Five Years of Lord of the Rings Online

It is a strange feeling.  MMOs that have launched since I started blogging are starting to hit significant anniversaries.  Games I played in beta and blogged about are hitting the five year mark.

And while I didn’t exactly set anything on fire when Vanguard hit the five year mark (I was accused of trolling by some, though that was not my intent), Lord of the Rings Online is a different story.  While it hasn’t spent a lot of time as my main game in the course of events, it is a game I keep going back to.  Of course, I did by a lifetime subscription at launch, but Star Trek Online proves that even such a subscription isn’t enough to keep me playing.

So there is a big five year anniversary event going on in LOTRO now.

Five Years of LOTRO

And while I have been playing LOTRO some lately, the anniversary and the promise of gifts was enough to get into game to focus on just that.  I will usually log on for some new shiny, and getting a new mount pretty much guarantees it.  There is a range of gifts you can get, depending on how old your account is, and since mine dates back to February 22, 2007, I am on board to get them all.

The list of things attached to my account...

I actually named my account LOTRO BETA back then and only just realized today that I could change it.  But you can see my account creation date in there.  But as long as you were in the game by June 30, 2007, you qualify for all of the goodies.

The horse was what I really wanted.  I won’t spend money on mounts… not very often anyway… but a free one for just showing up and I am there.

Manteca on the new mount

That is a nice new mount, with blue finery and a blue flag that waves in the wind while you ride.  Manteca is also wearing the blue festival cosmetic gear (I actually bought a new cosmetic slot just to have that available) along with a hat I dyed blue just to go with the whole thing.  Why no hat with the gear I wonder?

There were also some consumables to go with it, though I tend to hate those.  The +5% to attack damage booster is single use, so I will save it forever in my bag waiting for the right time to use it.  And then I will be out in the field and my bags will be full and I will use it just to clear a bag slot.  The thought it nice, but I always end up mildly frustrated with those items.

And then there was a “visible to me” upgrade.  At least I think it is just visible to me.  Maybe it shows up to other people in groups.  Anyway, my character portrait got a cosmetic upgrade.

Manteca, now with gold highlights

All of which is fine and dandy.  I will have to get around to collecting the goodies on all of my characters, which are spread across four servers (Windfola, Nimrodel, Firefoot, and Silverlode), each of which represents a generation of playing LOTRO.

But there is also a series of anniversary events going on in LOTRO.  And while there are some nice items to be earned between now and April 30th, I have an ambivalent relationship with in-game events.  And because of that, I really have no favorite in-game event.

Sometimes, when I am in the right mood, I will go out and tear through an event.  For example, three years back, I cranked through all of the WoW Noblegarden event, primarily because I wanted a pet bunny and a pair of bunny ears.  And I had a good time.

But since then I haven’t really done anything when that event rolls around.  It is going on now I think, or it just finished, but I could not be bothered.  I have my ears and my pet bunny, I do not need to chase any more eggs.

And in LOTRO I have never really been a big fan of any of the events.  They have just never struck me at the right time.  I get the little party invite in the mail, accept the quest, and then end up deleting it six months later, untouched and incomplete, when purging quests from my log.

So I remain uncertain as to whether I will do anything for the anniversary events this time around, though I did give things a start.  The initial quest won’t be lingering for months at least.  And there are a few fun looking ones, and fireworks are involved along with the promise of earning another mount or two.

Lighting fireworks on command is a quest

The quests, which are semi-dailies… they all have timers that regulate how often you can repeat them, ranging from 1 to 6 hours from what I have seen… involve a lot of running around or running horse races.  I can just barely win the horse race most times.  I steer from the keyboard which means I almost always fall off into the muck for the run across the narrow, curving plank bridge and jump the gap part.

I did all of the quests I could find last night once.  That did not get me anywhere close to a new mount.  But given the number of people I saw riding event prize mounts last night, it is doable if I just press on and run them whenever I can.

We will see how much effort I want to put into that.

Addendum: Casual Stroll to Mordor has an Anniversary Festival guide up now.