Ravalation

Fashion Friday: High Elf Warden

2017-12-01T23:30:00.000+01:00

You may remember the commotion about Lord of the Rings Online's Mordor expansion earlier this year. One of the gripes about its pricing was that the new High Elf race was only available if you'd buy the deluxe edition for $80,-, or the legendary edition for even more. Other players would have to wait until "winter" and buy it in the in-game store. Well, last week the time was finally there: the High Elf race was available for LOTRO points! And I bought one.

Then a difficult decision had to be made: what class should my High Elf be? I already had all ten different classes. Only burglar and warden were still below level 50. Burglar is not available for High Elves (and wouldn't make much sense lore-wise), so warden it was. And since I also had an Aria of the Valar from the Mordor base edition (an item that instantly levels up your character to 105), my new warden, Ravalas, was near level cap right away.

The first thing that I noticed, is that High Elves are taller and more masculine than regular Elves. Even their faces look stronger. This makes sense from a lore perspective: in Tolkien's lore, generally speaking, the older the race, the more powerful it was. Because of the High Elves' superiority, I wanted a perfect looking one, with golden hair and shining armour. I knew right away which armour I wanted to use, as it had been in the back of my mind from the moment I set foot in Mordor.

Another interesting fact about the High Elf race is that there are small, but noticeable details that distinguish High Elves from regular Elves. For instance, High Elves sit differently on their horses, as if they're holding reins (unfortunately you don't see any reins, though, so it looks silly if you're paying attention). When High Elves fall from a height, they roll over. They also have a special Elven cry for skills that play a shout sound effect. It sounds really cool.

/dance3

But most of all, High Elves are famous for their special racial dance. There was a lot of buzz about this gracious, ballet like dance when the race was just released. Everyone loves it. It certainly fits the look-at-me-I'm-so-perfect air of the High Elf like a glove.

Outfit

Warden Ravalas to the right is wearing the following:

Memory of the West Hat (lore-master item from skirmish camps, originally from Ost Dunhoth)
Conquerer's Camail, dyed steel blue (Mordor gear)
Expeditionary's Reinforced Hauberk, dyed steel blue (Mordor gear)
Invader's Mighty Gages, dyed steel blue (Mordor gear)
Expeditionary Boots, dyed steel blue (Mordor gear)
Cloak of the Slain Hunter, dyed steel blue (Great River quest reward)
Infiltrator (The Rift of Nûrz Ghâshu)
Elven Soldier's Light Shield (metalsmith crafting tier 5)

The pieces of the Mordor armour set come as selectable medium armour quest rewards for various quests. There are many quests that reward then, so don't worry if you can't find the specific one mentioned here. You can also barter them for ash.

An alternative for the shiny golden spear is the spear Fight Against the Darkness or the javelin Strike Against the Darkness, both selectable rewards from the level 30 warden class quest. They are dark blue with gold, so they are a perfect fit for this outfit. It's a shame you have to pick between them, because I'd love to have both!

Did you buy the High Elf race? And if so, is yours wearing shining armour as well?

Many thanks go to Conrad, for helping out with the animated GIF and for his invaluable fashion advice. I don't thank him nearly enough for his invisible contributions to this blog from behind the scenes.

LOTRO's Dulgabeth teaser: one trailer to save it all

2017-09-15T21:22:00.003+02:00

Remember that truly awful Mordor trailer? You know, the one that made Lord of the Rings Online the laughingstock of the MMO scape and that everybody, including Standing Stone Games, is trying really hard to forget about? (Right, I'm not helping, eh? Sorry about that.) Back then I wrote that the only thing SSG could do to fix it would be to make a better one. Turns out they have! Scroll down and watch LOTRO's latest trailer with me.

Mordor: After the Fall - Dulgabeth (Source)

It's more a teaser than a full trailer, really. It also isn't mind blowing: rather, it's the style we are used from LOTRO (not counting the Mordor trailer). Somehow watching it gives off some oldschool Angmar vibes - it must be the dark setting. That same setting doesn't do the overall look of the trailer any favours. Unsurprisingly, LOTRO's graphics are outdated: the game is ten years old. The strength of its landscapes that still hold up, lies in its skies, weather system, trees and foliage; in Mordor you just see that ugly brown-blackish stone texture. It also looks like the in-game footage is recorded on low resolution - which is puzzling. On high graphics settings, the game looks much better! But - age notwithstanding - the Dulgabeth trailer does its job and provides some background to people who aren't familiar with the Mordor expansion. The tone is set by Chance Thomas' soundtrack that subtlely weaves LOTRO's hope filled login theme through the despairing dissonances of Mordor. Most of all, I feel extremely relieved that the developers still know what a trailer is.

Of interest is the choice of narrator. It is one of the bad guys: Dulgabeth, second in command to Sauron. This brings me to one of my favourite things about the expansion: the creative way the developers have solved the problem that there isn't all that much to Mordor after the One Ring is destroyed - at least, according to the book. In The Return of the King, the story focuses on the heroes: Frodo and Sam get saved by the Eagles, Aragorn becomes king in Minas Tirith, the Elves leave Middle-earth, the hobbits return to the Shire etc. Not much attention is given to what happens in Mordor after Sauron's defeat. Yet the place is filled with orcs that don't just magically drop dead. This is the point at which LOTRO players enter the region.

In LOTRO's Mordor expansion, players get to 'clean up' Mordor, and that isn't as easy as it may sound. After all, the orcs are no stranger to power play, and new candidates for the throne are rapidly emerging. Questing in Mordor gives you a unique look into the social structure of the forces of evil, one that is surprisingly convincing. I will save further thoughts on this for a Mordor review (I really should write one!), but this trailer does a decent job of giving players a peek behind the Black Gate.

What do you think of the Dulgabeth trailer?

LOTRO's first character update: humans & Elves

2017-08-28T09:56:00.001+02:00

Lord of the Rings Online's recent Mordor expansion didn't just add a good chunk of depressing landscape architecture to the virtual world, it also introduced something for all residents: a character overhaul. Okay - correction - it only adds something for players that own Elven and human characters; hobbits and dwarves will follow in the future. Being a ten year old game, LOTRO could really use an update of its avatars - or so many players seem to think. It is telling that I spent my first couple of hours after launch fiddling around with my characters' new looks rather than venture into Mordor.

I wasn't the only one. The Prancing Pony (Bree) looked like this. Players were continuously spawning in and changing their looks.

Never before this barber felt so popular

Initially, I felt slightly disappointed. I think this was partly because I'm visually inclined and set the bar high. I would've loved more sliders, (even) more hairstyles and more facial complexion. It was also disappointing to find out that long hair still clips through the shoulders, especially if you're wearing a cloak (cloaks in LOTRO put two blobs on your shoulders that I refer to as the "shoulder flaps"). I think the other part of it was that I'm very accustomed to my characters' looks after having played them for ten years. The game automatically 'translates' your characters' old features into the new model and the result isn't always flattering. It usually pays off to fiddle around with the features a bit at the in-game barber to make your character feel right again. Hence why it was so busy at the barber in Bree.

The in-game interface to change your character's appearance, found at a barber NPC

My boyfriend, on the other hand, didn't have that much trouble adapted to the new looks at all. He enthusiastically logged all his characters and had them all changed in no time. After that he offered his second opinion to my still struggling self, which was very helpful.

While I was working on them, I recorded the process with screenshots, so you can get some insight into the changes and form your own opinion. Note that "auto" stands for the automatically generated look, and "new" for the final look after I changed things around at the barber. Let's first look at the elves.

From top to bottom: 1. Ravanel; 2. Ravalinde; 3. Ravereth; 4. Ravenwë.

The hardest to do was my main character, Ravanel (1). I really disliked the way her hair clips on one side at the height of her chin (see "auto"), so I changed her hairstyle. Problem is I loved that hairstyle so much and the character is dear to me, so I'm a bit sad about not having the old hairstyle anymore. I'm not getting my hopes up, but if a developer would fix this glitch, it would make my day.

Ravereth (3) I absolutely love with the new look. She just looks extremely Elf-like and feminine. A real improvement. Ravenwë (4) and Ravalinde (2) I am fine with, too. Ravalinde's face looks a tad too bulky for an Elf, but there was no other way with that hairstyle.

Now let's look at changes to the human character model.

From top to bottom: 1. Ravenwyn; 2. Ravalyn; 3. Laceleaf; 4. Haradwen.

One of the first things that I noticed is that female human faces look a bit chubby after the update. The "baby face" effect, if you will. They all do, no matter what face you pick. For Ravenwyn (1) it doesn't matter, because she's (meant to be) young and naive. Her new look is just perfect! I really love it. Laceleaf (3) looks great, too. She is staunch and stubborn, and looks like it.

I'm less happy about Haradwen (4). She's supposed to be one of my older characters, above 40, but she looks very young. I never liked LOTRO's option for wrinkles (too exessive and artificial), and without them pulling off an middle age woman character with the new look is tough. Also, some hairstyles, like Ravalyn's long hair (2), strengthen the baby face effect, which is a shame.

This would be the perfect blog post if I would continue with the male character models. Unfortunately, however, I don't play any male characters, so I don't have the same amount of visual material. Boo, Rav. I know, sorry to disappoint.

Luckily, my boyfriend was able to help me out with some screenshots, although he didn't have many of his old characters stored. Here goes.

Conrad's character Fingolwë

Just wow. Male Elves look so much hotter nowadays! My boyfriend only has one, because they used to look so bad that he couldn't bear rolling more, but now they look like something you might actually want to play. Ravanel is totally hitting on this Elf, just saying.

The only thing I could criticize the new male Elf look for is that they perhaps look a bit too manly. But compared to what they looked like before, it's a huge improvement.

The new looks of: 1. Aikanar (man), 2. Thorfaer (man), 3. Eleril (man) and 4. Fingolwë (Elf)

I don't have screenshots of pre-update male human characters, so you'll have to take my word for it, but men also show a definite improvement. The new men look like, well, actual men, and I would even go so far that they show character. Do beware of the "creeper look" as shown by Aikanar (1), though (my boyfriend is going to kill me when he reads this!): if a man would look at me like that I wouldn't feel comfortable. I do like Eleril's semi melancholic gaze, though, and Thorfaer nails the grizzled ranger look.

Changes that I haven't covered here but do want to quickly mention are some extra character customization options at the barber and character animations. As for the barber: 1) existing hairstyles have been improved and it seems a few have been added. 2) Before, eye colour and body shape could only be changed at the character creation screen, but now they can be changed at the barber, like other features. (I guess they weren't eligible for in-game changing before because of lore reasons, but it's darn convenient like this.) 3) The body shape slider has expanded, allowing your character to display a broader range of body types. Women can now be made to look more muscular.

Elves and men also got new running and walking animations. Most of them look pretty neat. The one I'm not sure about is the running animation of female Elves. They tip-toe and bounce a lot (you notice this best when looking at your character from the side). I get what the developers were going for, but it looks a bit odd.

Conclusions

Although I have been critical in this article about some details, I generally feel the character update is a huge upgrade and a great addition to the game for LOTRO players. If you are like me and have trouble adapting to a new look of your characters, give it some time and fiddle around with things at the barber - the automatic look almost never does it right. If you still don't like what you're seeing, you can always turn the update off; there's an option to do so under Options > Adv Graphics > Avatar Update Visible or you can just untick the "Avatar Update Visible" box at the character selection screen when logging in (it's to the left bottom of your selected character's pedestal).

What do you think of LOTRO's new human and Elven looks?

LOTRO's Mordor trailer: a reaction

2017-08-05T22:24:00.001+02:00

It's expansion time in Lord of the Rings Online, so get ready for some dark and depressing images on Ravalation. Sauron has done a great job of branding his homeland such that nobody ever wants to visit (SSG arguably even helped a bit with their widely discussed pre-order prices), yet many players chose to (wo)man up and venture through the Black Gate this past Wednesday. I was among them. Since I haven't played enough to write a review yet, let's discuss something else: the Mordor trailer.

I don't usually dedicate whole blog posts to MMO trailers - I don't think they're that interesting - but, as you will see, this is a very special trailer. More precisely, this is probably (hopefully) the worst MMO trailer you've seen this year, perhaps ever. If you haven't seen it yet, give it a go.

Official trailer for LOTRO's Mordor expansion (source)

It's hard to find words that can describe the amount of cringe I feel when watching this trailer. It looks like it was put together a couple of hours before launch - in fact, it probably was.

The trailer in context

LOTRO has a tradition of rushed expansions, and Mordor is no exception. Despite beta testers urging the developers to wait with release until finished, the expansion was announced to go live as planned on August the first. However, less than 12 hours before the servers were supposed to go offline, a major bug was found and Mordor was delayed by two days. During this two day period, the trailer was released. To be honest, I hadn't even realized that there hadn't been a trailer so far: news of the highly anticipated addition of Mordor to the game had done its job all by itself.

Let's look at LOTRO's Helm's Deep trailer (the previous expansion). I wasn't a huge fan of that trailer back in the day, but say what you will, it does manage to capture that Middle-earth feeling. For me, the Mordor trailer did nothing of the sorts. And it's not just that the graphics are somewhat outdated: to me the Warcraft III trailer from 1999 (almost 20 years ago!) evokes more emotion than the Mordor one... and I don't even like the Warcraft world. More closer to home, LOTRO's original opening cinematic from 2007 was actually pretty cool. I wish my in-game elven characters could actually look like that elf chick (but more on that in an upcoming post about LOTRO's character overhaul).

Finally, for a more contemporary comparison we can look at Guild Wars 2's upcoming expansion: Path of Fire and its accompanying trailer. Now that's a trailer that enthuses one about a game! And then I haven't even talked about Star Wars: the Old Republic's trailer for the Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion (2016): the best one I've ever seen for an MMO. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

Community reception

Players have expressed their feelings of horror online, for instance in the comment section of Massively OP's news article and in a LOTRO forum post unambiguously called SSG, please take down the official Mordor trailer. Some players thought at first glance that the trailer was satire or a fan video. Others point at the damage it does to the game.

"If I was a prospective player, I would see that and not even try the game. Even as a veteran player, that trailer did nothing to excite me."
- Player Kanoma on the LOTRO forum

In the same thread, player "bobbylobs" observes a trend of SSG becoming the laughing stock in the MMO gamer community:

"SSG do yourselves a huge favour and do as the OP suggests - take it down - it's a laughing stock right now, I'm not joking I've logged on to two other games tonight and players there are literally laughing at this, people are searching the internet to see it and no-one, absolutely no-one has anything complimentary to say about it, I am supremely confident it isn't generating any customers but it is definitely turning people away."

The above pretty much sums up what was being discussed in my kinship's Discord channel (consisting of mostly veteran LOTRO players of the first hour). We had a lot of fun joking at how bad the trailer was; deep down, of course, we were a bit sad too, because we all love(d) the game and it deserves better.

Finally, you know when something truly went awfully wrong when even self proclaimed LOTRO fanboys are embarrassed:

"Well I'd probably be classed as hopeless fanboi as I've bought the expansion, have no problem with the launch delay, disagreed with all the moaners about the delay, happily had my tea and watched some TV whilst the update downloaded and am really looking forward to Mordor, BUT that trailer is truly awful. On second viewing it's even worse, I really don't understand the thought process behind it. It makes LOTRO look terrible, the trailer has no plus points."

Reportedly, community manager Cordovan addressed the matter on the official LOTRO stream, saying the trailer would be "de-emphasized." I didn't watch the stream myself, but that sounds awfully much like "we keep it up, pretend it doesn't exist and hopefully people will forget about it". The latter would definitely be the best for the game.

Conclusions

Standing Stone Games (SSG) is in an unusual position. In an 'expected' game studio's lifecycle, it would start out small, getting more successful and growing bigger with the release of good games. Think of CD Projekt Red with their Witcher games. In LOTRO, we see the opposite happening. If some small game would've made a trailer like this, nobody would've noticed. But LOTRO started out as a potential "WoW killer" (back in 2007 when that was still a thing) and that legacy brings certain expectations. I would be lying if I didn't feel for the developer that made the trailer because of its reception. Not that I want to explain away the quality of this trailer: it's truly awful, and the criticism is justified. If anyone at SSG has the ability to work on their introspection skill, now's the time.

I have a final note, though. Yes, the trailer is bad, and I can't really blame people from thinking "wow, this game went to shit, glad I didn't buy Mordor". But there's one thing I need to say: I've been tremendously enjoying the expansion so far! It's actually pretty good. New space to explore, new levels, new actual content rather than gear grind (in fact, less grind for the new essences and even some efforts to reduce power creep) and an interesting new light of Eärendil mechanic. There is that special kind of community buzz that seems reserved for expansions. Everyone is sincerely excited - I mean, the game actually made it to Mordor! - so it truly feels like an expansion. If you're not playing Mordor because of the trailer, you're missing out on something.

Fashion Friday: Sunflower-picking hobbit

2017-07-28T21:56:00.000+02:00

With all the exciting news in Lord of the Rings Online and Star Wars: the Old Republic (Scavenger hunt, Manaan stronghold, Mordor pre-order deals etc), I didn't find the time to write about this year's Summer Festival in LOTRO. Content-wise, my 2016 Summer Festival review still holds true: it's the same festival with the broad varied offer of cute quests. Of course there are some new cosmetics, though; my sunflower-picking hobbit will show you in this LOTRO fashion post.

This year's big eyecatchers were the Short-sleeved Sunflower Tunic and Trousers and the Sunflower Steed. I used to not get very excited by tunics, because they don't look great on Ravanel, my female elf main character (that I played exclusively for years). Then, however, I found out that they look great on hobbits! So it shouldn't be a surprise that I went with a hobbit for the Sunflower outfit photoshoot. That said, if you do like it on your character of another race, be my guest!

I like the tunic's default colour (evendim blue) the most on its own. However, it doesn't look all that great together with the Sunflower Steed, because they have few colours in common (I nitpick about these things). When dyed forest green, the tunic looks much better with the pony. Below you can compare both versions.

The Sunflower outfit looks great in bright basic colours, such as forest green (above, left) and the default colour, evendim blue (above, right). If red looks better on your character: that colour works well, too.

Sunflower outfit

White Rose Circlet
Padded Mantle of the Dunland Soothsayer (forest green dye)
Hammer-mark Cloak (forest green dye)
Short-sleeved Sunflower Tunic and Trousers (forest green dye)
Sunflower Steed
Sunny Summer Kite

I was super happy that I could use my recently acquired Hammer-mark Cloak for this outfit. This cloak drops from the Rift raid, and so far, it's always been someone else who won it. However, when I duo'd the Rift with Conrad for the Scavenger Hunt, he already had it, so it's finally mine! The cloak dyes really well, and the remaining yellow corresponds with the yellow of the sunflowers. The Padded Mantle (from Dunland quests) is always a favourite of mine, because it attaches the mantle more realistically than the weird shoulder flaps that come with LOTRO's cloaks.

Cicely, in the picture above - right, is wearing the green version that fits well with the pony. On my second hobbit, Ravil, I went for the default colour of the tunic, which resembles evendim blue. I equipped the Circlet of Fresh-picked Flowers and dyed it evendim blue, just like the cloak and mantle, to match it.

Above, you can see what the forest green tunic looks like in combination with the Sunflower Steed. The tunic's green corresponds with the sunflower leaves' green on the pony's apparel and back.

Since all classes have access to pets nowadays, I try to incorporate them in my outfits when I can. The best match that was available at the festival was the Sunny Summer Kite (see below). (Note that while kites are obviously not pets, they are coded as such.)

There's another kite that would look even better: the Sunflower Kite. This kite is blue with a sunflower and would've been so perfect! Alas it currently costs 495 LOTRO Points in the Store, which I'm not willing to pay. I'm disappointed that the kite that's obviously meant to compliment this year's Summer Festival steed and tunic isn't available through the festival itself; at least the Sunny Summer Kite is an affordable alternative. On the plus side, it doesn't have the blue, so it matches perfectly with the green version of the tunic.

Do you like tunics on hobbits as much as I do? And did you get yourself any of the Summer festival goodies?

LOTRO's Mordor pre-order deals put in perspective

2017-07-14T22:18:00.002+02:00

This week, Lord of the Rings Online announced its upcoming Mordor expansion, including its pre-order options. Whereas other MMOs feed the hype before the release of a new expansion, LOTRO stuck to tradition by causing a huge player outrage with its pre-order offers. Just like in 2012 and 2013, it looks like the player base will spend the last weeks before the release of a major expansion discussing its outrageous pricing rather than eagerly anticipating cool new content.

Mordor expansion pre-order pricing

Let's look at the pricing, and compare it to the previous two expansions:

	Riders of Rohan (2012)	Helm’s Deep (2013)	Mordor (2017)
Basic	$40,-	$40,-	$40,-
Deluxe	$50,-	$60,-	$80,-
Legendary	$70,-	-	$130,-

N.B.: you can find all the pre-order bonuses here on the official LOTRO website. For European players, be prices are €35/£30,- (basic), €75,-/£60,- (deluxe) and €114,-/£100,- (legendary). When pre-ordering, you gain access to the content at August 31st at the latest; if you buy with LOTRO Points (LP), you'll have to wait until "winter". When buying with LP, the basic version will cost 2495 LP; the High Elf race 1000 LP.

Historically, the amount of content in LOTRO’s expansions has steadily decreased. As we can see, the price of the basic edition, however, has stayed the same. The more expensive editions have considerably gone up in price, with the legendary edition now costing almost twice as much as in 2012.

A history of mistrust

It is not the first time LOTRO's pre-order offers cause a stir in the community. Veteran players may still remember the Riders of Rohan pre-order costs in 2012. Back then a essential quality-of-life feature, the sixth inventory bag, was originally exclusive to, and gated behind the legendary edition. Only after a huge player outcry did the developers quickly announce that the bag would be available for separate purchase in the Store as well, upon launch. The pre-order offers for Helm's Deep in 2013 didn't fare much better. So far, each expansion has reinforced the image of the game studio as greedy and out-of-touch with their community. Fast forward five years and nothing has changed.

It's not even the ridiculous price of the legendary edition that's disgruntling most current players: that's obviously meant for fans that want to support the game in any way they can, and it only grants cosmetic fluff on top of the content of the other editions. However, LOTRO's new High Elf race is exclusive to the deluxe and legendary edition. It is used to to push people into buying the deluxe version in a similar fashion as the sixth bag was in 2012.

How expansions are handled in the MMO scape

As we can see from the table above, LOTRO's expansion costs have always been steep. At the time of the game's launch in the late 2000's, a subscription model and money charged for an expansion were the only sources of income for a game development studio. Because of this, higher expansion costs were deemed acceptable by players. However, much has changed since then in the MMO scape. With the introduction of alternative revenue models, such as free-to-play and buy-to-play, the expansion model has been thrown out of the window by many game studios. The focus has shifted to smaller, free updates. In a way, LOTRO's Mordor expansion pricing model still stems from the late 2000's.

To understand why many LOTRO players are upset with the pre-order pricing, we should look at how other MMOs have handled recent expansions.

First off, there's Star Wars: the Old Republic (SWTOR). Although this MMO is strictly speaking free-to-play, it leans heavily on subscriptions. Its last two expansions, Knights of the Fallen Empire (2015) and Knights of the Eternal Throne (2016), are unlocked by subscribing in the month of release (or later). They do not cost an additional fee and if you'd want, you could unsubscribe a month later. The price of a one-month subscription is $15,- or €12,50.

Then there's Guild Wars 2 (GW2). This MMO has one expansion, Heart of Thorns (2015). Similarly to LOTRO, the expansion comes in three editions: a standard edition (€30,-), a deluxe version (€55,-) and an ultimate edition (€80,-). Note, however, that each of these options is cheaper than their LOTRO equivalent. On top of this, GW2 is free-to-play (previously buy-to-play) without the option to subscribe. Because of this, the game studio relies more on the sale of expansions to keep making content; players understand this and are willing to pay more.

Finally, let's look at the market leader: World of Warcraft (WoW). WoW is not free-to-play and relies on subscribers for income. Its latest expansion, Legion (2016), comes in two editions: the standard edition ($50,-/€45,-) and a deluxe edition ($70,-/€60,-). Costing $10,- more than LOTRO's base package, it's the only MMO that charges more for a base edition. However, it's worth noting that Legion contains way more content than the Mordor expansion: at launch, it came with no less than 9 dungeons and two raids. (LOTRO comes with none.) It also includes a new class, whereas a new race costs LOTRO players $40,- more (deluxe edition). WoW's deluxe edition only adds cosmetic fluff.

All things considered, it's clear that LOTRO's prices, especially those of the deluxe and legendary edition, are quite high compared to what's customary in the industry.

It's the thought that counts

Even though the LOTRO developers may choose to live in their own virtual Middle-earth bubble, players are aware of the MMO market and its customary prices. You cannot blame players for being displeased by being ripped off. As a LOTRO player myself, I want Standing Stone Games to continue to work on LOTRO and produce more content, but when the prices radiate such greed, I feel less inclined to do so.

Standing Stone Games (SSG) built up a lot of goodwill by going indie earlier this year. Many players felt that past greedy business decisions were forced from 'above' by Warner Bros. or Turbine. Now SSG is its own studio, we know this is not the case: it looks like SSG brought the same tone deaf marketing team along when making the switch.

Part of LOTRO's playerbase consists of extremely loyal fans that don't play any other games and are willing to pay anything. The Mordor expansion is heavily relying on these people. But the price is high. In doing so, SSG spends some of the goodwill of the community that was carefully built up earlier this year - and karma is easier spent than gained. It's not just the goodies that tempt players to spend money on a pricey expansion: it's also their belief in the game studio and their willingness to support said studio. This is especially the case for an old game that cathers to loyal, veteran players rather than new ones. When charged exorbitant amounts, it's not surprising when players feel insulted and decide to buy the new expansion with saved up LOTRO points rather than spending real money on it.

Perhaps this is what it costs to keep an indie game studio up and running these days. If that's the case, I'd love to know. I bet people would be way more willing to pay more! Sadly, transparency is underrated. If you're going to charge way more than customary for your content, give some explanation to your players why that is, or it'll only come off as insulting. At the end of the day, the only one SSG hurts with overpricing their expansion, is SSG.

Since I like to keep myself in the dark, the pictures in this post are not of Mordor. They are, however, taken not far north of the Black Gate and radiate a similar air of despair that we no doubt can expect to enjoy in the expansion.

LOTRO Scavenger hunt review

2017-07-10T19:16:00.000+02:00

Earlier this year, Lord of the Rings Online hit its ten year mark - a respectable age for an MMO. I wrote a lengthy game review in its honour. In-game the feat was celebrated with the annual anniversary, but this time around, something new was introduced alongside it: the Scavenger hunt. At the time of writing, this event is nearing its end (13th of July, 2017). It's time for a review.

Reception and criticism

Upon release, the Scavenger hunt's reception was mixed. Some players reacted with "is this all?", without specifying what they would've expected instead. Others were disappointed that the hunt involved a lot of pointless clicking and riding around - a complaint that amused me, if truth be told. The aim of the hunt is to look back at the past through reliving past moments. And - let's face it - a lot of LOTRO's gameplay does involve clicking, killing things and riding around. Complaining about this boils down to complaining that LOTRO is LOTRO. For some rose tinted glass wearers, LOTRO's throwback in the past became a bit too real.

Another complaint was that some of the quests could not be completed by low level characters. On the one hand, I sympathize with this: nobody likes being excluded. On the other hand, I wouldn't want the Scavenger hunt to suffer quality-wise to accommodate everyone. Part of the fun is that it looks back at the entire ten years of content, and the majority of those years was spent adding high level content. Besides, if you'd want a level cap for the quests, at what level would you put it? Regardless of where that would be, some people would be left out.

One of the places that needs visiting in the Scavenger hunt: the Tower of Ecthelion in Minas Tirith

It is worth noting that the LOTRO developers addressed this criticism by altering some things, so at least one quest of the early years can now be completed by adventurous low level players (upon which the next year quests can be accepted). In theory, it is possible for all players outside the introduction instance to travel to high level areas, such as the Dead Marshes. Because enemies will have a huge aggro range for low level players, it's probably advisable to bring a high level friend to clear the area, though.

My experiences

When I took my first glance at the ribbons hanging at the Party Tree (granting the Scavenger hunt quests), I was impressed by the extent of the event. Each week, a new "year" was introduced, containing three quests, making for a total of 30 quests. And most of them wouldn't be easy to complete without a guide, and take some time to complete.

One of the quests for each year is themed around the memories of a LOTR hero. These included cool references to the books; I don't think I'd enjoyed the quests as much if I weren't a Tolkien fan. For example, Year 6, themed "Legolas", asks you to kill 41 orcs in a Helm's Deep epic battle. My boyfriend and I grinned when we found that Year 7 was - as we had predicted - Gimli themed and asked us to kill 42 orcs in Helm's Deep.

Another reference was paying a visit to the Writer's Club in the Bird and Baby Inn, based on the group Tolkien was in. The hobbits are named after its members: Ronald Dwale represents Tolkien.

Typical LOTRO landscape in the Shire

The travelling thoroughly tested my knowledge of virtual Middle-earth and was a lot of fun. Contrary to most, I don't like to speed things up by using guides; I'd rather take it slow and experience the things as they were intended. This meant that I had to look around and search for things, and, as a result, inevitably spent time taking in LOTRO's beautiful landscapes - which is never a bad thing. Sometimes I even chose to ride my "slow horse" to enjoy the scenery. The fast, "drunk horse" (a.k.a. war-steed) just annoys me, as it lags out and gets stuck behind fences.

Goats in Rohan, a Bird in Tuckborough and "The Bird" in the Ettenmoors

Some Years had a truly creative approach. I had two favourites. First off, one that sent us to /pat animals all around Middle-earth. We had to dig deep into our memories to think of where these enemies would be. I proudly remembered that there was a Squirrel on one of the island to the far north of Bree, so off we went. Unfortunately, it seemed the developers themselves hadn't thought of this Squirrel, because the quest didn't update when I patted it. We also had to pat a Bird. What better place to go than to The Bird, the PvMP meme, in the Ettenmoors? Unfortunately, this one didn't count either. My boyfriend saved the day by remembering there was a Bird in Tuckborough, from all the times he did the skirmish Trouble in Tuckborough. This Bird did count. Eventually, we managed to find all animals without outside help.

I loved the quest, but I was a bit disappointed with the animals that should've counted, but did not. Most people will probably look them up so don't care, but if you do take the time to figure it all out by yourself, it's a bit of a bummer. I've bug reported the missing animals, so hopefully they'll get added for next year's edition.

The Snowman in Ered Luin

My second favourite was the Year 9 Trifles quest, that sends you off to find curious places. Most of these I already knew, such as the Crazy Cat Lady's house and the Turtle House in Bree (see below), Goldilock's House in Rohan and the Killer Rabbits. Luckily, my boyfriend remembered the location of the Sandcastle in Evendim. Some places were still a surprise. For instance, I had never seen the Snowman in Ered Luin. We searched for 15 minutes in the northwestern part of the map - it was a great feeling when we finally found it!

The Turtle house in Bree

Because the Scavenger hunt is a lot of work, I only did it on one character: lore-master Ravanel, my main character that I created back in 2007. Especially in her early years, I played her as a completionist, finishing every quest I could find for the sake of it. So it was a surprise to bump into one or two quests that I had not done yet. One of them was the turtle soup quest chain (I could be wrong, but I don't think it was in the game when I did the Bree quests originally). I was positively surprised by the cuteness of the quest!

(Quest spoiler: you need to collect turtles for soup, but the quest gets a twist when the quest giver gets filled with remorse at the sight of the cute little things. He decides to keep them instead, and now his whole house is filled with little turtles, as you can see on the pictures above.)

1... 2... 3... Bottoms up!

I also enjoyed the drinking quests, because they were pretty fast and fun in a role-play kinda way. It's funny to go outside and see your surroundings turn into hazy sepia tones. A pro-tip for the tavern crawl in Eriador: while you're at it, buy the special beverage(s) at the inn keeper and drink 'em to complete the hidden deed.

Other random fun moments:

Eavesdropping in Bag's End; bowing to Gaffer Gamgee, bringing a beer to Rosie Cotton ("I wish Sam had never left!"). Aww, the feels.

On my way to the Prancing Pony, a group of seven roleplayers were performing music at the stage. When I passed an hour later, they were still playing. I couldn't help but join in and show off my dance moves.

Riding through Lothlórien, I accidentally discovered the Garden of Memory and completed the Wanderer of the Golden Wood title - apparently that was the last one I needed.

And then the level 60 bounty quests! I had totally forgotten this was a thing. Back in the day, people used to pick up all the bounty quests in Esteldín and group up with a hunter to earn quick item experience. For a while, you saw people calling out for it in chat every day. It was a nice daily ritual and you could run into a bunch of nice people.

Exploring Carn Dum by warsteed

One thing I like, is that the event does not require any particular feats of skill. For instance, you don't need to complete any instances on tier 2 challenge mode etc. Mostly, the hunt requires perseverance and patience, because it's a lot of work, and probably a lot of looking up things for players that are not deeply involved with the game.

The quests that required instances left me with mixed feelings. Not because I want to qq about instances being involved: they are an important aspect of the game and it would be silly to leave them out. However, since instance scaling is done poorly in LOTRO, redoing them did not give a similar experience as it did back in the day. My boyfriend and I simply blasted through them with the two of us - even the raids. (Admittedly, riding on a warsteed through Carn Dum was an interesting new experience.)

The dragon Draigoch, just before becoming targetable

The only thing that we couldn't duo that was required were Draigoch and the Ost Dunhoth Fear Wing, and that was only because of mechanics requiring a certain amount of people. It's worth noting that you don't need to be able to defeat these bosses; you just need to target them and use an emote. But in order to get to Durin's Bane (Fear Wing), you need to defeat the Wound Wing, and for that one you need six players to set off the mumak race. Similarly, Draigoch only becomes targetable after the fight is initiated, and for that you need six people to break through the floor.

Draigoch is peeking through cracks in his cave, looking for a player to roast

The latter provided for an interesting pugging experience. Some of our pugs were clueless. Of course we had the obligatory player that got caught by Draigoch in the initial part of the encounter every time - at least that's the old time experience. But we did the best we could to talk them through everything, and they were so thankful for having people to guide them. One of them told us afterwards that they had been afraid they wouldn't complete the hunt in time because of the instances. As someone who has cleared all group content in LOTRO (apart from the Pelennor raid on tier 2), it's easy to forget how scary that prospect can be.

Looking for remembrances in the Eastemnet

Many quests send you off to look for "remembrances": glowy floating books that are found at meaningful places. I've heard a lot of people complain that these places don't mean anything to them; they miss an in-game explanation of what they're commemorating by going there. I don't mind it myself, because I believe everyone has their own, unique memories of places and one universal explanation couldn't do those justice. Often, a text pops up on your screen when you come near them, and the game lets you fill in the blanks. As I wrote earlier, I like to play actively rather than passively following a guide and clicking, and one of the most fun things of the Scavenger hunt has been to discuss past places and happenings with my boyfriend while traveling through virtual Middle-earth. I wholeheartedly recommend doing the Scavenger hunt with a friend, if possible, because sharing your memories with someone truly enriches the experience.

Rewards

My main motivation for doing the Scavenger hunt wasn't the rewards; rather, it was the achievement of completing it in its entirety. That's not to say there weren't any cool rewards, though! I've compiled some of them in this picture.

Stone of Erech; Little Old man Willow; Bill the Pony; Lore-master with two ravens; Dwarf Well; Caras Galadhon Mirror; Fishing Creel; Dwarf Well from above; Quiet Cow pet.

I enjoyed the pet rewards, although it was sometimes a bit hard to decide which character to give them to - I don't think I'll ever do the entire thing again, so it's a one time choice. Some of the rewards, like the Caras Galadhon mirror and the cosmetic of Legolas' cloak, were already available in the game. That's a bit of a shame, but I didn't mind it that much. Who knows, perhaps it helped out some people that accidentally destroyed them.

If you missed this year's (first) edition, fear not: the Scavenger hunt will return next year. Each year, a new Year with three quests will be added to the existing pile. Everyone, regardless of subscription status, is able to pick them up and join the fun, so you will always be able to get the rewards you want.

Conclusions

LOTRO's Scavenger hunt is no grand spectacle or loot fest, so if that's what you're looking for, you'll be disappointed. It is, however, a carefully forged opportunity to relive past moments in the game, some of which will surprise you. Overall, I'm happy to have participated in this cute and rich piece of content that fits seamlessly into the spirit of virtual Middle-earth.

Ten years of LOTRO: a history of virtual Middle-earth

2017-05-08T15:33:00.000+02:00

Lord of the Rings Online is celebrating its ten year anniversary. Time to go back to 2007 and look at everything that has happened since then, I thought. Well, that kind of backfired: it took me two weeks of writing to finish this article. Turns out a lot happened in ten years; more than fits in a blog post! This means I had to be selective. I also had to find a middle ground between my personal experiences and universal developments in virtual Middle-earth. History is always subjective, and by no means did I want this article to be a dry summary of facts. That said, if you experienced an in-game era very differently, I would love to read about it in the comment section.

This article is meant to reminisce about good and bad times in LOTRO, or to look up what happened in a period you were absent: few people will have been around for the full ten years. I realize that some people may read this that have never played LOTRO, so I have tried to make it comprehensible for everyone. You can drop me a note below if anything isn't clear.

I hope you'll enjoy this 'longread' of ten years of LOTRO. We start by traveling back in time, to the spring of 2007...

How I got into LOTRO (2007)

I first heard of LOTRO when I was visiting the Elf Fantasy Fair in Haren, the Netherlands, back in 2007. It was an open air fair near a castle with cosplayers and the likes. In one of the stands, people were playing the elf intro in Ered Luin in the soon-to-be-released Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. When the servers were going live, I was told, you could play together with others in a virtual Middle-earth. This sounded extremely exciting to me as a frantic Tolkien fan. After half an hour of waiting in a stand mostly filled with teenage boys, I was allowed to play for twenty minutes. I honestly wasn't that impressed by the intro: I had no idea where my character was, what was happening and why, but I made it through somehow. But in that moment, my interest in LOTRO was piqued.

There was just one problem: I didn't have a computer that could run the game. Because of this, I didn't buy it right away. When my father bought a new computer and I could have his old one (a Mac), I partitioned it so I could install the game on the "virtual PC" (this was before there was a Mac client). For the first time in my life, I entered the local video game store - back then predominantly male territory - and proudly bought my LOTRO starter box with installation CD-ROM (cute!).

I don't have a picture of the original character screen, but this is my current

Then I was ready to start playing. At launch, LOTRO featured four races (human, elf, hobbit and dwarf) and 7 classes (guardian, minstrel, hunter, champion, burglar, lore-master and captain). After contemplating for a couple of hours whether I should start playing a minstrel, hunter or lore-master, I decided to go with the latter. It was a good choice. For three years, I exclusively played my elf lore-master, Ravanel, determined to become really good at the class. And, boy, was there a lot to learn. It was my first MMO and I knew nobody else who played. When I was level 17 I died for the first time. I was so annoyed when I found out I had almost achieved the title the Undying if I just had been a bit less reckless in the Old Forest!

The LOTRO of 2007 was a different LOTRO than it is now: it was more 'hardcore' in several ways. Classes that had a support role in group content (guardian, captain, lore-master and minstrel) had no DPS mode (trait lines didn't exist yet), so leveling them took a long time. When you died, there was no option to revive at the spot: you had to retreat to a stone circle (or be lucky and be found by a friendly captain, lore-master or minstrel). Traveling took much longer than it does today, with fewer stables and swift travel routes gated behind reputation (and no option unlock them with mithril coins). There was no group finder, so if you wanted to do an instance, everyone had to travel to the physical entrance by themselves. Because of this, hunters and captains were sought after for their porting and summoning capabilities. It was common for players of these classes to kindly lend their quick travel skills to both friends and strangers to help them move around the world.

Other aspects of virtual Middle-earth have been more consistent since release. The beautiful landscapes, the weather system, the lore and the cute nature of quests have been there from the beginning. Niches like the unique music system, role-playing and the Ettenmoors (player versus monster player, aka PVMP) attracted players that formed communities with their own unwritten rules and sub culture. Out of game, LOTRO fashion blogs form a niche that is still going strong as of today.

My oldest LOTRO screenshot: Ravanel runs through the Misty Mountains (Nov 15, 2008)

LOTRO vs WoW

One thing people usually mention when they're talking about LOTRO is how friendly the community is. In reality, the LOTRO community has constantly changed over the years, but I would say that there's always been a strong base of players that is friendly and helpful towards newcomers, more so than in other MMOs I've played. That said, people make it out to be more perfect than it was; general chat never was completely devoid of trolls.

These first years a recurring theme in general chat was "LOTRO vs WoW". People were constantly comparing the two MMOs. I never really saw the point: why were the "LOTRO is just a WoW clone" people even in LOTRO chat if they'd rather play World of Warcraft? My boyfriend at the time played WoW with his friends and had tried to get me into it, but I didn't like the cartoony graphics and the look of my character. LOTRO's landscapes looked gorgeous compared to those in WoW and made my favourite fantasy world come to life - to me, there never was any contest.

The Rift

Another topic of discussion was the Rift raid, but because I was playing on my own and honestly didn't even know at first that there was such a thing as 'endgame' and 'raiding', I didn't get to experience it firsthand until I was level 60. An interesting characteristic of the typical LOTRO player is that they have extreme nostalgic feelings for this raid. If you'll ask one for their favourite raid, it'll be "the Rift, hands down". When I eventually did get to see the Rift, I thought it was pretty average in terms of fight mechanics and difficulty levels; later raids featured more depth and more demanding and challenging gameplay. I think the fact that it was their first exposure to raiding for many people coloured those memories. (I fully expect to be crucified by loyal LOTRO players now that I've written this down!)

Lifetime subscription

I leveled very slowly, determined to do all the quests out there. Naturally, I quickly outleveled the regions I was in, so it took me very long to get to level 50, the original level cap. The screenshot below, taken at February the 3rd, 2009, shows that I must have reached it after about one and a half year of playing. At this time, I was still very much in love with LOTRO, and I decided to buy the lifetime subscription. As a founder, I could buy it for the discounted price of about 200 euros, and from that moment on, I never had to pay a subscription fee anymore. Back in the day it felt like a gamble, because nobody knew how long LOTRO would stick around. It was a lot of money for me, a poor student, but I knew I would keep playing long enough to earn it back. And even if the servers would shut down earlier, it felt like a good way to support the studio. Seeing as LOTRO is still around nine years later, I'm so happy I took the plunge!

Ravanel in her early level 50's, resting in the Great Delving, Moria

The Mines of Moria (2008)

At November 18, 2008, LOTRO's first expansion launched: the Mines of Moria. Players ventured into Moria to help the dwarves reclaim it from the goblins and worse, and could level up to 60. It was an awesome expansion. The Moria quests felt more engaging than ever before, and it was exciting to see whether the dwarves would succeed. There were lots of well designed group instances and two lair raids: the Watcher and the Turtle. Fighting the Watcher in the Water was a really cool experience: lore wise but also mechanically. It was my first raid and I was rapidly learning to support my group as a lore-master. I had found friends around level 40, joined their kinship and enthusiastically ventured out with them to best those group instances. I had found my place in Middle-earth.

Moria is also when legendary items were added to the game, allowing players to customize their weapons. Every class received three different trait lines, of which at least one was DPS oriented. This made soloing much less cumbersome for support classes such as captains, minstrels and lore-masters. It also meant that player characters became a lot more powerful; the first major instances of power creep. Two new classes were added with Mines of Moria: the rune-keeper and the warden.

This was also a time in which a different attitude towards endgame was maintained. During Shadows of Angmar, endgame gear mostly meant hunting specific items that were best in slot for certain classes. With Mines of Moria, players also needed to collect radiance gear. Radiance was a stat that was needed to counteract the huge amount of dread bestowed on the player when fighting the Watcher (and later bosses in Dar Narbugud and Barad Guldur). If you didn't have enough radiance, you'd constantly cower, have decreased health and would miss your attacks because your effective level was lower. To put it simply, you couldn't contribute to the encounter. This meant that all other sources of armour (including crafted armour) were rendered obsolete, because radiance was required. To obtain radiance armour, you needed to run those Moria group instances. The Twenty-first hall was where you would find most level capped players, hanging out with friends or just randomly standing around.

In the spring of 2009, Lothlórien was added, allowing players to escape the darkness of Moria for a bit. The inner parts of Lórien were only accessible to players with enough reputation with the Galadhrim; the Elves would mercilessly shoot down (one-shot) any players that ventured within the boundaries without permission. This feature was later removed.

The depressing darkness of Mirkwood

Siege of Mirkwood (2009)

The next expansion, Siege of Mirkwood (September 4, 2009), raised the level cap from 60 to 65. It added new, well designed group instances, but there was substantially less initial content: fewer group instances and the map was considerably smaller than Moria. Barad Guldur was a well designed raid that I thoroughly enjoyed. Instead of large group instances, development time went to skirmishes: scaleable instances with randomly selected mobs that were meant to keep the experience fresh. Alas, it didn't turn out that way. Skirmishes were reasonably fun and a useful tool to tell the story of the siege of Mirkwood by the Elves, but they felt more shallow. Difficulty could only be increased artificially through the tier system, and many players (myself included) preferred traditional group content. Nowadays, skirmishes are primarily approached as an alternative way to level.

I don't know whether it was due to Mirkwood being yet another depressing environment after the dark mines of Moria, or if it was due to the skirmishes and low amount of initial content. Either way, more players started leaving LOTRO during the Siege of Mirkwood than ever before in the history of the game. Especially on my small server, Gilrain, you could really tell that the world was getting quiet. The first silent player exodus had started.

Free-to-play

It was around this time that LOTRO went free to play with an optional subscription option: a model it retains to this day. Lifetime memberships were no longer sold. Some players think of the introduction of the F2P model as the beginning of the end for LOTRO, because it had a huge effect on the community atmosphere. Indeed, general chat went downhill. Personally, I strongly disliked the free-to-play change, but I figured it was something the game needed to survive. As I could ignore general chat and hang out with my friends, I was more worried about the Store breaking my immersion and constantly testing the boundaries of pay to win.

After Siege of Mirkwood, LOTRO experienced its first content drought. With every prior expansion, the game received an update including group content after about four months. But this time, it was only one landscape region (Enedwaith) and an epic book story. New group content came one year and a half after Siege of Mirkwood, and it took two years for a new expansion to arrive.

Echoes of the Dead (2011)

After having besieged Barad Guldur in Mirkwood, players joined up with the Rangers to help them move south, following in their chieftain Aragorn's footsteps. This is where the whole Grey Company storyline started, a storyline that would turn out to continue deep into Gondor (2017). With the influential game update Echoes of the Dead (March 18, 2011), the Ost Dunhoth raid and the In Their Absence instance cluster was added. This is when the game grew up in a sense; the quests felt more fluent and the landscape was more detailed than ever before. Ost Dunhoth and its related group instances showed a break in style: they felt different from older group content. The raid in particular featured new and creative game design. The last boss, Gortheron, was very challenging on tier 2, and I was proud to be part of the first group to down it on our humble server.

Echoes of the Dead was also when radiance was removed from the game, lowering the barrier of entry for group content. Furthermore, first age legendary items were once more available after having been absent during the Siege of Mirkwood. The map home was changed into a skill, so that players didn't have to carry around a map in their inventory. Finally, the tier system was added for group instances, allowing for the Ost Dunhoth raid to be very challenging on tier 2 without making the experience out of reach for more casual players, that could do it on tier 1.

In June 2011, Turbine decided to no longer outsource the publishing of LOTRO in Europe to Codemasters and moved all EU servers to Turbine's own data centre in Boston.

Rise of Isengard (2011)

LOTRO's third expansion, Rise of Isengard, launched on September 27, 2011. The level cap was raised to 75 and three new regions were added: Dunland, Gap of Rohan and Isengard. Dunland was the largest of the three and explored the allegiance of Dunlending tribes to Saruman. I was very impressed with the way the game developers portrayed the Dunlending people: much less black and white, with more nuance between "good" and "evil", than Tolkien did. This gave questing a great sense of realism, which was strengthened by the use of 'dynamic layers': the open world environment would appear differently to you depending on where you were in the story. The main hub during this era was Galtrev, or "Lagtrev", as it was mockingly called by LOTRO players.

The expansion featured two raids: the Tower of Orthanc and the lair boss Draigoch. Both struggled with bugs. The Tower of Orthanc had well designed bosses, but felt unfinished upon release. The Fire and Frost tier 2 challenge was literally unbeatable for months because some numbers were messed up in the coding. The last encounter of the raid, Saruman, took very long (half an hour) and if you were unlucky with RNG at the very end, you could start all over again. It was a well designed raid, but balancing issues took some of the fun away. Luckily, the armour sets looked gorgeous.

I wrote earlier how Siege of Mirkwood had less group content than the Mines of Moria. This turned out to be a trend: Rise of Isengard had even less group content, while the price for the expansion stayed more or less the same.

In the spring of 2012, the Great River region was added, featuring players' first encounter with the Rohirrim in the town Stangard. A new feature was that you could actually go inside all the houses of this town, purely for immersive reasons. The daily area the Limlight Gorge was intended to be visited with a small fellowship: I had a lot of fun duoing it with my boyfriend. One new 6-man was added (Roots of Fangorn).

Riders of Rohan (2012)

LOTRO's fourth expansion, Riders of Rohan (October 2012), was a defining moment in the game's history, as it was the first expansion that released without any group content at all. The burnt down village Hytbold was the 'endgame': players could do a maximum of five dailies across Rohan per day in order to rebuild it. I could enjoy the town from a lore perspective, but it took awfully long to completely rebuild it: 40 days if you did the maximum amount of dailies each day. By now, the in-game cash shop was flirting more enthusiastically with pay-to-win: if you paid real money (on top of already having paid up to $70,- for the expansion itself), you could get the grind down to 15 days. Riders of Rohan also showcases the first example of useless power creep: the final goal of rebuilding was to acquire the Hytbold armour sets, but there was no content in the game that required its better stats. The level cap was raised by ten levels, to 85.

It is obvious that Riders of Rohan was not a great expansion for endgame players; however, there were also more positive aspects. In virtual square meters, Eastern Rohan was the largest region added in one go thus far, and it looked gorgeous. The quests in Rohan were well done and felt true to the spirit of Tolkien. The game also moved with its time: minorities like children and women played important parts in the expansion's storylines, making the stories 'hit home' more than ever before. LOTRO storytelling had grown up.

In order to navigate the large areas in Rohan, the war-steed was added. These allowed players to ride much faster than on traditional steeds. Unfortunately, mounted combat was a fiasco. War-steed movement was clunky and laggy, and for many classes the combat didn't feel engaging and fun. Warbands were enemies designed to be defeated by multiple mounted players, but didn't feel like proper group content as not much strategy or team play was required. A nice thing about the war-steed is that it looked great and was customizable. But because customizations (coat colours in particular) were almost exclusively available in the Store and unlocked per character rather than per account when purchased, dressing up horses never became as popular as player character fashion in the game.

The Erebor cluster

Eventually, group content did get added: the Erebor cluster. The instances weren't very beloved and definitely sub par in terms of quality compared to existing ones. Totally disillusioned, I wrote a review of the 6-man with the not so subtle title The failure that is Dale (March 2013). Three new raid boss fights were released. To many these felt unfinished and badly designed, and top end raiding kinships became inactive. The ultimate low was the encounter Fires of Smaug, in which more than half of the raid group spent the entire 'fight' running around clicking valves rather than engaging in combat.

Several months later, a small update called Shadows of the Past introduced the skirmish Storm on Methedras and scaled Fornost to level cap. Just like in the Dale instance, the difficulty seemed off.

Helm's Deep (2013)

November 2013, LOTRO's last expansion as of today was released: update 13, Helm's Deep. The stakes were high. Many players had left after the disappointing endgame content of the Erebor cluster, and small servers were getting awfully quiet with many players transferring to higher populated servers. The out-of-game world also became quiet, with many fan sites disappearing, among which the popular A Casual Stroll to Mordor.

With Helm's Deep the level cap increased to 95 and the world was extended to Western Rohan. Skill trees were introduced and a huge class overhaul was implemented, causing uproar in the community. Generally, the total amount of skills per class were reduced, and several classes got 'dumbed down' to appeal to new players. As a result, many classes played very differently than before, and felt clunky and awkward to play (eventually, the latter was addressed).

No raids were released with Helm's Deep. This was explained with - I paraphrase - "'well noboby raids anyway, so it isn't a priority... we're just reacting to player trends". (In 2015, a former Turbine employee revealed that the true reason was insufficient funds.) Instead, epic battles were introduced. These allowed players to join instances of famous Middle-earth events, where they could watch NPCs kill each other while waiting around and occasionally clicking things. Epic battles were almost universally disliked, but players had to play them (and still do up until this day) to grind promotion points (200!) to get points for the skill trees and get first age symbols.

In April 2014, a few months after the expansion, update 13 brought Fangorn and Flooded Isengard to the game, and added the ability to use cosmetic (non combat) pets on all classes. Previously, pets were exclusive to lore-masters.

Whether it was because of dislike for the class changes, the absense of raid content or the epic battles (or a combination of those), many people stopped playing with Helm's Deep, making it the second player exodus.

Gondor updates (2014-ongoing)

By now, LOTRO had unmistakingly outworn its stature as triple-A MMO. From 2014 onwards, the game focused on rolling out smaller updates that focused entirely on world building, storylines and landscapes. The first of these was update 14, which added Western Gondor to virtual Middle-earth. Although warbands were still around, Gondor leaned less on mounted combat than Rohan and provided with a more traditional questing experience (but with better looking landscapes and NPCs). Life time subscribers and VIPs automatically gained access to all updates that gradually introduced all regions of Gondor.

In the footsteps of legendary items, more customization - but also more grind - was added to jewellery and armour with the introduction of the essence system. The level cap was raised to 100 and 'endgame' revolved around doing quests for reputation in Dol Amroth to acquire socketed armour that could be filled with essences.

With update 15: Gondor Aflame (November 2014), the Beorning class and race was introduced to LOTRO. It was the first class that was exclusive to one race, and it could fill all three primary roles (healer, damage dealer and tank). Unique to the class is that it can transform into bear form when having built up sufficient 'wrath'. Like the rune-keeper, the Beorning was initially met with mixed feelings because of lore reasons. Unfortunately, the class is not very strong in endgame content, as every role is done significantly better by another class.

In May 2015, update 16 brought the Osgiliath cluster, unexpectedly bringing new group content to LOTRO after all. Luckily, these instances did not suffer from difficulty tuning problems and were of decent quality. Lorewise, it was pretty cool to explore Osgiliath around the time of its fall. The city was also released as a new PVMP map. In October of that year, Minas Tirith was added (update 17). The city was huge, had an incredible amount of detail and held true to the lore. Players explored it while doing a gigantic number of quests, stumbling upon many lore nuggets. The Battle for Minas Tirith was experienced in two epic battles.

Up until this point, all 29 original game servers were still around. Historically, much resistance existed against potential server merges. Many servers knew tight communities that felt a sense of shared identity and server pride. After eight and a half years, however, many servers had become ghost towns, and players were positive about merges. In August 2015, the number of servers was reduced to 10. The event brought some new life into LOTRO, with old time players checking out their accounts and making a fresh start on a new server.

In April 2016, the much anticipated update 18 brought the Pelennor cluster to the game, including the first new raid in three years: the Throne of the Dread Terror. After Minas Tirith, virtual Middle-earth expanded eastward, adding the beautiful and lush North Ithilien. More needless power creep was added by introducing essence equipment with better stats than raid rewards for flower picking, first in Ithilien, later in Dagorlad. I was upset by the huge grind and dumb nature of clicking things in the landscape, but the type of players that are left in the game are fine with it (judging by the comments, most are upset by me being upset).

During the course of 2016, Turbine transitioned into a mobile game studio. Following this change of direction, the LOTRO developers banded together with their collegues working on DDO to found a new independent game studio: Standing Stone Games (December 2016). Daybreak Games became the new publisher.

LOTRO as of today (2017)

As it stands today, players can explore virtual Middle-earth from the Shire and the Blue Mountains in the west to the Black Gate in the east, helping the fellowship from behind the scenes on their errand. But LOTRO will not be over once Frodo fulfills his task: in interviews earlier this year, its developers have revealed that they are already working on what direction players will take after that event. Mordor will not be the end, but rather a new beginning.

I've always hoped that LOTRO would reach Mordor, but I never imagined it would take ten years! It wasn't an easy decade: the MMO is no longer the popular, potential "WoW killer" it was at launch. Combat struggles with several issues caused by irregular power creep and it isn't easy to get into the game for gamers that are used to modern MMOs. But despite its flaws, LOTRO is still the go to game for Tolkien fans that want to immerse themselves in virtual Middle-earth: a beautiful world full of lore nuggets.

Happy anniversary, Lord of the Rings Online!

Fashion Friday: Egg hunter's outfit

2017-04-14T23:53:00.002+02:00

It's Easter this weekend, and I'm already looking forward to our egg hunt. Okay, okay, I'm grown up... but what's wrong with some fun? I've been looking for eggs with my family since I was old enough to identify one, so it's a nostalgia thing for me. Also, if I'd be a hobbit I'd still be a tween, so... totally legit.

This is my burglar, Ravil. She is my only true roleplay character. I don't roleplay much - I created her in 2010 or so and she's still level 25, so you can probably tell. But this weekend I'm totally in the Easter mood. Lord of the Rings Online doesn't have an Easter festival or something of the sorts, but I do love creating outfits. So that's how the egg hunter's outfit was born.

Looking for eggs is fun, but it does make a hobbit hungry. That's why we need some help in the form of a loyal dog with a good nose. Faroth is helping Ravil find those extra hard eggs that you'd otherwise find in the winter three years later or so. Can't leave any eggs behind to rot!

Outfit

Ravil to the right is ready for some egg hunting! She is wearing the following:

Circlet of Fresh-picked Flowers, dyed sea blue (Farmer's Faire)
Padded Mantle of the Dunland Soothsayer, dyed gold (L69 quest reward)
Cloak of the Cluck (L6 quest reward)
The Ancient Master's Robe, dyed sea blue (lore-master set bonus piece, Nan Curunir)
Basket of Colourful Eggs (Farmer's Faire)

Pet

Faroth (L105 quest reward)

I always wanted an outfit that would include the Cloak of the Cluck, but never found a good colour match. The eggs in the egg basket have pretty much all colours, though, so for this one it was most important that it was colourful. I usually don't like sea blue as much because it can really hurt your eyes, but I think it works quite well on the Ancient Master's Robe. I also love that there are daisies on the basket and in her hair. And the Padded Mantle of the Dunland Soothsayer looks as if it is part of the cloak dyed gold.

Alternatives

If you don't have the patience to make it through all chicken session play quests (required for the Cloak of the Cluck), you can play Hobnanigans instead and acquire the Blue Chicken Cloak. This cloak looks similar, but is dyed bright blue. But the cool thing about the Cloak of the Cluck is that it makes your character do an animation when clicked (top picture).

The Padded Mantle of the Dunland Soothsayer is a great piece to go with cloaks, because it camouflages the 'shoulder flaps' cloaks have in LOTRO (I'm not a fan) and it looks as if it fastens the cloak, as you would in reality. There are multiple shoulder pieces with this cosmetic from the Dunland area (follow the link to the Lotro-wiki to find out about some alternatives).

The dog Faroth is acquired through a quest of the latest update (update 20, The Black Gate). Note that the tome that grants the skill to summon him is not bound on acquire: you can send it over to a low level alt. You might also be able to find Faroth on the auction house (the poor thing).

If you're not into dogs, a chicken pet would also fit this outfit well. You can win or barter for various chicken pets during the Hobnanigans event.

But really, how can you not be into Faroth? Who's a good boy...

I hope you guys will have a great Easter weekend!

Managing a ten year old MMO: thumbs up to the LOTRO devs

2017-04-10T23:40:00.003+02:00

I've never written so much for Developer Appreciation Week (DAW) before: one post a day. I don't know, I think I just finally found the right format for this thing. When I thought of developers to thank beforehand, I came up with eight, more than I had time for! So I'm saving one for next year (which one will have to stay a secret a bit longer).

Note that this is the last day of DAW 2017, a bonus day (as I was late with the announcement post). I will write a wrap up post with everyone's contributions later this week. If you are too curious to wait until then, you can already check some out in the comment section of the introduction post or on Twitter.

This last DAW entry is dedicated to the developers of Lord of the Rings Online. I know, I've featured them in previous years (read To the people making the sun go up and The things I love about LOTRO), but if you read my DAW 2017 introduction post...

"Have you ever been so critical about a game that you read back that post later and gasped? As in, you start wondering if any dev addressed would jump off a cliff after reading it?"

Well, let's just keep it at that I have opinionated LOTRO posts that would qualify.

Criticism and praise

So, just in case any LOTRO devs are reading this: know that the only reason I write critical posts about your beautiful game is because I feel so passionate about it! And that's the truth. I believe the best gaming blogs voice the authentic thoughts of the author(s), not just a selection of either positive or negative thoughts. This is what I aim for in my writing.

I always try to keep my critical posts constructive and based on facts rather than emotions - although I'm certainly not flawless in my writing. I also make sure to take the time to write about the parts of virtual Middle-earth that I absolutely love as well: the quest writing, the classes, group instances and the gorgeous landscapes. The latter is illustrated with the picture above of a dreamy road through Breeland. It's hard to believe this landscape is ten years old, but it is!

If you want to read any recent articles praising the game, I recommend LOTRO housing updates: a review, Green inspired screenshots from virtual Middle-earth and Fashion Friday: herald of the moon moth. However, my enthusiastic LOTRO articles notwithstanding, the devs deserve more love.

Working with an old MMO

If there's something I've learned from my fellow participants during this year's DAW it's that 1) game developers work extremely hard purely because they love their games; 2) bugs frequently appear in complicated coding and 3) devs are usually aware that bugs exist when content goes live and feel terrible about it. Especially with an MMO that is so old (almost ten years now!) issues may have piled up that make it even more challenging to keep it all working. Not to mention developers that worked on earlier versions of the game, having vital knowledge of specific parts of the game's design, that have moved over to other game companies. So it is the more impressive that a fresh wind is blowing now LOTRO is part of Standing Stone Games. The renewed enthusiasm and love for virtual Middle-earth shines through in the devs' work.

LOTRO community engagement

One thing specifically deserves a shoutout and that's how much LOTRO's communication with the community has improved. Remember, this is the game where "Soon TM" became a beloved meme that was even used by devs themselves. People are still complaining, as they always will, but communication certainly is better than it was. Starting in 2014, the LOTRO devs started doing livestreams, about 3-4 per year. Since Cordovan joined the team as a community manager in June 2016, the amount of dev streams dramatically increased. Indeed, this is when I found out about them existing. After all the more regular the streaming, the higher the chance people will find out about them and keep watching. As I wrote earlier this DAW, streaming is a great way to engage with the playerbase and make players feel involved with the game.

Something else that the devs are doing is actively promoting community streamers by letting them stream on the official LOTRO channel. This is a great gesture that I bet streamers of other MMOs are very envious of! Extra admirable is that attention is also given to content creators that are not streamers - something that is often overlooked by other community managers of other MMOs. In February this year, a weekly community letter called The LOTRO Beacon was initiated, featuring player events, game festivals and fan posts. LOTRO developers have participated in podcasts and regularly retweet blog posts and pretty screenshots posted by fans on Twitter. It's great to know that LOTRO's developers are so well informed and I for one felt very honoured on the occasions that one of my articles made it to the Beacon.

Conclusion

MMOs generally don't age well and it can't be easy to work on such an old game as Lord of the Rings Online. Therefore, the LOTRO devs deserve a big thumbs up for their work, especially when it comes to community engagement.

This post is part of the eight annual Developer Appreciation Week (DAW), running from April 3rd to 10th 2017. Everyone is welcome to join the prompt and spread some game dev positivity (#DAW8).

Standing firm in the wake of progress: a tribute to Standing Stone Games

2017-04-06T23:57:00.000+02:00

Somewhere during the course of 2016, news reached me that Turbine was transitioning into a 'mobile game studio'. For us, the fans, this came out of nowhere and didn't make much sense: after all, thusfar the studio had been working on MMOs. It sounded ominous for the many Turbine developers that were working on MMOs such as the one I've been playing for almost ten years now: Lord of the Rings Online. After the short announcement, things went on as usual and the worried feeling retreated into the back of my mind.

Fast forward a couple of months (December 2016) and we hear that the developers that worked on LOTRO and Dungeons and Dragons Online for Turbine are starting their own 'indie game studio': Standing Stone Games. The gaming community is blindsided: nobody saw this coming. Some people preach doom and gloom, others regard it as a liberation from the shackles of the 'evil' corporate Turbine. Myself? Somewhere in the middle. I don't believe Turbine is evil; that's a product of gamers having the tendency to blame unpopular decisions on corporate greed.

With Turbine's choice to exclusively focus on mobile games, a clear difference of interest became apparent and I believe every player that spends time in LOTRO or DDO is indebted to the developers that chose to continue developing those games as part of a newborn indie studio. It is an incredibly brave decision, and one that speaks volumes of the love of these developers for the two virtual worlds they created.

Nobody knows for sure what would've happened if Standing Stone Games wouldn't have formed when it did, but the news that Asheron's Call (Turbine's third MMO) was shutting down mere days after SSG announced their secession from Turbine makes one wonder.

I do not play DDO, so I can't speak for it, but for LOTRO the change to SSG blew a refreshing gust of wind through the game. Old time players reinstalled LOTRO to check it out once more and devs and players held enthusiastic discussions about plans for the future on the game's forum. Some quality of life changes have already made it live (fix of the /say bug and a housing update), others will likely follow this year (High Elf new playable race, new character customizations and Mordor).

When I think of the name of the studio, "Standing Stone Games", I imagine the ancient stones of the Barrow Downs, weathered by the ages, yet upright, enduring. It is a name well chosen. LOTRO and DDO may not offer the most modern gameplay and advanced graphics, but they have successfully conquered their territory in the MMOscape, and their devs are willing to defend it. Not only do these oldschool MMOs have a dedicated fan base, they now also have their own dedicated game studio.

So this one is for you, Standing Stone Games. May you stand tall and proud, until there are no stories left to tell. /drink

This post is part of the eight annual Developer Appreciation Week (DAW), running from April 3rd to 10th 2017. Everyone is welcome to join the prompt and spread some game dev positivity (#DAW8).

Fashion Friday: Herald of the moon moth

2017-03-31T17:35:00.001+02:00

It's been a while since I posted an in-game outfit. "Fashion Friday" I used to call these posts, as there isn't always a 5 Fandom Friday topic that fits my blog and it is nice to have something relaxing going on the last day for the working week. I'll take the occasion to pick up where I left and share my latest spring look in Lord of the Rings Online.

The hills are alive...

For some reason, a Sound of Music tune kept creeping up on me during the photoshoot. I will have to rewatch that movie one day. It's been so long.

Most parts of this outfit are Moon Moth themed pieces that were added to the Spring Festival this year (2017). The festival is open to all levels and offers a great opportunity for new players to pick up some stuff that looks better than the starter gear. The pieces can be bartered for with spring leaves, which in their turn are earned through doing Spring Festival quests. Each year new rewards are added, so (since LOTRO turns ten this year) the choice is huge by now.

I love how war-steed garments have made it to the festival the past years. Garments are hard to come by if you don't want to buy from the LOTRO store (for real money), so I gladly took the opportunity to dress up my brown war-steed in similar fashion (see above).

Outfit

Lore-master Ravanel to the right is wearing the following:

White Rose Circlet (Spring Festival, 13 spring leaves)
Cloak of the Moth (Spring Festival, 18 spring leaves)
Long-sleeved Dress of the Moth, dyed burguny (Spring Festival, 18 spring leaves)
Wood-lily (off-hand) (epic book quest [85] Volume III, Book 10, Chapter 15: The Bloom)
Moth-kite (cosmetic pet, overrides main hand) (Spring Festival, 30 spring leaves)

The cloak is also available with hood and there is a short-sleeved and a sleeveless version of the dress. The cloak has a unique glow effect: it shifts colour, like the cloak and steed of many colours.

Mounts

Steed of the Moth (Spring Festival, 40 spring leaves)
War-steed (requires level 71):

Solid War-steed appearance with red roan colour,

Simple Tail coloured brown (looks blond),

Head-piece of the Moon Moth (Spring Festival, 40 spring leaves),

Caparison of the Moon Moth (Spring Festival, 40 spring leaves)

Depicted to the right is the Steed of the Moth. Unlike war-steeds, the coat colour of horses and ponies cannot be altered (other than summoning a different horse or pony altogether).

Note: the amount of currency stated is correct for the 2017 Spring Festival (ongoing at the time of writing). Prices are subject to change for future festivals.

Here are some more pictures of my war-steed, Suletal. I like dark-haired steeds with these light coloured garments, as they provide contrast. The blonde tail ("brown") is a fun detail that corresponds with the yellow in the headpiece and caparison. I did not buy the saddle, as Elves supposedly ride without.

The coolest part of the outfit is no doubt the moth kite. The first kites were added with the Farmer's Faire in 2016, and they were an instant hit. Back then one of the two available kites could only be bought with real money, which was a pity. Both kites of the Spring Festival (there's a flower version as well) can be bartered for with spring leaves, though: really cool! I expect they may be changed to mithril coins when/if new versions are added in future years, like is customary for festival steeds.

Did you get any parts of the Moon Moth outfit for your LOTRO characters?

When MMO love is complicated. The ambiguous relationship of a seasoned raider with LOTRO

2017-03-22T21:53:00.001+01:00

I have an ambiguous relationship with Lord of the Rings Online: I seem to be part of an eternal cycle of embracing and rejecting the game. On the one hand, virtual Middle Earth calls to me, always. I love immersing myself in its gorgeous landscapes and if there's something new, I want to check it out. On the other hand, it's hard for me (as a seasoned MMO progression raider) to ignore fundamental flaws in its combat system. For reasons already stated elsewhere, the gameplay simply isn't what it used to be.

After my return to LOTRO in the spring of 2016, several of my guildies or kinnies (your pick) joined in to try out the new group content. We had fun times doing the Osgiliath and Pelennor instances on tier 2 challenge mode with Asylum. Even that bugged one (Silent Street T2 Challenge) we managed to do as intended (say no to bears, kids!) - but in the end the gear grind proved too steep to ever get a full group of twelve of us together. This really disheartened me, because what I've seen of the the Throne of the Dread Terror raid on tier 2 is actually quite good! It deserves to be played way more than it is. If you have read my thoughts on (gear) grind both in LOTRO and in SWTOR, though, you know I can't blame my friends for not having the time and commitment to invest in a game that is, unfortunately, unbalanced and broken in many ways. The most frustrating thing is that it doesn't have to be this way: I honestly believe that all issues could be solved if the developers would put their minds to it. But, as these things seem to go in MMO world, it's all about forgetting what is and adding more and more new things. Seeing all this unfulfilled potential in an MMO I so deeply care about eventually makes me feel depressed about LOTRO, after which I typically login less and less to focus on group content in more modern MMOs. Then, after a few months of going cold turkey, virtual Middle-earth starts to call again and we've come full circle.

Somewhere in the fall of 2016, around the time of SWTOR's Eternal Throne expansion, LOTRO reverted to being my 'secondary MMO'. I more or less only logged in when something new and exciting was added, such as the much celebrated housing changes. It is only now, in March 2017, that I felt like playing seriously again, to check out LOTRO's latest update 20: Battle of the Black Gate. The game is approaching Mordor and that, of course, is not something I would want to miss!

When Conrad and I logged in the other day, we found that, in our absence, we had missed an entire quest line revolving around curing Eowyn, Faramir, Meriadoc and others in Minas Tirith's houses of healing. So we spent the whole evening doing that rather than trying out update 20 (gotta do everything in the right order!). I was meaning to write a review of it today, but when I started typing this came out instead. Guess some things needed to be heard.

Ravalation must be a super confusing blog to new LOTRO readers. Especially to the masses that look for a LOTRO guide to picking Ithilien flowers in a search engine, only to end up at my call to arms to Occupy Ithilien (true story, happens every day)! There are parts of the game I really love and write super enthusiastic posts about and then there are aspects I really dislike and write critical posts about - the latter of which never fail to evoke the wrath of hardcore LOTRO fanboys and girls. I am the only blogger left (as far as I'm aware) that writes such critical posts and has first hand knowledge of LOTRO's endgame - and I'm aware that I'm writing for a type of playerbase that may no longer exist. I have promised myself to stay true to my feelings in my writings and blog about what is important to me, rather than what other people would want me to write about, though. And thus I will.

In the foreseeable future, you can definitely expect lots of posts about LOTRO's new content (update 20), but when SWTOR's War for Iokath launches, I will probably play more SWTOR instead. Quality endgame calls. And so my ambiguous relationship with LOTRO will likely continue to direct my choice of MMOs in 2017.

Green inspired screenshots from virtual Middle-earth

2017-03-17T23:41:00.000+01:00

The Shire

It's Five Fandom Friday, and that means another geeky post! This week's topic was the Green Photo Challenge, and the participants were stimulated to share 5 green inspired photos in honour of St. Patrick's Day. In what is by now Ravalation tradition, I decided to go with screenshots instead, and Lord of the Rings Online was the first game that came to my mind.

LOTRO is my go-to game when I want to immerse myself in beautiful landscapes. Even though it's a pretty old MMO by now that has been overtaken graphics wise by new games, there's something about its landscapes that makes it feel more lively and 'real' than any game world I've visited. Perhaps it's the beautiful skies and weather mechanics. Or I'm just biased because I'm a huge Tolkien fan. Either way, here are five pretty green screenies from virtual Middle-earth.

Westemnet, Rohan

The first 'green landscape' you can access is the Shire (top picture). This region was released in vanilla (2007), so ten years ago, but it still looks very pretty to me. It also has the cutest music, so this is where I go if I need cheering up.

The picture above shows the endless green plains of Rohan. You can hate on mounted combat if you like (I do always get stuck when passing through towns, ugh), but riding through those plains on your war-steed gives a tremendous feeling of freedom.

Isengard

During one of the epic story chapters, players get the chance to visit Isengard before Saruman turned truly evil. It's beautiful and green and sometimes I wish I could stay there a bit longer. But then I get a feeling of sorrow because I know what's going to happen.

Isendale

Isengard lies in the Isendale, near the Gap of Rohan (86.9 S, 8.2W). This region is designed much later in the game than the Shire, and you can clearly see a difference in style. The ground is covered with so called frills, the soft looking grass cushions that I've grown to love.

Fenmarch

Finally, if you're after a romantic spot for your Lord of the Rings Online in-game wedding, look no further. The Fenmarch (Eastemnet, Rohan) has water lilies, black swans, emotional trees and a turquoise sky. If I take a character through Rohan, I always make sure to stop by this small village near the marshes. It's just so darn beautiful.

This was your daily dose of Middle-earth eye candy. If you like pretty pictures sorted by colour, make sure to check out my 6 on 6 series (featuring six screenies on the sixth of the month). You can find more specifically green goodness in Six times green. And for those of you that celebrate: I hope you had a great St. Patrick's Day - or Bullroarer Took's Day, for the hobbits among you!

5 Fandom Friday is a weekly event organized by the Female Geek Bloggers group on Google+. You can look up past and upcoming topics on The Nerdy Girlie.

LOTRO housing updates: a review

2017-03-06T18:32:00.000+01:00

Lord of the Rings Online received two updates to player housing in 2016. A few weeks ago, February 2017, it received a third. I didn't write about the changes to the housing system before, but they're quite good and much celebrated in the community. So it's about time for a full review.

Housing changes in 2016

The first change, in the summer of 2016, added tons of extra interior decoration hooks. This was a much needed change and turned around my stance towards LOTRO housing entirely. Before, there were so few hooks that I had to be very selective with what to put in my house. It also looked very empty, because there was lots of space but not much stuff. So what I did is I bought the smallest house (which looked less empty) and used the decorations I thought looked best - and never looked back. I always thought it was such a shame because there were so many cool decorations from quests, from instances and from festivals, but I never had space to use them, so I ignored them for years. And when I say years, I mean like eight years long. Nothing had been changed to the housing system since its initial implementation, so the majority of players had given up on it ever getting any attention (despite continuous hints from the player base). So while some extra hooks doesn't sound like much, the effect was actually huge. Housing in LOTRO was all of a sudden hot!

Inspired by this sudden resurgence of playing housing, the developers added a new housing neighbourhood in Gondor later in the year. Players loved it. The Gondorian player houses are reportedly huge and have tons of hooks, but they do cost real money to buy. This is one of the reasons I didn't buy one (and blog about it); the other being that I don't like the old stone texture they feature. If, however, a new housing area in Rohan would be added, I would probably cave and spend the money. Houses in Rohan would probably be made of wood, of which the texture looks better, and there are tons of pretty looking Rohirric housing decorations available, most of which I already use in my current house in Bree-land.

New changes to housing (2017)

But enough of that old news already. On to the current changes! The latest change to housing reportedly updated the whole hook system, so I eagerly logged in to give it a try. This is what I was met with when turning decoration mode on:

Whoa, Middle-earth disco mode engaged! The first thing that stood out to me were all the different colours. Before, all hooks were just white. The colours definitely make it easier to identify what type of decoration goes in what hook: green is for thin, white for small and red for large furniture; turquoise is for floor tiles and small wall hooks; dark blue for huge floor tiles and large wall hooks.

But there were more changes. In the decorations window, three more sliders have appeared (see the picture above). Before, there was just one slider that would rotate objects. You could not move decorations around; they were stationary. Now, however, you can move decorations around in the room and the maximum distance is insane. You can literally move furniture from one side of the house to the other.

But that's not the best part: it's not just moving things around in 2D, it's 3D. The bottom slider moves objects vertically, without any restrictions. This is a very brave decision of the developers. Since the slider works for all decorations, players can move all objects wherever they want: they can even let chairs float into the air (see the picture above). Even though this means lore inappropriate houses will exist, the developers decided they wanted to offer players complete, unrestricted freedom in how they decorate their house, and I think that's cool. For what it's worth: from what I've seen most people grow bored of floating furniture after a while; most houses I've visited look non gravity defying.

Position of paintings: before (left) and after (right)

The vertical slider allowed me to correct something that had been bothering me for a while: the position of paintings on the wall (I'm a perfectionist, can you tell?). Paintings always hung really low, the frame almost hitting the wood below. It didn't look good, but there was nothing you could do about it. So one of the first things I did was going through all my paintings and move them upwards a bit with the new vertical slider!

Here are some of the changes I made to my house.

Second sleeping room

This room belongs to my shieldmaiden from Rohan: captain Ravenwyn. It features many horse themed decorations and the fresh colour green refers to nature. She even collected some mistletoe and hung it on the ceiling.

Before

After

I only changed and added a couple of decorations (most of which are to the left and right back of the screenshot so you can't see them), so it's mostly changes to details. If you look closely, you'll notice that the tapestries hang a bit higher, the furniture stands closer to the wall and the mistletoe hangs above the bed.

Primary sleeping room

This is the room of lore-master Ravanel, Elf and historian. The sea theme and art in general caters to her Elven heritage, while she uses the books professionally. I went for a blue and purple colour scheme.

Before

After

Again, I've mostly changed the position of decorations. The room looks tidier and more logical this way. Although it also looks a bit more empty. I guess we could still do with some extra decoration hooks (for instance so I could add a chair to that table) - all in this room are filled.

Main room

This is the main room of my house. Each corner holds memories of places in Middle-earth my characters have visited.

Before

After

It's quite challenging to take a good overview picture of the main room, as it's so large. But this is the room I changed most in. In the middle is the huge fireplace, which now has seats on all four sides rather than on two. The rug underneath it (who has a rug under a fireplace?) has been moved to the Gondorian study area at the back of the room.

The hearth has been transformed into a cosy hangout. This corner refers to my characters' time with the Rangers.

This is where Ravenwyn plans her travels through Rohan.

I finally was able to have all my kegs displayed together in one corner of the house! Drinking from the skull faced kegs (Inn League and Moria) will port you to hilarious places in Middle-earth. Now I just need to find the perfect table with food that fits on a large hook and the dinner corner would be done. For now, you can just get very, very drunk in Casa Ravanel.

Final thoughts

As you may have guessed from reading this article, I'm really, really happy with these changes! It's awesome that LOTRO's designers have decided to give players absolute freedom, and the range of sliders is huge: as large as the house itself. This allows you to arrange decorations exactly as they want, making your house feel logical and truly a home when moving through it.

Of course there's always room for improvement. We could still use some more hooks. Gardens still have very few hooks and the interior looks more empty than before now you can position furniture with its back to the walls (like you would in reality). And we could use more housing items for thin and small furniture hooks. Some decorations that require large hooks are very small - see the picture above: does that tiny table with artifacts really need a large furniture hook (right now, it does)? Finally, I would love a key system that allows friends to instantly travel to your house.

These are all minor things, though. Overall, I'm very happy with all the changes that have been made to LOTRO housing over the course of this and last year. After nine years of vanilla housing I honestly never expected anything to change, but I'm glad I was wrong!

What do you think of LOTRO's housing updates?

Geeky expressions only my friends understand (and now you will, too)

2017-02-27T23:00:00.001+01:00

For most these will just be some random words,

but members of Asylum will recognize them immediately

The latest 5 Fandom Friday was about "geeky expressions that only my friends understand". I suggested the topic myself, so I definitely wanted to participate, even if the flu kept me from writing anything on the appropriate day (last Friday).

I don't really talk "geeky" in everyday life, but when I'm at my gaming laptop, I definitely do. Not only am I fluent in "MMO language" (read: Lost in translation: Why my friends don't understand me when I talk about MMOs), I also use specific phrases that don't make a lot of sense to anyone (not even other MMO players) but my friends.

Those friends all play together in the gaming group Asylum. Originally a kinship in Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) and now mostly active as a guild in Star Wars: the Old Republic (SWTOR), I've been part of this group of lovely people for six years now. If you spend so much time together, you inevitably come up with your own approach of gaming and inside jokes. In this post I will share five.

LOTRO 2012. Someone (presumably a hobbit, considering the height)
still wears the noob leaf on a kinship picture right after doing the Saruman T2 Challenge

Noob leaf & Green dildo

When someone does something exceptionally stupid doing raid nights, typically resulting in the deaths of all members in a comical way, we mark them up with a specific target marker (normally reserved for adversaries). This was the "noob leaf" in LOTRO (see picture above). When we started raiding in SWTOR we needed an equivalent, which became the "green dildo" (although one polite Englishman in our guild stubbornly refers to it as "the sabre").

"Wipe on trash, one shot the boss"

This is what we call 'the Asylum way' when something doesn't go as planned. We have this tradition of being able to down horribly hard bosses, but now and then dying horribly ("wipe") on easy adversaries (called "trash" in MMOs) when nobody is paying attention. The saying goes back to a night in LOTRO during the Siege of Mirkwood expansion, when the raid group had defeated the Lieutenant (a big achievement) and afterwards wiped on the Turtle (a pug worthy easy lair boss five levels below level cap). This still is a great source of self ridicule.

As I was typing this article, someone was typing 'the dot' in guild chat

.

Originally intended to get people from different LOTRO kinships together quickly in a shared chat channel (for instance if people had relogged to a different character that the other might not recognize), the dot in chat still lives on in our guild chat. The dot may mean "I'm in!", or "This is my alt I was going to relog" or simply "I'm ready for an invite": either way, the expected action is an invite to the group. Newcomers are always mystified when they see those dots appear.

"Kill stuff, don't die"

Some guilds require their members to read up on online guides before coming to a raid night. We don't. We throw ourselves upon the raid bosses until we figure out what is going on. And when we don't know it anymore, we always have this incredibly useful tactic to fall back upon! Usually, the conversation goes something like this. First timer: "Any tactics I should know about?" Reply: "Kill stuff, don't die." The saying has developed into more than our guild's mantra: it stands for the no nonsense way we play our MMOs.

Left: 121 search results for :derp: in Discord chat; top right: the :derp: Discord icon

:Derp:

Old expressions go and new ones take their place. :Derp: or "Colon derp colon" (when spoken out loud) is fresh from 2017! Since the start of this year, Asylum is using Discord to communicate, which works amazing as a sort of out of game guild chat for a multi-gaming group. Discord allows for uploading your own emotes, a feature we have eagerly put to use. I made an icon of one of our favourite pets, the kelldrake (see picture above). This little bugger has a gift for looking really derpy, so he was assigned the code ":derp:", which we now enthusiastically apply whenever someone (be it a dev or ourselves) derps. Conrad and I have even started saying "colon derp colon" to each other if one of us does something stupid - which is probably only funny to us.

I almost feel a bit guilty about writing these expressions down, as they're not so much my expressions, but rather our expressions. These funny little ways of talking to each other is part of what makes Asylum Asylum. Some things are best kept secret, though: if you want to find out who Norman is (another Asylum word), you'll just have to join us!

Do you use geeky gaming expressions that nobody but your mates get?

5 Fandom Friday is a weekly event organized by the Female Geek Bloggers group on Google+. You can look up past and upcoming topics on The Nerdy Girlie.

The power of memories: a quest for the essence of MMOs

2017-02-20T21:58:00.000+01:00

Last week, I was chatting to my friend Rakuno. He was reminiscing why he was going through this "long, weird streak of burning out on MMOs": "after playing MMOs for a while it kind of feels like the road is the same no matter the game", he said. And he has a point. Other than artistic, visual differences and varying lore settings, all MMOs boil down to the same formula: gather experience (level up), gather gear, gather currency... maybe fight some challenging bosses, craft stuff, dress up or decorate your house. There is no definite end goal, no satisfying "You WIN!" button at the end; in fact, there is no end, there are seemingly always more things to do. Indeed, MMOs would be shitty, grindy RPGs, if not for that single defining element: the other people with whom you share this virtual world.

I had the feeling that my friend might feel the way he does about MMOs because he is mostly playing on his own these days, while it is other players that make your experience in MMOs unpredictable, and thus interesting. I'm not saying it's all sunshine and rainbows: I'm sure we can all recall encounters with trolls, guild drama and misunderstandings (read: The day on which virtual people made me cry). But there are also good times, and I would argue that these have the potential to transform into powerful positive memories, which in their turn make us want to login and expect us to have fun.

To investigate this hypothesis I've delved deep into the blogosphere to look for such powerful memories. I've had a lot of help from people tweeting me their stories - thank you! Here are five memories that in my opinion touch upon the essence of what it means to play MMOs.

Family bonding

In Finding value out of gaming, Redbeard tells how he grew up with gaming and how his children in their turn are now growing up gaming as well. For him, gaming is a way to form cross-generational bonds. "The mini-Reds have been indoctrinated into gamer culture from a young age, and they've grown to become gamers themselves. Whereas other families might discuss sports, we discuss games." He continues: "I've no doubt that when my oldest goes off to college I'll use MMOs to keep in touch with her. I can imagine her occasionally logging into SWTOR or LOTRO to just putz around and occasionally group up, just before heading out to dinner or hanging out with friends." For Redbeard, some of his favourite memories as a father have come from gaming. I was moved by his story and fully recommend clicking through to read about all his adventures playing MMOs and other games with the 'mini-Reds'.

One of Ethu's drawings (left) and Zenakh's Rock (right) (source: Etholution)

The loss of a fellow player

The tearjerker of this article is provided for by Ethuiliel with High Chieftain Zenakh. She takes us back to Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) in 2011, when monster player and PvP raid leader Zenakh passed away. Game masters placed a copy of his character on a rock in the Ettenmoors with 600 players holding a wake in his honour. From then onwards, the rock was known as "Zenakh's rock" and it was neutral ground. Ethuiliel drew two breathtaking character portraits in his honour. I couldn't keep my eyes dry when reading her writings.

Pizzamaid and her friend during the Eternal Bonding ceremony (source: Pizzamaid.moe)

In-game marriage

A more uplifting memory comes from Pizzamaid in A screenshot is worth 1000 words: the day on which she participated in the Eternal Bonding ceremony in Final Fantasy XIV. "Romantically? There’s nothing there, but in our time online? We’ve developed an amazing friendship that we know will go on for years to come. Is it safe to say we were in it for the 2 seater Chocobo mounts? OH YEAH. Plus… what woman doesn’t love a wedding? Plus one that only cost us $20.00? /raises hand" Like a true couple, the pair fussed over all the details extensively beforehand to make sure their perfect day, celebrated with many friends in-game, would transform into the cherished memory it is today.

Rakuno's character in Lineage 2 (source: Shards of Imagination)

Standing up for each other

Rakuno memorizes an event in Lineage 2 that left a lasting impression in It is personal to me. Someone had killed a guildie, which was a big deal in that game. The offender said it was 'just for fun, nothing personal'. "To which my clan leader replied "It is personal to me." then proceeded to challenge the PKer for a one-on-one duel. (...) What stuck to my mind (...) were those words spoken by my clan leader "It is personal to me". There were just a lot implicit things behind those words. That she would stand by us, no matter what. That our problems were her problems. That if we ever attacked that she would always come to our defense. (...) that may not be a big deal, just something natural for a guild leader to do. (...) But at that time, at that particular moment with all the tension going on (...), it really stuck to me. I'd like to say that since then I've tried to live up to those words."

Fingolwë and Ravanel at the banks of the river Gilrain in the final minutes of their server's life

Server pride

Finally, I wouldn't want to end this article without sharing my own memories, of which the fondest have their origin in LOTRO. Lord of the Rings Online was always a game of strong communities. When my home server, Gilrain, was closed last year after having existed for nine years, it felt like the end of an age to me. In a sense, Gilrain felt like a small town: I didn't know everyone, but there were many familiar faces and names that you felt accustomed to seeing around all these years. Everyone knew the server lunatic and the notorious exploiter, the names of legendary PvMP raid leaders, the local history of big raiding guilds. So many friendships were formed, alliances made and lost... it wasn't all perfect, but it was definitely home. You can read my ten fondest memories in Goodbye, Gilrain.

Wait, I want more!

You're in luck, because there's more. Lina Willowwood (LOTRO) writes about her first time playing a musical instrument in front of a crowd in LOTRO. She was so nervous! Luckily, everybody loved it and it turned out to be one of the best nights she had in the game. Joe (CWA) looks back at his childhood memories in Clone Wars Adventures. "One of the best things about the game was the community feel, everyone worked together to help each other which was a really nice feeling. (...) I can't give this game a score as it's too dear to my heart and brings so many memories to me." Every year, Shintar (SWTOR) sits down to write about her memorable moments in Star Wars: the Old Republic. Doing things with guildies is a constant factor. Meanwhile, Jaedia (FFXIV) felt burnt out on MMOs, but returned to Final Fantasy anyway because of its wonderful community and her friends that want to play with her. And Wolfyeyes (Blade & Soul, Wildstar and others) listens to game soundtracks to relive past memories.

Conclusions

What strikes me in all these memories is the constant presence of other people. These are stories about family, about friends, about the comradery of relative strangers and a feeling of belonging. I could imagine myself revisiting an MMO world completely emptied of players, but it would just be to relive some of those past feelings, to have the sense that it isn't all gone forever. Then again, isn't the constantly developing gameplay and content, and the coming and going of players: in short, the very notion of temporality of MMOs and that makes our memories of playing them so precious? And is the fact that there's only one first time for everything why our fondest memories are usually forged in the first MMO we played?

Think back to a strong positive memory you had in an MMO. Did it involve other players?

PS If you wrote a blog post about an MMO memory, feel free to link to it in the comments below and I'll definitely check it out.

LOTRO changes I'd love to see in 2017

2017-01-30T23:58:00.000+01:00

In the beginning of the year, I wrote a post called SWTOR changes I'd love to see in 2017. What about the other MMO I play, though, Lord of the Rings Online? At first I decided against writing such a post, because I am sure (contrary to SWTOR) none of my suggestions would see the light of day and that's a depressing thought. But then I read LOTRO Legendarium: My LOTRO wishlist for 2017 on Massively OP and it was so radically different from my own list that I decided to go with it after all.

The Massively OP article suggests some nice quality of life changes, such as a virtue and currency overhaul, that would make life easier for the everyday player. Some proposals will definitely be addressed this year: Standing Stone Games has already revealed that the developers are discussing where to go with the story after Mordor, claiming it's a new beginning for player characters rather than an ending. We also know that player character models will get attention (hopefully with new hairstyles becoming available). However, no pressing gameplay matters were addressed.

In this article, I will feature things I'd love to see changed in LOTRO that are of vital importance to me as an endgame group player. I'm going to keep it simple and restrict myself to three. You are warned: they are absolutely unsexy and not easy to sell to the playerbase (as in "hey guys, look what we're working on now!") - hence I'm not believing they'll ever happen. However, I cannot overstate the impact these three changes would make.

1) Class balance

Balancing the combat output of classes is a challenge for every MMO, but even more so for LOTRO than others. Increasing levels and stats (especially the introduction of legendary items) have more effect on some classes than others, magnifying class imbalances over time. A recent example (2016) is the difference in sustained DPS between the best (rune-keeper) and the worst (hunter) performing DPS class at the time: ~50% (!). For the most of 2016, one rune-keeper dealt as much damage as two hunters together - guess which class had a hard time getting in tier 2 groups. This was eventually fixed by buffing the hunter's overall raw damage output rather than looking at the underlying problem. As a result, it is now (2017) best to spam a single skill (barrage) as a hunter, with a lore-master feeding you power. There is no use trying to do a rotation, as you will just be performing worse. When leveling up a hunter you will one shot everything because the class is so strong. After the buff, the roles are reversed: hunters now deal more than double the DPS of the second highest damage dealer (rune-keepers), and they do so by just using one skill! This is honestly the worst class balance I've ever seen in an MMO.

LOTRO desperately needs a competent developer that is familiar with all classes to look at the base formulae and adapt them so all profit from the steep power creep (caused by legacies, imbued items, essence gear etc.) equally, or class imbalance will only get worse when new levels and gear are introduced.

2) Reduced barrier of entry

LOTRO is a great game for the casual Tolkien fan who likes to explore Middle-earth. However, it is less so for new players that want to participate in endgame. Through time, so many systems have been introduced that the learning curve is sky high. Even if players are persistent enough to grasp the legendary item system, the imbued item system and the essence system, a huge grind awaits them before they are able to head into the latest tier 2 raid. In this age, the young high school students that could pump so much time into their games have grown up. They have jobs and kids; they don't have that much time to invest anymore, especially not since there are so many other games out there that you can easily hop in and out of to get a comparable experience. I get it, grind is an efficient tool to keep people playing, and it works for some, but it is also a great tool to keep people from playing. I still play together with the friends I made in LOTRO: a team of highly skilled players that conquered many server first titles back in the day. All these people love the game to bits: it's their first MMO and they would love nothing more than to get back raiding, but they simply don't have the time or will to get into it. The recent constant release of new gear levels is another factor that makes gearing up feel like a huge treadmill and puts players off from participating. If the barrier of entry would be lowered by reducing the grind (not skill level, flower picking is something that puts skilled individuals off rather than on), the new raid would get the audience it deserves.

3) Correct instance scaling

The power creep between level 1 and 105 is not linear; it takes jumps at certain levels (those at which new expansions were released), for instance with the introduction of legendary items and imbued LI's. However, instance scaling is done linearly: it does not take power creep in regard at all. Hence we have ended up in a situation where old instances that are leveled up to new level caps are ludicrously easy (e.g. Tomb of Elendil), whereas instances that have been scaled down to lower levels are virtually impossible to beat. For example, Fornost tier 2 on level 30 is harder than a tier 2 raid on level of release. The damage dealt by mobs is way out of line with what characters of low levels (restricted by both stats of gear and defensive skills & trait points) are capable of dealing with. The tier 2 scaling system that is in the game now is based on stats of essence geared characters, while the 95 levels of characters not having access to min maxing stats with essences is completely disregarded. In effect, I avoid playing scaled instances altogether, even those that I used to love, because the experience does not even come close to the original.

If you're not extremely well versed in LOTRO's combat and scaling system, it's hard to predict what experience you're signing up for when entering a scaled instance; in most cases, it will be a disappointing one. This is a great shame, because LOTRO has many high quality instances that I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on. Rescaling these instances so they properly take into account the available stats, damage/healing output and abilities of characters at various levels would make them shine again.

Conclusion

LOTRO is a beautiful game with amazing group content, even ten years after release. However, core elements have been neglected that prevent it from reaching its full potential for group play. You can add as many cool new features as you like, but if the base mechanics of a game are inherently broken, this will ruin the rest of the game. I believe LOTRO deserves better and can, also gameplay wise, again be the star quality game it once was. So, without getting my hopes up, this was it: my three deepest wishes to make LOTRO my most beloved MMO ever again.

Many thanks go to Conrad for his extensive testing of instance scaling and insights into class balance and power creep.

LOTRO moving to Standing Stone Games: a fan's perspective

2016-12-19T23:55:00.000+01:00

Earlier today, the MMO world was surprised with the news of Lord of the Rings Online moving to a newly founded independent game studio called Standing Stone Games, together with Dungeons & Dragons Online. Daybreak Games will be doing the publishing. Of course, people are already announcing the impending death of LOTRO in various comment threads, inspired by the cancellation of the much anticipated Everquest Next earlier this year by that very company. Truth is, we don't know what Daybreak's role in this exactly is and we're not likely to find out anytime soon either, the way things are done in the game industry. But if Daybreak Games is indeed just distributing LOTRO and will not hold any control over the game's content, this may actually not be a bad change.

Considering we LOTRO players aren't going to change anything about the whole situation anyway, I don't see the point in doom-and-glooming and am trying to see the positive side of things. Remember earlier this year, when it was announced that LOTRO transitioned into a "free-to-play, mobile development studio" and had to eliminate several positions? An independent company that fully focuses on developing and sustaining their own two MMOs sounds a lot better to me. We also know that Warner Brothers never really was interested in LOTRO. The game developers that have been making these beautiful regions of Middle-earth filled with lore appropriate quests all these years, though? They definitely care.

There are other possibly positive aspects to this. For one, revenue earned from LOTRO might actually be invested in LOTRO rather than another game. However, we don't know how much LOTRO received from Warner Brothers, so we're unable to tell what the changes to the overall budget will be.

Not having a big gaming company look over your shoulder all the time might be a positive change as well. I'm not being naive and don't expect less grind and gear related store incentives all of a sudden, but who knows? If the developer team can sustain themselves by continuing to release the quality content we're used to, this could be for the better. We'll just have to wait and see.

In the immediate future, not much will change for players. Lifetime memberships are staying, Turbine Points will be renamed but will function the same, and the licence is taken care of for now. LOTRO is not the pool A "WoW killer" MMO it once was and that is not what its players are expecting. But if the game manages to continue to put out small quality updates that bring us closer to Mordor... well, that's all I can hope for, and I'm still positive we'll get there.

WTB Massively Singleplayer Online Game

2016-12-05T23:40:00.001+01:00

A friend just pointed me to someone complaining in LOTRO world chat. Okay, so far nothing new. But several people joined in, in a lament of which the irony just hurts.

"Why do we need to do raids and instances for the featured gear box?"

Good question. Why force players to leave the safety of solo play and expose them to something stressful like carrying out strategies, playing skillfully and exercise social interaction? Wouldn't it be awesome if one could just do something relaxing, such as enjoying the beautiful landscape and picking flowers, to get best in slot gear?

Oh, wait...

My Steam Awards nominations

2016-11-30T23:57:00.001+01:00

Valve organized something new this year: the so called Steam Awards. I would probably have totally missed it if a friend wouldn't have asked me for advice on who to nominate for the Villain That Needs a Hug category (I'm a terrible advisor by the way, I had no clue!) and I would probably have skipped it if it wasn't such a nice thought experiment to fill in those categories.

Only when I read Jeromai's and Izlain's nominations, it occurred to me that this was a perfect topic for a blog post. Not only do you get to compare choices, you also get to find out about people's interests beyond MMOs and may even discover some new titles you want to play. So, without further ado, here are my Steam Awards nominations.

Test of Time: The Lord of the Rings Online - The first category was an absolute no brainer. Lord of the Rings Online came out in 2007. It's now 2016 and I still actively play: that's almost ten years! The game has changed a lot over time and most of it not for the better, but, no matter what, in the end I always find myself back logging into virtual Middle-earth.

Featured in:
My return to LOTRO (2016)
Or any other of my 114 LOTRO posts on Ravalation (2012-2016)

I'm Not Crying, There's Something In My Eye: Valiant Hearts: The Great War - The first game that came to my mind for this category was Life is Strange; however, I ended up using it for another category. Valiant Hearts: The Great War is perhaps even a better choice. I am so impressed by this game and cannot recommend it enough. Gameplay wise it's a charming 2D puzzle game in a second world war setting. The art is cute and beautiful, and, together with the playful game design, is responsible for the topic not being too heavy to handle. The ability to find hidden everyday life objects with unexpected stories behind them is a brilliant plus that strongly appeals to the inner archaeologist in me. However, I still haven't finished the last chapters because I am so afraid (more) sad things will happen.

Featured in:
The games I love to play (2015)

Just 5 more minutes: ARK: Survival - ARK: Survival is a 3D survival game with dinosaurs. For dino lovers, this game is just heaven. Tread with caution, though: ARK eats away your time, especially when playing with friends. I don't want to think about the amount of times I just logged in to do A, but then this really cool dino B turns up and we drop everything to chase and tame it - only to return hours later empty handed with all our resources lost and our flying mount C slowly dying in the air somewhere in the arctic zone. The unpredictability is what makes this game so addictive, but also so much fun.

Featured in:
How to survive your first day in ARK: Survival, Pointers for newbies (2016)
The misadventures of Conrav on the beaches of horror, or: the steep learning curve of ARK: Survival (2016)

Whoooaaaaaaa Dude: Botanicula - Botanicula is an Indie game that, indeed, blew my mind. Not because of its plot, but because its approach to gameplay is so different from any other game I've played. There is no voiced component in Botanicula. There is no written content either. You get dropped in a world without knowing who "you" and where you are. It's one big trip revolving around exploring the visuals and sounds to progress and figure out what is going on. Bewildering. Refreshing. Stunning. I cannot recommend this game enough.

Featured in:
Back from the mud, living in a tree (2012)

Villain Most in Need Of A Hug: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - This was definitely a hard category to come up with a title. Every huggable villain I thought of was in a non Steam game, so that didn't help. Eventually I decided to go with Visas Marr from KOTOR 2. She is the sole survivor of an attack that purged all life from the Miraluka homeworld. Darth Nihilus, responsible for that attack, then forces her into submission. She becomes his apprentice and is sent to ambush you. In my play through, I forgave her and turned her to the light side of the force.

I never wrote anything about Visas in particular on Ravalation, but I have written about my adventures in KOTOR 2.

Featured in:

Fashion in the Old Republic (2013)
Strange new friends (2013)
I'm a saint (2013)

Game Within A Game: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - This one was really hard for me as well. I eventually decided to go with the original KOTOR game (what can I say? Need more Star Wars to compensate for not being able to include SWTOR), because I always enjoyed the swoop races and - of course - pazaak.

I haven't written any posts about the original KOTOR on Ravalation, because I played it before I started blogging.

I Thought This Game Was Cool Before It Won An Award: Life Is Strange - This was the absolute hardest category of all to fill in. If you know me, you know it's far more likely for me to start playing a game waaaay after everyone has hyped about it and already left (*cough* Guild Wars 2 *cough*) than the other way around. I just don't play that many different titles and I'm immune to bandwagons.

My brother introduced me to Life Is Strange at the end of 2015, when I returned from Sweden prematurely due to family matters. I hadn't heard of the game at all, but it conquered my heart right at the first episode. The game is witty, beautiful and, most of all, portrays the essence of what it is like to be a teenager exceptionally well. It also helped me through a tough period of my life and will therefore always be special to me.

Best Use Of A Farm Animal: Fable - The first game that came to my mind was Goat Simulator: even though I've never played it myself, I find it hilarious that it's a thing. I'm pretty sure it's going to win this category regardless, so I decided to nominate a more original one: Fable. The original Fable is among the first games I played, on my brother's Xbox (we're talking ancient history here). In it you can eat "crunchy chicks" (tooltip: high in protein, low in morality): alive baby chickens that give you evil points when consumed. There's a demon door that asks you to commit an act of great evil in order to pass through - eating 11 crunchy chicks in front of it does the job.

Back in the day I thought this was hilarious. I felt really bad when I once accidentally ate a crunchy chick, though, and never went through the demon door, just because I couldn't bear to eat all those chicks.

Most Original Use of Blood & Gore: Viscera Cleanup Detail - The last category was one you could title yourself. I came up with the "Most Original Use of Blood & Gore" award because of a game I discussed with some friends: Viscera Cleanup Detail. In this game, you get to clean up the mess left behind after your average gamer has 'cleared a room'. (Spoiler: it ain't pretty.) I cannot help but to be intrigued with games with such an original (and controversial) approach. My friend: "I bought it because I thought it was going to be funny, but it wasn't!" The predominantly positive Steam reviews disagree with her. It all boils down to what you enjoy doing in your spare time, I suppose.

What did you think of my choices? And what games would you nominate for these categories? I'd love to read your picks in the comments.

Note: the pictures of KOTOR, Fable and Viscera Cleanup Detail are official promotional images of their respective game companies. All other images are taken by me in-game. I only counted the latter for IntPiPoMo.

IntPiPoMo count: 52/50

LOTRO Update 19 review: Minas Tirith after the battle and North Ithilien

2016-11-21T23:32:00.000+01:00

I don't like to rush through content to get to the end of it; rather, I try to enjoy the road there. This is especially the case in Lord of the Rings Online. Conrad and I have enjoyed our quiet evenings together playing through LOTRO's latest update that added North Ithilien. Because the MMO has old fashioned quest text to read through rather than voiced cut scenes, we've been making things more lively by reading the quests out to each other. Turns out this slows down things a lot, and hence I am unfashionably late with this update 19 review.

I decided to post this anyway, because, well, North Ithilien is pretty! If I did it right, this post will give a solid impression of the region both to LOTRO players that aren't high enough level to enter yet, and Tolkien fans that do not play the game.

To get to the content of this update, you have to take a horse to Minas Tirith After the Battle. I was flabbergasted. It was so nice to see the blue sky above Minas Tirith! Before the battle, the red sky Tolkien described in The Return of the King surrounded this part of Gondor and (fittingly) gave everything an air of impending doom. Now the air has cleared, the impressiveness and beauty of Minas Tirith surprised me.

The first quests of the update send you all over the battlefield for various tasks. I feel they capture the strange mix of sentiments - sadness (because of lost friends), relief (because of not being taking over by the forces of Mordor) and happiness (because of victory) - quite well. Most impressive are the quests that send you to check for people that are missing. It is heartbreaking to see NPCs that you became fond of during questlines not having made it; similarly, a huge sense of relief filled me when finding those that through some wonder did make it.

Some parts of the battlefield look very realistic, others seem strangely untouched by the battle. I would have expected the grass around this dead mumak to have been trampled.

After things on the battlefield have been taken care of, we follow Aragorn and his army to Osgiliath, which also looks so much different by proper daylight! A funny twist of events is that it's now the orcs that hide in the culverts.

We are sent to scout ahead and ensure Aragorn and co a safe passage on their way to the Black Gate of Mordor. The first stop: Ithilien.

This is the road from Osgiliath to Minas Morgul. It has deteriorated under the influence of the forces of evil; riding around here feels downright spooky. Luckily we don't continue eastwards to Minas Morgul (yet). Instead, we head north to North Ithilien.

This region has not been permanently occupied by orcs and the likes. Smaller contingencies of soldiers have passed through, but they have not left many marks. North Ithilien is lush and wild, and full of flowers.

Although Ithilien seems mostly inspired by the Mediterranean landscape, some parts are almost jungle like. There are worse things in life than running errands in this beautiful region.

A minor issue is that trees in the distance sometimes look pixellated. I've seen this happen in multiple places. It is the first time I've noticed this in Lord of the Rings Online, but Conrad ensures me he has seen it before somewhere - but doesn't remember where. If you know more about this, let me know in the comments.

North Ithilien is also a great place for lore fans. You get to meet the rangers of Ithilien and discover Faramir's Hideout. Here I'm standing in the waterfall overlooking the Hidden Pool. There is also session play that shows you what happened to Frodo and Sam, and you are able to help out the rangers with various things.

I have this odd habit of checking out the clothes and hairstyles of NPCs in new areas. I'm very jealous of those boots the Ithilien rangers wear! They look comfy and elegant; pretty much perfect for any ranger or hunter outfit, but as far as I'm aware it's not available for players.

Overall I was impressed by update 19. Not only did it add a beautiful new region filled with quests to the game, it also covered even more quests on the Pelennor fields and Osgiliath. It took me quite a while to play through it all. I must say I was also positively surprised by the size of the North Ithilien map. There is only one thing I am not such a fan of in this update, and that is the flower picking and Ithilien essence system, which I will probably ignore. But LOTRO Store shenanigans aside, North Ithilien was an absolute joy to play through.

IntPiPoMo count: 46/50

Picking flowers to gain best in slot equipment: how LOTRO monetizes its endgame gear grind

2016-11-14T23:53:00.002+01:00

It's Thursday evening; I'm home after a long day. He had picked me up from the station and now he was finishing dinner. Happy he was taking care so well of an exhausted me, I gave him a big hug - but he just gloomily stared at the wall. "What's up?" I asked. "Did I do something wrong?" "No, it's not you." Conrad replied, adding a dramatic pause. I looked at him inquisitively. "It's Turbine", he continued in a dark voice. "Today is a black day in history. Lord of the Rings Online is introducing the worst cash grabbing endgame gear I've ever seen. I can't believe they are going through with this... That, and Trump is going to be president."

So what was that all about?

It's hard to not get attached to one's first MMO. Lord of the Rings Online was this for me and Conrad both. With the introduction of the free-to-play model we watched with sadness how more and more immersion breaking "buy this in the Store" buttons were added, while increasingly many functions became gated behind Turbine Points, even for subscribing players. But we kept playing, because virtual Middle-earth was beautiful, its inhabitants our friends and the raids challenging. Only when no new group content was released for years there was nothing left for us, and our kinship gradually moved over to Star Wars: the Old Republic (SWTOR).

This year, however, actual group content was added to LOTRO: the Osgiliath cluster (two 3-man and one 6-man instance) and the Pelennor cluster (two 3-man, one 6-man instance and one 12-man raid). Especially the Pelennor raid was a big surprise, as the last full-feature raid was added five years ago. So Conrad and I returned to LOTRO with the intent to ignore its flaws and just smell the roses. What we did not know is that Turbine would be taking that last bit literally.

Ithilien is full of beautiful flowers. Spending days picking them was not on my wishlist, though.

LOTRO's latest update added North Ithilien. With it, a new tier of essences*, jewellery and the option to upgrade raid armour was added to the game that can be acquired by running around in the landscape and picking hundreds of flowers. Yes, you read that right, some of the rewards that can only be acquired by picking flowers are better than rewards earned through group content, including the Throne of the Dread Terror raid.

One of the unwritten rules in MMOs is that harder content should provide with better gear. LOTRO released a new raid earlier this year, their first in four years. It seems logical to encourage people to do this valuable content, especially after so many raiders have left the game. Hence it is mind-boggling that mindless solo grinding rewards you with anything at all that is better that raid rewards. Or is it?

There is a possible explanation for Turbine taking this approach, and it revolves around certain items that can be acquired through either RNG or LOTRO's real money Store. Let's look into this in more detail.

A brief history of best in slot gear in 2016

People that are not familiar with LOTRO's endgame should know that the game has an intricate gear system that is primarily RNG based. It takes a long time to gear up compared to other MMOs. Initially, max level instances and the new tier 2 raid dropped the best in slot gear. However, during the course of 2016 several tiers of new gear have been introduced.

Update 19: new jewellery was added to the lootboxes of featured instances. Earlier acquired jewellery was not replaced, so players effectively needed to play the same instances in order to get new rewards.
Update 19: Ithilien essences were introduced from North Ithilien quests (and, officially, instances, but with such a minuscule drop chance it is negligible). The Ithilien morale essences are universally better than the non-Ithilien ones that drop from instances, the others are situationally better. Tier 2 raid armour can be upgraded using flowers, but the essences are destroyed if you don't remove them first.
Update 19.1: jewellery was added from picking flowers that is better than that of the tier 2 raid.
An upcoming update (19.2?) will add new Ithilien essences that are better than those that drop from group content. In order to get them, you need to barter a crafted item that requires one extremely rare ingredient (more on this later).

So far, this sounds like an obvious attempt to keep the player occupied with the game by adding new rewards to existing content, so they don't run off to other games. It's not the most chivalrous attitude towards your playerbase, but it's done before in other games (*cough* SWTOR's Dark vs Light event *cough*). Turbine just takes it to a whole new level. Nothing new here, right?

However, there is another thing going on here that is hard to see for those who are not deeply involved with the LOTRO's endgame gear system. I mentioned earlier that getting best in slot equipment is a huge grind. It is a grind that you cannot skip if you want to do the hardest available content, because the amount of incoming damage in tier 2 instances is such that you will simply die without the amount of morale and mitigations essence gear allows for. Non essence gear does not offer enough total stats. Some of the more rare items that are imperative to acquiring essence gear are, conveniently, available for purchase in the LOTRO Store.

A crash course to LOTRO's essence gear system

Essence gear is armour or jewellery that has empty slots, called "sockets". These slots can be filled with essences. However, once an essence is put in, it cannot be taken out without using a special consumable item, the essence reclamation scroll. These scrolls can be bartered for at NPCs (for instance for faction items), but they are not cheap. They can also be bought from the LOTRO Store.

My lore-master's gear. Highlighted is the chest set bonus piece with four filled essence slots

Essences come in three tiers: purple, teal and gold. Purple essences can randomly drop from instances and raids. The other tiers need to be crafted. Each crafted essence needs an essence from the previous tier and a universal solvent, among other things. Solvents can be acquired randomly, but they are rare. They are guaranteed to drop from challenge mode in Pelennor instances (1 from 3-mans, 2 from the 6-man); however, this is per group, not per character, so you will still need to roll for it. However, solvents can also be acquired... you guessed it, in the LOTRO Store.

The essence system is so sophisticated that it is difficult to get an understanding of the scale of things. I will try to illustrate this. Some classes can 'get away' with using some non essence armour or jewellery with a good set bonus, but in the worst case scenario a character needs (18 sockets for the jewellery, 24 for the armour, 1 for the cloak, 1 for the class item) a total of 44 essences. Two universal solvents per essence are needed to transform them to the best in slot gold tier, meaning that you need (4 x 44 =) 88 universal solvents.

Believe me when I say these items will take months of intensive grind to acquire, and then we're just talking about one character build - imagine wanting an alternate build, or to gear up an alt. Want to tank on your captain in addition to DPSing? See you in two months. Or you could just buy that 25 universal solvent pack from the Store for 700 Turbine Points. Hmm, tempting.

If you don't want to spend Turbine Points yourself, you'll probably end up buying them for 50-100 gold from someone else who got them from the Store to make some quick in-game gold. Either way, real money is spent on Turbine Points. The rules of supply and demand keep this system operational.

More flower picking incoming

I briefly mentioned flower picking above. At the moment, upcoming changes involving more Ithilien flowers are live on Bullroarer (LOTRO's test server). They introduce the gold tier of Ithilien essences that will be universally better than anything currently available. The keyword seems to be grind. Below is a video from a beta tester that I wholeheartedly recommend watching if you're interested in the amount of RNG involved (initially this content was intended to go live with 19.1, hence the title). It's astonishing.

LOTRO U19.1 Coverage part 1/2 by Thomas Huayra (Beta material) (Source)

I know this is still officially up to change. But I do find it worrying that Thomas, after having picked over five hundred flowers, was starting to wonder if these new rare ingredients were live on the test server at all. And then, when he eventually got one to drop (just before he was going to give up), it was bound to account and meant for a different vocation. So if you don't have an army of crafting alts on the top level crafting tier, you may even end up with a super rare material that you cannot use, nor trade with someone else.

To clarify: by running around and clicking for hours (I would love to know how many), Thomas got the special ingredient that allows him to craft one essence. And you need around 40. Not to mention that you need a teal Ithilien essence for the recipe, for which you also need flowers. Update 19.2? The grind is strong with this one.

Edit: Thomas let me know it took him five hours of non stop flower picking to get the ingredient. He also told me he did not run into any competition for the flowers because he was playing on the test server; he expects it would take longer on the live servers because people would have to fight over flowers (they disappear when picked).

Food for thought

One wonders why this new gear is even being added. The only thing it does is add more power creep, which is the absolute last thing LOTRO needs. You don't need the new gear to beat any in-game challenges, so it only serves to cheapen the experience by allowing characters to be more powerful than the instances were designed for. From a gameplay and balancing perspective, there is no reason for this gear to exist; it is clearly a decision driven entirely by the desire for increased revenue.

This suspicion is only reinforced by the fact that new tiers of gear are added gradually, rather than being released all at once, so that every time players need to buy new essence reclamation scrolls to upgrade or replace their essence gear, rather than only having to do that once.

I have shown above how Turbine is continuously adding gear grind as a substitute for new content and an incentive to buy items in the Store. Now, before the fanboys and -girls leap upon me, this post is not about me hating the game. I love Lord of the Rings Online; its landscape, cute quests, festivals and group content in particular. I have written many posts on this blog that celebrate those aspects. It is possible to love a game, but dislike a specific aspect of it. This post is also not about attacking LOTRO's successful free to play model, or invoking the end of LOTRO. It is about identifying the recent disturbing trend of monetizing endgame gear, that can be - at best - described as borderline pay to win.

Equally worrying is the absence of community feedback on these changes. The raiders that used to be vocal about this kind of thing have either voted with their feet, leaving for other games, or have given up after having written threads full of helpful feedback that was ignored (one such a specimen is sitting right next to me). The blogosphere is silent as well. I only know of a handful of LOTRO blogs, and they write about fashion, roleplay events or their personal adventures. It is up to the playerbase to voice our concerns with the development team; remaining silent is effectively signalling that monetizing gear is okay. Am I the only one who is unhappy about this?

* Essences are comparable to modifications in SWTOR to a certain extent, but they can be upgraded (twice) by crafting (only when not slotted) and cannot be taken out nor replaced once slotted without a specific consumable item. Both crafting ingredients and the consumable to take them out can be purchased from the LOTRO Store.

IntPiPoMo count: 19/50. Not counting unfashionable pictures with UI elements.

Why do we like to pew pew from range?

2016-10-21T21:14:00.001+02:00

Last week, a really interesting article caught my eye. It was called When starting a fight in video games, cautious long range is most popular, but men like to rush in and was based on scientific research by Quantic Foundry on 1266 gamers. The news was picked up by Massively OP, but remained unnoticed in the blogosphere. Which is odd, because it addressed a question that is on my mind a lot: what makes us play MMOs the way we do? Perhaps I'm alone in this; either way, it prompted me to investigate why (almost) everyone loves to play ranged in MMOs.

Everybody likes to pew pew

The survey provided two major insights. The first is that the majority of gamers prefers the 'cautious long range' playstyle. Interestingly, there was no statistically significant difference in gender or age: this type of playing appeals to all of us. Moreover, this was also the case for most other playstyles (stealthy evading and assasinating).

Noteworthy is that all examined playstyles were offensive, or - in MMO terminology - DPS approaches. I imagine this is because the research focuses on gaming on the most basic level, in a way that would cover most genres. If we would do something similar for MMO players and incorporate playstyles that are based on team play, however, I suspect we would see a gender discrepancy for tank, support and healer roles. But until then, these are just suspicions.

The hunter class in different MMOs:

Guild Wars 2 (left), World of Warcraft (middle) and Lord of the Rings Online (right)

The hunter or ranger stereotype

The 'cautiously from range' playstyle is most notably represented by the hunter/ranger class. Most fantasy based MMOs feature one: game developers seem to know such a class is an instant hit. The hunter or ranger typically utilizes a bow as main weapon and may be accompanied by a pet that fights for them. Drawing on the literary stereotype of the lone ranger, the class usually designed to be particularly suitable for exploration, travel and leveling (solo play).

I have the strong impression hunters are much played and loved in every MMO I have played. For instance, whenever I check in Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) which of the ten classes is most played at the moment, the answer invariably is hunter. Hunters are currently not in a great spot DPS wise, yet yesterday evening on Laurelin there were 111 hunters online, versus 21 beornings (the least played class in LOTRO). If the class would be doing better in endgame, I would expect that number to be even higher (but that is speculation for another blog post).

Playing my elf hunter in LOTRO is one of the best leveling experiences I've had in that game

According to marketing company Statista, out of World of Warcraft's eleven classes, hunter and death knight are the most popular; hunter being slightly favoured on American servers (11.7% vs 11.6%), whilst death knight wins on European servers (11.3% vs 10.9%). The supporting data is from June 2016.

Other ranged stereotypes

MMOs that don't have a fantasy setting will usually feature a class with a similar playstyle, but with ammunition instead of arrows. The stereotype that is most similar to that of the hunter is the "cowboy type", think SWTOR's gunslinger and mercenary class. Another popular trope is that of the soldier, think SWTOR's commando or vanguard class.

Examples of 'cautiously from ranged' classes in Star Wars: the Old Republic (SWTOR):

Commando (top left), mercenary (top right), gunslinger (bottom left), sniper (bottom right)

I mentioned some examples of ranged classes in Star Wars: the Old Republic above. The interesting thing is that we actually have information about which classes are played most in this MMO. The following chart shows the relative popularity of DPS classes in raids for the past 16 weeks (one bar per week, most recent week at the right). The data was collected by the popular parsing program Star Parse. When highlighting the ranged classes, it becomes clear they are indeed somewhat favoured; however, much depends on if you regard the vanguard/powertech as a ranged or a DPS class. Notable is the overwhelming popularity of the (ranged) commando, SWTOR's currently most played class. Keep in mind that data is taken from raids only. Other classes, such as the gunslinger, might be more popular among people who are leveling or soloing.

The graph to the left is taken straight from the Star Parse website at 19 October 2016, 2 pm CEST.

In the right graph I have highlighted ranged classes with pink; vanguard - a ranged-melee hybrid class - with light pink, and melee classes with grey. Although the classes have Republic names, the collected data represents both mirror classes.

Casters

The last ranged stereotype I haven't covered yet is that of the casters. These magic users typically deal a high amount of damage using flashy animations based on the elements, but are vulnerable to attacks due to wearing 'light armour'. Range is imperative for the survival of the caster, making kiting and crowd control recurring tools of the trade. Once again, game developers seem to know the popularity of such a class, because almost every MMO has at least one.

This is perhaps my personal favourite, because it embodies what sets the virtual gaming world apart from the offline one: the presence of magic or the supernatural in some form or another.

Caster classes in various MMOs:

GW 2's elementalist (left), SWTOR's sorcerer (top right) and LOTRO's lore-master (bottom right)

But... why?

In this article, I've shown how the preference to play 'cautiously from ranged' also holds trye for MMO players. For the games investigated, one of the most, if not the most popular class was invariably ranged. Hunters, casters, slingers and soldiers form powerful stereotypes that understandably attract people. However, other playstyles have attractive stereotypes attached to them as well - yet still ranged dominates. Is there something about the ranged playstyle that makes us love it so much? Here I will return to Quantic Foundry's research.

The researchers broke down each playstyle by relating them to game motivations of players. Interestingly, these did not explain the ranged preference, as its motivations (discovery, design, strategy) were shared with the 'stealthy assassination' and 'stealthily evasion' playstyles. However, the 'rushing in' playstyle showed a connection to the motives excitement, destruction and power and turned out to be strongly impacted by gender and age: mostly young men favoured it (the survey's second major insight). It seems to me that there is a biological factor explaining "rushing in". Perhaps we should approach 'cautiously ranged' with the same line of reasoning.

Assessing her own preferred playstyle, Bree Royce wrote in the Massively OP article:

"For me, which playstyle I follow depends a ton on the game. I prefer stealthy ranged pew-pew in The Elder Scrolls Online, (...) but I dislike casters so much in Guild Wars 2 that I’m a rusher-inner there for sure (...). I also think I’ve become slightly more impatient and more rushy as I’ve grown up — I was so much more timid when I first got into MMORPGs as a kid."

This wasn't so different for me. My first MMO character was a lore-master, a ranged support class in Lord of the Rings Online. Because I had never played an online multiplayer game before, it was important to me that I picked a class that felt right for me. Lore-master played from range, could make enemies less threatening by applying debuffs and could heal - all factors that made the jump into the game less scary. Then, when I got used to MMO gameplay, the virtual world did not seem so dangerous anymore and I started experimenting with other gamestyles. Take a look at Rav's Army: I now enjoy playing all classes and roles, and I value them for their differences. In SWTOR, I play a melee force user (tank shadow) in raids.

Could it be that there is a biological factor in this initial choice? It is generally not evolutionary viable to "rush in" when in a new situation; rather, one would want to observe from a distance before dealing with things. Playing an MMO for the first time is diving into an unknown situation as well. Our 'gut feeling' or instinct could be telling players to be cautious. Even when people get confident in their new virtual environment after a while and try other classes, their first character is often still perceived as their 'main'. This could explain the popularity of ranged classes. I'm no exception: I still identify with my lore-master in LOTRO and my sage in SWTOR most and will play them in raids and solo whenever I can. And when I had to pick that first character in LOTRO? I almost picked hunter.

Think back at the first MMO character that 'stuck' with you. Did you play it cautiously from ranged?

General chat, where facts are opinions

2016-10-14T12:34:00.000+02:00

My minstrel, Ravenwe, was just forging some ancient silver when my eyes got bored of following the crafting bar progress and incidentally wandered off to the general chat box.

Captain newbie: "Is it best to level a captain as healer in green bar?"

After a bit of talk in world chat, it became apparent that they meant blue line.

Blue line, designed to be the captain's healing line, under-performs significantly compared to the captain's two other trait lines (red for DPS, yellow for tanking). In a group setting, captains lack the single target burst healing of 'true' healer classes (minstrel, rune-keeper, beorning). Going blue on a captain means you get more (unneeded) AoE healing, less meaningful group buffs and the tank still dies. TL;DR: nobody plays blue line captain and no one is waiting for one in their group.

Perhaps I could save this newbie from a career path of excruciatingly slow leveling, getting acquainted with a trait line that nobody wants to invite to their group. I could at least make an attempt.

Ravenwe: "Red line would be more efficient."

I chose my words carefully. I did not write "blue line sucks, lol" (although it currently does). I kept it factual. Nevertheless, someone was eager to remind me why class discussions in general chat give me a headache.

Carebear: "Well, if you put it with the right or wrong line there is no such thing. There is only the way you feel it works best for you and your playstyle."

Captain newbie was hoping for some insight into the relative strength of their class' trait lines, but nope. LOTRO general chat. The place where facts are opinions.