1st Weekend in LotRO Has Come and Gone

Oh my... what a great weekend. It's not often that one gets to start a new MMO, have the 1st party in their new house, and enjoy freakin' awesome March/April weather (in Ohio).

Friday I left work early, around 2:30pm, using some Authorized Absence I had accrued from my boss at the day job. The servers for LotRO were up, my wife understood that I would be a vegetable for the rest of the night, and with due reason: Friday night was LotRO's 1st day of Pre-Order Open Beta.

Unlike other Open Beta's, with LotRO if you pre-order, Open Beta is essentially the same as launch. You get to keep your characters you make, up to level 15, and carry them over into the official retail release on April 24th. So I was a little more than excited.

I spent all this time in Beta, since Alpha back in August, and the one thing I always made sure to do was to not delve into the epic quests because I wanted them fresh for release. I started doing them last night with Begud... and I am amazed at just how fun and interesting, heart-pounding, they really are.

A guy in Ered Luin (the Dwarf and Elf starting Area) was looking for help for the quest "Vow of Vengeance." We did that, and he asked if I wanted to help him with one of the epic quests. I figured why not? It was finally for rizzle in the game, and I might as well take advantage of a completely competent player while I had him. :)

We got 4 more to help on the quest chain: 2 Minstrels (healers), a Guardian (Tank), and another Hunter (single-target DPS). I was a Champion (melee/AE DPS), and my new friend was a hunter.

Talk about steam-rolling. We ploughed through those quests, all the way up until we were sent to a new area for the next part of the Epic Prologue. You see, unlike so many other MMORPGs, there's actually a continual and overaching story in LotRO. There should be, I mean, it's Lord of the Freakin' Rings. I won't spoil the quests and their story for you, but suffice to say, they're exciting and brisquely paced. No 3 hour treks through trash-mobs here (at least, not yet). And so, after last night's quests, I'm off to Bree tonight to seek out Barliman Butterbur at the Prancing Pony and inquire about Strider's whereabouts.

I haven't had that much fun in one of these games since I 1st started playing WoW and did Van Cleef back in 2004. If this same sense of awe rides with me all through the epic quest line, I'm going to be one happy camper.

What about you guys? Did anyone here play LotRO over the weekend? If so, how'd it go?

4 More Days...

4 More days and my real time in Lord of the Rings Online can actually begin. Pre-order access to the open beta, with character roll-over into release (capped at level 15) starts on Friday. I am stoked to say the least. LotRO receives a lot of flack around the web for being nothing new. Or for not having magic, or too much of it to some of the Lore Nazis. Me? I enjoy the game. I have since I started in Alpha 2 back in August.

Call me crazy, but I'll simply play what I like. It helps that I love Tolkien, but this could be Asheron's Call 3 or some entirely new IP, and I'd still be playing it. Why? Because what it is as a game works, and works well. LotRO doesn't seek to reinvent the wheel, it just wants to take an already perfectly rolling model of said wheel, add some white-walls and some nifty tread, and roll on.

This is not to say it doesn't have its own new fangled gadgets to play with. Anyone in the beta will tell you the Music system is something out of this world, and Monster Play is at the very least a new take on PvP in these games. But inherently, LotRO is an amalgamation of many past successful MMORPGs. I for one am grateful that they didn't try to be too radical with their design concepts. Other may disagree. But come the 30th, this Friday, I won't be looking back.

MMO Fatigue... Is There a Cure?

One of my favorite bloggers, Tobold, has recently been showing some frustration with the fan-favorite MMO, World of Warcraft. I have to say, I'm right there with him. It's been nigh two and a half years since I started playing WoW, and for a while now I've been suffering from the titular "MMO Fatigue". I'm sick of the game... I don't want to log in... and yet for the past 6 months I've been feeling this way, I keep resubscribing, trying to play, trying to love it once more... but I can't.

I bought the expansion on opening night like the rest of the world, and my fervor and zest for exploring the Outland lasted only as long as it took me to realize I was still just a casual player with nothing to look forward to at 70 except waiting for the level cap to be raised to 80. I'm not a fan of raiding, been there tried it, enjoyed it once or twice, but I prefer small group content.

There is a TON of small group content in the Burning Crusade, but I'm not excited about it anymore. Why? Because I've quickly realized that it's the same as small group content in Vanilla WoW: fun, but with rewards on the lowest end of the totem pole. I love doing the dungeons but it's hard to feel motivated to complete them more than once when you know that you're missing out on the best gear (WoW's only real form of progression at the level cap) by not raiding or PvP-ing. I'd be fine without the good weapons and armor, if only there was a better form of character progression at the maximum level... which in WoW doesn't exist as of this writing.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm sick of WoW... finally. I still have very strong ties to the game, as it was the 1st MMO I truly went full-steam into (not just for a couple of months before leaving), but I think my time with it is done. It really did open up the genre to a lot of people who never even considered it, and it's certainly a high-quality crafted game. One of the best I've played for all intents and purposes, on both consoles and PC... but it's no longer for me.

I also have the feeling many folk like me are realizing it's not for them anymore. The game is more and more shifting into old EQ territory... for the "vocal minority, and less for the non-vocal majority" or something of that nature as Tobold put it. And the more they go into that mentality, the more I feel like I'm being told by Blizzard to GTFO.

I'll wrap this up. I'm sick of WoW, fatigued by the grind, I don't think there is a cure, and I'm now looking forward with cautious optimism at Lord of the Rings Online. Similar mechanics of gameplay to WoW and a host of other classic MMOs, but with a real focus on story, casual play, and equal paths of all kinds to the best of the game. I only hope all that it looks like it will be, it really will be.

AC was and still is friendly to all manner of folks, AC2 was as well, and DDO is more and more. Turbine's the 1st company to cater to casual people with real lives that come before their MMO lives, and I hope that stays true with LotRO... keep Tigole and the like far away from Middle-Earth please. I don't want to be making a post like this in another 2 years for my favorite fantasy setting turned MMO.

Am I alone here? Is anyone else feeling the same way about the 800 pound gorilla that is WoW?