Unfortunately, despite her happy-looking face, Hahani is incredibly disappointed with me.

Why?

Well, thanks to a comment left on my previous post regarding the Mists of Pandaria beta, I realized I had been incredibly remiss in my shadow priestly duties. Pictures of the adorable pandas are all well and good, but how do the priests look in Shadowform? As a shadow priest, you spend the majority of your time in Shadowform. It’s not enough to like how you look outside of it; you have to like what you see in all your shadowy glory, too!

So, Marc? This is for you.

And this isn’t even all of Rivendell. It’s gorgeous, though, isn’t it?

One of the things I personally love about LotRO is the fact that the major lore characters are right there. You can talk to them, you can quest for them, and, sometimes, you can even adventure with them. At the current point Anthyllis is at in the epic quest chain, the Fellowship has yet to leave Imladris, so the entire Fellowship is still right there in the city, and, yes, she’s happily visited them all. She even got to run around a bit with Gimli last night when they ventured out to destroy an evil dwarf.

However, despite this, it wasn’t quite enough, and I found myself incapable of describing why that was. The entire time, I couldn’t help but feel like something major was missing. I had gotten to see quite a few major landmarks so far. I got to see Weathertop earlier, and the Ford of Bruinen where the Ringwraiths were swept away by the river in the Fellowship of the Ring. I had gotten to meet the Fellowship. I had even met Bilbo! So why didn’t it feel like enough? Something was missing, I just wasn’t sure what.

As Anthyllis continued to roam through the Trollshaws, however, she happened upon a man further down the Bruinen river, who informed her that his grandparents lived in a village that had been raided by trolls, and he, for reason, wanted to find out what had become of them all these years later. It turned out their names were Bert, Tom, and Bill. It took me a minute or two before I remembered The Hobbit and why those names were so significant.

The quest-giver was talking about Bilbo’s trolls.

Once I came to this realization, I had Anthyllis mount up and ride for Rivendell, almost frantically trying to remember where Bilbo was in the Last Homely House. If anybody knew where they would be, he would. Fortunately, it didn’t take me very long to do. He quite happily regaled Anthyllis with the tale of the trolls (apparently, it’s her favorite) and even told her where they were. So, enthused, she set out immediately for the clearing where the three trolls were still frozen in stone, and I as the player, couldn’t stop squeeing for at least ten minutes while I took all the pictures ever.

Anthyllis, however, was finally able to see something she had actually grown up hearing about, and could not have been happier. What could possibly top seeing Mister Bilbo’s trolls?

Anthyllis is so excited to finally see something amazing from Bilbo’s stories

For the curious, yes, dear readers, you are now witnessing my secret love: cosmetic gear.  It’s no secret that I like my characters to look good. Even if I wasn’t a roleplayer, I’d still happily use a system like this. I feel like every character has an outfit for anything they do, even if it’s just hanging around with guild/kinmates. You don’t have to look like a hodgepodge of different armor styles all the time, after all. There’s a reason why addons like Outfitter, back in the earlier days of WoW, were so popular, as these allowed us to easily switch between our questing/PvP gear and that pretty dress we got during the last holiday or the matching armor set that was gathering dust in our bank. I jumped for joy when WoW came out with transmogging, but I still think it pales in comparison to LotRO’s cosmetic system.

I’m still new to the ways of cosmetic gearing, as the majority of my outfits tend to be simple things. I’m also still somewhat in the “EVERYTHING I PUT ON MUST MATCH” phase. Once I began to figure out how the cosmetic gear system worked and I had options apart from the cosmetics that came with the Rise of Isengard expansion, I realized I needed something for Anthyllis to wear when she returned to the safer areas and she wasn’t out and about questing. She needed what I decided to call a Hobbit About Town look, something she could live in. After messing around a bit, taking into account what Tolkien himself said hobbits favored for colors, and going through the mish-mash of a wardrobe that I had, I finally came up with something I loved.

Admittedly, yes, it’s a very simple cosmetic outfit as I didn’t have to worry about footgear (what self-respecting hobbit would wear shoes, I ask you?) or gloves. Despite that, I cannot think of a better look for her. Anthyllis is very attached to this hat, and it’s part of every single outfit I piece together for her whether you can see it or not (the exception to this being her questing set as the scrolls from the Map-Maker’s Travelling Pack clip through the brim). I even got a compliment on it the other night when I was loitering around Oatbarton! The pieces, in case you’re wondering, are as follows:

Head: Plumed Hat, dyed Umber (Quest Reward: Into the Shadow / Medicine of the Elves)
Chest: Robe of Leisure, dyed Ranger Green (LotRO store)

In this entire process, though, I realized something very important: I need to clean out the wardrobe. There’s so much stuff in there and I think I just started throwing things in there without knowing if I really wanted them in there or not…

So, since Pen and Shield covers multiple games now, I decided to personally take things a step further. Not only are we going into my Warcraft screenshots folder, but also my SWTOR and LotRO screenshot folders. I guess I like madness? I don’t know.

Since this blog began because of my love for World of Warcraft, it seems only fitting that I begin with that. Before I moved to my new computer, I had apparently gone and decided to organize my Warcraft screenshot folder, breaking it down by year. This year would be the sixth year (man, have I really been playing WoW for six years?), and thus my sixth subfolder…

The beauty of blood elven architecture

Dated February 7, 2012, one of the first screenshots I took on my new computer. In an attempt to revitalize my love for my original main (I’m still not quite willing to let go of her, I suppose), I returned to Eversong Woods and went a little nuts taking screencaps for inspiration. This was the second image I took, and, amusingly, the only usable one in the batch. The others had other PCs running through it and I had been silly and neglected to turn off the overhead names. Go me.

Next up… SWTOR! Sadly, my SWTOR folder doesn’t have subfolders, so this is the sixth image in this game’s screenshot folder.

A shot from SWTOR's beta days!

This would be a shot I took when the game went into open beta in November of last year, taken on my old laptop (which notoriously had issues with the game). Damaris began life here in the beta, where I discovered my love for the trooper class. This was her trying to look badass and me attempting to put together something that looked a bit nice given my limited graphics capabilities. It was a victory screenshot, once I figured out how to get the UI to disappear. >> It’s a nice shot, regardless, though.

Next up is my LotRO folder! No subfolders here, either, sadly, so I had to go with the sixth screenshot.

Engeled talking to Amdir waaaaaaaaaaay back in the day

This takes me back. XD Back when I first started playing LotRO, my main was Engeled, a woman of Rohan and a hunter. This was back before they made all the changes they’ve made to the racial starting areas, so you ran into Amdir right away as a human as opposed to Strider like you do now. I also felt the need to chronicle everything then, so the subsequent screenshots consist of the story as it was then, with Amdir telling you about a couple of hobbits who were captured and how you have to save them. I remember feeling very epic after I finished that starting area, just because you run into one of the Black Riders before the flames stop him from getting next to you and the two hobbits you just saved from brigands.

*******

The rules state that I’m now supposed to tag people to do this. Unfortunately, I can’t keep track of who has and who hasn’t, so I’m going to put the challenge to the world at large now. Show off some of the images in your screenshot folders! Have fun with it, too! You might find something you didn’t expect to see again.