A Few Short Musings

• If I ran as much as my LOTRO toon does, I'd be back to a normal weight.
  
  I'm at that point in the Mines of Moria storyline where I'm sent from the Crossroads down to the Waterworks, then back to the 21st Hall, then down to the Flaming Deeps, and then back to the 21st Hall, then down to the Waterworks.... You get the idea. Outside of the fact that the storyline wouldn't simply wait for me to go back and forth like that* if this were closer to a real time event, I'd have worked off all those years of helping to "eliminate" excess Halloween candy in our household.
  
• Even though I love the "slurring" that WoW has their toons perform when talking, I think I prefer the LOTRO version of the "drunk toon". Sure, both MMOs have the screens get progressively blurrier, but LOTRO takes it a step further by making everything monochromatic sepia toned, like you're swimming in an oil tainted pool. The toneless muttering also makes it sound like I've collapsed in a corner, arguing with myself over whether Stalin would have arisen in Russia if Lenin hadn't passed away when he did.
  
• It felt weird logging into SWTOR after having spent so much time in LOTRO recently. I'd jumped on a toon that was deep in Justicar territory on Coruscant, and it felt.... Airy. I never thought I'd say that about the lower levels of Coruscant, but after a month's worth of slogging through the Mines of Moria, it sure feels open. And welcoming.

*I once read it described as an offshoot of moving at the speed of plot. In a novel or a pencil and paper RPG, these boring parts can be skipped to keep the pace going. Videogames, not so much. You'd have to rely upon cutscenes to keep things moving, or automated transportation perhaps, but neither is an ideal situation.