All Grey 2 Me

I have to admit, there is ONE good thing about many MMOs copying the DikuMUD style formula slavishly and following the EQ/WoW rising level cap strategy as well.

Despite the trivialization of the achievement 'grind' and whatever happy loot one 'worked' to attain, the uselessness of entire areas and mobs which have become nonrelevant to those hoping to gain xp (aka 95% of the MMO populace), the happy accident of mobs and quests becoming "all grey to me" in LOTRO is a boon in disguise.

To a (solo) explorer of land area, zones and content anyhow.

Some peaceful grinding of local wildlife later (animal pelts, planting seeds, chopping down walking trees...okay, there were also some half-orc brigands in the mix), I was a happy level 49.

Except for a slight OCD irritation at seeing heaps of Scholar nodes that were one tier too high for me to harvest.

It seems the new region of Eregion was built to address certain shortcomings in crafts like cooks and scholars, because I couldn't walk five metres without stumbling over a blackberry, blueberry or strawberry bush, or honey - as contrasted with going 500 metres in other zones and not seeing a single harvestable resource.

That, and I think the majority of people being at the new level cap of 60 leaves a lot of the early zones free to respawn their nodes, rather than get farmed to death by scores of people hoping to level their crafting skills.

Whatever the case, this is a good thing. Except for the fact that I couldn't harvest the nodes because of my slackard crafting ways.

Deciding to turn over a new leaf, and take a break from slaughtering local wildlife, I backtracked to an older zone in the hope of finding scholar nodes from the tier I still needed to work on.

While galloping around lost, searching vainly for ruins, I noticed that the elite Troll mobs in the zone were all grey to me. Hey... didn't I have an epic book quest that I had been stuck forever at, where I had to go to the DEEPEST chamber of three troll caves? (Group quest, of course, but I had never found -anyone- in the same range as me when I needed to do it.)

Glee. Perky goth glee, when I noticed that the epic book quest was now a glorious GREY in color. I charged into the nearest troll cave I could find, and sure enough, all the nasty trash trolls inside were a happy grey and completely ignored me.

Carefully NOT clicking on them (as they could still kick my ass if aggroed,) I ran full tilt through the mini-dungeon towards the end, and right into the arms of a bigger troll that attacked.

EEP.

Turns out he was one level higher than the rest. I had been right on the level range edge. Fortunately, after some scrambling to get my combat hat on, the inherent diku dismissal of near-grey mobs in the combat mechanics allowed me to dodge/evade/block/parry most of the hits and I whittled the thing to death.

Seems I might finally be able to progress with this epic book at last.