LOTRO: Progressing Through Mordor
It was in May that I last subscribed to LOTRO and attempted to progress through the Mordor expansion. I was under geared and under powered and the initial zone of Udûn was proving to be an up-hill struggle. So, I decided to level elsewhere in the game and managed to get as far as 111 (the current level cap is 115). I still couldn’t improve my gear so there was no point bypassing Mordor and going straight to the Dale-lands which were released in June in Update 22. So, I decided to spend my gaming time elsewhere and left LOTRO. However, the recent Bullroarer preview of Update 23 rekindled my interest in the MMO. Surely Mordor wasn’t the immovable obstacle that I thought? So, I subscribed once again, and returned to the game on Friday evening. Luckily, there were several kinship members online and they generously helped me until I reached the “tipping point” of the Mordor expansion. Two days later and I’ve nearly hit level cap and the game although challenging, it’s no longer the grind that it was a few months ago.
LOTRO: Update 23 Preview
I managed to spend an hour or so today, exploring the latest preview of Update 23 for LOTRO, that is currently being beta tested on the Bullroarer server. Sadly, due to my schedule, I did not get to spend as much time as I would like, exploring the new zones, and by the time I reached the Withered Heath, the server closed. However, I did see sufficient for me to be able to gauge progress. Overall this is an interesting zone which offers new iterations of Dwarven culture. Standing Stone Games once again have found the right balance between using established in-game assets and integrating them with newer designs. The results are two regions that are bright, roomy and distinctly Dwarven. However, it should be noted that as ever with these beta previews, the build is subject to change.
Not Playing World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is still the biggest western MMO around and despite the ebb and flow of its player base, it remains a powerful presence within the gaming community. With the release of the pre-patch for the next expansion Battle of Azeroth yesterday, naturally there has been a wealth of blog posts as players dust off their subscriptions and return to the game. It’s a timely reminder that WoW was the MMO that made the genre more mainstream and commercially viable. For many gamers it was their stepping stone into other titles and sub-genres. The importance of World of Warcraft in gaming history and its place within pop culture is significant. The games success has bled through in to the mainstream. WoW is a known quantity outside of gaming circles and is social reference point, in the same way as Dungeons and Dragons, Batman or Star Trek.
Dailies
Broadly speaking, dailies are repeatable quests or activities that are designed to keep you engaged and busy within the MMO genre. They are a supplement to main story quests and often offer a long-term goal and reward or provide barter tokens for a range of gear. They can sometimes be used as an alternative means of gaining high-end gear for players who cannot or will not raid. Dailies also offer an additional means to level an alt, for players who are tired of repeating primary content that they are over familiar with. Along with log-in rewards, dailies are designed to entice players into regular play. They offer quick, repeatable content along with a clearly defined bauble or trinket, making them ideal for players who have a limited amount of game time. Hence, you’ll find variations thereof present in most MMOs.
The Lord of the Rings Online 2.0
“I’d love to see LOTRO reimagined in a new engine with a certain modernization of gameplay". So said Koshelkin, in a recent comment made over at the Massively Overpowered website. It’s a common sentiment that often expressed by the LOTRO community and I must admit, I have a similar curiosity. But the more I ponder this idea, the more I find myself thinking “be careful what you wish for”. Because LOTRO as it currently exists, embodies the MMO ethos of the time that spawned it. Long-term players love it because of its foibles. As I’ve mentioned before in previous blog posts many LOTRO players are not gamers per se and therefore have no exposure to modern MMOs along with contemporary game mechanics. Thus, if Standing Stone Games were to radically redesign their virtual Middle-earth to include action combat and a truly open world, they may find themselves alienating a great many current LOTRO players, who would be all at sea in a modern iteration of the game.
Fans, Community Management and Social Media
When I first read about the furore caused by Jessica Price’s comments yesterday, I knew it wouldn’t end well. There’s a tedious inevitability to the outcome of most video game related “outrages” these days. For example, a senior member of staff from a major developer will same something crass, double down, dig a hole and then finally after being bitten on the ass by reality, will put out a mealy-mouthed half ass apology. The other scenario is that an employee affiliated to a studio says something completely left field, is presented with short window of opportunity to retract it and blame it on over the counter flu medication, before they get fired due to the ensuing PR shit storm. This particular controversy falls into the latter category. However, if you take a step back from the Jessica Price debacle you quickly notice it raises a lot of questions beyond her obvious transgression. Namely, the problem of always being “on the clock” when you work in certain professions, the need to separate your work and personal social media presence and the place “influencers have in the video games industry.
Victory is Life
Star Trek Online is a curious beast compared to other MMOs. Although the characters that you create have gear, skills and traits to advance, it is your ship that is the real focus of in game min-maxing. The game also has several strong narrative arcs that dovetail superbly into existing Trek lore. The fact that numerous actors from the original TV shows have returned to voice their characters in the game, is another feather in the hat for Cryptic, the games developers. STO recently had a major lighting and game engine overhaul to accommodate it’s launch on the console market. Yet despite many very positive factors, there are still times when STO feels a little clunky and lacking in polish. Cutscenes can be problematic and the game has some persistent bugs and glitches. However, despite some flaws the MMO has a strong and loyal fanbase who play actively and pay prodigiously. This is also a game with a large number of whales in its wider community.
LOTRO: Update 22.2
When I first started playing LOTRO in late 2008, I actually read the manual that came with my box copy, before I decided which class I was going to play. I chose the Lore-master as it sounded and interesting mixture of both ranged attacks and the use of pets. Being new to the MMO genre at the time, I didn’t realise that it was actually quite a complex class to play. Although I have dabbled with alts over the years I have stuck with this single character and until 2017, kept them relatively up to date with regard to content and respective skills. Mordor greatly dampened what enthusiasm for LOTRO and as a result I have fallen behind the curve. My gear is poor as I haven’t really progressed far into the lastest expansion. Combat has become a tedious grind, leaving me with a paradoxical situation. Poor gear makes progression slower, but bypassing Mordor leaves my character gimped. Bearing this in mind, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the Lore-master class changes that have come with Update 22.2 in the hope they will improve my situation. Sadly, I don’t think that today’s changes are the solution I’m looking for.
Open World Games
The Virtual Bolivia that Ubisoft have created for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is truly stunning. This massive open world is approximately 576 square kilometres (222.4 square miles) and features 21 regions and 11 distinct ecosystems. Furthermore, the world is seamless without any loading screens or phasing. You can travel from one end of the map to the other without any immersion breaking transitions. The main story missions and the regional counterparts can be tackled in any order, affording players the freedom to explore and play through content however they want. The game can be played cop-operatively via PUGS or through bespoke custom teams. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands takes the textbook concept of the “open world” and augments it sufficiently to hang a narrative on. But beyond the overall task of dismantling a sprawling national drugs cartel, the player is given a superbly crafted sandbox and is left to determine their own agenda and play style.
"Grinding"
According to Wikipedia, “grinding” is defined as “performing repetitive tasks for gameplay advantage. In MMORPG, for instance, it can be advantageous to repeatedly kill AI-controlled monsters, using basically the same strategy over and over again to advance one's character level and to unlock content. Grinding may be required by some games to unlock additional features such as level progression or additional items”. Although I broadly agree with this summation, I feel that “grinding” is one of those terms that can also be very subjective. Repetitious content has a specific purpose in video games, especially the MMO genre. Not all of it is tedious or egregious. Therefore, it is a question of degrees. Killing 25 mobs of a specific species may be a tolerable number. A challenge but not a task that out stays its welcome. However, double that amount a suddenly a line has been crossed. The entire undertaking now feels like it has been inflated simply to slow player progress down, which is more than likely the exact purpose of the task.
The “Psychology” of an MMO Player
Before we start I’d like to make it clear that I do not have any formal qualifications in psychology. If you want specific details of research into MMO player psychology, the I would urge you to look to more academic source. For the sake of this post, I shall be using the term “psychology” figuratively. As people do in everyday parlance. In this case it is meant to refer to the motivations and foibles of the MMO gamer. Okay, that's the legal disclaimer out of the way. Let us continue with a finely-honed dissection of the topic in hand, bolstered by that impeachable source of verification, namely anecdotal evidence.
LOTRO and Daybreak Game Company
Over the past eleven years The Lord of the Rings Online has faced many business-related issues that has prompted its player base to speculate over the games future. These include the MMOs transition from a subscription to a free to play service, Turbine’s acquisition by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and then there were the issues with the license expiration in 2017. However, all these problems were resolved in one way or another and the game endures. That is not to say that Turbine or Standing Stone Games (SSG) are business geniuses. Absolutely not. They’ve made plenty of mistakes over the years and continue to regularly shoot themselves in the foot with their community relations. LOTRO survives because of its core playerbase who have made this virtual Middle-earth their home and they support the game come hell or high water. A lot of this core group are fully aware of SSGs shortcomings, but they are wedded to this game and hence they sustain it. It’s a curious yet fascinating symbiotic relationship.
Competition or Entertainment?
It becomes apparent when reading the various musings of the gaming cognoscenti, that there are vastly differing views on most key areas of gaming. Take a subject such as “difficulty” which is currently a subject of debate over at Massively Overpowered. A quick perusal of the comments shows a broad range of views with many being at odds with each other. But if we step back from these individual differences of opinion, it becomes clear that the basis of all of these stems from a fundamental disagreement as to what actually constitutes a game and exactly what are its defining attributes. There are those who feel that competition is the foundation of gaming and that this can only be fully realised in a player versus player environment. Success is the measure of achievement and the basis of their personal gratification. However, others beg to differ and feel that collaborative play, social interaction and achieving personal goals are as equally important. I believe this divide clearly shows that the definition of gaming has evolved and may be its time we revised our preconceptions.
LOTRO: More Community Nostalgia
A few days ago, I wrote about some aspects of the wider LOTRO community that were no longer with us. These included the podcast A Casual Stroll to Mordor, the rivalry between the official and unofficial LOTRO forums and that curious experiment, the player council. I was quite surprised by the response to this post, which was very positive, and was also interested by some of the comments that followed on social media. Hence, I decided to follow it up with some further examples, based upon reader feedback and further reflection upon the matter. LOTRO has been around for eleven years which is a considerable period of time. To put this into some sort of perspective, it has been part of my leisure time for one fifth of my life. During that time a lot of things have come and gone.
LOTRO: Community Nostalgia
Next Thursday LOTRO officially starts its 11th anniversary celebrations. It’s an opportunity for “fun and larks” with a wealth of special in-game events to play or grind through, depending on your perspective. Standing Stones Games will no doubt espouse the MMOs achievements and if we’re lucky they may even elaborate further upon the games long term road map. However, anniversaries are also a time for reflection and I would like to take some time to explore several wider aspects of LOTRO and its community that are no longer with us. A lot has happened in eleven years and things are naturally not the same. Change is inevitable and not always bad, but some of the things that have gone from the LOTRO-verse are sorely missed. Others may be not so, but I would still argue that their presence at the time were born of an engaged and motivate playerbase.
The Deliberately Capricious Nature of the Random Number Generator
Although I enjoy Hand of Fate 2, due to the nature of the game’s underlying narrative, you frequently have to pick a card, roll a dice or select yet another card from a spinning wheel, to determine an outcome to an event or an encounter. Hence the game relies heavily on the use of a random number generator mechanic. Sometimes, depending of the speed of the card-based activities you can visually track the one you need to pick. However there reaches a point when you can’t do this. There are either too many cards to keep an eye on or the spinning wheel is simply going to fast. Then it becomes a matter of random chance. And if the odds are unfavourable a matter of repetition. And then frustration. And then a potential abandonment of the game.
Social Gaming Without the Gaming
Earlier this evening, I logged into my Discord server as I do each week, to catch up with some internet friends while playing The Elder Scrolls Online. For some technical reason, the game was unavailable, so we chatted among ourselves while pursuing other activities. I don’t think any of us actually played another game while we talked. However, despite the absence of any MMO related entertainment, we managed to keep ourselves amused for three hours. For me this anecdote highlights a point I’ve made many times in the past, that games do not create social interaction but merely facilitate it. Furthermore, the social element of the MMO genre is often misunderstood, misrepresented and over sold. Much of the enjoyment that we get from the social aspect gaming is from our interactions with friends. However, this is not solely dependent on the game which is ultimately nothing more than a conduit.
The Tedium of April Fool's Day
Many of the traditions that we maintain as a society, started off with honest intentions. Such things as public holidays, religious observance or the simple celebration of a particular group or ideal are prime examples. Inevitably the meaning of these traditions becomes diluted over time and they more often than not become exercises in marketing or tedious institutions perpetuated by those with a specific agenda. For me April Fool's Day is the embodiment of this concept. An exquisitely unfunny ritual that is inflicted upon us by those who don't realise (or care) that the activity is totally arbitrary. I hate the concept of organised fun. And that it’s something to be martialled and stage managed by self-appointed arbiters. Furthermore, I despise the accompanying mindset that if you somehow don't enjoy yourself, or wish to participate in the ensuing charade, you are somehow lacking or a "killjoy". Both concepts are flawed and morally oppressive. For me fun is something that occurs organically, and its dynamic nature eschews control and shepherding. It should not be at someone else’s expense either.
The Next Big Thing
I was chatting with a few fellow gamers recently and was asked if I had pre-ordered any new up and coming titles, such as The Crew 2 and Anthem. They seemed surprised when I responded "no". I subsequently explained that I had reached a stage in my life where I was beginning to tire of hype, false expectations, the continual internet chatter and the crap that accompanies being an early adopter. I think that the whole Star Wars: Battlefront II debacle pretty much put it all into perspective for me and I just don't see the point in going through all that again. Then the subject of early access and soft launches came up and I similarly pointed out that I wouldn’t be jumping on the Sea of Thieves bandwagon either. I like to buy a game when it’s finished and therefore get an entire product. I don’t have to be part of the crowd that’s playing any game on day one of launch.
Let the Gamer Beware
Gaming is a very interesting and unique industry. It has evolved a great deal over the last three decades and now deals in virtual products. It’s a far cry from traditional notions of business. Yet despite its modern trappings it is still driven by the same processes and imperatives of any other sector. Therefore, should a customer really treat it any differently? The reason I ask is because it seems to me that gamers have a very different relationship with their respective vendors, compared to other groups of consumers. It is a relationship that I believe to be somewhat skewed and therefore detrimental to both parties.