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Hell, the only reason I’m playing LOTRO is because I played it before! An easy answer is to find a guild (or whatever LOTRO calls it), but most of the people in the guild will have long passed it. For someone with years of content to play and catch up, it is a little rough not having other people to go alongside it with. They are a passionate, friendly group (from what I’ve seen in chats and outside sources) but are not in a period of growth. Most of the people playing LOTRO are people who have been playing LOTRO for a long time. All of this can be overlooked due to the game’s age, but I find the single biggest sign of age comes with the community. Character models and graphics are charming and can capture the feel of Middle-Earth but lack some of the whistles modern games (like FF14) has. The combat is enjoyable but lacks impact due to some wimpy effects. This is a retro experience that feels jarring when compared to any game after 2012. The game shows its age like a grandma at a nude beach. With that said, I cannot picture myself playing the game for long periods for a couple of critical reasons. To make a long story short, it did not ruin those memories and feels fun to experience those zones again. The game holds a lot of fond memories for me, so I was almost afraid of playing the game and spoiling that nostalgia. I never experienced much of the end-game content outside of some dungeons but did a lot of RP. My main character was a dwarf champion and an elf rune-keeper (can’t remember if I ever reached max level with him). Most of my previous time was spent during Moria before WoW consumed all my bandwidth. I am honestly surprised that LOTRO is still up and kicking after all these years. To quote Tolkien, “ The old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not touched by the frost.” It should be noted that given the limited amount of time spent in each game, this isn’t a full-blown review or an in-depth opinion piece. Most of this information is probably going to be a bit dull to a veteran of MMOs but hopefully this gives a newer or returning player a bit of perspective. Next week, I’ll try GW2 and ESO before making a final decision on what game to play. I decided to explore some of the big options of the genre and picked two this week to play: LOTRO and FF14. LOTRO still tempts me with that charming Middle-Earth setting.ĭue to fun work schedules and on-call stuff, I’ve been able to play a lot more games than normal this week (and looks to be next week as well). Blizzard is busy with fruit paintings, and GW2 still has my favorite race (Charr for the win).
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Some people swear that FF14 and the God-Emperor Yoshi-P is the only true path. I could not figure out what game to play. Mature games have passed into the realm of senior citizens. WoW, once king, has been (supposedly) thrown off its throne by FF14, and some of the games that I remembered being new have matured. My adult brain decided to do a little research instead of just subbing to WoW, and the landscape really changed since I last played.
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Six years later, I overheard some people at work talking about Warcraft and felt that familiar urge to dip my toes into the virtual ocean. Adulthood happened, and around late 2014, I stopped playing them all together to focus on real-life stuff and being a filthy console peasant. As a kid, I spent countless hours exploring and failing at playing many of the big names of the time such as WoW and LOTRO. The MMORPG is my second favorite genre of video games, second only to the CRPG.