Somehow I can’t think of a better phrase to sum up my recent conundrum with Lord of the Rings Online. What type of conundrum? Well, this might be one of those long stories so you might want to make yourself comfortable, get something to drink, etc.
I’ve been thinking for a little while about giving Lord of the Rings Online another go for some reasons. The first one is since I’ve left Everquest 2, I’ve been having a severe case of decoration withdrawal. So much in fact that even a limited housing system like the one in the LotRO sounds better than any. The second reason is because I’ve been checking some blogs like Lotro Fashion, Landroval Style and Brazokie’s Blog Space and I’ve been pretty much drooling over the outfits. Now, like a former wise clannie in Lineage 2 would say “In real life I don’t care about my appearance but in game I am a metrosexual.” LotRO to me is one of the best games for that kind of… uh… I dunno, philosophy, I guess? Anyway, the thing is the game has a ton of cool looking outfits and a pretty good system to show them off while still wearing your mismatched gear with uber stats. And if I am going to be killing X orcs for their middle toe nails I might as well do it with style damnit!
What finally pushed me to do it was a promotion on GameStop/Impulse that I found out at the Frugal Gamer. It was the Mithril Edition for 50% off and considering its contents it just seemed one of those bargains that you can’t resist. That discount is already gone but you can still get it for about $20.
Now what I am undecided about is what class to play. I know I want a hobbit since I like their houses better. My first thought would be to make a Burglar since I have a certain fondness for sneaky, stabby, classes. The problem with that is Basilio, of my LotRO Experiment, is a Burglar already. He is on a complete different account and if I decide to resurrect the project I am pretty sure I wouldn’t be too happy with two Burglars. More about the Experiment in a bit.
So my choices become to make either the Hunter or the Warden. The Hunter is cool but a Hobbit Hunter isn’t something I am too enthusiastic about. While the Warden is a pretty unique class with the spear as its main weapon and the whole Gambit system. The only problem is that it would take about half of the Turbine Points I got with the Mithral Edition to unlock it. Well, ok it would take 795 Turbine Points if I just unlock the Warden class but I also want to unlock the the Rune Keeper class so I might just get the bundle with both and do it for 1295 TPs. :p
I am hesitant to do that because I keep wondering if I shouldn’t just spend those Turbine Points into something more useful first like, currency cap, ride skill, shared storage, etc. Although if I play a class that I don’t like that might not do me a lot of good either… Oh, well. Most likely I will just go with the Warden anyway and figure out the rest later. /sigh
Now, about the LotRO experiment. I pretty much abandoned it for a couple reasons. When I was writing it I was doing it pretty much as I played since I was afraid of losing any important detail. That was extremely time consuming and I would rather use some of that time to play other games or do other stuff. I am a fickle person after all.
I thought about then switching to maybe a post about it a week or maybe bi-weekly or something like that where I could just condense a lot of gameplay, go straight to the interesting points instead of constantly doing a point by point replay of what I did. Not only I think that would becoming boring real quick but it would end up having a lot of posts where there was no Turbine Points earned in-game to show.
Even with making it on a weekly or bi-weekly basis there would be no guarantee I could say I earned some Turbine Points because I was pretty much learning the game as I played it. On the other hand perhaps that was the whole point of the Experiment, to show off if someone who was starting out without knowing much about the game could earn a significant quantity of Turbine Points in-game and how long it would take to do so.
In any case that project is on hold for now. If I can think of a better way to do it I will resurrect it, most likely continuing from the point where I stopped. For now I will enjoy a new journey with a new hobbit! Wee~
Welcome to LOTRO 🙂
Hope you enjoy it. I personally play more with outfits then with the quests, but hey, I’m still having fun!
By the way… check this guide about what you get unlocked by staying VIP for 1 month. It MIGHT be outdated since this website received no updates anymore, I am not sure. Double check, but I think you still get unlocks by being VIP for only 1 month:
http://lotro.mmorsel.com/2010/09/best-lotro-account-type.html#downgrade
Somehow I can see myself hunting for outfit pieces more than doing quests! I even got Tailor as part of my crafting skills just so I could have an easier time getting some outfits.
Thanks for the link! I am going to check out and then see if I can subscribe for one month if that guide is still true. 🙂
Hey there, and cool to hear you’re indeed giving LotRO another try! I’m not really sure about if you’re decided what class to play with your hobbit, but have you considered the minstrel and the guardian as well? Perhaps you’re not into healing (minstrel), but you don’t have to pay extra TP for the guardian and it fits the race well, being inspired by Samwise Gamgee and all.
If you start playing LotRO, I heard that getting VIP for one month to unlock areas and then returning to F2P is still the best way to go if you want to play using the F2P model.
Looking forward to read about your adventures!
Yeah. I was undecided on the class I was going to play when I made this post. I decided to go with the Warden in the end since there aren’t that many warrior-like classes who use spears in MMORPGs and it looked like a pretty flexible one. So far it has been really fun. 🙂
I do intent to give the Minstrel a try in the future too, with an alt. And a Lore Master. And a Hunter. And a Captain. And…. well, you can see the altitis already started to kick in. 🙂
Thanks for the tip. I am still undecided if I am going to stick to the F2P model or subscribe. Most likely I will stay with the F2P model but might go with the subscription option if the finances allow. We’ll see!