Yesterday afternoon I was in a pretty bad mood. I had destroyed a part of my main character in Lord of the Rings Online. It wasn’t until later that evening when I could apply a salve to my character’s gaping wound that I felt better. It wasn’t my fault, but the change needed to happen. I had to switch crafting professions.Â
Category: Lord of the Rings Online
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.The Old Comfortable
In Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood, my journey is over. I have a smattering of small quests left to do on the Eastern side of the zone, but for the most part my leveling and errand-boy running are done. Now my time with my main character has simplified drastically. Instead of pushing from quest hub to quest hub and through the epic story, not quite sure what’s next in store, I have set goals with planned steps. Signing on has become a comfortable chore that I was used to for months before the expansion jarred me from my oasis of calm with the rest of the herd.
This is not a bad thing, and for many MMO players this is how we actually play. We sign on to craft a few items, check the auction house, do a few daily quests, and that’s about it. These gaming chores are interrupted on busy or event nights by grouping up for a group instance. The braver choose to make random connections through pick up groupings. The best part is that everybody at this level is right there with me. When I was journeying geographically and leveling, I was for all intents alone. Sure there were clearings in the forest where my journey would intersect another’s, but for the most part everybody was either at the end or somewhere in the middle.
Is this another diseased symptom of MMOs following the DIKU/Everquest based ancestors? Or is this a benefit of allowing so many gameplaying styles in MMOs? For a “true” solo player, couple, or static group, the journey together can easily be the whole game. Whatever sticky content exists at the end like being drunk for 10,000 minutes for a title or killing 10,000 rats for achievement points is irrelevant. For those whose social groups are guild or alliance-based, the broader social net means a more heterogeneous place in the journey. The so-called “end game” merely provides a place in the journey where broad social groups (like an entire server) are all on the same page. It’s an old comfortable place to be in the herd until the devs tell the us to move to another watering hole.
–Ravious
crackalackin’
Marathon MMO, A Vignette
A happy couple sits at the end of a gently used sofa. The husband has his arm around his wife and has his other arm resting on the armrest of the sofa. He watches a laptop on a laptop table while his wife thinks deep thoughts about how to spend Christmas gift cards as she occasionally glances at the laptop.
Wife: That’s pretty.
Husband:Yeah, Lord of the Rings Online ™ has some great visuals.
Wife: I like watching you play this game because of the landscapes. It’s much better than shooting people all the time.
Husband: You know… once I get my Guild Wars 2 computer, you can use this computer to play this game with me.
Wife: I don’t know. You are always yelling and killing things.
Husband:They aren’t really living things. Think of them as pinata gift bags. You told me you liked that part when we played World of Warcraft, briefly.
Wife: That was kind of fun.
Husband: This game is not just about killing things either. You can craft things, farm, fish, and even decorate your own home. I know you would like that.
Wife: I suppose. I don’t know, the game actually seems kind of boring. All I see you do is run through the pretty landscapes anyway.
–Ravious
Captain Shakespeare: It’s my reputation.
Procedural Content
I was worried that skirmishes would pale. They have, for me at least. The problem is that they are so transparently procedural content, and that is not LotRO’s strong point. Let me contrast with the equally procedural Torchlight.
The Group Recipe
World of Warcraft (further) obviates a group recipe with the new random grouping mechanics: 3 DPS, 1 healer, 1 tank. While the issues regarding population imbalance caused by the DPS majority can slow down group matching, the groups and challenges are made so that the five random people are not impeded by guessing what the group make up should be.Â
Zubon points out that the group recipe in Lord of the Rings Online can be much more varied, and Berath comments that the favorite classes in Lord of the Rings Online are the straightforward DPS classes. Sure a Captain, Loremaster, Burglar, or Warden can cover multiple roles (even without retraitting), but the purity of the Guardian as Tank, Minstrel as Healer, and Champion, Rune-Keepers, and Hunters as DPS are hard to overcome.
DPS Population Imbalance
Step back from what you know about how popular certain classes are and reconsider the acclaimed LFG tool. The slots are for one healer, one tank, and three DPS. From a naive perspective, the non-DPS classes are getting screwed here. It looks especially absurd coming from City of Heroes, where support stacks nicely and groups are often more than half support classes, or The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢, where an ideal six includes an off-tank, secondary healer, and/or controller/debuffer. Cap the group at one, while the DPS classes get three slots? It would seem like you’d have a much easier time finding a group as DPS.
But no, the population is so absurdly slanted towards DPS that they are waiting. Tanks and healers queue and instantly get groups. This is still true even now that people know they can skip the queue by switching talent trees, and few groups are going to kick you for having lousy tank or healer gear. Granted, if you are a Mage or Rogue, you are stuck as DPS, but that Paladin could spec and queue as any.
A system that explicitly favors a preponderence of DPS is de facto the largest buff to tanks and healers ever. This mostly comes down to what I said about static groups: anything that makes grouping easier makes group-friendly classes and builds more viable. As the population has time to react, group-friendly classes and builds will become more popular.
The upcoming Star Wars has a different approach: the Jedi/Sith classes are the tanks and healers. If you want a shiny lightsaber, you don’t get to play DPS. Yeah, right, I say that, but you can already hear the forum wars mockery of all the Jedi/Sith that focus on damage. “DPS Sith lol. Can we get a tank that can tank?” Or, as DK tanks currently say, “But Blood Stance heals me!”
: Zubon
In the Future, We Will All Be Hybrid DPS Classes
One positive incremental change in the MMO world is the introduction of different character modes. That is, you can hit a button and switch the focus of your character. You can fulfill multiple roles, but not all at once, with a way to switch between them. Examples include Champions Online and DC Universe (no classes, just modes), dual talent specs and Druids in World of Warcraft, and the Minstrel and Rune-keeper in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢. If you have the skill points and cash, you can also switch ships in EVE Online easily enough, which would be like hopping classes in another game.
These vary in their ease or extent of switching between modes. The two main LotRO healing classes need about 10 seconds to switch modes fully mid-combat. My WoW Paladin lost all her mana when switching. Other games might require you to go back to town to switch, which is still nice although certainly not the one-click, mid-adventure thing I am talking about. The effectiveness of doing so depends on how flexible other aspects of your character are. In LotRO, you must visit town to change your traits, and I know how I hate it when our healer is traited for damage. In WoW (late game), you would want to be carrying a second set of gear if you switch from Retribution to Holy.
Another way to implement modes is to switch focus within a role. A Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Hunter has solo and group DPS modes, the former with higher threat and mana costs, the latter decreasing them but losing bonus damage. (Solo mode: good for pulling targets off the healer, not worth much else post-Siege of Mirkwoodâ„¢.) Switching your Warcraft Mage from ice to fire is probably a less dramatic change.
While I love my alts, I am in favor of anything that will let you stick with one character. Let me stack all my options on one guy and switch which option I use, rather than switching between Zubon, Zuba, Zoobown, and Zupwn. While that will make hotkey management interesting, it saves me from having separate friends lists, guild rankings, vaults, key bindings… (You could also implement saved (and importable) or account-wide friends list, guild affiliation, shared vaults, key bindings…)
: Zubon
[Update: I see that Tobold just hit this theme from the POV of a DPS class in the post-LFG WoW world. Yeah, dual-spec does not seem like a huge boon for them. Having played ranged DPS in quite a few games, while I cannot address how WoW is this week, we are generally doing fine and soloing brilliantly, even if we are over-competing for group slots. I feel more for my healers, like my poor CoH Controller who fought bosses by putting his damaging hold (“stun” for WoW folk) on auto-repeat while I went AFK and waited for the pitiful DPS.]
Siege of Mirkwood Contest Winners
Below are the winners I chose for the Siege of Mirkwood upgrade key contest, based on how hard I laughed.
Each winner has been given a free Siege of Mirkwood upgrade key for the North American accounts (Turbine run servers).
Caption 1
(Submitted by MU): “You know, this doesn’t have to be the LONE lands…”
(Submitted by CH): “Dear Gandalf, You take the Hobbits to Rivendale, Something’s come up.”
(Submitted by JB): “She’s totally giving me her ‘Light of the Eldar’, if you know what I mean.”
Caption 2
(Submitted by CS): “Fearing that their armies are underpowered, the Dwarves and Elves devise a way to create a new army. Unfortunately, they need the war to be over before the spring because, well…”
Caption 6
(Submitted by MH): “Little did Frodo know that in that jolly instant the ring slipped from his pocket and fell to the ground. He had to start that whole [CENSORED] Ring quest over again.”
Thanks to Turbine for the upgrade keys and congratulations to the winners!
– Ethic
Pixel Click Bosses
Lord of the Rings Online is generally a mainstay MMO with most features from the core pool of primal MMO goo. However, it gets massive negative points for the User Interface (UI) implementation, but not for the obvious. The issues with minimalist UI modifications are minor. Turbine allows players to move UI elements around the screen, resize a few of them, recolor a few of them, and even gives a preschool level amount of control in the creation of new UIs. Don’t expect anywhere near the amount of customization found in World of Warcraft of Warhammer Online.
I can live with this. My favorite MMO, Guild Wars, has even less options (although better resizability) than Lord of the Rings Online. The problem is when developers start creating insta-death boss puzzles that hide in the UI.
Favorite LOTRO Solo Instance
I am way behind even the casual hardcore wave hitting the fog-filled forests of Mirkwood, but I am steadily plodding along like an old work horse. I usually follow the quest hubs pretty closely, and I maintain the epic quest to “match” the geographic location. This is even more doable now that Turbine has given players the choice to do Volume 2, Book 9 solo or with a group.
The story thus far in Volume 2, Book 9 is that I have to transport the most badass orc west of Mordor to the gates of Dol Guldur in the hopes I can do a prisoner exchange. Nevermind the fact that if I were the Nazgul in charge I would just shoot them all dead (including the orc) as they approached my tower, and I am surprised that the elves think this outcome will be any different. Anyway, it is a secret mission that uses the actual Siege as a cover. We take the mithril-shackled Mazog through the backwoods so Dol Guldur will not know of our approach.
In Chapter 3, Midnight in the Drownholt, I felt that my solo instance somehow transcended normal gameplay in to something meaningful. Where I was, momentarily, the hero.