The LOTRO Conundrum--Should I Come Back?

So last night I patched LOTRO and sat there very quietly contemplating what I was doing. Do I really want to play LOTRO again or am I just happy doing what I'm doing?



You know . . . it really all boils down to getting some rare face time with my good friend, Calrain. But, on the other hand, how much face time will I really get since I MUST make some agreements up front about playing this game again if I do play.

1- I'm not a raider. I just can't put my 3 kids through the loss of their father for 2-3 hours twice *or more* a week. That's just not going to happen.

2-I'm a limited grouper. Once again, I have to be able to afk when things go down off screen in real life. That means grouping with people that fully understand who I am and how I play (I AM extended AFK man!) . . . and that they take my situation with gigantic chunks of kosher salt. Calrain is one of those people. But will guild peer pressure be hard on me?

3-I'm mostly an unknown soloer in a big big world. In some ways that's actually attractive to me. I don't mind some quiet play taking on stuff that I have no business taking on. My favorite memories of LOTRO are when I soloed Beryl Shard droppers in the Bree Faction dungeons. Will I be able to find the same with Mithril Flake droppers and beyond in the new expansions?

Let me tell you . . . I'm am perfectly content just playing Wizard101. It's totally different from LOTRO and yet has those MMO Fantasy characteristics just like LOTRO. But Wizard101 is FUN and BRIGHT and HAPPY (and I'm arguably "famous" in that game). LOTRO is more beautiful and eerie and mellow (and I'm literally a nobody in that game, which has its benefits ;)). Yeah, both have their moments of boredom and both have their moments of intense excitement, but they are about as opposite as you can get.

You know what really gets me here is the cost. The Mirkwood and Mines of Moria expansion are going to set me back $30 and a 3-month subscription will cost me another $30 . . . that's a year's worth of play on Wizard101. Yes, yes . . . I know there are other options like the $200 lifetime subscription, but I'd still have to shell out $30 for the expansions at this point.

My wife said to me last night as I was sitting there pondering this state, "Well, if you want it, then Merry Christmas." Hmmm. What to do.

Gold Farmer Crackdown and /anon on

Pretty much everybody has figured out in LOTRO that if they type in "/anon on", then the spam from Gold Selling websites goes to practically nothing. This is the grassroots effort to silence the annoying tells that look like these:

It doesn't stop there . . . they also like to send you annoying in-game mail, just like back in good ol' WoW.

I've been collecting these screenshots just to kind of illustrate how nuts it is when you're playing and don't have /anon on hiding you from their sight. The problem with this is that when you turn /anon on . . . you're invisible to your friends list and to the zone you're in. So if you have friends outside your kinship, /shrug . . . who knows if they're online or not. Not me! /shrug

I've turned my /anon off, and here's why: I'm cracking down on these fellas thanks to the "spam" reporting feature. Here's what you do, the moment you receive one of these, find a safe spot, hit escape, select "help," open a ticket, click spam as the type of report you're submitting, and type "spam message from www. wherever the link goes.com" and the person's name that sent you the tell. So far I've reported at least 7 names in the past couple of days, and I will continue to report this nonsense . . . but I have to tell you this feels very much akin to "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root" as Thoreau put it. I feel like a branch hacker.

So what's the root of the problem? Oh man, it goes deeper than I dare shoot in this blog. MMOs have to make games challenging and they have to make earning money somewhat difficult. When things are difficult, they take time. Some people see these games as a type of "work," and therefore buy gold because their time is worth more money to them.

How deep do you really want to go with that?

This whole discussion could also be looked at from a ladder of abstraction view because the root of the problem is a long root . . . where do you cut and why?

I mean . . .

you could blame a particular programmer for not being energetic enough to develop a "cure" for these advertisements that don't involve the player base.

you could blame that programmer's boss for not directing that programmer.

you could blame Turbine for introducing the refer a friend program, which means gold spammer advertisers get 5 free accounts to spam me with.

you could blame MMOs in general for how their business models are.

you could blame the 3rd level of Maslow's hierarchy.

on and on and on ad nauseum. But, for now, what we have in the LOTRO world is a spam reporting feature. I guess I'll take it and use it.

Although, one warning, when you report spam . . . you get spam . . . thanks Turbine, what in the world are you thinking with this deluge of e-mails to my inbox?

Functionality Toggling

First off, here's what the folks at Turbine have given Minstrels for instruments:

Superior Lute
Serenade Defense Vital Cost Modifier: -15.0%

Superior Flute
Serenade Utility Vital Cost Modifier: -10.0%

Superior Harp
Serenade Offense Vital Cost Modifier: -10.0%

Superior Drum
+15% Ballad Damage
+10% Ballad Power Cost

Superior Theorbo
Threat Reduction During Combat

Basically the only two that people really use are the superior drum or the superior theorbo. Soloing, you throw on your drum . . . group, you throw on your theorbo. It's our way of toggling our abilities to some extent. Now to the outside observer +15% to damage is nothing to shirk about, but I have to tell you that it's not that big of a boost and the power cost is not that big of a power cost. As for the Theorbo, there's no real way of telling your threat in this game aside from mobs leaving their dance partners for you. Tell you what though, strap on your theorbo and add some lute strings of subtlety and you're not going to attract much attention if your tank is even halfway decent.

I just think that the potential for doing damage as a minstrel is kind of poor. Especially AoE. To get to an AoE spell, a minstrel has to cycle through 3 tiers of songs until they can get to an AoE blast, and even then . . . it's kind of pathetic. The legendary aoe blast (which is also a tier 4 anthem) actually does put out some pretty decent damage . . . the problem is the refresh on this thing is horrible; we're talking 15-20 minutes to refresh here.

I like the idea of functionality toggling. If I'm in a group with 3 healers, I think I'd like the ability to toggle my healing off and turn my damage on and turn it on big time. The introduction of these instruments and the threat reduction string for the instruments is a step in the right direction. I would encourage more of this and encourage the ability to damage dump AOEs more frequently. I don't want to have the best dps in the game . . . but I like the idea of trade-offs for the group or the solo'ers sake. If we have strings of subtlety, can we also get drum heads or drum sticks of amplifiction that would boost my damage and extra 15% and an extra 10% mana cost? Options = good.

the fun . . . um . . . or cool factor in LOTRO

I was just reading an article comparing WoW and LOTRO and the argument seemed to be stemming around what was innovative and what was fun about the two games. I borrow a couple of those ideas below. Anyway it got me to thinking about what y'all are finding fun in this game and what fun are you having here in this game, that you couldn't have in another game.

1- /Music—For me, I've been liking the /music command. I don't think I've ever seen that in another MMO. I haven't been going crazy with it or anything, but I think it's a cool idea. I wonder if there are any rare musical instruments out there for the /music command. That would be awesome.

2- The LOTR story elements—You're not going to find them anywhere else.

3- The titles—They come quickly and with a variety. It's just a fun option.

4- Built in VOIP—It was a smart move. I don't know how it implements in a raid setting, but it's a good step in the right direction.

5- Evil is evil—You know in WoW how if you came across a horde player, you'd type /wave and kind of run past them . . . and in EQ, iksars were just good buds with wood elves outside of their towns. In LOTRO, evil is evil and you can't play evil outside of the MP. Evil isn't just a misunderstood group of opposing races.

6- I don't know a lot of people—there's kind of an initial rush for me of trying to get to know new people without coming off as a complete freak. The people that I do know that are in this game already are great people from a previous guild I was in.

Other than that, I can go on any other MMO and find a quest to kill X amount of this or that or gather an amount of this or that and turn it in for xp and gold or items. I'm not sure if I've yet found the "coolness" factor in this game, though. There has to be something that really makes it sing, or this is going to be a short trip in this MMO for me. I need the coolness factor.

I have no idea what end game gear is going to be like. Hopefully that is where the really cool stuff goes down or that is where I will feel like I've been through or witnessed something amazing.

Please feel free to chime in if you have an opinion about it.

ding and dang 15

Last night I had both my first death and I dinged 15. It was funny because in the morning yesterday I was killing mobs 2 or 3 levels over me and doing really well. At night yesterday I couldn't deal with a simple even con bear. /boggle. I wrack it up to just being tired. I had healing potions and mana to spare when I died. Oh well . . . at least I got the level 14 title, "indomitable," for not dying up until that point.

15th is a cool level for a Minstrel because we get the medium armor trait. On the forum boards it's being debated on the usefulness of using the limited trait slots for medium armor. Those arguing for medium armor say that medium armor is more plentiful and has better stats. Those arguing against medium armor are saying there's really no difference and I can be better served with a different trait in that slot.

When I logged out last night, I was at the feet of the guy who runs you through the quest. I'm looking forward to completing that the next time I log on. Can't do that this morning though since the servers are down for maintenance.