I’m not going to deny that there are compulsive players that very quickly identify the path of maximum reward and minimal resistance and run it all the way to level cap. There are a lot of players like that. And probably a few of the players that quit LOTRO did it on that point.

What I contend is not that LOTRO doesn’t have enough content, so people leave. What I’m saying is that the content it has is ultimately uninteresting for many people and it fails to grasp them and keep them. We’re not talking necessarily about compulsive level cap rushers. Just a lot of normal folk, maybe.

It’s not that it doesn’t have content, or that all the quitters tore through the content. I think it’s because the content they have is not attractive to a swath of their playerbase. Like you said: Community events, player created community events, socializing, MP… if they find it boring, or uninteresting, there’s not a good game behind all that (in their estimation) to keep them.

Yeah, summer festivals, a new type of ale you can brew or a new deed you can get by traveling from Bree to Buckland on your knees, yeah, it’s ‘content’. But for a lot of players that’s crap and meaningless content, so they won’t touch it. (without going further, I personally despise ‘seasonal content’, regardless of the game. I don’t find it remotely fun at all. It’s nothing I like to take part in)

We can’t easily say “stop and smell the roses”, as if we were assuming the problem is just a problem of player speed. That they’re too fast, so they get bored. Yeah, that might be true for some people, but we can’t be blind to the fact that for many others there are no roses to smell.

“Well, in that case then it might be this is not the game for them”. Of course. We agree on that. Therefore… it’s not the players, it’s the game.

I am far from an authority on the matter, but I am going to go out on a limb and disagree with you.

It seems to me that the people who have burned out on LotRO so quickly are people who eventually burned out on WoW because they felt like they had nothing to do at 60/70 etc in WoW, and got bored. They now find themselves with little or nothing to do at 50 in Middle-Earth.

Are these people taking advantage of the in-game community events? Do they enjoy the player create community events, and the socializing? Are they utilizing the PvMP options on both sides of the War? Did they quest fully and explore, or race to 50, and wonder what next?

The reasons I have seen for disliking the game, in most cases, seem to be player driven rather than design driven. Once again, I could eat my words in a few months, so this is just high level observations.

So far, there appears to be TOO much to do on the path to 50. Last night we didn’t even play our heros once while we did Monster Play, and I could see spending countless hours on the Monster Side, and then at 45 or so, spending countless more hours on the FreeP side.

Yes, but not necessarily. WoW didn’t start bleeding players so early on, despite having a much (much) bigger population of uber achievers and really sparse content updates in comparison.

It’s the game, not the players.

“All set pieces will soon drop outside of Helegrod! We know that there are a lot of players who feel that raiding is not for them so on a much lower percentage, we have high level monsters possibly dropping set pieces.”

and

“We were dropping the set pieces on a low percentage outside of Helegrod. There will now be a better chance for you to get them.”

Haven’t done enough researh on that particular Dev statement to refute what you say, but my impression from it was that the ‘raid sets’ will also drop from Fellowhip level end-bosses, at a lower rate.

Thus, non-Raid Guild level players can still get the sets, but it will still require farming the same encounters repeatedly to do so.

I would say, don’t expect Undead#213422 to have a .000001% chance of dropping Gloves of Minstreling.

I don’t know I guess I never read that rulebook. And apparently they are trying to. According to devs they are even allowing the “raid” armor sets to drop from world mobs so non raiding people will get them, albeit at a lesser rate. Talk about giving rewards to people for casually goofing around killing random mobs. In addition to all the content that is not even about progression at all.

I’m still subscribed since I have the founders’ rate in hopes that my interest picks up later and continue to quest with my husband every so often. But getting him to quest with me is like pulling teeth. He hates questing.

Glad you are enjoying it and hope you continue to do so.

That is such a load of crap. The game has levels. The game has loot. The game has end game raids. A game for explorers and socializers does not build around this structure.