Alt soulution

Well, I have decided to just focus on the burglar in LotrO. It is my oldest character there, and I find the play style more satisfying than the minstrel, so I shall stick with it. I have not been spending too much time in Middle Earth this week, mostly due to being very busy with real life. I have a huge pile of group quests to get through, and I might try to plough into them this afternoon.

I have downloaded and installed the Warhammer client in anticipation of open beta, though it looks like I will not actually get to take part. As far as I can tell, the only way to get open beta access is to order the digital version of the game, either through the EA store or Direct2drive, both of which are charging £10 more for the game than most other online retailers. I want a boxed copy, and I do not feel like being charged more money, so I shall miss out. Seems that new MMOs have a strange concept of open beta these days, what with this situation and also Funcom operating a similar pre-order only access, and charging for early access. It is a disturbing trend. I have been in open beta for almost every MMO that has been released in the last 4 years, without being charged or having to even pre-order. Oh well. I should at least get access to the head start on the 15th, so not too much longer.

Alt trouble

Still spending far too much time playing LotrO.

After playing a human burglar up to level 19, I finally succumbed to the temptation of rolling another character - a hobbit minstrel. Then after a few days playing that character, I realized that I prefer hobbits to big folks, so I started playing my year old level 21 hobbit burglar, and I have ditched the human.

I see playing the human as a good training exercise, getting me back up to speed with all my burglar skills, but still...

Now I keep having the problem that half the time when I am playing one hobbit, I am sort of wishing I was playing the other. I have a real problem with alts, it is just too tempting to try out a different set of skills and equipment. Even in single player games like Morrowind, I end up starting several characters, and losing focus on progress. Thank goodness for party based single player games. 

I have already narrowed down my Warhammer character choices to three, which is still alot, but was hard work. Speaking of Warhammer, EU pre-order open beta partners are finally announced tomorrow.

Community

Playing LotrO on and off for the past few days, I have really been struck by how in generally the community feels very good on my server. I did encounter a few annoying players, one spamming the LFF channel, and one spamming me with fellowship invites in the wilds. ( Random group invites are a real annoyance to me. If you cannot be bother to at least send me a tell say "want to team up" first, then I certainly cannot be bothered to group with you. It is disruptive and rude. Grrr!)

It is a funny thing that your initial choice of server, and the resulting quality of community there can influence your experience of the game so strongly. I wonder if I would have stuck with WoW for so long if I had clicked the next server down on the list all those years ago.

I am really enjoying my experiences in LotrO again, though I cannot help but think I will get bored in the early twenties again. It certainly feels like it will keep me going until Warhammer is released. 

I *want* to group

It has been written about elsewhere that there seems to be a growing trend in MMOs that is needs to be easily possible to play solo all the way to the level cap. Personally I find this rather disturbing. A major part of the reason for playing an MMO for me is the potential for interaction with other players, and I mean interaction beyond just having a guild chat window open while I play. 

I remember in my first day playing World of Warcraft, I had been soloing along in the starter night elf area, learning about the mechanics of the game and how my small set of skills worked, and eventually I found myself around level 8 at the entrance to a dangerous looking Barrow Den. Fortunately three other players showed up, and after a brief chat we decided to join forces. This was my first ever group in WoW, and it was amazing. Suddenly seeing how different classes worked together, getting into much bigger battles than I had ever seen before, sharing jokes and helping each other out ( remember, this was the early days long before a pug became a thing to dread). From that point on, I actively sought out groups for dangerous quests, and it is how I made a good bunch of friends and found a great guild.

These days, WoW seems to be trying to eliminate this sort of behavior, as Blizzard is mainly concerned with getting a new player to Outland as fast as possible. The speedier leveling means you can easily ignore the harder quests you are given. I remember Uldaman quests sitting in my logbook for weeks, now the would be gray in a few days as I level beyond them. The changing of many world monsters to non-elite also adds to this, and seems completely pointless to me. Killing the ogres in Loch Modan was not only an excellent way of teaming up and meeting people, it was great practice for what to expect in instances, and always felt like a rite of passage with a new character. Now you can solo it.

Sorry, I am not intending this to be a rant about WoW. I like being about to play my character without having to group all the time too. I like for there to be plenty I can do alone. But I do believe that at certain stages you should need to interact with the other players in the world, and there should be plenty of incentive to do this (and not just instanced dungeons). From what I can tell, Warhammer seems to encourage grouping with things like public quests and the open party system, and that makes me hopeful. 

Hi, I'm new here.

Following on from my previous (and only) post, I have been thinking a little about the concept of what it is like making a fresh start in an MMO that has been plodding along for many years. I have been present at the start of a fair few online worlds, specifically Eve, World of Warcraft, LotrO and Age of Conan. I love the first few weeks, where everyone is gradually learning their way around and communities are forming. It seems to me that people are just more open in these stages, and my friends list always grows rapidly in this period. 

After a while, it seems that people are already involved in their own communities and focused on their activities, and there is much less stopping to socialize with strangers, and a lot more running about concerned with your own list of errands. For some reason, Age of Conan was like this right from the start, bypassing the first stage. I blame their ridiculous zone instancing, which is good because is fragments the population of zone and minimizes lag, but very bad because it fragments the population of zones and minimizes the amount and variety of other players to interact with. It is certainly one of the top three reasons that I left that game, but that is a subject for another post, or maybe not.

Anyway, I started characters in two old MMOs this week, the venerable Final Fantasy XI which is nearly six years old, and Lord of the Rings Online, which has been going for about a year and a half. Well, FF XI is hard work! The biggest issue for me is finding my way around the cities. In the times I played before I always started in Windurst, so for a change I started in  San d'Oria this time. Instantly I remembered how long it took me too learn where everything is in Windurst, and the prospect of doing that all again does not appeal. I shall probably just re-roll in the leafy Windurst for the sake of my time and sanity.

Ultimately, I know the game is just too far along for me to consider joining properly. This is an MMO where after about level 10, grouping is pretty much a necessity, and the general lack of low level population means it will really be a struggle to get anywhere. The general user-unfriendliness of the interface and controls (it very much feels like no effort was made to taylor it to the PC when it was ported from consoles) doesn't help either. All in all, it just feels too much like hard work.

On to LotrO. As I said above, I was there for the launch of this one, and had a very enjoyable few months adventuring in the Shire and beyond. Eventually a few of my good friends left the game, and the more time I had to spend in Bree and it's surroundings the more generic and bland this part of Middle Earth felt to me, and so I drifted back to Warcraft. I returned to LotrO at the start of this year, just playing with a friend, and had a great time, but again drifted away once I got into the early twenties. So, third time lucky, I wonder?

It has been a promising start. When I played before, it was on an old PC that could just about run the game with low to medium settings. My current PC can run everything at full, and it looks great. It never felt very smooth before, now everything flows along nicely. I started a human burglar. I already have a level 21 hobbit burglar, but I wanted a fresh start, and I thought that maybe if I start in the human lands, I may get used to them and not find them as generic as I did before. 

I would like to see what is beyond Breeland, as I did think there was some great design in other parts of the world, so hopefully Breeland is just a brief dip in quality. That is the current theory I shall delude myself with. I do not feel that enthusiastic about the Moria expansion, I must say. I would have been much happier with something like Mirkwood, or Rohan. Moria just feels too small in my mind. Regardless, I am feeling that LotrO will certainly keep me interested until Warhammer comes along next month.

Level 1

Currently my gaming habits are in a curious limbo. My on again/off again relationship with World of Warcraft is in a 'let's have some time apart' phase. I cannot imagine getting sucked back in, but I have felt that way in the past and somehow ended up completely hooked again, so who knows?

Mainly I am patiently awaiting Warhammer Online. Hopefully the NDA will drop this week and the internet will be filled with interesting info. I will be playing the game in about a month (hopefully earlier, depending on the open beta / head start situation ), and I am thinking of a stand in MMO to play while I wait. 

I have been toying with the idea of heading back to Everquest 2. I spent a month or so exploring Norath as part of Sony's cunning Living Legacy promotion, and the is much that appeals to me in the game. The main problem is a common one when investigating MMOs that have been around for a while - I just feel like I am too late to the party. It is hard to find you feet in a world where pretty much all the other players are deeply involved in the higher end content, or are alts who know the game inside and out. I am still tempted by the idea though.

The other game that had been tempting me for some reason is Final Fantasy XI. I have played FF XI for about 3 months on and off over the last 3 years, and I know it is a big grind, and I know that the low level zones can feel very empty (or at least they did on my server), but still I am getting this terrible urge to log in, to the extent that I am currently patching the damn thing on my PC.