Season finale of Lost was on TV a few nights ago. A lot of hopes were put into this one, because that show, no matter how awesome it was when it started, lost a lot of its freshness as the seasons progressed. Lost had such a big impact on how TV shows are made and a lot of TV stations try and make something as compelling  as that pilot episode of Lost (only Heroes managed to get even close though imo).

In the meantime, Silriel and I managed to level to 20! Yay - I can resurrect people now and she gets to wear shiny new heavy armor.

These two things kind of mixed in my mind and that's how this comic got made.

If you don't watch the show or have never heard of it - it's this TV show featuring survivors of a plain crash on a deserted island. I bet though that in any given TV show you would see our characters go for that next level. And since Lost features Dominic Monaghan - one of the actors that played the part of Merry in The Lord of the Rings trilogy the parallel between our site, the game we love and this TV show is easy to make - right? (what was that philosophy - you can connect any two things in the world in three steps - or was that 6 degrees of separation)

It was a long and exhausting fight for our Hobbit hero and his Female Elf mentor. When put up against the 16 day reigning champion - Church Mice - it took all of your help to stay on top.Thanks to the EU LOTRO community we managed to prevail. The battle was won, but not the war. We are pitted against another opponent today so if you have some time go to Webcomic Battle site and cast your vote - may the best fly ... errr ... hobbit win.

I am so not doing this again - I'm a competitive guy by nature - part of why I enjoy MMORPGs - but this was almost too much for my nerves. Puts to test all the hard work we invested into this idea ...

Btw - you can see the final result of the battle below

While browsing the net I came across this site that pairs up webcomics against each other in a Webocomic Battle. I just couldn't resist putting us up on there and we got this notice:
"Congratulations! Your comic, Lotro Life, has made it to its 1st round!

Today it has been paired up against Church mice, which is on its 16th round!"

16th round! I mean 16th! Therefore we are calling out for your help dear visitors. Vote for Lotro Life - increase your karma for today!

By the way, Here is a comic I've seen on there that made me even more worried - so please don't be shy on your clicking.
There are four other Webcomic battles going on so if you don't see us right away vote until you get to our comic.
Thank you all!

While browsing the net for LOTRO related news and articles (and an everlasting battle to promote our young site) I usually come across a lot of fun articles and projects. The LOTRO community feels to be still at its very beginning. There are not that many community created sites and fresh ideas seemed to be few and apart. This seems to be changing as the game world goes into it's 2nd month and the free content update is around the corner.

What I found is that there are the, almost obligatory, big portal LOTRO sites like the ones at IGN, Stratics, Curse-Gaming, and Tentonhammer. These guys are backed up by the big internet corporations but played a large role in promoting the game pre-release. Some of these portals are led by very dedicated people that are true LOTRO enthusiasts like Loktofeit at lotrovaul.ign.com. Tentonhammer's portal is one of the oldes LOTRO communities around as well.

Then there are the gold selling fronts. I have been surprised by how fast the gold selling enterprises have responded to LOTRO release. They have put up sites that feel as if being legit and made by genuine fans, but than you see this huge block of gold selling commercials and every other word in their "articles" is about how you can buy gold... Even our LOTRO top list feels to be a part of this circle along with some sites promoting themselves to be lotro wikis, databases, guides sites, lotro player faces sites, etc. Now I have no proof of my allegations and they are an expression of a personal opinion, but I sure as hell won't be losing my time on these kinds of sites. You'll probably recognize them by yourself.

Finally, coming to the focus of this article are the efforts of individuals that would just like to contribute something to the LOTRO community. The kinship sites, EU and US server "portals", player blogs and some really cool groups of people with unique ideas. We have tried including such sites in our links section but this part of the community is still in its forming stage and we hope it will progress rapidly. Without further ado  here are some interesting stuff we picked up on the net:

- http://www.evernighteurope.co.uk the home for the players of the server Silriel and I play on managed by Nuala in a very tasteful fashion. Great looking site.
- Our friend Trinity from www.female-gamer.com has posted a webcomic of her own which I truly enjoyed. Female gamer is a regularly updated blog and each article is a joy to read so you can check it out without fear of boredom.
- Jesters of middle earth is one of those cool and unique ideas springing from the LOTRO community. They are a group of RPG players organizing really fun and unique events including the "first ever organized conga in Lord of the Rings Online" to the "Battle of the Bards contest" I find particularly cool. Check them out at http://jesters-of-middle-earth.com/
- A Catholic priest doing a podcast about LOTRO - now that is something to check out - http://www.sqpn.com/?cat=34
- Last but not least is the http://savethenorbogs.org/ - an outrageously funny and unique spoof site that sure brought some joy to them gloomy mornings.

So much for this weeks community watch. I hope you enjoy this attempt of ours to bring you some fun sites to browse. If you have any links to recommend don't be shy and post in our Site Suggestions forum or contact us.

P.S. We came across a Russian mmorpg community at leash.ru and guess what - these guys actually translated Lotro Life webcomics to Russian! You can see an example here.

Hobbit Adventurer - sounds like an oxymoron to me. One can always easily imagine living a peaceful life of the small folk, but can you imagine hobbits thinking of living a life of a hero? When the need calls though, small folk can appear to be of a much larger stature. Unfortunately for our "hero" the transition period might last a bit longer than expected and might be a road filled with thorns (or fire, bruises, crazy goblin engineers with sharp tools, etc.)Click here to read our latest Epic comic

You have probably saw in our previous news, that for the last few days we were hunting wolves through the Old Forest, and marking the places where you can find them. During that exhausting work, a nutty idea crosses my mind for the new comic. Don't worry, our Old Forest map for wolves does not have anything in common with this comic:)

Dear visitors we have released new LOTRO guide and improved one of our pages.

- The Fellowship Maneuvers (also known as Fellowship Combos) page has been updated with new information introducing a list of all the conjunctions we could find and some more descriptions on the matter.

- Although we do not intend on becoming a LOTRO database site we do want to provide you with some guides and help in solving things we find a bit harder to grasp or solve. In that quest of ours we have released our first little quest guide for the Quest: Forest Wolves . When we first made the comic about the Old Forest Wolves the response we got had one thing in common - and that is that this was the first time most people ever saw that many wolves in one place. So we went out and combed the Old Forest for you and recorded the locations of all the wolves we stumbled upon.

Hope you enjoy these additions to our site.

WESTWOOD, MA – June 5, 2007 - Today, Turbine, Inc. and Codemasters Online Gaming announced the details of the first free update for subscribers to The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™, the #1 selling PC title in North America, Germany, UK and France. Book 9: Shores of Evendim, the first of many planned free updates to the world of Middle-earth, introduces an entirely new landscape region, over 100 additional quests, the battle for Helegrod raid, nine new monsters and major enhancements to monster play and the music system. The Lord of the Rings Online has been enthusiastically received by many gaming critics, including The New York Times, USA Today, Yahoo!, PC Gamer, GameSpot and Game Informer in the US as well as The Sunday Times, The Guardian, CVG, Eurogamer, PC Juegos and 4Gamers in Europe.

“The Lord of the Rings Online has taken the world by storm and we’re thrilled with the community’s response to the game,” said Jeffrey Anderson, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc. “Shores of Evendim offers an enormous amount of content that delivers even more value to our subscribers.”

David Solari, Vice President and General Manager of Codemasters Online Gaming, commented “We are ecstatic to unveil the first in a long line of planned free updates to The Lord of the Rings Online. In just over six weeks, thousands of players have already experienced the world of Middle-earth.”

As the Fellowship prepares to leave Rivendell, Aragorn must re-forge Narsil, the Sword of Elendil. Gandalf has asked for help in Aragorn’s search of the lands of Evendim for an ancient jewel that once belonged in the sword’s hilt. This powerful relic must be recovered before the Dark Lord Sauron finds it. Players are challenged to secure the valuables of the abandoned city, defy Angmar’s encroaching grip on Annuminas, and aid Aragorn in his quest to re-forge Narsil.

Beginning June 13th, heroes can adventure to the Shores of Evendim, the first of many free updates to The Lord of the Rings Online.

NEW FEATURES:

- Discover Evendim — About 100 miles north of the Shire, in northern Eriador, lies Evendim, a vast region dominated by the Lake Nenuial, the ‘Lake of the Twilight’. On the southern shore, the ancient abandoned city of Annuminas -- the former capital of the kingdom of Arnor ­is well known amongst the Free Peoples. For according to the Legends, amidst its ruins lay a great wealth and powerful artifacts now threatened by evil creatures and the nefarious forces lurking in Angmar.

- Over 100 New Quests — The story continues for players as they aid the Fellowship and encounter new adventures, characters and monsters including the Rogmul!

- Raid in the Battle for Helegrod — Challege the fearsome dragon Thorog in a massive 24-player raid in the Misty Mountains.

- Major Updates to the Music System — In addition to the new percussion and bass instruments, players can now utilize a new music notation system that enables them to compose music offline and upload it to your character in-game.

- New Collectible Armor Sets — Seven new sets of epic armor enable players to gain progressive bonuses for each piece of armor worn from a set.

For more information about The Lord of the Rings Online, please visit www.lotro.com or www.lotro-europe.com.

Week or so ago Silriel and me were questing around in Bree land. Silriel is one of those players that sees a mining resource from miles away - has her vision focused on it and sees nothing else until she sees ore in her bags. On one of those occasions she got her ore and all of a sudden we see "THIEF!" written in our chat window. We look around and there's a dwarf guardian standing there all puffing and smoking with anger. Apparently he was about to mine that resource and something lagged for him and Silriel got to it first. She, of course, had no idea he was there because all she could see was the mining node. Now, this topic has been covered several times by various other LOTRO sites and comics and we wanted to do something special and different. This being our 10th casual comic we wanted to organize a mini in-game event and give a chance to the actual players on our server to get a chance and be featured in our webcomic. And so we announced our first ever Live comic shoot and started spamming the OOC and Regional channels on Sunday night about the upcoming event. The spamming got lost quickly among all the other "LFF Chapter 11s" and "LFM Bone Man" requests but there were a few brave souls that answered our call and joined in on the fun and here we are with our first comic featuring the real LOTRO community. Thank you all very much for helping us and we are looking forward on doing more events like this in the future.

It was a very busy few weeks but we are happy to let you all know about the work we've done on the site and the new stuff available:

- One time use recipes Rare Crafting Component List page has been put up. It lists all the rare components needed for one time use recipes. The list was compiled with help of Fizen's world famous list and we added a number of new recipes we found ourselves as well. The list has full search functionality. (http://www.lotrolife.com/rare_crafting_component_list/)
- Fellowship Combos page has been enriched with new information (http://www.lotrolife.com/fellowship_combos/)
- Our very own forums are up providing a friendly place for LOTRO community. (http://www.lotrolife.com/forum/)
- Wallpapers and Mobile wallpapers sections are up. Enrich your desktop or cellular phone with this selection of LOTRO themed backgrounds.
- RSS feeds for our News and Comic pages have been added so you can monitor when new webcomics are up through your Live Bookmarks or favorite Feed reader.
- We have added Digg and del.icio.us buttons so you can add bookmarks to our webcomics to these communities.

The live comic shoot event went fine as well and we'll be releasing the new comic tomorrow.