Pumping Irony

…because I’m breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law…

I haven’t had all that much time for gaming because of my work schedule, but the past week I’ve put the majority of my efforts into LOTRO. That’s “home” after all, and I need to get reacquainted with my kinship as well as continue the journeys of my lore-master, Arwellyn.

When I built my new PC and decided my MMO Burnout was over and I thought I could return safely, I made a rule: No Alts! I didn’t want to immediately burn myself out again. Of course, rather than multiple alts in a single game, I’ve had one character in multiple games. But they’re all adventuring through unique content, so it’s not the same as leveling and alt through the same content I’ve already done.

When I took my break from MMO’s last year, Arwellyn had achieved kindred status with the Iron Garrison Miners and got her goat. She’d done all the initial set of quests in Lothlorien. So I took the past week to get kindred with both the Iron Garrison Guards to get the Friend of Nature legendary trait and with the elves of Lothlorien, the Galadhrim.

Yesterday, however, I hesitated at the login screen. All those other characters were there, looking up at me despondently as they vainly tried to shrug dust off their armour. No! I said “no alts” and I mean it. Hey, leave that mouse alone! Don’t click tha… d’oh, too late!

So I logged in my captain, Gared, first. He was the only alt I was actively leveling at the time I hit my burnout. He’s level 44 and had most recently gotten the Fem armour set from Angmar. I took him to Bree then Celomdim for some Spring Festival quests and completed the horse race so he’s eligible to buy the Blue Roan horse now but if he does that will take his purse down to 200 silver or less, so I’m hesitant to do it. He is also without a kinship; apparently I forgot to put a note saying who’s alt he was and the officers of Eldar thought he was missing in action and gave him the boot. A great friend who started with me in Exodus, then raided with me in The Stoned Alliance then made her own kinship, Lords of a Fallen Empire, with her husband has been harassing me daily to join her kinship so I put Gared there. It isn’t Arwellyn, which I know is who she really wanted, but now I can technically get away with saying “but I am in your kinship!”

Next I checked my hobbit minstrel, Myrra. When I was raiding back in the Shadows of Angmar game, Myrra was my “main alt” who I practically power-leveled for the sole purpose of group content ie. instances and raids. I could feel my burnout starting right about the time Mines of Moria launched so other than taking Myrra to Eregion and doing just enough of the new content to get her first Legendary Weapon, I parked her in Forochel still working on her Lossoth reputation to complete the armour set for cosmetic purposes. I discovered Myrra was suddenly an officer in Exodus! Wha? Checking the membership log, it seems only a scant handful of people have actively played in the past six months or more. M’kay… a dead kinship is the same as no kinship, so I quit Exodus and put Myrra into TSA with Arwellyn, which is who she raided with anyway so they all know she’s my alt. I did take her out for a bit of solo combat just to try to get a grip on the minstrel class again. All the ballands and songs can get complex and I’d totally forgotten how to play the class. I’m still shaky but by the time I was done I was feeling a bit more comfortable in her hairy little feet. (Started to say “in her shoes” but hobbits don’t wear them!)

I clicked on my hunter, Sethryndil but opted to not log him it at that time. I was already annoyed that I logged in two alts, then put an hour or more into relearning how to play the minstrel. I was not a happy camper about this so what did I do next?

I made another alt! Aaarrrgh! Yes, I made a Warden this time. During all the pre-launch hype for Mines of Moria I was just itching at the chance to play the Warden because I loved how the class looked on paper. Excels at both melee and ranged combat, has multiple muster points around Middle Earth similar to the hunter class, can support the group as either an off-tank or “evasion tank” as opposed to the guardian class who has the traditional tank role of taking the beating for everyone, and an all-new fast-paced combat system? Sign me up! Unfortunately, as I’ve already mentioned, by the time Moria arrived my burnout was already picking up pace so I never got around to the Warden.

Here we have Veldorran the Warden at level 5. Yes, that makes three elves now. Oh, shut up, you! They’re paying Hi-Rez Studios protection money from their Global Agenda snipers, ok?

Veldorran is level 14 as of this writing, and I must admit I’m really having a blast with the class, though I have my doubts whether the reality of its “evasion tanking” will match what I have in mind. We’ll see, but from the little I’ve seen, they appear to be largely a class for soloers. I’ve only grouped with one so far with Arwellyn, and he was just doing ranged dps with his javelin since we had a guardian to tank. The Gambit combat system is fun and complex with a gradual learning curve that makes it easy to get into. I enjoy complex classes, though I’m not sure how I feel about the various Gambits being memory-based. Age of Conan makes their combos easy by showing a reminder in the UI. Even LOTRO’s Fellowship Maneuvers have a UI gude – if the group leaders sets one – so I suppose the Gambits could be directly compared to completing a Fellowship Maneuver by memory, only you’re doing it all yourself.

This is also giving me a chance to see the revamped content. I’ve already run into several instances where content and quests were either completely different and new or have been changed to make more sense.

So, I had a day of breaking my “no alts” rule. Rules were meant to be broken, right? I still like the idea behind it though. I’m giving attention to 3 MMO’s at the moment, plus trying to balance them with my games and friends on the 360, plus real life and work. The main concern is avoiding burnout again at any cost, so I’ve got my work cut out for me. My attention shifts at the blink of an eye so by the time I get home next week I may be hardcore anti-alts again.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Lord of the Rings Online, MMO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.