I am feeling sentimental...

     Probably what a few glasses of good red wine will do to you, but without further ado I give you some pictures of my LOTRO journey. Some are old friends long gone and some are still people I keep in touch with. Here are some of my fondest memories in LOTRO. Note some of these are old because I retired shortly after Mines of Moria eventually was released.

The three amigos

I am having some wine tonight...

So its either gonna be full steam ahead with catching up with my blog posts or...

Catching Up...

So whoever has stumbled across this may notice that all my posts started in September. Actually I started blogging a few years ago in FFXI to sort of commemorate my experiences and create a scrapbook of my adventures. However, I know realize FFXI is only one part of my gaming evolution so I felt I needed a better blog to track all my gaming exploits and antics. In addition to this I wanted to add in more real life information in an attempt to make the "Narcissitc Mithra" more accountable and realistic. I plan on adding several sections for other ventures, such as procrastination and my dissertation progress. But for now I am still playing catch up with my blogs, working on networking and generally organizing myself for ease in the future.

Equipment to sustain our hobbies

     I have had my share of hobbies throughout my life, whether it was caring for my horse, gardening, arts and crafts or gaming. Each requires tools and materials for the upkeep, however I am finding the latter hobby of gaming is always changing with technology and upgrades become a necessity rather then a luxury.
     My previous computer is about 6 years old at the moment. I received it as a Christmas gift from my well meaning parents who likely thought my only computer usage would be for my studies. However, we beefed it up with a Nvidia GForce 7900 and a new power supply and found it exceeded expectations for graphical quality in FFXI. Even when I gradually moved to LOTRO, my computer was sustainable enough not to have to play at the lowest settings, however when they introduced DX 10 in that game I fell behind graphically. After I returned for another stint in FFXI, no updates their so graphically I was still superior. However the real pain was felt in WoW where I have to play at the lowest settings to function in raids. With the new FFXIV coming out, my computer fails to meet even the minimum expectations.
     I am hoping to work on building a new custom computer this month or next, hopefully one that functions within some of the Tier1/2 recommendations for FFXIV so that maybe this one will last me through my gaming habits as well. I would like to find a Nvidia GForce 480, Core I7 processor, and a decent amount of Ram this time around.  A higher resolution monitor wouldn't be bad either. Hopefully I can make it happen financially, in the meantime I will probably just play on my boyfriends computer while he is at work in the evenings.