Turbine has announced the next expansion for Lord of the Rings Online, the Siege of Mirkwood.
Being something of a partisan of the game, I ought to be happy to see a new installment coming out for the game.
And yet I feel a little guilty that this expansion is coming along this fall.
You see, I set myself four gaming goals this year. I was going to do a post about them back in January, but I never got around to it.
None the less, I have had them in my mind and have tried to achieve them. My goals were:
- Hit 80 in World of Warcraft
- Buy a freighter in EVE Online and make back the money I spent on it
- Play no SOE games
- See Moria in Lord of the Rings Online
The first was easy enough. The instance group may have taken its time getting to 80, but we’re all there.
The second I managed and I have made back the money spent a couple times over now.
The third is tough to explain, which is part of the reason why my goals never made it to a post. Too much EverQuest nostalgia I think. Anyway, SOE games suddenly became unpalatable so I am taking a year off from them. And I have stuck to that one despite the fact that Gaff was hit with the Norrath bug a few weeks back.
And then there is Moria.
I am nowhere close to seeing any of Moria. I have level 30 characters on two servers, but the furthest I have been is Rivendell. And that was back in February.
And now there is more Middle-earth coming out this fall.
I like the game.
I enjoy the game when I play.
And of course I am in love with the lore and the mere idea of walking free in Middle-earth.
But more than one fantasy MMO at a time seems to be beyond my capabilities right now.
So now that Mirkwood has been announce, I will probably go patch the game and take a peek. Maybe even get a level. But I doubt that Moria is in the cards this year.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
It’s funny, I joined LOTR because of what you had written about it, putting EVE away for a bit. I maxed one character and did just about everything there was to do in Moria. I even built a second character as well and tried it out, but as time progressed, I soon came to realise that I just wasn’t having fun. The quests were all the same, the mobs were all the same, the other character was following in the footsteps of my first, with no real method of changing that.
So I swallowed my pride and talked to my sons and found myself starting an account on WOW. I’ve been having a good time, the quests are fresh and new and plentiful. The terrain I’m exploring is new for me, the people I’m meeting are a mixed lot. I now have two characters, one Alliance, one Horde and I’m entertained.
While LOTR is stunning in its graphics, it is lacking in depth of content, a problem that WOW doesn’t seem to have. I enjoyed my time there, but I suspect I won’t be back anytime soon.
I do still dabble in EVE, but not with the same intensity that I played over the previous years. 0.0 space lost its hold on me and Empire space hasn’t sucked me in…yet. I’ve some friends who are directors and such in some good corps, who knows, in time I may join them and return to daily EVE play. But for now I’m playing WOW and waiting for whatever comes next on the gaming horizon.
CCP is developing a game that I may try out, simply because I suspect my teenage daughter will want to explore it as well when it’s released, but that is a bit down the road with little being released about its details as of yet.
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LOTRO is one of those games I love the look and feel, and hate the feeling of little to no progress after a gaming session. I do have fun while I’m in-game, but afterwards when I notice my XP bar really hasn’t changed much, I get disappointed and don’t go back for months at time. I have a character or two in their 30’s and one that’s in his 40’s, and I’ve been playing off and on (mostly off) since “open beta.” And I have a buddy that’s got 2 or 3 max-level characters, and they’re max skilled crafters as well, but I’m still not strongly tempted to re-visit Middle Earth, for now. I feel Moria is as yet still out of reach for me as well. The last time I was in-game (last July), I felt like I could barely hold my own just in the Trollshaws.
Until the LOTRO is a bit more solo-friendly, I think it will just stay on the shelf for now. I currently find myself in EVE almost exclusively with a peek in on a few other games here and there to see if they’ve got any new hooks to lure me in with.
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The LotRO expansion seems like an odd one to me. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not a proper expansion but just a book update with some extra bells, 5 more levels and price tag. I don’t play LotRO though so I might just be acting ignorant.
I’ll get into LotRO some day… one day… it holds some appeal but I’ve got other, bigger, more tasy fish to fry.
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I’ve never managed to stomach LoTRO past the free trial if I’m honest. The graphics are really good but as Ezra points out the quests just didnt do it for me. I think a big factor which probably effects my judgement on all other MMOs is that I’ve dedicated so much time and effort into my characters in WoW I have a bond with the game therefore it taints my opinion of others. It may be unfair but that seems to be the way blizzard have rewired my brain.
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Hello,
Nice goalset. What freighter did you buy in eve?
frank
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Where do you get all the time to play all these games with so much dedication and enthusiasm?
You have a kid and a wife, a job, probably friends and a social life. What is your secret? Really I want to know.
I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while now, and I like your stories. But the one thing that amazes me the most is the fact that you keep on doing this.
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@Inktomi – The Charon. It hauls a lot of stuff. Of course, then I got an Orca, which hauls almost enough to make me think about selling the Charon. Almost.
@EGW – Odd you should ask that question on a post where I am moaning about not playing a game. I’ve spent more time writing about games than playing them of late. That said, there is always a little time in the evening to play, or enough time for some daily quests before work in the morning. It helps if you’ve given up on broadcast television. And a tolerant wife… an invaluable asset that!
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The combat mechanics for each class is part of the draw back. Also if you can’t get into any solid groups with leaders that can run multiple quests and turn them in at once, or the epic book instances, you’re losing more than half of the game’s appeal: which is group play.
Depending on your chosen class, solo can be mind numbingly boring and it doesn’t get better with Moria. Moria has more deeds and rewards, but the penalty is that if you try to solo it, it is both harder than SOA and strangely lacking in various quests. Other than the waterworks for lvl 55, most areas are very very hostile and require that you know exactly where you are going, where your retreat paths are, and how to take down mobs efficiently using your class.
The reward for all this, of course, is end game content. You do your radiance instances, you get your virtues to max, and you work on perfecting your lvl 60 character. Until Myrkwood. If you get bored with a character, create another character and start from scratch. The level progression early on is ridiculously fast if you know even a semi-efficient path. Combined with the blue bars and you can get half a level just going into some place and killing a boat load of mobs. If you haven’t played in a long time, all the skills become fresh.
Soloing early levels gives you new skills very quickly to play with. At higher levels, group quests, instances, and even more skills keeps it fresh and interesting. THe number of combinations in which you can put your class to depends on your skill rotation, the situation, and your trait setup. And if pve becomes too boring, roll a creep and start getting DP.
It’s also a lot of fun if you have high level characters that can make good money so you don’t really care if you die or not.
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