Horses, Horses, Horses, Horses Coming In In All Directions

At about half-past one this afternoon I decided to log in to Lord of the Rings Online to claim my free horse and whatever else Standing Stone was giving away out of embarassment after the 64-bit server debacle. As I type this, I still have no horse. It's ten past four and the damn thing hasn't patched yet.

It's not even as though I haven't updated recently. I did it when they announced the compensation package a couple of weeks ago, or at least I think I did. I can't remember if I actually logged in. Even if I didn't get that far, though, you wouldn't think it would take another two or three hours to get everything up to date.

What I'd been thinking of doing after I chose my horse was to ride around on it for a while, take a few screenshots and cobble some kind of post together from that. Now I don't imagine I'll have time. Even if the thing is done patching in, say, half an hour, which frankly I wouldn't bet on, by then it'll be time for tea and we have to go out after that to vote in the stupid election for the ridiculous regional mayor, that fantasy position one of the delusional administrations of recent times decided would make life in 21st Century Britain feel more like living in the Ruritania of their dreams. Or more likely their old nanny's dreams.

Okay, I suppose we don't have to vote. When the polling cards (Which no longer even do anything since they mandated photo-identitifcation at time of voting, so why they still print and post them is beyond me...) dropped through the letter-box, I said I had no intention of wasting my time on it. But Beryl needs a walk and she likes to go to the polling station because it means going somewhere she's been often enough to remember it but not so often it's well-known to her and that sort of thing gets her very excited, so I guess we may as well. Not to mention that, when you're of a certain age, voting becomes just something you do because it's time to do it, not because you want to or because you care about the result

That said, even though I have neither respect for nor interest in the office, know nothing about any of the candidates and feel confident whoever is elected will make no material difference to anything, I still have my tribal loyalties to enact. It's been quite a while since I was in the happy position of being able to cast a vote expectantly and excitedly in favor of a candidate or a party but I sure have cast plenty as spoilers against people and policies I wanted no part of, so why stop now?

That's five dense paragraphs about something completely irrelevant, not to say inappropriate, given the normal scope and range of this blog, and LotRO is still patching. I think it's past three hours now. I wonder if it stopped when I went to have a lie down after lunch?

I don't usually nap in the afternoons. I'm not that old. It's just that I've had really bad hay-fever this week and it's left me feeling unusually tired and sleepy in the day, mostly because it's made it hard to sleep at night when I'm supposed to.

I lay down and fell asleep for half an hour and then, when I woke up, I stayed there because there was a very good adaptation of H. G. Wells' Ann-Veronica on the radio, with Bill Nighy as Wells and I like both Wells' social histories and Nighy's soothing radio voice, so I stayed to listen to the whole thing. Akso because Beryl came in half way through and asked to get up on the bed and then went straight to sleep and I didn't want to disturb her.

Anyway, following our example, the PC had also gone to sleep when I came back in to check how the update was going (Actually it never occured to me it wouldn't have finished.) so I suppose patching might have been suspended when that happened. I'm not sure how it works. I'd lay odds no other game's patcher would give up so easily, though. The LotRO patcher seems happy to take any excuse not to let anyone into the game.

How do they get away with it? It has to be one of those situations where most people who play regularly are so inured to the iniquities of the software by now they don't even notice them. It's only people like me, who come and go, that complain about it. It's just as well they have a good game and a great IP or they'd have closed down years ago. And then someone would have put up an emulator, which I bet would have patched a damn sight faster, so maybe that's a mixed blessing.

I think I'm going to have to abandon any notion of posting about that horse for now. Or about the game, either. Maybe another day. Not tomorrow, though. I'm going to do a music post tomorrow, or that's the plan. You've been warned.

 

Since this was going to be a horse-related post, though, I might as well throw in something about that extremely odd horse-mystery MMORPG we heard about not so long ago, Equinox: Homecoming. When I posted about I said it was "in production" but it seems it was a lot further along than anyone knew. According to MassivelyOP it'll be playable to all in exactly a week from now, on 8 May.

It isn't exactly "launching" in the accepted meaning of the word. It's going into Early Access with a $25 buy-in. That upfront payment gets you just "eight to twelve hours gameplay" according to the article, which includes "the first act of its greater grim plot as well as multiplayer activities like races, riding clubs, and more".

It doesn't sound like a lot and I wouldn't have considered it but then it goes on to say the game, when it officially launches, will have a monthly subscription, but EA players can avoid it because the $25 pack comes with a lifetime subscription. The MassivelyOP piece is a bit confusing on that point but the game's Steam page makes it entirely clear: "Anyone who purchases the game during Early Access will get a lifetime subscription with no additional, future subscription costs."

I'm not crazy about virtual horses, either racing them or breeding them, but I do like the mystery element and the setting and twenty-five dollars isn't much of a risk. I very much doubt the game will have a sub, or if it does it won't have one for long, but it most probably will always have some sort of subscription-like perks that Lifetimers will get for free, so if anyone has any interest at all in playing, this seems like the time to pony up. (Can't believe I went there...)

If nothing else, since it's on Steam you'll at least be able to patch the blasted thing and log in in less than an entire afternoon, which is very much not the case with LotRO. It's been at it for about four hours now and it's still going...