Recently the husband and I started playing Lord of the Rings Online again. We had bought it back shortly after it’s original release and got really frustrated and gave up on it. Yes, things have changed, both in what we were looking for in a game, and the game itself. I’ve dropped my WoW subscription 3 times in the past few years, and I kept going back. Each time I did, I got more and more annoyed with the general attitude of the players, to the point that I recently called it quits again, and as of right now, I’m not really that interested in the Cataclysm expansion.

After a couple years of tying myself to a raiding schedule, I’ve gotten over the need to have the best and biggest everything. There’s a part of me that would like to see the content in games I play, but at the same time, the time and work involved takes the experience beyond having fun, into a place that is more like work. That’s not what I want to spend my time doing.

We’ve had a few discussions about the new expansion with some friends that actively play, and it all boils down to the fact that no matter how much they change the lower level content, the race is on to hit the cap and start getting gear. The new dungeon system is a great tool, in that it lets you hit as many runs as you want, because it randomly puts groups together for you, but at the same time, I’m over the attitude that most players have to get it done as fast as possible and woe to the person that actually needs some of the gear that drops. I don’t think that Blizzard designers had it in mind that people would be rushing through an average instance in 10-15 minutes, and I’m not even going to bring up the hell that falls on anyone who doesn’t keep up with the group, both in speed and damage.

This brings me to my experience since creating a character in LotRO. We did some research, ok, hubby did some research and rolled a character on Landroval, the unofficial RP server there, and after a few days of hearing how wonderful it was, I sucked it up and joined him. I found people to be polite and helpful. No one told me to go to the moors when I couldn’t find a location for a quest. There are a bunch of people, both new players and old players rolling new characters, so asking for help or advice actually works when you have questions.

I was thinking this was a bit too good to be true for a few days as I leveled my hobbit minstrel, and then I got to the point where I could do my first instance. I answered a call for a healer and stressed the point that it would be my first grouping and that people would probably die. I’ve played healers in most online games now, it’s stressful in a fun way, but the mechanic is very different from what I was used to. The run went well, amazingly well in the fact that the group leader made a point of checking to see who had what quests before we started, and periodically stopping to make sure that everyone was clearing all their objectives as we moved through the dungeon. I realized I wasn’t in WoW anymore when we stopped before the final wing and a couple characters pulled out pipes, someone lit a campfire and we sat and chatted for about five minutes before heading into the final battles.

I know there are those that will roll their eyes at the idea of role playing in a game, and honestly, it was one thing I was a bit worried about when we decided to do this. I’m not a lore geek, I’ve read the books many years ago, I saw the movies when they came out, but I honestly can not tell you much about the world background and such. Needless to say, I had no intention of getting into the middle of things. What I discovered was a bunch of people that know the story inside and out, and an equal number of people who just know the basics, and there’s the third group, that really are just trying it out and don’t know more than just a general idea of what the game is about.

What struck me was the way everything happened and mixed in locations and people were respectful of each other. I started thinking about my little hobbit, and realized that she wouldn’t know much about what was going on in the world, other than what she had learned or overheard from various people who were asking her to run errands all the time (go kill 10 of those and bring me 6 of these etc) but that worked for me. It means I’m not expected to know everything, and if I find myself in a situation where I’m pulled into a conversation, I can honestly say I didn’t know that, and it’s ok.

I think that we’ve found a place to have fun without feeling the need to rush through to the end and then wait for new bits to arrive. Something I lost along the way, was the fun of discovering new areas and exploring while learning about the world through the quests and adventures that were available. There’s also much to be said for a community that does a fairly good job of policing itself, stomping on inappropriate behavior and language before it gets out of hand. Maybe what I’ve really found is a game that’s played by adults that act like adults. I think I’m going to be staying around for a bit and see what happens.