#lotro screencaps

[vandacarnelme]

On the 19th of October, at the Old Secret Door, 'Here on Durin's Day Thorin II Oakenshield King of the Longbeards son of Thráin son of Thrór unlocked this door,' the runes begin.

[lesbiansforboromir]

Canonically queer characters within - Lord of the Rings Online

[heroineimages]

I know that place!

This game is gorgeous an internet's age later

[fash1onable-late-for-lotr]

Visited Chetwood again for the first time in forever and Síladis and Utred got a breather from everything.

Síladis wanted to go to the waterfall...and we did go on top of it and she fell down. We’re not allowed to talk about that

(I remember when i first came here i thought this was the most beautiful forest in the game but i have been bamboozled over and over again.)

[elesianne]

LotRO screencaps again...

I’ve continued my journey through Gondor in Lord of the Rings Online. My progress is slow because I keep going back to do dailies in Ringló Vale, Dor-en-Ernil and Lebennin, and also since Thursday there is a festival again, Summer Festival. I’ve never done quests for that one before :)

Screencaps behind the readmore.

There is ash in the air in eastern Gondor; the fruit of war. There are also dramatic ‘sunrises’ in the area covered by the darkness that Sauron sent before the battle of Pelennor fields, very blood-red, and distant thunder (Mount Doom?) in the eastern sky.

With the aid of my husband’s Champion that he hadn’t played for years, I was able to complete the epic battle of Retaking Pelargir, and was pleased to proceed with the epic storyline (which follows the book). It was cool to see Aragorn dismiss the Army of the Dead, surrounded by his loyal Grey Company as well as warriors of Gondor and the standards of various Gondorian fiefdoms. There’s the banner that Arwen made for him behind him, as well :)

I ran into Denethor’s sisters! Both of them ordered my character around. I like that this game has added female characters and has them also in positions of power. This sister of Denethor, Terenis, was stern but more reasonable than her brother.

It is very pretty in Imloth Melui. I’m questing there at the moment.

In more sunny climes, the free peoples are celebrating summer. Unfortunately this involves a lot of fishing. I’m not very keen on it. I’m still doing it though, for the mounts, warsteed cosmetics and cosmetic pets.

There’s a bit of a crush in the festival area around the Party Tree, and a bit of lag as well :/

[loremastering]

daerhovan tries to convince eruingil to come back to the library. inspired by a rp scene. 

[90sgimli]

PLEASE I PLAYED LOTRO FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FOREVER AND I ALMOST CRIED WHEN I SAW LOTHRANDIR.

Calenglad too?? Let me guess Daervunn will join us too and we will have a bigass feast and i’ll be broke af afterwards

Also Gondor is so gloomy it looks like even the sky is waiting for me to drop dead in any second.

And i met Jajax again!! Pls i love him

Ahhh i missed this game so much

[heroineimages]

Bless you, LOTRO

Been playing Lord of the Rings Online off and on again here lately. You've no idea how happy it makes me to see shieldmaiden NPCs when I'm traveling through Rohan.

[housedzemael-archived]

build a boy workshop, lotro edition

[middleearthwisdom]

[morwensteelsheen]

sorry but jesus christ ive just seen this screencap of faramir & éowyn in lotro and im absolutely pissing myself with laughter

every bit of it rocks so hard but éowyn being as tall as him? like i know there are only so many ranger models but what a chef’s kiss galaxy brain decision there. phenomenal. love it. hellaciously chaotic energy on display.

[vandacarnelme]

Showing off Nisar's outfits and associated pets :)

[heroineimages]

LotRO was my first MMO, actually. I still have kind of a soft spot for it and really should try to make more time to play.

I love LotRO so so much I love it so much none of you understand how much I love LotRO, they're literally going to do a version of Gondor without the shadow so we can see it in the light of day, we're going to UMBAR next expansion and I TRUST them to do that well, I trust them to be not weird about it!!!! IT'S INSANE, I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH

[fash1onable-late-for-lotr]

BYE THIS PLACE IS SO PRETTY AND JAJAX IS LITERALLY THE BEST- I WILL SUE IF HE DIES

[elesianne]

Screencaps again

Because of nice rewards of summer festival + a lot a time to play I’ve been doing festival quests on several characters.

This is my level 102 Rune-Keeper Celibrael feat. a lovely Shire sunset. She didn’t have this grumpy a face when I made her years ago. She likes roasting monsters and fancy dresses, and making jewellery (she’s my Tinker).

(On my main Hunter again) There is so much fishing to be done... I don’t do all the fishing quests every day though, I don’t have the patience.

This is my first LotRO character, a hunter called Faerinthien. I levelled her to 65 years ago, playing together with my husband on his Champion. Since then Fae has only gained levels doing scholarly crafting and occasional skirmishes when my husband feels like playing LotRO.

The Perfect Picnic instance is amusing. I love the rainbow that you get at the end after defeating Downpour.

I bought a Gil-Galad statue for my garden.

[smol-nevi]

I don't generally make this kind of thing a habit, but I think if you happen to be on the Crystal RP Discord, aka @crystal-rp-ffxiv, you should probably be aware of this kind of behavior, so here goes.

If you're on Crystal RP and the admin team decides they don't like you, you're going to be living under a microscope while they wait for you to mess up, if not bait you, probably while making up conspiracies about you as well. As for how I know this, I was a moderator for about a week's duration and saw it first-hand.

Unapologetically lengthy post. Receipts in the link above, long version below the cut.

From the first time I looked in the mod chat I knew something was wrong. I read backwards in the channel, thinking I'd acclimate myself and see what kind of rules precedents had been set and that sort of thing. I mostly just found out that they had it out for a particular member (at the time using the name Jericho) for not much reason. They'd spent a troubling amount of time over the past few months watching him and another member like vultures, believing them to be the same person and waiting for them to make some kind of mistake that would justify banning both of them...despite keeping different schedules, having different personalities and typing habits, and visibly being two different people. The admin team had come to the conclusion that Jericho was a troll who wanted to make them look bad, and anything he said or did was scrutinized to a ridiculous degree for evidence that would corroborate their belief.

Except none of the things they believed at all were true: he'd had a minor argument via DM with the head admin Benjimir Thursby's wife, Tessariel Aerlinn, who had made an overly broad statement about anime and Asian culture. Jericho had told her that overgeneralization about 'Asian culture' is potentially racist, and she became extremely angry, saying that because she's Asian, she can't be racist against Asians. After that, it seemed that Jericho was considered fair game for whatever retaliatory actions the two of them could justify.

Even a cursory glance at actual racism in Asia pokes Tessariel's statement entirely full of holes, and having personally read the conversation I didn't see anything actually inaccurate in his statement even if she believed it didn't apply to her. I asked what he had done that would merit such a response, because it felt very disproportionate to anything I'd ever seen him do publicly, and that was what I was told. The exchange via DMs had been screencapped and kept in a channel for evidence, and while I didn't get a copy of it, I did read it, and I said that I thought it sounded awfully one-sided and punitive and would have been much better as an actual conversation. I also expressed that I was concerned how much of the channel had been solely devoted to what was basically a witch hunt, considering that some of the server members had over the course of the past couple of months commented that the admins' behavior towards Jericho seemed biased.

I basically got a pat on the head and told that my opinion was "valued" but wrong. This would happen a lot over the course of the week.

Shit continued to escalate. Their favorite punching bag, who was acutely aware of the grudge by now and probably trying to be nice and discuss something that he thought they could all talk about, brought up some articles that stated that LOTRO might be having a graphical overhaul. This actually ended in him being put into some kind of time-out mute, because "everyone knows those articles are debunked already" despite them still being hosted on reputable games news sites. Back-channel, the admin consensus was that he was in fact trying to bait Benjimir and Tessariel into somehow looking stupid in public, because [paraphrasing] 'he knows how important LOTRO is to them.'

Benjimir in fact went off publicly about how he knows the dev team and they sent him 'personalized swag' for 'being himself' and that everyone should just listen to him because he's right. Someone else made a reasonable request for sources on statements that Benjimir made about the LOTRO improvements not happening, and they immediately became the team's private #2 punching bag.

The whole time I reiterated that this was really uncomfortable and I had serious concerns about the way they were handling Jericho. And as always I received a pat on the head and was told to not worry about it, there were really good reasons for it, really. He was 'bringing down the quality of discourse' on the server somehow. Benjimir decided that the only way he would unmute Jericho is if Jericho talked directly to him, and that Jericho tried to talk to any of the more level-headed members of the team first was taken as obvious evidence that he wanted to evade rules and create problems. I asked when we planned to unmute him, and Tessariel immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had messaged me, which wasn't incorrect but the way she worded it felt highly accusatory and I was beginning to feel that I was also in trouble somehow for not agreeing with the rest of the team.

Things came to a head quickly when I woke up and looked at the mod chat and they were having an animated conversation that started with Benjimir asking if it was 'bad that he was laughing at Jericho' and most of the rest of the team talking about how he was stupid, uninformed, a troll, etc. for the sin of having some misgivings about cryptocurrency, of all the things. One of the mods self-described their behavior as bullying. I said that this was extremely unprofessional and that I thought they should keep conversation to actual moderation matters, and if they had a personal disagreement with a server member they should handle it in a personal venue, not via official server moderation channels.

I was, for the final time, patted on the head, and told that this was not something they would consider, because the moderation team 'needs to be able to vent for their mental health' (never mind that the job was not stressful except for the rest of the team committing worse behavior than the server members) and that maybe I was in fact too sensitive for the job. Benjimir heavily implied that I had become too close to Jericho and was being manipulated, managed to misgender me somehow despite my having used solely male or neutral pronouns the entire time I'd been on the server, and after relating a story in which a couple of years ago a well-liked moderator left after having the same complaints as I did (which he saw nothing at all troubling about), suggested that I should be demoted to babysitting the lore channel.

So I took some time to collect receipts, which are linked at the top of the post, and told him where to shove it.

Since that time, things have actually somehow gotten worse on Crystal RP. Benjimir posted an entire page screed vaguely talking about "rampant negativity" that stated anyone with questions should DM him.

Upon DMing him with questions, Jericho was banned, the only reason given being that he was a 'poor fit' for the server in some vague way. I was immediately banned afterwards for calling out this decision as being driven by a personal vendetta in the feedback channel and let him know afterwards via DMs in no uncertain terms that I had logged everything I needed and would be building my case (and that he is an asshole). Jericho was reinstated, though I'm not sure what the conditions of his return were as that was after my ban and I didn't ask since I didn't want to stress him out further. Benjimir also reprimanded someone for discussing asexuality, stating in a DM to them that the conversation was somehow ERP related. I called him out on this via DM as well. Tessariel was not much later caught posting my last DMs to Benjimir in an entirely unrelated server, though she didn't include the part after that where I brought up his aphobia (during Pride Month, in a server with a rainbow icon no less). Benjimir for some reason decided to suddenly start following my FC's Tumblr well after our falling-out.

And as of today (6/24), Crystal RP now has seven pages of draconian rules, because it wasn't micromanaged hard enough before or something. Notably, a lot of these rules describe behaviors that they wanted to punish Jericho for but couldn't at the time justify, or that they'd like to punish me for but have nothing they can do to me. Or they exist to justify their own behavior, as now seen in the very beginning of the channel:

"This approach also provides our volunteers with leeway to act in good faith without the burden befitting a professional occupation."

"So we afford them the means to speak openly, vent, lament, candidly and yes, sometimes crassly and raw about everything and one."

Not only did they behave unprofessionally and shit-talk before, they have now encoded in the rules that this is acceptable and even good moderator behavior, because they saw someone else do it so it's fine (a lot of this wording is very similar to what I was told when I protested it). So rather than address anything I ever said past or present, Benjimir is choosing to double down and giving himself and his team explicit permission to be shitty, right in the opening paragraphs where you'd have expected a mission statement or at least some sort of welcome.

Which is about all you need to know about that server and its owners, in my estimation. I'd considered not even posting to Tumblr about it, but given that it's only getting worse, I think it should be generally known that this is how you can expect to potentially be treated.