Despite having a number of MMOs on the go at the moment, including Warhammer Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, and World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online remains my go-to MMO.

10 VACILLATE OVER WHAT TO PLAY
20 HOVER MOUSE OVER VARIOUS MMO ICONS ON THE DESKTOP
30 CONSIDER BUYING A NEW GAME IN THE STEAM SALE
40 GOTO LOTRO

There’s just something so compelling about the world that LotRO presents: environments in which it’s pleasant simply to exist. I’ve had to curb the time I spend on my static group character due to being in danger of rapidly out-levelling most of the rest of the group; let’s just say that daily skirmishes and rested XP are an unholy levelling alliance: a Wormtongue and Sharkey to scourge static group stability. Having maxed out crafting as far as I can without completing further crafting quests which are currently twice the level of my character, I’ve had to shelve my Guardian for the time being, but the land of Middle Earth continues to draw me in. I spent one evening chatting with kinshipmates (probably better as ‘kinmates’ but I’ve been spending a bit of time in Pirates of the Burning Sea as I mentioned above. Avast kinshipmates!) while I stood beside the fire in the Prancing Pony and played music to passing strangers, adjusting my .abc repertoire to include songs slightly more in keeping with the setting; Enya’s Caribbean Blue works quite well, Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black, not so much. The music system is just one small (oft overlooked) example of why, when it comes to immersing oneself in a fantasy world, LotRO is a world apart. Still, the urge was strong to do something ‘productive’ with one of my characters, after all, I think it was Fargo who defined the MMO player’s mantra while devising an algorithm for his Automated Online Role-Player:

* If there is a status bar, make it grow bigger
* If there is a number, make it higher
* If it moves, either get a mission from it or kill it

I needed to do something, and in LotRO, as in the books it is based upon, there’s always a road leading to somewhere new and interesting.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

“Where many paths and errands meet”; it’s almost as if Tolkien was foreshadowing the coming of LotRO and its errand-based ‘epic’ book content, where heroic warriors of the land spend most of the Third Age of Man carrying messages from one bone-idle NPC to another. When it comes to LotRO’s book content, the road really does seem to go on and on and on. And on.

There and, of bloody course, back again.

Twice.

Honestly, I sometimes wonder if Turbine’s developers took some of those famous phrases a little too literally.

However, having run multiple alts through the low level content while trying to decide which one to settle upon for the static group, I found myself not wanting to play another alt through the early content yet again, so it was upon my level-capped characters that I focussed. They’re pretty complete, or as complete as a non-raiding layabout like myself is ever likely to get them, but the one thing I’ve never managed to do on any of them is… Volume 1 of the epic book content. Thus it was that I grabbed my Warden – soloing machine and small fellowship compressed into a single set of tight leather armour – and began to pick away at the chapters of the book’s storyline that I had yet to complete. I hadn’t completed very much.

Returning to the book content in this way provides a strange juxtaposition of heroism. Turbine provides a buff that allows a solo player to complete the book content at the correct level but without the support of a fellowship; it’s a simple and effective solution to a common issue, namely that it can be quite tricky to find a full group of players all on the same specific step of the book content that you’re on. So Turbine provided a buff that only applies to solo players, if you happen to have a group then you can complete the book content as it was intended, but if you can’t find a group or simply want to go it alone, you have that option. If I were ever to be forced at gunpoint to describe Turbine and their philosophy to games in one word, an unlikely proposition I grant you…

“You! Into the alley, now!”

“Okay! Okay! Don’t shoot! What do you want?! Money? Here’s my wallet! Please, point the gun somewhere else! What? What do you want from me?”

“I want you to describe, in one word only, the general design philosophy behind the games and systems of Turbine, Inc, specifically in respect to their MMO Lord of the Rings Online, but also taking into consideration works such as Asheron’s Call 2.”

“Let me have a look at that gun again.”

Where was I? So the one word I’d use would be ‘options’. It’s another of the things that I enjoy so much about LotRO, that there are so many and varied options, for anyone not doggedly determined to level a character and to hell with any other form of game-play at least. There’s the cosmetic system, the music system, chicken play, monster play, exploration (via deeds or simply because the world is just so darned elegant and worth the appreciation), skirmishes, instances, crafting, housing, titles, and more. There are so many options outside of the standard quest hub shuffle, and now with the introduction of the LotRO Store there are options as to how you go about some of those activities. Let’s not kid ourselves, the LotRO Store is ultimately there to make Turbine money, but the fact that I have the choice to spend some of my money to avoid certain aspects of the game’s grind – aspects that have always been there and have not been introduced in order to force people into the store – can only be a Good Thing. I haven’t taken that option yet, I don’t think the current options are good value for me despite getting a large chunk of free points every month for having been a lifetime subscriber, but the fact that that option is available to me actually makes the grind less of an issue. I find that to be an interesting mindset, and it’s certainly one that works counter to Turbine’s intentions, but having the option to skip the grind makes the grind more palatable. The grind has become a matter of principle not of necessity, it becomes “I grind because the other option is less appealing”, rather than “I grind because I have no other choice”. Thus Turbine keeps me interested and playing their game, and although I’m not likely to spend points on skipping content at any point, a person playing the game is better than one who has burnt out on the grind because they saw no other option, because eventually a player will spend points in the store. Why? Options. The store caters to all tastes, be it stat tomes for the power gamers, cosmetics for the more fashion conscious amongst us, as well as the aforementioned items that allow you to skip various parts of the game’s grind. Eventually most players will find something that they want that’s available to them on the store. Even then there are still further options. Don’t like the thought of being nickel-and-dimed by the store? Then you have the option to subscribe and gain a large chunk of what’s available on the store as part of your subscription charge.

I’ve sidetracked ever so slightly, so I’ll come back to the curious juxtaposition of heroism another time.

I do wonder how much trouble they have in the meeting rooms at Turbine HQ when trying to come up with things to put into the Lord of the Rings Online’s item shop. It’s a game where, despite the frothing rantings of the most rabid of Tolkien’s self-appointed hardcore guards of lore, Turbine have tried to stick to the spirit of the books as much as possible within a game world where boars reproduce by asexual spontaneous self-parturition, and enough of them have by now been killed that you could carpet the whole of Middle Earth with their hides. Three layers deep.

Mini-pets are one class of item that springs to mind. World of Warcraft has an abundance of them, and many players will, for example, go out of their way to spend some of their £15-a-month subscription to play a pared down version of a £5 Popcap game in order to obtain an, admittedly very cute, singing sunflower pet. Warhammer Online has also started to expand its mini-pet lines, and both games offer mini-pets for sale in their minimal digital shop fronts. Turbine doesn’t offer mini-pets, but it has got around to offering its own version of WoW’s sparkle pony; the Steed of Night is expensive and no better than the reputation-based mounts available in the game. However, requiring no time but ‘merely’ money to acquire, the new time-limited-offer mount provides an option for those who wish to shortcut reputation grinds or simply want to show off a bit.

Turbine’s marketing is really starting to push forward their promotion of the store too, understandable since it is the foundation of funding for further development of the game, but it’s a fine line they have to tread, keeping the LotRO store at the fore of player’s thoughts without it coming to dominate the game, break all immersion, and thus drive those same players away. Generally the item prices on the store have been well considered, with the prices tending to hover around the neighbourhood boundaries of Impulse Purchase and Teeth Sucking Indecision. The items themselves are also sensitive to the legacy of the game, with the new cosmetic items on the whole being exciting and yet in keeping with the general tone of the world, although the turtle-shell backpack, which makes the more compact hobbit form look akin to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, is perhaps rapidly approaching the border guard of acceptability, armed with nothing more than a set of false papers, a fake moustache, and a rudimentary grasp of the native language.

Of course the Lore-master class is already able to collect non-combat mini-pets, with Radagast the Brown providing ample precedent with which to fend off the hardlore players, but it must be quite difficult for the developers to resist expanding that functionality to all players and then popping a small petting zoo of animals on the store for five or six hundred Turbine Points apiece. I can only surmise that either the pointy-haired bosses don’t have the level of control over game content in LotRO as they do in other games, or the ground-level developers simply haven’t told them about the possibility and are hoping that nobody notices Blizzard selling mini-pets on their store for £5-£10 a pop. Or perhaps the developers all sit around the table and invent reasons why it can’t be done:

Dev1: “Ah, no, can’t do mini-pets because we, uh, don’t have enough uh…”

Dev2: “… fur… texels? In the, um… badgerenderer pipeline…”

Dev1: “Yes, we’d totally overflow the, ah, yipyap wrapping… map…”

Dev2: “And then we wouldn’t be able to give the dogs a bone.”

Dev1: [rolls his eyes at Dev2]

Dev2: [shrugs ‘What?!’]

Mounts are another option where Turbine could go wild and yet have restrained themselves admirably thus far. The Steed of Night is an extravagance, sure, but it doesn’t sparkle, it doesn’t fly, it doesn’t breath fire or carry NPC passengers in convenient compartments on its back.

It’s not a sod-buggering faux-steampunk motorcycle and sidecar.

It’s a tricky balancing act that Turbine has to perform, and although I am quite fond of my mini-pets in other games, I’m also quite glad that they haven’t become an all pervasive item store status symbol within LotRO as of yet. It only takes one to see a Lore-master running down the street trailed by a train of various pets, mini-pets and mobstacles, looking like some sort of harangued medieval Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, to realise the detrimental effect that releasing mini-pets on Middle Earth would probably have.

The assist window in Lord of the Rings Online is a rather useful tool, allowing the fellowship leader to designate a player as the ‘assist’, at which point a small UI window pops up displaying that player’s unit frame as well as the unit frame of anything they target. In basic terms it allows all members of the group to focus their fire on one target, making the tank’s life easier and generally leading to the group dispatching mobs safely and efficiently.

One does have to wonder how it would be realised in the game world, however. Perhaps the ‘assist’ is simply shouting out what they are looking at for the rest of the group to act upon.

“I’m attacking this Orc!”

“I’m fighting this badger!”

“I’m changing target to this bigger badger!”

“I’m not looking at anything!”

“I’m looking at the tank’s fine arse in that sexy elven armour!”

“I’m looking at an angry tank walking towards me!”

“I’m looking scared!”

“I’m looking at my bloody teeth lying next to me on the floor!”

Watching the assist window outside of combat is the MMO equivalent of getting an accidental call from someone’s mobile phone where the caller doesn’t realise they’ve dialled you up, and where you can hear everything going on in the background at the other end of the line. And as with such a phone call, the assist window leads to quite voyeuristic tendencies. You get to watch whatever the other person is watching. It’s like a double-blind peep show and it can be quite fun to watch the ‘assist’ flicking between various targets as your group wanders along between fights. Of course, as with the accidental phone call, voyeuristic experiences may vary; I wonder if an adventurer has ever left their assist window on after a hard day at work fighting the forces of darkness. What occurs when they travel home and, exhausted, go about their evening routine oblivious to the fact that the rest of their group can still see everything they target…

Groktar: “Night folks”

Groktar -> Map of Recall

Groktar -> Keys

Groktar -> Door

Groktar -> Keys

Groktar -> Bowl

Groktar -> Left Boot

Groktar -> Right Boot

Groktar

Groktar -> Kitchen Cupboard

Groktar -> Bottle of Wine

Groktar -> Cloth

Groktar -> Puddle of Wine

Groktar -> Broken Glass

Groktar

Groktar -> First Aid Kit

Groktar -> Plaster

Groktar -> Cloth

Groktar -> Puddle of Blood

[Various targetings of frozen fish fingers, microwave ovens, baked beans and stoves. Followed by four hours targeting a TV]

Groktar -> Bedroom Door

Groktar

Groktar -> Bed post

Groktar -> Big toe

Groktar -> Axe

Groktar -> Bed

Groktar -> Kindling

Groktar

Groktar -> Pyjamas

Groktar -> Playelf, May 3018 Third Age edition

Groktar -> Sock

Groktar -> Tissue

Groktar -> Sock

Groktar -> Tissue

Groktar -> [REDCATED]

Groktar -> [REDACTED] -> Tissue (Target of Target)

Groktar -> Bin

Groktar -> Duvet

Groktar -> Light switch

Groktar

On further consideration, I might insist that we stick to simple target marking in our group for the time being.

I have to stop playing Lord of the Rings Online. Okay, more specifically I have to stop playing my current character, a Guardian that I’ve created in order to play with the crowd over on the Consoling Gamers forum. It’s a semi-static-group affair, with everyone trying to stay within a certain level band in order to progress through the epic storyline together at the appropriate level, or close thereto.

The problem I have is that I can’t stop levelling.

This isn’t some Altoholics Anonymous confession where I stand up hand-wringing and lip-biting amid a circle of my seated peers, and after some hesitation say “This past week I played four characters through a total of seventeen levels. My name is Melmoth and I have a problem.” And everyone claps and nods and offers hugs while a counsellor initiates a discussion on the side effects and social impact of heavy character levelling, and offers a leaflet detailing the health risks associated with sharing your characters with other users.

The problem is that I can’t stop my character levelling.

Having reached level sixteen and a half, with a very general but reasonable soft-cap of level twenty set on the group (so that we don’t have new players being blasted through the epic storyline by nigh-invulnerable super characters ten or more levels above the content), I decided to stop levelling and flesh out the parts that I tend to ignore on my solo characters, in this case crafting and virtues. I picked the Armourer crafting vocation, and as such I needed to mine ore to feed the Metalsmith profession and kill animals for their hides in order to progress the Tailor profession. Killing animals for their hides gave me XP, and every ore node seemed to be guarded by a crap mobstacle that needed to be killed first, also giving me XP. By the time I’d gathered enough materials to master the first tier of all my crafting professions I had, thanks in part to rested XP, gained the best part of another level. Ding.

Things went further downhill when I decided to work out which virtues would be best for my character, and complete the low level deeds that would give me ranks in those virtues. Unfortunately deeds come, in the main, in two flavours: the genocide of a species of animal or critter in a certain location, or the completion of a great many quests in a certain zone. For the deeds concerning the slaughtering of innocent animals, the Venn diagram intersection of Right Mobs, Right Location and Low Enough Level Not To Give XP was pretty hard to achieve, and seeing as the first two were non-negotiable in terms of getting the deed completed, it was often the last category that had to be sacrificed in order to get anything accomplished; I got plenty accomplished in the end, so much so that I gained another level. Ding.

I was now floating close to the weir of the soft level cap, and despite my frantic attempts at rowing in the opposite direction I seemed to be achieving nothing more than propelling myself into a faster current, thus threatening not to simply approach the barrier but launch myself past it at pace and on and down to deeper levels. I resolved to complete the final deed I wanted – completing low level quests in the Shire – and then, despite my current joy at playing the game, hang-up my character and wait until the group had progressed through the epic storyline somewhat. Of course those low level Shire quests still gave XP, and because they weren’t that low a level to me, that XP quickly began to add up. I tried, I really tried not to gain XP, but those damnable hobbits weren’t having any of it.

“‘ere you go lad, thanks for yer help!”

“Oh, uh no, I don’t want any XP thank you. I’m just doing it for fun, really. Just glad to help. A little coin is more than enough.”

“Oh it’s like that is it? ‘ere ‘arold, this ‘ere chap says ‘e doesn’t want XP.”

<peering around from behind a hedge> “Doesn’t want XP? What is ‘e, some sort of raving Lothlórien Elf? Doesn’t want XP… Pah! Too good for our XP are ya?”

“N-no, you misunderstand me, sir.”

“Oooo, get ‘im with ‘is ‘sirs’ and long fancy words. Now you listen ‘ere sonny, people ’round ‘ere like to give XP. It mightn’t be the fancy pants reputation and tokens that you city boys like to flash about, driving around on yer fast women with a glitzy horse on yer arm…”

“I… uh…”

“…BUT around ‘ere you get XP, and if you don’t like it, ye can just bugger off back to yer porcelain sheets and yer silk toilets.”

So I took the XP and ran away. And then ran back and quickly sold their quest rewards back to them. And then ran away again. I finally finished the quests I needed for the deed, seventy five in all, and in the process managed to gain a level and a half. Ding. That’s three and a half levels while avoiding at-level quests and trying not to level. My character now sat at level twenty, and as I returned to Bree I vowed to do nothing but train any new skills and hope that the trainer didn’t reward me with four levels for successfully paying him eighty copper for a new skill. As I ran through Bree I’d see people with quest rings hovering over their heads, and my character would scream and run in huge wide arcs around those NPCs as though they harboured the plague.

And that was that. Almost. I was just about to log out and leave my character for the week when I noticed I had a mail message waiting. I popped over to the mailbox and opened an invitation to visit the local skirmish camp ‘Four star facilities for slaughter. See all the wonderful opportunities for death and blood that skirmishing can offer you’, that sort of thing. And I looked at the letter, and I looked at my character’s XP bar, and I looked at the letter. Weeeellllllll, a little skirmish training before I log off couldn’t hurt, could it? I mean, skirmishes don’t give that much XP do they?

Ding.

We’re taking them to Isengard. The Rise of Isengard, no less. ‘Risengard’ for ease of use. Or ‘Samantha’, if you like to nickname your expansions after late ’80s glamour models… no? Ah. Just me, then.

Still, here’s hoping that the expansion is true to the book, as I, for one, am looking forward to piercing Samantha’s ring while having a good rummage about in the expansive shrubbery that surrounds it.

Just don’t mention The Song. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

.ABC music files in 3… 2… 1…

A Hobbit’s Tale, by Bilbo Baggins.

Chapter 1 – Concerning Hunters

Really, if you ever find yourself in need of taking a ring to Mordor, just find a friendly Hunter and get them to teleport you there (and back again). Usually they’ll do it for free, but if not it’s only a matter of a donation of a few silver.

We got the Lonely Mountain sorted out in about half an hour one lazy morning: just teleported Thorin’s company and the entire population of the Shire into Dale and then raided that cave like it was open day at the pie shop. It was easy to find enough taxis for everyone, I mean, have you seen how many Hunters are running around Bree these days?

Poor old dragon didn’t stand a chance, and we teleported back to the Shire in time for elevenses.

And we all lived happily ever after, till the end of our days.

It’s curious, but I really had a feeling that this book was going to be much longer.

The End.

Why do I play MMOs? Because despite years of play, despite having multiple level-capped characters, and despite thinking I’ve done it all, I can still discover an unfamiliar door in a low level town and enter to find this:


LotRO’s own Cataclysm?

And while we’re talking about my not knowing/remembering obvious stuff in Lord of the Rings Online, it was only upon reading Syp’s article at Massively that I found out my Warden can’t kill critter mobs in the game because she’s a tree-hugging hippy elf; I’d never found this out because I’m the sort of tree-hugging hippy who doesn’t go around trying to one-shot critter mobs as I run along, which is perhaps also why I gravitated to playing an elf.

It’s curious though, and I can only imagine that these critters are able to claim diplomatic immunity, because my elf Warden has killed all manner of animals on her travels and not all of them could have been evil. No, there’s been a definite lack of pointy moustaches on many of the boars she’s killed, with nary a sign of high-collared capes or top hats on the bears. Yet those animals were apparently fine to kill because some random stranger demanded it; some spoilt NPC rolling on their back, kicking their legs in the air, pounding their fists on the ground and screaming until my character, sighing and eyes rolling to the heavens, went off and killed a number of innocent pigs. So why have qualms over stabbing a squirrel? (note: not a euphemism). I won’t have it that she’s one of the more hypocritical breed of animal rights sorts, where killing anything cute and that is easily anthropomorphised is a hideous crime, and which they’ll yell angrily about around a mouthful of hamburger to anyone who’ll listen. Thus, assuming she is fair and indiscriminate in her wholesale slaughter of wildlife throughout the lands of Middle Earth, there must be some other reason why she can’t kill critters; diplomatic immunity is my best answer. It seems obvious now that every time she goes to violate a vole (note: not a euphemism), the critter whips out documents outlining its protection under several binding conventions of Middle Earthian law. Where does it find the space to keep such documents? I couldn’t explain it to you, but then I couldn’t explain how a wolf manages to hide a long sword or a boar manages to secrete plate armour on its person either. Squirrels, well okay, I could understand how a squirrel would manage it, because after all squirreling things away is what they do, but when you’re trying to filet a fox (note: not a euphemism) and it suddenly and from nowhere pulls out a large diplomatic wallet it must be both surprising and frustrating.

And after such a long hard day, where her adventuring has lead to nothing but pent up aggression and frustration, I can only imagine that my elf has a routine need to find a secluded spot, settle comfortably down and quietly shank a shrew.

We have also added a few bonus Talismans that are store exclusives.

‘Store exclusives’ the new term for ‘going to cost you’.

Turbine have been good in this respect, however: as far as I recall from DDO, it’s only fluff and cosmetic items that have ever been store exclusives, everything else can be earned from playing the game (albeit often at a great cost of personal time, as is to be expected).

It was just the wording of it that made me chuckle, as if it were some special kindness that they were adding bonus items for which you have to pay. Such is the world of marketing, I guess.

The Talismans do seem a nice change for Lore-masters however; making the customisation of their pets independent of a jewellery slot means that they can concentrate on getting the most out of the stats for that slot without having to sacrifice the desired appearance for their pets.

One does have to wonder whether the store-based Talismans make the pets translucent and sparkly though…