lotro’s second “expansion” – Siege of Mirkwood (SoM) – came out on December 3, 2009 and now at the end of January 2010 i have two characters at level cap (level 65) that are raid ready (enough radiance armor for the new raid instance Barad Guldur) and a third alt at level 63. my main character did all quests in the new area of Mirkwood, leveled several new legendary items to level 70, maxed the skirmish soldier and farmed the 3 and 6 man instances ad nauseam. additionally, my kin Hope and Glory completed Barad Guldur, the new 12 man raid instance in normal mode one week ago. granted there is still hard mode to crack but everyone seems worn out and you can clearly notice a general raid-fatigue.

there is no word from Turbine yet on when the next content update will be released or what it will contain. i remember vaguely that they mentioned some announcement to be made in mid February 2010 and if this is actually true i would not expect to see the next content patch going live before mid March. what is one supposed to do until then? level more alts to level cap? grind skirmishes? farm Barad Guldur? there is no easy answer to that. an expansion that raises the level cap by five levels, introduces one new area (Mirkwood),  no new skills, virtues or traits, three 3 man and one 6 man instance and one raid instance that contains three bosses… seems a bit thin content wise, doesn’t it?

i really like lotro, it is a great game, no doubt about it and the dx10 graphics are just awesome. the lore, the storyline, questing and instance design is well done and it really developed into a polished, enjoyable mmo over the past 2.5 years. content updates came pretty fast in vanilla lotro: about every two month something was added and come to think of it, the free content patches that introduced Evendim or Forochel were as elaborate as the paid “content patch” that brought us Mirkwood.

my theory is that selling lifetime-subscriptions wasn’t such a good idea and now Turbine lacks the funds to keep developing free content updates in an acceptable time frame. during the lifespan of Mines of Moria (and that’s roughly 12 months) we saw two major content updates and a few smaller ones. the major updates included Lothlorien and the raid instance DN (with six bosses) whereas the small ones introduced minor things like new crafting recipes or the disappointing lair boss known as the Turtle/Toitle.

• the epic grind: i can live with seven digit numbers required to level up if the “grind” is masked by doing quests that require you to kill x or bring y or deliver z to some NPC. questing is something i consider essential to any RPG and it should give you sufficient amounts of xp. lotro does it right: there are more than enough quests to go around and you will easily hit the level cap by doing quests only. aion however has a minimal amount of quests (around 5 quests per level) that in turn give you around 5% of the total xp required to level up. so to fill that 95% of your xp you need to grind: kill the same mobs over and over again for hours on end. not my idea of having a good time in an mmo.
• the free for all zergplay PvP: for a game that claims to focus on PvP you expect epic battles and that skill > numbers of players. well, another disappointment here. skill doesnt matter, the side that brings the higher levels/more numbers win. at lvl 25 you enter the abyss, the huge free for all PvP area and there is little protection for lvl 25 characters: they will get ganked/zerged/killed repeatedly by bored higher level characters. at least in WoW you had a chance to move to another area if you got ganked and corpsecamped somewhere.
• the ridiculous harsh death penalty: if you die, you have a permanent xp loss and suffer from soul sickness, which requires you to pay a rather hefty sum of ingame money to get rid off. by doing so, you get a certain percentage of your lost xp back. granted, you dont suffer from permanent xp loss if you die to another player in PvP. however, if you take damage from another player and get some mobs trained on you that kills you, you get permanent xp loss. its not exactly fun to blow 80% of your ingame money on soul healing bills on one single evening. (trust me, that can happen easily.)
• the flying combat scam: flying around and fighting sounds like fun, but in reality it isnt. in most areas you cannot fly and when you can fly, your flight time is limited to 2 minutes tops. so if you fight in the abyss chasing opponents and you run out of flight time and there is no place to land safely.. you plummet to your death. and guess what? yep, soul healer bill here i come.
• PvE instances with bosses who dont drop loot: imagine you do a PvE instance for 2 hours, you fight your way through thrash mobs and when you finally kill the endboss he drops… nothing. not even money or some vendor trash. now how fun is that? your effort of doing an instance should be rewarded in some form or another. having endbosses of PvE instances drop some loot only once a blue moon… outrageous.
• crafting is just a time and moneysink because the crafting process can fail and you can lose the materials you gathered. same goes for slotting runestones into your gear: if your armour piece has 4 slots and you managed to put 3 runestones in it… theres a chance that the attempt to slot a forth one can fail and hence destroy all of your runestones in the item.

i guess i could go on why i consider Aion yet another mmo fail. one thing is for sure that i wont fall to the hype of upcoming mmos again… WAR and Aion did in fact teach me a lesson.

more content, fewer bugs
for all the games i have seriously (i.e. longer than 30 days) played i can only point out one single game where not enough content and too many bugs are an issue. i can’t say that WoW and LotRO lack content or are so bug-ridden that it impairs your enjoyment. the most important aspect of content is the so called “endgame” content since i am not an alt-o-holic and i want to keep enjoying the MMO of my choice once i hit the level cap. again, WoW and LotRO do quite well at endgame level, providing enough group and raid content to keep both casual and hardcore players happy. however, with WAR things aren’t that great really. granted the game is still young but the proposed endgame is not accessible because of stability issues (i wrote about it) and bugs (fortress lord aoe’ing through the floor would be the prime example).

a social world
the ideal MMO has a good balance between solo, group, and raid content. i don’t want to be forced to group up all the time but on the other hand i don’t like to play solo contantly because all quests can be done without the help of a group. in this matter i think WoW has the best balance, whereas LotRO’s focus is slightly shifted towards group play. WAR however emphasizes “soloability” which in turn makes the game feel like a single player game at some times. i do not play MMOs to have a single player experience, i want to interact and play with other players. hence forcing players to group up is actually something good in my book. however, there should be alternatives available if you cannot seem to get a group for a party quest.

point, click, repeat – delete
i honestly don’t mind clicking the same buttons for a few hours but that’s just me. what bothers me more is running the very same instance again and again. WoW (in The Burning Crusade) and LotRO (in Shadows of Angmar) tried to bring some variation to instances by making the encounters more random. the Black Morass instance and the Angmar battleground come to mind: both featured dynamic spawn mechanics. waves of mobs did not always spawn at place A first, then at place B and after that at place C. it was random, you had to observe and react quickly in order to succeed. i’d like to see more of these dynamic encounters in MMOs.

an RPG without a story
from what i have been told about WoW: Wrath of the Lich King so far, the storytelling seems to be impressive with the use of phasing so that your advancement is reflected in the environment. the overall LotRO storyline is awesome as well, complete with cut scenes and you really feel like you are helping Frodo. there is some kind of phasing in place, too: key quest NPCs are placed in instances you can only enter as long as you are on the quest. once completed, the instances are closed to you because in the storyline the NPCs have moved on in their journey. WAR does not offer an ongoing storyline except the war between order and destruction.

now why is that so? i do not want to make a general assumption that *all* couples that play a mmorpg are causing trouble and dramas in guilds; there might be as well exceptions only i haven’t met any yet.

one of the underlying problems with recruiting couples into your guild is that when one of them is pissed off you will most likely piss off the other significant part as well. that means usually if one quits or leaves the guild, the other does so as well. this fact is usually connected to what i would like to call the “package deal” you accept the moment you invite a couple into the guild. “package deal” means that usually one of the two plays a healer, one of the most desireable and needed classes in almost every game. healers are always in huge demand and with said “package deal” you only get the healer if you take another, less needed class as well. the same applies for all events your guild runs: couples usually insist of attending guild events together. having a space for a healer in a group is usually no problem, but fitting that additional dps or offtank in might prove a bit more difficult and will sooner or later lead to grief. no matter what rotation or signup system you have in place to ensure everyone gets an equal chance to attend guild runs, you will have to make exceptions for your couple.

additionally, couples have more leverage to push their agenda than your average guild member. one example: a new raid schedule is introduced. as with everything in life, you can’t please everyone but you can try to make a good compromise and try to please the majority of people. if the average joe has some issues with the new schedule, you are most likely to tell him to deal with it. as far as the couple is concerned, you are again asking for troubles. if one of them does not agree with the schedule, the other is bound to take sides. in the end you lose a valueable healer or end up changing the schedule again to please the couple.

i am perfectly aware that my observations are not extensive nor universal. it is plainly my experience and the underlying assumption is that one player of the couple is a healer. nevertheless, i still find it intriguing to recognize a pattern in the behaviour of couples in mmorpgs.

with that being said, i created a set of rules to be able to enjoy an online game and avoid a “WoW-like” situation in the future. first off, i will not take on any responsibility ingame in the form of running a guild or organizing events (including hosting a guild website or forum). i will not hurry home or rush through ordinary tasks like eating or showering in order to be online at a given time in the evening. i will not play or even consider playing when there are other things to do. last but not least i will try to remember that it is “just a game” and shrug off any incidents that can induce drama or frustration as insignificant to me or my life. (i am not a better person just because my ingame character wears a certain armor or wields a specific weapon because in the end it really does not matter at all.)