“Look children, who’s here? It’s Billy Bog-Crawler. Hello Billy!”

<Billy wiggles a greeting>

“Billy lives in a swamp in Mirkwood, where he does nothing all day long. Isn’t that right Billy?”

<Billy nods>

“In fact, Billy seems to be utterly pointless in all respects. His internal organs are not required for any quests in the area, he barely moves from the spot where spawns, and he drops no interesting loot whatsoever. You’re useless, aren’t you Billy?”

<Billy nods sadly>

“Billy isn’t alone, though. He has hundreds of friends just like him dotted all around his swamp. They especially like playing together in the shallow pools of water, where adventurers can’t see them hiding. Do you like paddling in the water Billy?”

<Billy perks up and nods enthusiastically>

“Billy and his friends mainly like to annoy the heck out of adventurers. It’s their favourite game of all. Do you like to make adventurers cry, Billy?”

<Billy nods furiously>

“Billy and his friends chase adventurers for no real reason. They get underfoot when the adventurer is trying to fight mobs that they need for a quest; they interrupt adventurers when they’re trying to pick up an object, making them start all over again; and generally they make a nuisance of themselves. Are you an utterly pointless nuisance Billy?”

<Billy nods sheepishly>

“Billy is very tough. Are you very tough Billy?”

<Billy flexes his head tentacle beard fringe… thing>

“It takes forever to kill Billy, for a small worm he has an astonishing resilience to swords, axes, spears… most weapons, in fact. Not only does he interrupt and annoy, but he can’t take a hint and just f’ing well die either, can you Billy?”

<Billy shakes his head – no>

“No sir. An adventurer might think it wise to just run away until Billy gets bored, but Billy has a very long attention span and will chase you for miles and miles. Isn’t that right Billy?”

<Billy pretends to have been distracted>

“Very funny Billy.”

<Billy rocks his head back and forth in feigned laughter>

“But running away from Billy is pointless because, as I’ve mentioned, Billy has many friends in the swamp. Here comes one of Billy’s friends now. Hello Bernard Bog-light!”

<Bernard bobs up and down>

“Bernard is one of Billy’s friends. Bernard and Billy like to play with the adventurers together, don’t you Bernard and Billy?”

<Billy and Bernard nod>

“Yes sir. Bernard lives in an area where there’s a wonderful debuff that slows adventurers run speed down dramatically and quickly drains all their power. Bernard is a bit of bastard, aren’t you Bernard?”

<Bernard puffs up proudly>

“Indeed. Together, Bernard and Billy play happily together, making the lives of adventurers even more utterly miserable, if that were at all possible. However, Bernard is at least required for a quest in the area, whereas Billy is just pointless. Are you more important than Billy, Bernard?”

<Bernard looks awkwardly around>
<Billy looks enviously at Bernard>

“Oh look, some of Billy’s other friends have come to play now. Here are Barry and Benny, they are Bog-Crawlers too. Barry and Benny are Billy’s best friends, because they’re just as pointless as he is. They all live close to one another, just close enough that an adventurer can’t run past them without having to join in their wonderful games. Billy, Barry and Benny most like to play Let’s Annoy the Feck Out of Adventurers. The best part is when they make the adventurer scream obscenities or cry. Billy likes to watch adventurers cry.”

<Billy nods happily>

“Although they are tough (and pointless) Billy, Barry and Benny are also no threat whatsoever. They barely do any damage on their own, and so all they’re really good for is annoying adventures and getting underfoot in a tough fight or when the adventurer is trying to perform an action. Eventually one adventurer will be so infuriated that they will take the time to turn around and chop Billy and his friends into teeny tiny little bits, and then jump and down on their remains, before urinating on them, and possibly setting fire to the whole sorry mess.”

<Billy looks shocked>

“That’s right Billy, time to die. And although it will be a pointless death, because you are a pointless artificial cock-block of a creature placed by lazy level designers who simply seem to want to make their players regret every moment of their online time and having paid money for such a shoddy, miserable, blatantly obstructive tedious excuse for adventure, there will be a very brief moment of satisfaction for me before another ten of your friends turn up and ineffectively attack me while I try to loot your stupid skinny corpse.”

<Billy begins to back away nervously>

“That’s right: run. See Billy run. Run Billy run.”

<Billy begins to run>

“Run you little bugger. I’m coming for you Billy! I’m coming for you! See Billy? See Billy DIE! DIE BILLY DIE! DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE. AH HA HA HA HA HA…”

Some time later…

“Look children, who’s here? It’s Billy, Barry and Benny. They are dead. Very dead. See them not being alive. Even in death Billy was annoying though, performing some sort of overly dramatic death throe rather than just curling up into a neat little ball like Barry and Benny. Drama queen to the last, weren’t you Billy?”

<Billy’s corpse rolls over slightly as it is kicked>

“Well, it’s time for Billy to go and sleep with the fishes, children. Join me next time when we’re going to go and meet Colin craban and his annoying friends. Until next time children, goodbye. Goodbye! Say goodbye, Billy.”

<Billy’s corpse despawns. Billy reappears.>

“Oh Billy you little rascal.”

<Fade away to the sounds of furious stabbing…>

Playing a Hunter in LotRO after having played a Captain and Warden to the level cap is to suddenly transform from Droopy into Taz. If Droopy had been heavily sedated and Taz was on a really bad acid trip. Ever since I rolled this latest character in my line of LotRO levelling projects I’ve been hanging on for dear life, hair flaming out wildly backwards from a face that is a buffeted dough of skin folds, teeth bared through a gaping fish-mouth, my eyes tiny watery moons resting in the deep dark space of ballooning black hole sockets. I claw desperately at the keyboard with tendon-ridged hands, my legs flapping uselessly out behind me, body freely oscillating in the air in a sinusoidal motion. I am become an aerial banner, towed not by a sedate biplane but by a fighter jet afterburning its way through the sound barrier.

I picture my character leaving trails of flame behind her as she screams through quest hubs; dwarf beards are torn whole from their owner’s shocked faces; aloof elven maidens are humbled and embarrassed, left clasping themselves in a cross-legged half crouch to protect their modesty as their clothes are ripped from their ivory-skinned bodies by the turbulent wake of my character’s passing, like a spontaneous burlesque on fast forward; wildlife in the area appears to simply implode into neat little rows of bags filled with hide and steak. I can see why such a class could garner a bad reputation amongst the general populace, because without taking care not to impinge on fellow adventurers in the area the Hunter becomes a force of unwanted and unwelcome destruction, like a young tornado picking up his date for the prom and accidentally levelling her parents’ house in the process.

It’s worrying to me that both dwarves and elves can be Hunters because, although they share the same starting region of Ered Luin, they start off in separate areas before coming together around Thrasi’s Lodge and Gondamon for the epic storyline and quests. ‘Coming together’ is absolutely right when high speed Hunters are involved, and as the elf and dwarf zones converge on that small central area it must be like the smashing of atoms in a high-energy particle collider. Indeed, Gondamon is ground zero for Ered Luin’s Large Hunter Collider. I would highly recommend sitting in Gondamon for a while in these early days of the free-to-play release (In the US only, not that I’m BITTER!) and enjoying the show as all the new inexperienced elf and dwarf hunters smash into one another at incredible speeds, elves flying off on chaotic arching trajectories with a zinging squeal, like unleashed Catherine wheels, before exploding against the heights of Gondoman’s great walls. The more stout Dwarves, in turn, having had their progress unexpectedly impeded and diverted, stumble and bop along on their bums like bouncing bombs, detonating against the base of the wall and showering nearby NPCs in a hail of armour fragments and beard chunks.

Level twenty has come around so quickly for my Hunter, having rolled her late Sunday evening and played a few short hours each night since, and I can’t see myself stopping for many levels to come. Even if I wanted to. Really. It’s like having a tiger with diagnosed poor impulse control on a leash and then trying to reign it in when it sees a group of delinquent buffalo off in the distance flipping it the bird. I’m just hanging on here for dear life, but in the brief respites where I am actually able to get her to pause – the air-cooled radiator fins protruding from her body glowing white-hot and beginning to steam from the lack of airflow passing over them – I’ll report back to you the progress that has been made. In the meantime just recall the image from the original Superman film of the Man of Steel reversing time by flying around the Earth at high speed.

Then picture me, clinging onto his boots by my finger tips, screaming.