Tira and I decided a week or so ago to try out some new characters so that we could explore the changes/improvements to the starter areas in the game. Tira likes playing elves (*shudder*) and I like me some Dwarf action (yay!), and they had revamped the whole Dwarf/Elf starting region of Ered Luin fairly recently, so that was kind of a no-brainer.

(Also, I made up a kind-of solo character to check out the starting Man region of Archet/Combe/Staddle, because I’ve always liked that area most of all, and they updated it, so I was basically checking out two areas. No* revamp changes had occurred in the Shire, because (a) the designers were really happy with that area and (b) so were the players — therefore, we made up no new hobbitses. )

(* - Almost no changes: mail delivery pouches give you a run speed boost, so hurray for that!)

We were VERY favorably impressed with the new regions, both with the changes and the characters we made up, and played them during most of that weekend. Good stuff.

I think it’s safe to say that each starting region still has its own definable flavor (Ered Luin feels older, more ‘epic’ in the sense that these are old enemies you are fighting, while the Men are facing new threats of their own devising, and the Shire bounders move slowly from the bucolic and quaint to growing awareness of the threats from without), while all the starting regions have been brought up to the level of quality seen in the Shire (up until this point, considered the best place to level new characters up, once you knew all the various areas well-enough).

And then comes Bree, right? The great melting pot of all character activity from level 15 to 25, where everyone’s time line finally merges. It’s always been a decent area, but there were still a few notoriously annoying, deadly, or just plain aggravating elements of the region.

But that’s normal, right? There’s always going to be some annoying stuff, right? That’s a given.

I don’t think that anymore.

Tira and I had already played through the starting regions a week or so ago; the conclusion of which sent us off to Bree to speak with a ranger by the name of Strider. Having just explored the improved Ered Luin, we decided to let the characters sit for a week in Bree without taking any quests until Book 8 dropped, because we heard they were doing a full-bore revamp of the Bree area.

It was SO WORTH IT.

Without a hint of irony or sarcasm, I can say that the revamp of the Bree area represents the finest revision and improvement I’ve ever seen in any MMO. Period. Full stop. The way they have streamlined the storylines and quests in the area should quite simply become the new gold standard for zone design in MMOs.

If you’re just starting LotRO, like our friend Beogren, I envy you - you never had to deal with with that crappy quest down at the South Greenway Barricade… you never got ripped to pieces by the deathtrap meat grinder of the original Old Forest (or bored by the more-recent, dumbed-down version).

If you’re currently playing LotRO, make a new character and experience the new content in the old areas you think you know so well. You. Will. Love it.

So… back to what I was saying… Book 8 came out yesterday, and (after logging in all our other character to reap the benefits of the quality-of-life tweaks), we logged in our “littles” to resume playing them in Bree. By the end of the night, we’d made it through the new “Grimbriar” quest hub, Adso’s camp, dipped our toes in the (new) Old Forest and wrapped up with the middle Chapters 6, 7, and 8 of Book 1, which took us into Buckland at the edge of the Shire - and what a change Buckland has seen. Wow.

They revised the Old Forest (which I didn’t think they’d bother messing with, as it’s already seen one revision) and somehow – magically – found the perfect sweet spot between the original Old Forest (horrible death trap, but cool) and the more recent version (sadly, laughably harmless).

The Southern Barricade along the Green Way with that one miserable mission small fellowship mission that no one wants to do? They fixed the area. It’s fun now.

It’s all just… so much fun.

Right at the end of the night, we noticed we both had a message in the mail. I won’t say what the message was, except that it was from an NPC we (as players) were very familiar with, and who our characters had not yet met. The letter made the both of us stop and just stare at each other and say “That… is so. Fucking. Cool.”

And it was. It really was.

I cannot WAIT to really delve into the Old Forest now. I am practically VIBRATING in anticipation of the Barrow Downs. These are two areas of the game that, while cool, I have always tried to minimize contact with as much as possible.

No more. Bring it on. I may not be ready, but I am excited.

Kudos, LotRO Dev Team: you knocked it out. of. the. park.

A solo-ding in the Foundations of Stone, which means (mostly) that I can stop doing Foundations of Stone.

To do:

* Help Kate level her minstrel through Moria.

* Do a few Moria instances and finish the Captain Class Quest.

* While helping Kate, do whatever group stuff I skipped that we feel like we can handle.

* Proceed to Lothlorien.

Geiri: Level 60. Simul-dinged with Tiranor.

Finnras: powering up through the levels to get caught up with my wife’s minstrel. From 42 to 51 in 15 days.  Welcome to Moria. Boom.

Emyl: a very fun, NON-melee class to play.  Having a good time hiding behind a couple other people (my wife’s captain and my friend’s warden) and NOT getting hit all the time.

Dinged 57. Just cruising along with Tiranor and smiting everything it our path — riding the easy swell of a wave of quests all about 2 levels lower than us.

Our first real night in Moria, tonight. Woooot.

So, there’s a bunch of stuff going on in WoW right now - the normal Halloween event, plus a bunch of stuff having to do with the upcoming release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. There are neat attacks on major capitol cities — undead hordes dropping out of FLYING CITADELS, cool bosses to fight and gear to get… and just a lot of neat stuff.

And… in the limited amount of time I’ve had to play this weekend, I haven’t gone anywhere near WoW. Warhammer, yes. LotRO, sure. WoW? No.

The reason way can be pretty accurately summed up by John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, and the current Zombie Plague that’s spreading throughout the World… of Warcraft.

Basically, that part of the ongoing ‘lore event’ is ruining the fun I have in the game. Specifically, the extent to which people can use the event to screw with other players and the lack of safeguards against it.

To give the situation some context, I should explain how the event works:

1. People can become infected with the Scourge plague. This is done when a player kills an infected roach, opens some infected crates, or is the subject of infection by either player-controlled or NPC zombies.

2. The infection is applied as a disease. When the disease runs its course (which took 10 minutes, then five, and finally - this weekend - only 1 minute), or when a player dies while infected, the player turns into a zombie.

3. As a zombie, a player retains his or her level and can attack other players of either faction, whether they are flagged for PvP or not.

4. NPC’s can be infected and become zombies, as well, which means you can infect, zombify, and kill … oh, Auction House NPCs… or the Flight Point NPCs… or the Bank NPCs… or any of the thousands of NPCs who hand out quests.

5. There are NPC “Healers of the Argent Crusade” who can cleanse people of the infection and who will attack these zombies, which means they will probably get infected, zombify, and die.

6. High level players with any sort of disease cleansing capabilities (3 of the classes, none of which I play) can also remove it, though it has a high resistance rate.

7. City Guards can attack zombies, which means they will get infected, zombify, and start attacking other people.

This seems an okay situation on the surface. NPC healers were meant to serve as the defense against the early version of the plague. However, it is important to note the various conditions changed the event into one of the worst experiences WoW has offered:

1. The argent healers are only stationed in major cities at important hubs: banks, auction houses, flight points, and entrances to various areas. They are not stationed in towns outside of the capital cities… in other words, in 99% of the world.

2. Guards in most lower-level towns are too low in level to even hit, let alone put a dent in the high level player zombies. At best, they can daze the zombie and prevent them from reaching a low-level player who has managed to run away.

3. Low-level players cannot themselves put a dent in the player zombies that are much higher in level than them, due to the level difference.

4. Given the opportunity, most people are dicks (see Internet Dickwad Theory).

My high-level guys can get around alright with flying mounts, but … well, we can’t run quests anywhere near populated areas, because we’re either getting attacked by player-run zombies, running back to a healer to get cleansed of the plaque, or we can’t actually GET a quest or turn it in, cuz the guy we need to talk to is wandering around and moaning about Brraaaaaaains.

My low level guys can’t do anything. If they so much as log on, some level 70 player-run zombie will kill them.

So… when I had a chance to log in this weekend, did I log on one of my WoW 70s (who both have stuff I’d really like to accomplish before Wrath comes out in mid-November) or my WoW alts?

Nnnnnno. I’ll play another game. I have a character to level in LotRO. I’m still trying out all the character options in Warhammer. (I’m one of those apparently rare people who got the “dual-wield MMOs” talent.)

Hell, for that matter, I have blogs to read, books to read, an election to volunteer for, a Lexicon to write entries for, and pretty soon NaNoWriMo.

I have lots of things clamoring for my attention every day and World of Warcraft — which often calls out to me with the most seductive voice in the crowd — has handed it’s Blizzard-branded megaphone to a bunch of asshats. Heck, even if the event were running as intended it would regularly and routinely interfere with the game that I’m paying to play; so much so that I choose not to play that game.

Which I’m pretty sure was not the goal they were shooting for.

Over on Waaaaagh, they’re talking about “The Race.”

The Race is my pet term for the phenomena that happens at the beginning of any MMO launch, where players rush in the gates, then feel the compulsive need to flat-out sprint toward the end game out of fear of getting left behind. Left behind what? This isn’t the rapture, it’s a video game. Some yahoo is going to hit rank 40 in about 110 hours of non-stop, red-eyed gaming and be a minor game celebrity for six seconds. I’m not quite sure what Mr. Yahoo thinks, but I can assure him that women are not going to be throwing ovulated girlie parts at his feet because they want his awesome genetic legacy to live on. He’s just the first of several folk who think that the game “hasn’t really started” until they hit the highest peak.

So obviously nobody’s going to keep up with that, apart from a few insane hardcore guilds and their incredibly angry spouses. But there is this unsaid, palpable fear of getting left behind the main pack in those first few weeks, especially your guildies and friends who you want to team with.

(Emphasis mine.)

Like the original poster, I confess that I do have a certain amount of drive to get to the ‘top’ of the game, if for no other reason than the fact that I hate like hell to be the guy who can’t come along and play with my friends when they all want to run a new event and I’m not tall enough to ride the ride. I’ve experienced that to a small degree on WoW (not a lot, actually, since I wasn’t really IN a guild until after Grezzk hit 70), and a lot more on LotRO (where it seemed that someone was always organizing a group-event centered around a zone I wasn’t high enough level to survive).

((Dutiful props, here, to CoX and it’s Sidekick mechanism.))

With that said, I’m not really sweating this for the release of WAR. As much as I’d like to get into the game and go a little crazy, there are reasons I’m not (even though I did qualify for the early-bird week of play):

1. Technical difficulties. It took ages to download the 9 gig client, and once I had it, the .zip was corrupt. Consequently, I need to wait for the actual install disks to arrive, and they didn’t ship til Wednesday. No head-start for me.
2. AFK. The head start was last weekend. I was out of town. The “real” start is tomorrow. I’m going to be out of town (for the same depressing reason).
3. Other gaming stuff to do. Yes, I want to play WAR, but I also have stuff I want to accomplish in WoW and LotRO before THEIR next releases hit the shelves. I maintain that one of the best ways to balance one’s time in a game is to play more than one game. “Drugs are my antidrug”? Maybe, but it works. Tabletop games would work well here as well, but they simply aren’t as reliable for me at this point.

4. Other stuff to do in general. Home improvements. TV and movies to watch with Kate. Kaylee-things. Writing. Reading. Just stuff.
5. One must wait for the giants to grow up before one stands on their shoulders. Frankly, I’m lazy — I don’t like paying fifteen bucks a month to wander around fucking LOST for two hours while I try to find the little widget-thing that I need for a quest. If I wanted to get turned around and travel back and forth over the same area for an hour looking for something I KNOW should be RIGHT THERE, I’d drive downtown. Waiting a few weeks to get started and taking my time once I get in means that when I DO get into the game, there will be a number of lovely guides to tell me how-to and what-to and when-to and why.

So am I looking forward to WAR?

Absolutely. I want to play EVERYTHING.

But it will all still be there in a few days.

((And frankly, I’m going to kick ass no matter when I start. ))

So, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft is coming out November 13th - a bit less than 2 months. With it comes another 10 levels added to the level cap, and something like 10 new zones and stuff to do. Siege warfare, with big weapons. Et cetera.

Hot on its heels, Lord of the Rings Online is releasing it’s first expansion, The Mines of Moria, on november 18th. That expansion also adds 10 levels to the level-cap, a ton of new areas to explore, and a metric ton of new content for the ‘other’ heroes of Middle-Earth — things that, per usual, surround the events of the second ‘book’ of the Fellowship of the Ring, without directly focusing that.

So. Two Months left before the current content in both games becomes… well, not obsolete, but merely a bump in the road that leads to the new end-game.

Two months to tie up some loose ends. What loose ends? Well, let’s look at a list or two:

WoW

• Titles for your character in WoW (unlike most games) are INCREDIBLY rare and hard to come by. Grezzk needs to run two more “hardcore-difficulty” dungeons and defeat one of the easier 25-man raid bosses to become a “Champion of the Naruu”. I would dearly, dearly like to do that.
• Grezzk is also capable of improving his reputation with the “Netherwing Dragons” faction to the point where one of the Dragons actually volunteers to be his mount. This is an entirely soloable effort, and simply requires that I put in the time necessary to do the daily Netherwing quests for a couple weeks… and then I’d have a FLYING DRAGON to ride around on.
• I’d really like to get enough gold together to get the maxed-out riding skill for Syncerus, which would then let me start/finish the questline that would give him the ‘epic’ druid flight-form. This requires more than a little grinding of daily quests — about the same amount as what I need to do on Grezzk to get the dragon. With that said, there’s no reason I can’t do this particular goal AFTER Wrath comes out.
• There’s no gear or anything I really need for either of my main characters — Grezzk is pretty much geared to the nines until he’s close to level 80, and Syn’s stuff will be replaced relatively quickly by questing in the new zones.

LotRO

• Finish the Books. There are epic questlines in LotRO called ‘books.’ Basically, these are the story arcs in the game that specifically hover around the storyline of the actually Fellowship of the Ring story, either directly or obliquely… regardless, they bring you in contact with the main characters of the books a lot. There were eight “Book” story arcs in the basic LotRO release (with books 7 and 8 pretty much aimed at level 50 characters), and since then they have released… six more Books, all designed for level 50 characters. Kate and I have finished books 1 to 8 on our main characters, and we want to finish the other six books before the expansion comes out. If we I don’t manage to do anything else before Mines of Moria comes out, I’ll be quite happy.
• Kill that Balrog. I’ve written about him before. We’re close to figuring out how to beat him, and I’d like to do that before the level cap rises and he’s not as much of a challenge.
• Again, I don’t really have any gear I feel I must have before the expansion comes out. What I have now is working for me really well, and will no doubt be replaced as we venture ever closer to Mordor.
• Just for Kate, I’ll add that we need to get her character’s reputation with one of the factions up high enough for her to actually make use of a very nice item that she accidentally bought LONG before she has high enough rep to USE it.
• I’d like to get one more character to 50 before MoM comes out. I don’t know if that will happen, but I think it will for Kate, especially if she works on Tirathien while I’m doing my dailies in WoW.

Finally, I’ll note that I really only have about a month and a half to do this, not two months, because NaNoWriMo starts November 1st, and MIGHT cut into my play time a bit…

Once again, while I was out of town, the WoW guild my main character was a part of disbanded.

Said guild was the one true Horde ‘end game’ raiding guild on Farstriders - a ‘low-pop’ server that I transferred to a year ago when it was first brought online. It was a very successful guild for the player base — in the time I’ve been with them we’ve fought and defeated some stuff in the game that I NEVER thought I would see before the next expansion came out. I can’t say I was really friends with any of the guys in the guild, but I respected the leadership — they were good guys.

And now, just before the expansion comes out and everyone starts their big push to the new level cap and into the new content… I’m at loose ends again. This makes GoH the third guild that’s disbanded while I was afk.

I moved my second-alt to another server about a month ago — due to other stuff going on in my life, I haven’t spent a ton of time with those guys, but they seem pretty cool, and Cenarion Circle is a pretty high-population server with a robust player base… maybe I’ll go there.

Then again, they just made it possible to transfer your characters from PvE to PvP realms, so I *could* move Grezzk to the PvP server that I know people on… or the one that Lee has some active characters on…

I’m definitely going to move servers, I think. I know that much. I just dunno where. I’d really like to get into a group that will have a good time leveling up and ‘learning’ the new expansion.

I’ll try to leave my guild-killing-karma on Farstriders.

Tanking classes (if they’re build to be good tanks in NON-pvp) suck in PvP situations. They don’t do enough damage to take guys down, and all their cool tanking abilities don’t do squat.

In PvE: You can taunt a bad guy, forcing it to attack you, so that other people in your group can do their job while you soak all the big nasty hits.

In PvP: Your taunts have zero effect, and any opponent with half a brain will attack the wimpy little mage that does BIG damage first, then come back and whittle through your health at their leisure.

((Note: you can reconfigure a tanking class to do very good damage… at which point their ability to tank starts to suffer.))

Warhammer has come up with an elegant solution that’s vaguely like DnD 4th edition: in PvP, if you taunt an opponent, they can still attack whoever they want, but *if* they attack someone else, they do less damage and their chance of missing is higher. This gives your opponent a choice: take out the tank to get rid of the penalty, or try to take out the squishy mage anyway… even with the penalty, knowing you’ll miss more and won’t hit as hard?

Either way, you as the tank are still doing your job — protecting the group.

I think it’s a genius way of handling it, and I really hope that this kind of idea finds its way into games like LotRO, WoW, and CoH.