First, just so there’s no confusion or hurt feelings: I love my kin.  I am a member of the House of Blackrock, an outstanding group of people on Windfola, and a major reason that I continue to play LoTRO.  This post is about my “issues”, and is in no way a reflection on my kin.

Moving on…

MMOs are, by definition, multiplayer games.  To varying degrees, they emphasize the social aspects of gaming, giving people strong reasons to cooperate or compete.  One of the reasons I love LoTRO is that I’ve found that the emphasis on cooperative play, and the lack of any real benefit to screwing somebody over, creates a more pleasant and mature social environment (contrast with, say, Warhammer Online and the crass chatter that flooded the low-level areas where I was playing).

Why Go it Alone in a Multiplayer World?

There are a lot of benefits to being in a kinship.  My kinship is as much a social organization as anything else.  We chat, occasionally run instances or quests together, and offer crafting skills for gift or trade.  It’s loose, informal, friendly, and welcoming.  It’s a treasure.

That said, I am, by nature, an introvert.  I need - really, *need* - a lot of alone time to recover from the stress of social interaction.  I find people exhausting, and on my bad days even kin chat is more socialization than I can bear.

But having been on the receiving end of so much kindness, I feel a certain obligation to return it.  When people need help, I try to offer it.  Whether it’s crafting resources or help with a quest or just simple advice, I try to repay what I have been so generously given.

Some days, though, I’m just not up to it.  Some days all I want is the solace and silence of the woods and plains of Middle Earth.  I want to turn off all the talk - from kin and the world at large - and just be alone in a vast world.  And I want to do it without offending anyone.

How to Achieve Peace and Quiet

When I first joined the kin, I only had a couple of active characters.  I habitually created and destroyed low-level toons (my friends have accused me of alt-itis).  So I always had at least one character that was not in the kin.  When I was feeling really anti-social, I’d hop onto that character and roam the zone, slaying everything in my path.

Now, though, I have crafting obsessions, and each of my characters is working up through one of the craft guilds, taking up every single character slot.  I often want to chat while I’m crafting, so all 7 of my characters on Windfola are kin members.  Plus, I’ve done the Chetwood, Ered Luin, and the Shire to death.

So I recently created a new character on a different server.  This is now where I go when I’m exhausted of words, when I want sights and sounds but no chatter.

I turn off all of the public channels - no OOC, no Trade, no Advice, no Regional, no glff, and certainly no Say.  I turn off fellowship invites, so I don’t even have to see the random group offers.

I don’t even quest, really.  Just hunt.  The senseless slaughter of a thousand innocent mobs, the collecting of a hundred resource nodes, the exploration of every hidden corner of the map.

Um… why, again?

Sounds like a mindless, boring grind, doesn’t it?

In a way, it is.  But it offers a perspective on the game that I often miss in the chatter and goal-oriented play of my main characters.

When I lived in Colorado, I’d get in the car and drive.  Find some back road where nobody goes, and sit in the woods listening to the trees, emptying my mind and just being alone.  I can’t do that any more.  I live in a big city now, and there’s people everywhere.

But in Middle Earth, all alone, I can turn up the environmental sounds and the music without worrying about missing a fellowship comment.  I can turn up the graphics quality, because I’m not worried about lag in the middle of an epic fight.  I’m left with the grass swooshing away and the gravel crunching underfoot, the creaking of snow and the sound of running water, the twang of my bow and the clash of a melee.  A sunset reflecting from a vast lake, or the rain splashing off the rocks.

It’s freedom, with all of its benefits, and all of its costs.

I can’t play that way forever.  A few hours to clear my head and settle my mood.

And then I’m ready to be human and sociable again.

Tonight gave me a great example of why I play MMOs more often than single-player RPGs.

We have a quest group that meets once a week, and that’s the only time these characters are played.  A guard, two RKs, a minstrel, a captain, and me, a lowly hunter.  That’s a lot of DPS.

So, tonight, we needed to collect 5 auroch steaks for the hungry elves down in Lin whatsit.  One of our illustrious RKs decides to speed up the process of harvesting said steaks… by pulling the whole herd down on top of us.

Watching him run around asking for heals was hysterial.  All the way through the fight I was laughing so hard I could hardly see.  There’s about 10 aurochs in this screen, and another two or three out of frame.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why I play MMOs.

When you’re lying in bed trying to sleep and the music from the Thorin’s Hall crafting area is running through your head over and over and over and over and over…