Saturday 1 August 2015

Blaugust Day 1 : My Evergreen game - LOTRO

This post was already in mind before I saw a writing prompt from Void of A Green Mushroom blog,  to name your Evergreen game, the game you keep coming back to month after month, year after year so felt this fits the bill.

Of all MMO's I've dabbled in, Lord of the Rings Online is the one keep coming back to. My first true MMO, I discovered just before the release of the expansion, Siege of Mirkwood in 2009.



During those years, levelling was a slow process. It was close to a year before I got anywhere close to level cap on Jestro, my hobbit hunter and didn't even dream of having an alt. I never so much as looked at another MMO for about four years and even when I did it was a brief dalliance to return to my first love.

When my interest began to wane, I found renewed joy by playing on another server, rolling a new character on Landroval, having burnt out playing 9 alts on the Windfola server. This coincided with the Coursera course that revolved around the game and along with a new kinship and a community of roleplayers, it gave me a renewed interest.

A year on, I discovered Guild Wars 2 and that took over. I was burnt out again, having reached cap on my warden and rolled even more alts. I stopped playing Lotro altogether. After about two months I decided to end my sub, for the first time in 6 years. As my sub ran out, I logged in to say goodbye and found myself drawn in again. It felt fresh once more and as I'd been having problems with GW2 crashing, I'd become frustrated so returned to my old flame. My account lapsed for a full 24 hours. I logged in, realised what a pain it was not to have the functionality I'd had before, so I resubbed. That was a couple of weeks ago and I've been playing every day since. 

I've decided to try and focus on one character, my captain Diaspora, and so far it's working. Spreading myself thin quickly leads to burnout and I'm loving running through Rohan again and seeing things I missed before as I rushed through the content. The kinship is more active than ever before with new people coming through every day and with server merges ahead, things are looking rosy, at least for Landroval. I suspect Windfola may be one of those put to the wall, so I may have to transfer most if not all to Landroval. This will give me a diverse pool of crafters though the thought of trying to get all of them to level cap leaves me with cold sweats. 

One day at a time...




This post is part of the Blaugust 2015 initiative. If you are interested in taking part, all the information can be found by clicking the logo below.


6 comments:

  1. Glad I could help inspire your post!

    I love hearing about everyone's evergreen games. It's so different from person to person. In a way it's like how each person has their own comfort food... but the gaming equivalent instead.

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  2. I'm going to have to use this prompt some time this month! The topic of Evergreen games is a really interesting one. LotRO is one of those games which, had I got into it at the right time, would have devoured me as Middle Earth is my favourite world and I loved the 2 week trial I tried before it went free-to-play, however, I didn't, and now I can't seem to enjoy it. Sad. :(

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    1. It's been said many times, but the game was so much better before Free To Play. By the way, I'm using your prompts for tomorrow's post, Jaedia :)

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  3. I used to do this with Ultima Online and EverQuest. I'd alternate between returning to either for years and years. I've since broken the hold of returning regularly to any MMO, but I miss the days when I felt like choosing one to play was so hard.

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  4. It's hard to break away from your first love.

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