… I should get to 60 before the summer is out.  Well, one can dream.

I went from level 40 to 48 in the month of June.  I think that’s fairly good progress.  I’ll be happy if I hit 60 sometime in the late summer/early fall.  Really, I’ll be happy to hit 60 whenever it happens!  I feel a little strange, but also excited, about having a character at the level cap.  I think it’s mostly because I’ve never had a character at the level cap.  I was an altaholic in my first few months in this game, unable to commit to any one character.  When I created Mirthwyn, everything changed - I absolutely love this toon.  Before I started playing LOTRO, I played WoW, and suffered the same altaholicism (is that even a word?  IT IS NOW!).  I left the game for LOTRO before getting my WoW main to the end.  I also found that the idea of WoW endgame intimidated me a lot.  I kind of didn’t even want to get there. 

But I feel like there is so much in LOTRO to build the confidence.  The places you go, the things you do… it makes me feel, at least, that there isn’t anything I can’t handle once I get there.  It helps that I’m also in a kinship that I absolutely love, and I think it will be really fun to raid with these folks.

And then I think to myself, “Raid?  What are you saying!?”  I guess I’ve always had a bit of social anxiety when it comes to being in a group.  I’m afraid of being the one who makes a deadly mistake and causes the wipe.  I know it’s sort of silly to feel this way, since probably most people, if not everyone, has caused a wipe at some point in their gaming career.  Plus, sometimes it’s the only way we really learn how to play our class, by committing a really foolhardy mistake.

But in any case, my advancement in this game never ceases to amaze me, for some reason.  Maybe it’s because when I started playing MMO’s, I started just for the heck of it - a totally casual thing, and at the time, something to take my mind off of studying for the bar exam.  I used play as a reward for hours of good studying.  I didn’t expect to succeed or be good.  I did find that I enjoyed it a lot.  But I always associated MMO’s with hardcore gamers, people who were just good at them, as if they had some innate talent or ability to play.  I know now that isn’t true.  Gaming is just like anything else.  There’s a learning curve, and once you have some experience, you can really grow a lot, and become great at what you do.

I still have moments when I don’t remember to use some of my class/race abilities.  But I’ve yet to cause a full fellowship wipe (if memory serves).  I hope to keep playing and learning and get Mirthwyn to the endgame stuff, because it’s a whole new world once you get there, from what I understand, and I’m finding myself really excited to experience it for the first time.