Hail
to all members of the Valar Guild!
It
is I, Eonwë, and
I hope this e-mail finds you well. It is that time once
again to make sure your gaming information is up to date on the
Games Site. Many of you know the drill already :}
Each
year, the slate is wiped clean, and the Games Site is repopulated
with the current gaming information of the membership. Why?
So hopefully you can find other members who play the same games
you do :} It also lets us know that your e-mail is working and
that you're still interested in being a member. Sometimes that's
the only way we know.
What
I'm looking for:
- What
online games do you currently play that you'd like to be
able to find other guild members playing?
- What name would you
like to be found under there?
- If you play on a
multi-game platform, i.e. Battlenet or Steam, You can let us
know that as well (for Blizzard games at least, Battle.net is
a given). If you'd like your name there listed on the Games
Site, you can provide that.
In Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft, we
have guild branches that members can bring their characters
into.
In LotRO, our main server is Landroval, but we also have
a kin on Crickhollow and also on slower-going Treebeard server.
The faster Shadowfax server was retired in May shortly after it
caught up to the main servers. Treebeard server is still
accessible and sits at the Riders of Rohan expansion. It's
expected to move to the Helm's Deep expansion on December 6th.
The most recent update added River Hobbits as a playable race.
Get all the info on LotRO at https://www.lotro.com/.
If you're interested in joining us in LotRO, contact Varda.
In WoW, our main server is Lothar. WoW's current
expansion is Dragonflight. Content has been coming at a regular
pace, and 10.2: Guardians of the Dream, is the next up on the
schedule. Blizzard has been working to lift some of the grouping
and guilding restrictions that have existed for most of WoW's
lifetime, including cross-faction guilding and cross-realm
grouping. Unfortunately, the cross-faction guild part requires
being on the same realm as the guild. We have a Battlenet Group
to be able to chat across Blizzard games, and a WoW community to
be able to chat inside WoW across realms. If you're interested
in any of that, I'm to guy to speak to.
Of course, you don't have to just wade into a game and
hope you run into someone. You can e-mail us, or you can send us
a message on the Forum (and also post, chat, etc. there with
other members as well). Or, for a livelier, (relatively)
real-time conversation you can join us on Discord. That's where
you can find us sporadically (as our schedules allow) during the
week, but the best chance to run into not just me or Varda, but
many other members, is at the Sunday Meeting. Every week at 5pm
US East Coast time, like it has been for the last couple of
decades :} E-mail Varda if you need help getting into our
Discord channels: varda.elentari@gmail.com. Once
you're in, you can see about joining us in LotRO if you haven't
already, or WoW, or get some buddies for Diablo 2/3/4/Immortal,
or Elder Scrolls Online, or Starcraft 2, or play some online
chess, or see what's going on in Eve and decide if you want to
give that a whirl :}
Our dear friend Alatar passed at the very end of 2022.
Some of you who were around way back in 2001 may, like me, still
have fond memories of playing the original Diablo 2 and it's ME
mod (created by Varaya and Khan) with him or hearing his
thoughts in the Tolkien section of our weekly meetings of the
time. Some of you may remember him from Dark Age of Camelot.
Some of you may have had a chance to enjoy WoW or City of Heroes
with him. All of you will be familiar with our website: http://valarguild.org,
the
domain and the space for which
was granted by Alatar when long ago our Founder Eru was no
longer able to keep up the domain valar.org.
We were able to unite different sections of the site spread over
different servers onto one and under one domain. For the last
twenty years, his generosity provided us not just web space, but
an online home to share our triumphs and tragedies, to stretch
our creative and investigative wings, to be The Valar Guild.
Poetry, Stories, Art, Articles, Papers, Reviews, News and
Meeting Minutes for those who can't make the meeting, and the
Games Site that prompts this annual e-mail were all made
possible by Alatar. Namarië Al. You will be missed, meldo.
But there were not one but two Blue Wizards, and as Bilbo
Baggins once said: "A light from the shadows shall spring." In
our time of need Pallando has taken up the mantle, and with the
aid of Alatar's family we were able to secure the valarguild.org
domain for our new space and new server graciously provided by
Pallando. Thank you, meldo, for helping us to continue forward.
There were a few hiccups at the beginning, but the vast
majority should be ironed out, and already some tweaks towards
the future have been made. Still, if you see something that
appears to be broken, let me and Varda know.
The Guild's 26th Anniversary is
October 4th. Time to put the new server through its paces, so
don't be shy about getting some contributions in :}
Tolkien-inspired Art, Poetry, Encyclopedia articles, it's all
welcome, as long as it's made by you :} Check
with Varda if you need ideas or details. Don't miss out on
the annual chat marathon! Well, since the channel isn't
going to disappear without us in there, it's not so much a
marathon as it is coming in during the Anniversary week and
saying hi and chatting with whoever might also be popping
in, but it's still fun and you're still welcome to come on
in :} This year it will run from end-of-meeting on Sunday,
October 1st to start-of-meeting
Sunday, October 8th. Hope to see you there :}
Please make sure you respond to the Games Site
Mass-Update E-mail by September 30th. You can
reply to this e-mail, or send me a message on the Forum, or
respond through Discord.
Take care all!
May the stars shine upon your faces!
Eonwë
deneltir@hotmail.com
P.S. - All that is gold does not glitter.
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