Day 2 -- In game US Cst 6PM-9PM. Look for Percabald on Brandywine.
IMs are private messages, O to friend.
Percabald's Log, MiddleEarth date 2-28-2015.
* First half hour was spent reaching out to random strangers in communities I'm in online and posting tablature for Hey Mister Tambourine Man to Twitter, Imgur and Reddit. I have no idea which subreddit to post to and seem to have gotten some negative cred and a wait on posting links again. Wow, two links is pretty fast to be considered a troll! AND STILL so much crap and dreck winds up on the front page of Reddit! Clearly I have much to learn about proper crap curation.
* Nobody came, or they already have accounts and can easily reach the Shire. I had the unfortunate luck of not being able to get into my LOTRO account that has all the extra instruments to give out to people and a kinship guild formed already, namely the MSTie Mountain Minstrels because I had musical game plans with MSTies from the Cinematic Titanic forum back in 2007 or 8 or so. These digital busking guilds are always a hard clowder of cats to round up, yet I perservere.
* I wonder if the whole purpose of this mission is in error and I am being shunned. I was hoping it would lead to chat room discussions of fandom and music and fun stuff, and I was hoping I would finally see people using this game that has music built into it for actual music. Fighting off feelings of cynicism and sadness and anger that no one is ever social in MMOs, I press on and decide to do some of the Archet quests. It's not that hard to get to the Shire and the Shire is generally more friendly and chatty than the starting area for men/hobbits.
* I am most proud of my memory of these newb quests-- I'm not clearing them all in half an hour like the Youtube video I found said I would, but I know where everything is instinctively and know also I don't need any of the armor I get as rewards and can just choose the one that sells for the most money to put toward buying instruments later.
* I remain at a loss as to whether to stay in Archet or keep progressing toward the Shire. I reach out to people through tells and ask whether they want to play music and get several antisocial no's and one "Maybe later, I'm on an alt and I'm busy now." I wonder what makes people so busy they don't have time for meta gaming. And should I move my video game office hours to 9PM to avoid the dinner hour? That might be a plan for during the coming week. And further evidence of why these best laid plans generally don't work in online roleplaying games.
Office hours officially changing to 9-12, still on Brandywine server.
