Puzzles have always interested me. When I was young, my favorite game show was Concentration: not for the memory matching game but for the rebus you needed to solve to win. In my work as a software engineer, I am most at home when I am trying to solve something (either determining the best way to implement something or trying to swat a nagging bug).
This naturally has an impact on my gaming. When I look at a game, I am often trying to find out what makes the game tick. This sometimes means that the puzzle I’m trying to solve is not necessarily not the same one the authors intended. While others are trying to figure out the best way to defeat a raid boss, I’m busy trying to figure out the wave patterns of the trash mobs.
My other interest is stories and literature. Some of this is classic literature (such as Shakespeare), but I also read mysteries (which ties into those puzzles), science fiction (how would such as world really work?), and fantasy (what if?). When I give speeches at Toastmasters clubs, they are more likely than not going to contain a story somewhere.
I first read The Lord of the Rings in High School. When the Radio 2000 production of Lord of the Rings was first broadcast, our family would gather every night at the radio to listen to the latest episode. I admit that I was first skeptical when I first heard that there would be an MMO based on the books but I decided to give the game a try during the summer after release and it has been my primary MMO ever since.
Lotro is not the first game where I wrote guides. I once wrote a series of guides on Wing Commander that became infamous enough for one author to speculate that I spent my spare time rummaging thought the dumpster bins of the developers. Instead, I spent time rummaging through the various missions to find out what I could. I do the same with skirmishes in Lotro.
I started using the name Pineleaf on the day Moria launched. I wanted a name that would be suited for a hobbit warden. When you consider the number of characters I had deleted because I didn’t like the name, it was finally nice to find a name that I truly liked. I currently have two wardens at level cap (two different servers so that both could be called “Pineleaf”) and have a Loremaster (Pinestaff) that I expect to be there soon. Why these two classes? Because I feel that these two classes afford the best opportunities to learning how everything works.
When Mirkwood was released, and skirmishes became available, I started to study how they worked. As I worked on this, I began to wonder where would I post this information. I started creating my own blog for this, though I eventually decided that this was not the ideal medium for a good thorough guide. This is what led me to A Casual Stroll to Mordor.
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