Shockingly, Mr. Randomessa and I are still playing Lord of the Rings Online, which I think makes it the longest straight stint over which we have played one MMO since we pre-ordered Warhammer Online. We are, in fact, playing LOTRO so much that I am not sure our playstyle can be considered “casual” any longer; at least, not by my previous definition. I feel badly that we haven’t taken the time to check out the F2P launches of City of Heroes or Fallen Earth, but LOTRO is taking up all of our gaming time these days.
While it is true that we have not been racing to endgame (we only dinged level 33 this weekend), we have been amassing several hours of playtime across multiple alts and crafting professions. We have each purchased deluxe houses in the Falathorn homesteads – that’s how we know we’re serious! – and have begun decorating in earnest. Two of our alts, a Hunter for him and Rune Keeper for me, even duo together on odd days. And all this without PvP! Although I suspect that some of the more vicious bidding wars Mr. Randomessa has gotten into on the Auction House for crafting materials are serving as a form of PvP “high” for him….
In a refrain I have heard elsewhere by Minstrels, the class changes in Rise of Isengard have breathed new life into a class I had struggled with since around level 25. My Minstrel is now level 39, having gained three levels last week, and I have been enjoying tackling the Epic Story quests solo, in addition to skirmishing. I feel more sturdy and powerful than ever, and am seeking out new challenges to test the limits of my damage-dealing capabilities. Having unlocked more than the initial two free skirmishes, I was surprised to find that several of the later skirmishes were much easier than the early ones. I had much more fun and success running Attack at Dawn, Thievery and Mischief, or Stand at Amon Sul than I ever managed solo with Siege of Gondoman or Trouble in Tuckburough, which has made skirmishing a more fun and rewarding experience across all my characters.
Of course, with the tiny army that is our Captain and Loremaster combination, we’re still doing well with Tier 3 skirmish challenges, which I lay at the feet of Mr. Randomessa’s newly-acquired Lynx pet; enemies simply melt away before his stealthy kitty swipe. We’re also doing well with the Hunter/Rune Keeper pair; I was interested in trying the Rune Keeper for some time already, but upon learning more about its skills and realizing that in the healing attunement it’s essentially a Prot Monk, I was sold. With LOTRO’s slower-paced combat, this actually feels like something I might be able to do (and enjoy doing), and so far I’m liking healing with my RK more than I ever did on my Minstrel.
Sadly banished to the bench is my adorable Hobbit Warden, who, although invincible and mighty, just wasn’t a playstyle I really enjoyed at level 17. She’s resting comfortably at Michel Delving, cooking up a storm for the rest of the team with occasional overnight stays in Esteldin to craft jeweled goods and runestones as well. In the meantime, we will need to make some decisions as to what quest pack(s) Mr. Randomessa should buy to add variety to our alts’ leveling paths. Hopefully, one or two will round out the content he already has through the Isengard expansion; thanks to my VIP status, I have already earned enough TP to purchase the rest of the content should we still be playing at level 50, 60 or beyond.
To close, one more complaint from the premium member: no permanent swift travel unlocks in the LOTRO Store, Turbine? Really?
Casual Is As Casual Does 
As an old EQ veteran I used to be vehemently opposed to “swift travel” in any form. I actually enjoyed the feeling a virtual world had when you had to cross it on foot, or by boat… the sense of size and scope that lent it. Originally I felt that the Planes of Power expansion with it’s central of “hub” of the Plane of Knowledge was the purest form of blasphemy I had ever seen.
Over the last decade or so I’ve mellowed quite a bit on this particular issue, and I acknowledge that very few players want to spend 40 minutes of their 2 or 3 hours of playing time on a given evening just getting to the location they want to explore that night.
Unless you want your player base crying foul, some form of swift travel is almost an essential component of current MMOs. (Witness your closing comments in the OP.) However, I do still feel like DEVs walk a fine line with this game mechanic. Too little, and your players feel “stuck” or unable to get to where they want to go to experience the content of their choice within your game. Too much, and you’ve accidently “shrunk” your game world and completely destroyed any sense of exploration that a fairly large segement of the MMO players seek out as one of their primary sources of entertainment in the games.
I’m definitely more “explorer” than anything else (as described by the Bartle test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test) so anything that “shrinks” the game world is definitely on shakey ground with me. I like knowing the “hidden paths” of the world (if they even exist in a modern MMO game… often they are conspicuously absent.)
These days the best I can hope for is that the DEVs will throw my type of player a bone by including some little tidbits of content hidden away in the world, only to be found by those who are still willing to explore it on foot instead of instantly teleporting to their destinations. When MMOs were still thinking about being “virtual worlds” the games were more about exploration and adventure. So many of the current ones are “on rails” to such a degree that there is almost nothing to actually explore… the maps are essentially narrow, twisting tunnels at best, and even more narrow, completely straight tunnels at worst.
Compounding this is a player base that seems absolutely insistent on treating their “game” as if it were “work” instead. Killing any sense of immersion and adventure are statements from fellow players like, “Oh, finding out what else is hidden in that map area sounds like fun, but I can’t join you… I’ve got to bust out X number of Y crafting item and get them posted on the AH, and then I’ve got to grind some more of Z mobs to improve my character’s equipment in this one particular slot… I’ve got to have that finished by the end of the week before the scheduled raid.”
Everytime an MMO player says something like that an MMO angel is stripped of it’s wings and cast down into fiery pits of damnation.
But as I mentioned, I’ve mellowed quite a bit on this topic… as you can see…
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sarcasm)
(Btw, you damned kids get off my lawn!)
I think Lotro has to walk that fine line between “game” and “world” even moreso when the books establish long travel times within the narrative, and I think it handles it well; in this case I’m willing to sacrifice convenience for a sense of authenticity. It doesn’t, however, buy us more RL time when hubby and I want to play together and instead have to alt-tab out of the game for 15 minutes before we can actually meet up (or worse, actually manually steer and so can’t even go about any other business in the interim).
Although I’ve been gaming online for 16 years, my beginnings were in MUDs, not EQ, where even across long distances, all you’re getting are rapid scrolls of text, and recall scrolls didn’t have cooldowns and could warp you all over the map in an instance, so I have less patience or affection for forced long travel times :). Map travel in GW was a revelation once I finally made it to the graphical MMO space, and although this means no long scenic routes in GW2 (after the first trip to each location, of course), more time to play (and explore, which running along a road run by dozens of times isn’t) is an improvement to me.
/devil’s advocate 😉
*grins* You shoulda gotten into the scifi MU* then. At least, the ones based off the HSpace system. Log off for an hour in transit and hope you can get back online at the end of that hour or you’ll be flying until the fuel runs out :> I remember a few occurences of phone lines dropping back in the dial-up days and logging on to find you had no idea where you were and you were out of gas and losing life support. 😀
The most amusing variation of which was when, instead of a personal vessel, it would be the pilot of a major navy ship who did this, and no one with bridge access was online. Good way to see the help channel light up with an entire faction all at once when an entire carrier crew finds they’ve died in their sleep out of fuel and out of oxygen.
Another fun variant was those that had implemented asteroid belts as collisionable objects. Thirty+ people logging on to find they and their carrier have blown up in an asteroid field will also light the channels up.
@Randomessa
Absolutely true; running down the same road for the umpteenth time is definitely not exploration, and the delays in RL friends meeting up in game are simply unwarranted and have been steadily designed out of more current MMOs for good reason.
(It’s just a shame about the attitude that tends to inspire in DEVs = why worry about putting much effort into designing anything but the “destinations” since all the players are just porting to there anyway.)
Regarding GW2; until it launches I’m going to continue naively thinking that the scope of the world will be vast and dense, with many “hidden paths” to discover, and numerous “secret places” to marvel at. A part of me knows it’s highly improbable but I want to hope for it anyway. Even without these, that still looks like the only MMO on the horizon that is making sincere attempts at moving the genre forward, and is the only one I’m eagerly waiting for.
(I played a couple of MUDs starting back in the mid 80s… really enjoyed them… but made the leap to graphics as soon as games like UO and EQ came online, and was playing other “graphics” in single player mode before those.)
@ArcherAvatar LOTRO is pretty good for explorers, I find. There’s all these little things here and there to stumble across. Even moreso if you’re into the lore, of course, since some of them (like Bilbo’s trolls) only really mean something if you know the story. One of the classics is a certain house in Bree that serves no game purpose and is featured on no quest, but you consistently see the people who happen to explore enough to discover it talking about how neat it was to find.
@MrsRandomessa My highest is 39 as well. Currently running quests in Evendim. I’m not in any particular hurry to get out of there, quest-wise, though the temptation of Legendary traits and weapons is now near. LOTRO is likely to stay my main as long as my family members continue to enjoy it. When I’m not doing LOTRO, I bounce between Pirates of the Burning Sea, City of Heroes, and Mass Effect. Just started dabbling in Fallen Earth yesterday. It’s kinda sluggish at times right now, as they adjust to server load, so you can afford to wait a bit I’d say. Especially since it’s free, so no subscription ticking away. 🙂 Being a person who never plays subscription games, my options have really expanded the past two years.