstou tells the raid,  'ok disc burn'
[Sun Jul 18 21:11:01 2004] Kasstou tells the raid,  'BURN NOW'
[Sun Jul 18 23:23:43 2004] Kasstou tells the raid,  'BURN LIKE HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL'
[Sun Jul 25 20:56:40 2004] Kasstou tells the raid,  'DISC BURN KILL FASTTTTTT'

This used to frustrate me, because calling for burn suggested I hadn’t been trying to do as much DPS as I could have, the rest of the time.  I was a conscientious wizard, I was always trying to ride that line between aggro and DPS, I was always burning!  Once or twice I even complained about this to fellow group members.

When I started co-running my own raids, however, all that moaning went out of the window.  It became obvious very quickly that sometimes, you needed a single word to inspire greatness in your raid team, to elevate them to greater heights of damage.  At those times, BURN was the right choice, and so over time, I found myself using it more and more as we raided!

Reading back these log entries, even now, reminds me of the events, the mobs and the people involved in raiding in EverQuest, I miss you all, they were good times!

So, for your nostalgic pleasure, Grayhelm calls BURN!

Simple Burns

[Sat Jul 02 22:41:40 2005] You tell your raid, 'BURN NOW'
[Sat Jun 04 23:47:56 2005] You tell your raid, 'burninate'
[Sun Aug 14 00:03:55 2005] You tell your raid, 'burn dis nuke whatever'
[Thu Oct 20 21:08:39 2005] You tell your raid, 'BURN HIM ALL OUT'
[Wed Mar 22 20:39:59 2006] You tell your raid, 'WE CAN DO IT BURN BURN BURN'
[Wed Apr 05 20:28:33 2006] You tell your raid, 'DISC BURN NUKERISE'
[Thu Aug 24 22:13:13 2006] You tell your raid, 'BURN BURN BURN BURN'
[Sat Feb 02 22:51:35 2008] You tell your raid, 'more burn'
[Sat Jul 12 21:49:05 2008] You tell your raid, 'ok mini burn on Emperor Draygun, the Lich King'

Urgent Burns

[Sun Jan 28 00:27:06 2007] You tell your raid, 'BURN COME ON YOU CAN DO IT'
[Sun Mar 26 02:46:07 2006] You tell your raid, 'BURN THE FUCKER'
[Sat Sep 08 20:22:42 2007] You tell your raid, 'ALL GO BURN KILL SHOUT THROW THINGS DIE DIE KITE DOOM DEATH GO'
[Sun Dec 11 00:06:25 2005] You tell your raid, 'OH NO UNIVERSAL CHAT DOWN - BURN Velitorkin'
[Sun Mar 11 00:09:10 2007] You tell your raid, '30 seconds MORE BURN'
[Sat May 20 23:10:59 2006] You tell your raid, 'DISC BURN - throw laundry'
[Thu Aug 24 22:14:30 2006] You tell your raid, 'burn him - use harsh words'
[Sat Jan 13 20:44:10 2007] You tell your raid, 'Full burn - all discs go go go'
[Sat Jun 09 23:34:53 2007] You tell your raid, 'BURN with ANYTHING YOU HAVE'
[Sat Sep 01 21:51:08 2007] You tell your raid, 'BURN clerics light on mana'
[Sat May 10 23:23:03 2008] You tell your raid, 'Burn hard, Burn early, Burn often'

Anatomical Burns

[Sat Aug 27 22:05:21 2005] You tell your raid, 'burn his ass'

Directional Burns

[Sat Sep 29 21:28:34 2007] You tell your raid, 'BURN MY MOB'
[Sat Sep 29 21:29:04 2007] You tell your raid, 'burn east'
[Sat Sep 29 21:30:34 2007] You tell your raid, 'BURN WEST'
[Sat Nov 10 21:03:01 2007] You tell your raid, 'BURN SOUTH NOW'

Complex Burns

[Sat Aug 27 23:33:09 2005] You tell your raid, 'BURN TT - KITE ADDS'
[Sat Feb 10 22:02:59 2007] You tell your raid, 'GO GO BURN KITE KITE BURN KITE'
[Sat Mar 24 19:57:05 2007] You tell your raid, 'BURN DO NOT PUSH BURN BURN BURN'
[Sat Jun 02 23:49:19 2007] You tell your raid, 'Full swarm pets - burn burn burn etc.'

Exasperated Burns

[Sat Aug 20 22:24:37 2005] You tell your raid, 'BURN FFS ARGH - when you see that, go full DPS'
[Sun Sep 11 00:44:02 2005] You tell your raid, 'for gods sake BURN'
[Sun Jan 28 00:24:40 2007] You tell your raid, 'BURN Innoruuk ffs'
[Sat Jul 14 22:02:10 2007] You tell your raid, 'If you have Endurance left - WHY? BURN DISCS NOW'
[Sat Jul 21 22:15:06 2007] You tell your raid, 'If you have ENDURANCE LEFT - ask yourself WHY - BURN THIS MOB'
[Sat Oct 13 21:04:59 2007] You tell your raid, 'someone burn south ffs'
[Sat Dec 01 23:57:55 2007] You tell your raid, 'health going up? BURN'

Polite Burns

[Sat Mar 10 22:27:04 2007] You tell your raid, 'BURN Tqiv Araxt the Enraged please someone'
[Sat Sep 15 23:50:16 2007] You tell your raid, 'ok someone burn this thing to the ground please'

Inverted Burns

[Sat Oct 29 22:17:02 2005] You tell your raid, 'control your aggro this is not a burn competition'
[Sat Sep 29 21:21:50 2007] You tell your raid, 'slow burn'

Pre-emptive Burns

[Sat Aug 11 20:35:03 2007] You tell your raid, 'remember - full burn from the outset - dying with any mana or endurance is a waste'
[Sat May 21 20:38:49 2005] You tell your raid, 'and from 90% you go full burn and nuke the fucker into the ground without mercy'

Complacent Burns

[Mon Oct 29 20:38:21 2007] You tell your raid, 'Grats Burn - loot up'

Apocalyptic Burns

[Sat Nov 27 21:33:32 2004] You tell your raid, 'burn disc or it's all over'

Burns Which Could Be Misunderstood

[Sat Mar 15 20:31:09 2008] You tell your raid, 'burn the cat'

Wrong Burns

[Mon Apr 07 21:16:07 2008] You tell your raid, 'electrical burning smell here, if we go LD,send fire engines'
[Sat May 31 23:16:18 2008] You tell your raid, 'Burn SIDDHAYA'

And finally, When Burns Go Bad

[Sat Mar 15 22:02:19 2008] You tell your raid, 'there will be NO BURN call - we CONTROL this fight all the way through'
and then
[Sat Mar 15 23:27:53 2008] You tell your raid, 'FULL BURN Emperor Draygun, the Lich King DOTS and SWARM PETS GO'

Revamped Evendim

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The Lord of the Rings Online is going through a lot of change at the moment.  The move to Free-to-Play (including the addition of the store) has driven a lot of those changes, often to include opportunities for Turbine/Codemasters to make more revenue.  It has also in some ways, made the game ‘easier’.  I’m aware that over time all MMO’s get ‘easier’ for various definitions of what that might mean.  What used to take weeks now takes days, and what used to take days can now take hours.  The driver is usually the result of additional content and a desire to allow new players to catch up with their longer-playing friends.  One of the newest and biggest changes is a revamp of Evendim.

Evendim always felt a little odd to me.  There was a long ride from Oatbarton to Ost Forod or Tinnudir through a lot of countryside that never really got used.  Sure, you got sent back to Barandalf from Tinnudir to kill some stuff, but generally it was wasted space.  On top of that, you sort of moved between Ost Forod, Tinnudir, Rantost and the other islands and tried to find quests of the right colour.  A lot of that time was spent swimming (which was somewhat alleviated by the introduction of one boat route some time back, you can see what I think of all that swimming here, at the end of that post).

The revamp has done several things,

  • Added a new quest hub on the bridge with the giant statue on it.  This quest hub covers the gap between Oatbarton and Tinnudir .  It has quests in Barandalf (the area between Oatbarton and Tinnudir), some of which are old and many of which are completely new.
  • Implemented another new quest hub west of Oatbarton, in which you must help a bunch of Hobbits prepare for a festival.  Those quests alone provide a single levels worth of experience, and give you a real sense of the Hobbit mentality.
  • Smoothed the overall level progression, I’m not sure if they changed any mob or quest levels, but I was never stuck with a mix of blue, white and red quests.  While some of the quests were challenging, I never felt like they were out of my league or totally beneath me.
  • Expanded the quest hub at Men Erain, using the crypts and tombs along that road.  This is a really good addition and provides a much better transition from Tinnudir to Annuminas.  Some of the early quests in Annuminas have changed as well, but I didn’t stick around to try them out.
  • Added two more boat routes, from Tinnudir to Tyl Ruinen and Men Erain.  This removes virtually all of the swimming until you get to the Blue Lady quests.
  • ‘Soloised’ most of the quests.  With the exception of one or two notable quests, everything is now designated solo and can be done alone.  This includes the instance on Rantost to defend it against Tomb Robbers.  Obviously, this is both good and bad, depending on your play style.
  • Added new Gauredain camps and opened up the general area around the Gauredain so you don’t have to travel through the entire camp to collect one item at the top.  This is a really welcome addition, and along with the new camps there are a couple of extra quests in Evespires.
  • Replaced the quest rewards with barter tokens, which you can use to purchase full sets of class specific armour.  I really liked this, I’ve completed Evendim on 4 characters (pre-change), 2 characters (after they added the boat to the Evespires) and now 2 more characters after all the changes.  One of the most frustrating things about the place was the apparently random rewards.  Some classes came out of it much better than others.  With the new system, you can build up tokens and get a full set of suitable, sensible gear.  There’s a second set of armour to work towards as well, with a mix of tokens and quest rewards.
  • The reputation has been changed so that it builds with The Wardens of Annuminas all the way through, and if you stay and complete the quests you’ll be Kindred by the time you move on.  I like that, it makes more sense than having to hang around for days afterwards trying to get reputation drops.
  • Ost Forod has seen the fewest changes to the actual quests (there’s a couple of new ones), but the way in which you get the quests has been refined to make more sense.  This is true of all the quests in Evendim now.  The best quest in the entire game is still present in Ost Forod, and no, I won’t spoil it for you.
  • The overall story arc makes more sense now, with clear goals and a clear reason for the Wardens to be asking for your help.  Old quests have new descriptions or angles, and the new quests are designed to tie the story to the location.

Overall, the Evendim revamp is a huge success in my view.  It’s just a much more enjoyable place to quest, without the hours of endless and pointless travel to get from your quest giver to the quest location.  Turbine haven’t lost any of the charm of the area, have worked hard to utilise locations that were wasted before, and have back filled some lore and story that was sorely lacking.

Moaning – Update #1

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So I wrote a post about some moans (here).  Grete (as usual) put in loads of effort and arranged some appointments, specifically an electrician and a plumber to give us some quotes.  So in relation to this moan,

Plumbing

The plumbing isn’t bad (especially compared to the electrics), but the bathroom sink hot tap has seized up, and although it’s decreasing in frequency, flushing the loo causes some of the pipes somewhere to vibrate. Also, the silicon sealant around the bath and sinks has perished and really needs sorting.

The plumber thinks the vibration is the ball valve in the loo (which we suspected), but since he checked and fiddled with it, it hasn’t done it since.  Result.  She then moved to show him the seized up hot tap – turned it – and it turned on.  Fine.  Without any problems.  Result 2!  She had to promise him it had been broken.

1080p, HDTV and HD Ready makes me sad

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In the old days, when I was a boy, it was usually the case that if you bought a monitor that was larger than your current one (diagonally larger screen), it supported more pixels as well.  These days, it’s sad to see monitor vendors sticking to the flawed idea that somehow, 1080 pixels is the new one size fits all.

If you buy a bigger monitor, you don’t get more pixels, you just get bigger pixels.

This is because monitor vendors have bought into the HDTV size of 1900 x 1080.  Why would anyone want to use anything different?  I think it’s actually because monitor vendors realised they were being dumb.  I mean, people spent thousands of pounds buying larger and larger televisions in the old days, and they never got any increase in resolution?  If people would pay top dollar for huge TV’s at the same resolution as 14″ portables, why the hell couldn’t they bring that business model to the LCD monitor market.

So they did.

There’s a good rant on this over here.

When I bought the LCD’s we use at the moment, I got 5:4 ratio LCD monitors.  People probably laughed.  They’re 19″ displays.  That means (sorry to switch units), that the actual screen is ~30.5cm high and ~37.5cm wide.  That gives about a ~48cm display (diagonal).  We were thinking of getting some new monitors, but I knew it wouldn’t be that easy so I made sure I had the measurements.  These monitors run at 1280 x 1024.  A 19″ widescreen (16:9) might give 1900 x 1080, but it’s vertically much smaller than the monitors we have.  That’s okay, 21″ widescreen?  Still shorter.  22″?  Still shorter.  23″?  Still shorter.  I’d have to buy a 24″ monitor, running at just 56 more pixels high, to give me roughly the same physical height as my existing monitor.  And the screen would be ~20 inches wide (or ~50cm).

To get 56 more pixels (vertically).

And that’s it – you have to be specifically looking to find anything higher than 1080 vertical resolution and you pay for it.  And there’s no good reason for it.  If I want to watch movies, I do that on my television.  So we didn’t buy any new monitors.

I want a choice of monitors, with a choice of native resolutions, in a choice of ratios.

Eight Years

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Eight years ago I registered the gemmellmania.co.uk domain.  Sometime in 1999, I registered the gemmell-mania.org.uk domain (don’t go there now, it’s just full of links).  I ran various forums and web sites on those domains, hosted a Usenet FAQ (here, long out of date), ran mailing lists and wrote reviews.

The reviews eventually led to me meeting David, and to being a test reader on some of his later books, something I’m still astoundingly grateful for and proud of.

For a few years now, the site has had only a single page, my tribute to David.  However, the time has come for me to let the domain go.  The tribute is included on this blog as well (here).

The spirit of David’s writing lives on in The David Gemmell Legend Awards.

Debian, apache2, virtualhosts, FastCGI and PHP5

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I’ve spent an amusing evening revisiting FastCGI under Apache2, in order to server PHP5 content through Apache’s threaded MPM (worker).  I set this up ages ago on my previous web server and then forgot about it.

It was fine for a long time, but I hadn’t really customised it and to be frank, wasn’t really sure what it was doing.  I just know at the time it was very confusing reading a lot of conflicting stuff on the web.  But it worked.  Until recently, when I noticed the server was running out of memory and processes were being killed.  I didn’t really spend much time looking at the cause though.

When I moved to the new server, I thought I’d try out the prefork MPM again, as per my previous posts and it seemed okay.  However, it’s not okay (although I may do some more load testing if I get a chance).  So I quickly switched back to the worker MPM and FastCGI.

Which is where I started getting frustrated again – I wanted to understand better what’s going on with FastCGI and make sure I was handling it correctly.

If you search the web, there’s a lot of stuff, much of it from 2007 – 2009 with conflicting information and stuff you might or might not need to do.

So, first some caveats,

  1. this is Debian Squeeze, other distributions might be different.
  2. I run PHP5 under FastCGI and nothing else, so my config changes only affect PHP5.
  3. I’m guessing about most of this stuff – so if I’m wrong, please feel free to provide constructive comments.

Here’s what I learned.

Two FastCGI Modules?

Debian comes with two FastCGI modules, those being libapache2-mod-fcgid and libapache2-mod-fastcgi.  They are binary compatible, I’m lead to believe, but fcgid is newer and works better with suexec.  So you should use libapache2-mod-fcgid unless you know you need libapache2-mod-fastcgi for some specific reason.  If you read examples talking about libapache2-mod-fastcgi you can probably just use libapache2-mod-fcgid instead.

Don’t install them both at once – you can do, but there’s no point and it’ll only cause confusion.  You only need one.

Some Fcgid settings are per virtual host.

I run with a low memory setup, so I wanted the PHP5 processes to shut down after a while, rather than hang around.  I couldn’t work out why they weren’t going away.  Also, I couldn’t work out why there were so many.  But it looks to me like you get at least one PHP5 process per virtual host, sometimes more (if the load is high, but remember, these are mostly vanity VPS’s, low load).  The default settings for fcgid processes is to start with none, and create as many as needed, and then drop back to 3.  But it looks like with the way I’ve got it configured (maybe all ways), that’s per virtual host.  I had to set the FcgidMinProcessesPerClass to be 0, so that on each virtual host, fcgid will close all the unused PHP5 processes after a while.

Wrappers?

Most of the articles online suggest you write a little wrapper to launch your PHP5 stuff via Fast CGI.  I couldn’t remember doing that on the previous server and spent a while looking for my wrapper script – until I realised I’d not created one.  You don’t need a wrapper script, but you do need to tell your virtual host to run PHP5 code using the Fast CGI module.  I have this in each of my virtualhost Apache2 config sections.

AddHandler fcgid-script .php
FCGIWrapper /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php5 .php
Options ExecCGI

You need to add the ExecCGI to the Options directive to ensure the PHP pages can be run as CGI apps, and the Handler and FCGIWrapper lines tell Apache2 how to run the PHP.  The default wrapper is just the PHP5 CGI binary (as shown above).  You can put a shell script there and set some defaults, but you don’t have to, it ran fine for over a year on my other server without doing so.

You can set values in fcgid.conf

Because I’m only running PHP5 stuff via Fast CGI, I can happily put settings in Apache’s fcgid.conf file.  Some articles suggest creating a PHP specific one, and putting the wrapper script stuff above in that as well.  I’m sure that works, but so does the way I did it (there’s always more than one way!).  Here’s my fcgid.conf,

<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
 AddHandler    fcgid-script .fcgi
 FcgidConnectTimeout 20
 FcgidIOTimeout              60
 FcgidMaxRequestsPerProcess  400
 FcgidIdleTimeout            60
 FcgidMinProcessesPerClass   0
</IfModule>

The two Timeout entries ensure unused PHP5 processes are closed down.  The MinProcessesPerClass is required as mentioned above, otherwise it defaults to 3 per virtualhost.  The MaxRequestsPerProcess I’ve set at 400.  PHP will by default handle 500 and then shutdown, it can do that even if Fast CGI has already made a connection, resulting in a 500 error at the client.  If you force Fast CGI to stop PHP after <500 requests, you avoid that issue.  You can if you want write a PHP Wrapper script, and increase PHP’s max requests value, but you don’t have to.

There’s always another way

This is one way of setting it up, there’s always another way, and with Linux there’s usually another 10 ways.  I may do some more testing to narrow down some confusion I still have and see what the benefits of wrapper scripts may or may not be, and whether it’s worth moving some of the per-virtualhost config entries into the fcgid.conf file (like the handler bits).