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canadiandiamondWarning: this is gonna be a big ol' post about MMOs and my thoughts on the ones I used to play, the ones I do play, and the ones I want to play. Feel free to skip it if you're so inclined; I'll even tuck it all behind a nice little cut for y'all. :) I know, I know, I owe everyone a big post on my Christmas trip and I still need to finish that 10 day meme that got cut off by my flight back home, and I will, soon. But for now, this is what's on my mind.
Welcome to all of you brave (or bored) souls who decided to venture beneath the cut. Pull up a chair, grab a beverage of your choice, 'cause if this winds on as long as I think it may, we could be here awhile. XD
Where to start... well, there's a lot on my mind, really, but I'll try to keep it streamlined from past -> present -> future, since that makes sense, hehe. Basically I've been anticipating the new Star Wars MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR), and that's got me reflecting on my current MMO jam(s), the Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) and, to a much lesser extent since I hardly play my briefly renewed account, the World of Warcraft (WoW). The past comes up because my first MMO was also a Star Wars one, Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), and then there were many more in between, heh.
The Past!
It all began way back around when I started my first full time job in Marystown. I moved down to live with my aunt in the late summer / early fall of 2003. It was my first real job, I wasn't long out of UNB, and I had a Star Wars vibe going on because, well, what was my first major purchase after getting a job? Why, an Xbox, of course. Old school one, huge black effing brick of a console, haha, which still sits on a shelf by my TV, dusty yet 100% operational. I had that in mind to buy before even getting my first car (a second hand, green '95 Cirrus that would randomly refuse to start for me at times, mreh, had it for ~6 months before getting the green '97 Grand Am that did me until I got ol' Blue with my new job in Carbonear, but I digress), talking it over with my buddy Mark beforehand. He was leaning towards a PS2 but veered to the Xbox side when he got his new job in Gander, a few months before me. Hearing him talk about how much he liked the Xbox (we'd rented the PS2 a bunch of times while living together in NB but never an Xbox), it convinced me to look into it, and reading about one game made me want to give it a shot: BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). Once I'd talked to Mark and read up on KOTOR, my mind was made up, and I soon had myself a shiny new Xbox, which came bundled with some game called Halo or something, heh, and a snowboarding game, and I picked up KOTOR separately at the same time. I still remember getting home from St. John's and all but ripping open the boxes to set up my Xbox and to try out KOTOR in the living room, haha.
Anyway, once I got settled into Marystown, it became apparent that I needed to get a new computer as well. My old one had served me well all the way through law school, and I believe I had it for... hmm, not sure now, but at least a year or two while I was at MUN before UNB, so it was really showing its age. The point was, I had a new job and some wherewithal, and a sweet deal boarding with my relatives (I paid a flat weekly rent and that covered everything - all utilities, food, cable, internet, the works), so I could afford to replace my old machine with something more modern. So I did, spurred on as well by my best friend Brad and his own recent upgrade. He had also been telling me about this new game he'd been playing, a new genre of gaming called Massively Multiplayer Online gaming, which sounded omg so awesome. And on top of that, the game he played was a Star Wars one, SWG, made by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE).
He told me so, so, SO much about it and I was already hot and bothered for Star Wars thanks to my Xbox that I was practically salivating to get my hands on it. I won't lie; hearing all of this and looking into it myself was a huge, huge incentive to upgrade my computer and I made sure whatever I got would be able to handle SWG. I didn't build it myself but I went to a mom & pop PC store in Marystown and picked out the components I wanted, and they ordered and built it for me. The sad part was, being such a small, remote community (there was no Wal-Mart there at the time, Zellers was as good as it got, ugh), I couldn't get my hands on a copy of SWG. :( I hadn't dabbled much in online purchasing then, though now that I recall it I did order some law school supplemental texts from Chapters while in NB, hmm. Maybe it just never came to me, I dunno. Anyway, my PC was ordered but I had no SWG waiting for it. I told Brad about this and, with me sending him some money (I think, or he might've owed me some and he took it off that? Who knows after this long), he picked it up for me in Saskatchewan and mailed it to me way out here in NL.
And on that fateful day that my computer components were magically melded into an amazing machine, lo and behold, what should arrive in the mail for me that day as I walked in the door, computer under arm? Why, a package from SK! That was such a happy, happy day, my friends, I kid you not. I get warm and fuzzy just thinking about it now, ahhh. What a joy it was, to not only set up a brand, spanking new machine, but to have a shiny, new piece of software to install on it right away. It was like... like getting a brand new, state-of-the-art oven and baking brownies or ooh maybe chocolate chip cookies right away, omg, now I want cookies. ANYWAY. It was an epic day, and I installed it and let Brad know I was around, probably by e-mail because I don't think I had a cell phone back then, nor did he, haha.
I still remember meeting up with him in game, on Tatooine I believe it was. It was daytime in game, a dusty, windy atmosphere, and I remember getting off of the landing shuttle and seeing someone speed up to me on a speeder. Here it was, Brad, or Ban Couthri as his known, and he twinked me out something fierce, haha. I think he gave me a speeder myself, lots of credits, some weapons and armour, and maybe even ... yeah, an ore harvester, hahaha. You see, you could mine for ore on land in the game, the resources in SWG were just... god, this post would be HUGE if I even tried to explain it all, it was such an incredibly detailed and perfect game, I just. They should have sent a poet. *wipes away a tear* But yes, you could only place so many of the harvesters, depending on level / land size, I think, and he gave me one to use myself for him, haha. Quite the welcome wagon, and it was a lot to handle at first, but I quickly fell in love with the game.
I won't go into much more detail, only to say that out of all the games I've played since I've never seen a more satisfying approach to character creation / development, and making your own toon unique and customized to your liking. Still hate SOE so much for how they effed that up, rarar. But yes, I played that game. I played the hell out of it. Haha, for those of you who know me and know how much time I've spent in LOTRO in the past, and still do but not as much as I used to... even at my peak of LOTRO playing it couldn't hold a candle to my SWG days. Not even close. For months I'd play from morning to night, playing my entire lunch hour home from work, immediately after work (through supper) until I went to bed, and on weekends / holidays / snow days I'd get out of bed and start playing, bringing my food down next to me, and would play until I went to sleep. Even on work days I'd say I'd still get 7-8 hours in a day, easy, usually more. It was kind of obscene. And embarrassing. >.>
And then they changed it. ;_; Damn you, SOE. :(
That's a whole 'nother post in and of itself, and I don't want to relive that right now, haha, plus it's in the best interests of time if I just move on. XD So yes, move on I did, from game to game. Brad and I tried out other games after that - I think I was the first to buy WoW and played that alone, making an Orc rogue on one server and playing by myself for awhile, but didn't get much further than level 15-16 before I stopped. It was nowhere near as fun by myself and I didn't have any success with meeting people, so I just moved on. I tried City of Heroes (CoH) after and wasn't too happy with that, though at this point I was RPing on journals, which became my new main pastime, and had met a friend that way who played CoH so I tried it with her (April and her boyfriend [who didn't rp], I believe, for those who know who may know who I'm talking about), but it didn't last. Then I think I stopped for awhile, until Brad got into WoW and then I jumped right back on the MMO boat with him. We played the hell out of WoW, pre-expansion style, going to level 60 which was then the cap, and raiding with some people we'd met. Raids in WoW though are just, well, wow, heh. I've been spoiled by the 6- and 12-person events in LOTRO, because 20- and 40-person events are HARD to organize, let me tell you. We never did get much done, and what little we did do was in conjunction with other, larger groups or PuGs - I think there were never more than a dozen or so people in our guild.
WoW was fun, but didn't last as long as SWG did. After that, I think Brad migrated to GuildWars, which I also picked up but it never really appealed to me. I didn't get very far into it at all, and I think by the time I did give it a shot, Brad was burned out on it and didn't play much, so I didn't either. At this time I was oscillating between MMOs (WoW) and journal RPing, which is a good thing since that's how I met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
believeitup and so many other important people in my life. ♥ There may be other games, but I'm not sure.
Then there was a long, long gap where I didn't play anything at all. I switched jobs and came home, and I think I was dabbling back into WoW around then during the move, but by myself and never did get back into it, really. Brad was itching to play something too, and this was how Vanguard came up. He went and bought it before I did, after we'd discussed it for awhile, and once he did then you just know I had to as well, haha. XD I did, actually buying it online since it wasn't in stores here in Carbonear, and it was the first time I ever bought a game online and downloaded it. Which took FOREVER haha, my connection here still sucks and thankfully back then it was only... well, I think it was over 1GB, which just seemed obscene at the time, haha. XD But yeah, we downloaded it and tried it and... it was just, no. Too hardcore - dying meant losing xp, gear getting damaged, and a naked corpse run, it was pretty darn hardcore indeed. And it was a mess, glitchy all over the place and buggy, even though it had some cool ideas. The idea of Diplomacy as a way of leveling instead of fighting was nice (diplomacy was like a card game, getting new cards as you did better, it was neat), and the crafting system had a cool approach, but yeah, overall it was too borked.
Thankfully, not too long after we'd taken the Vanguard plunge, we'd both put our names in the hat for the LOTRO beta test, and, as fate should have it, both of us were selected to test the game. Fun fact: my first toon was actually a Lore-Master, Eadon, who I still have on Silverlode today but still isn't anywhere near the level cap. XD But yeah, we played that a LOT, from closed beta through to launch and onward. We did take a break for... hmm, a few months or so, where we hardly played, but then close to Christmas of that year, December 2007 I think, we both got into it again. Sara and I were dating by this time, and in early 2008 she started playing too, and I've pretty much been playing it regularly since then. Brad has been off and on, more off than on lately though he did play a fair bit last fall.
The Present!
Haha, ok, we've reached the present! God, if anyone actually reads all of this you deserve a cookie. ♥ But yeah, to cut to the chase, right now my wife and I are Officers in a LOTRO kin that we don't play with any more, that hardly plays themselves any more and hasn't for awhile. We've been playing on a whole different server since... well, I remember making my toon on E last January, so about a year now, though only the last 6-7 months or so to any large degree, I think. Could be wrong on that, but yeah, point is, we don't play on the Silverlode server where our toons are officers any more, not with the kin anyway. And the current situation I'm facing there is whether to remain an officer or to step down, or to just leave the kin altogether. The dilemma is that, well, those characters are the ones I made on Day 1, in the beta mostly, and I've spent so. Much. Time on them. More than I should admit, haha, which is still bad considering my earlier statement that I spent way more time in SWG than LOTRO, and I've got 5 65s on LOTRO (two of the same class even, one Burglar on each server), heh. I mean, I hate seeing them collecting dust on Silverlode and not getting any play. :/ But I honestly cannot see myself ever being active again with that kin, so why delay the inevitable / take up space as an officer? My mind, though, has me thinking it's an all or nothing thing, that if I quit as officer I should quit the kin entirely, but that may not be true. They've recently made a distinction for former officers who no longer play as much / can perform the regular duties, like an officer emeritus or ex-officio, which is an option I guess, but yeah. Even if I were to leave the kin, I still couldn't honestly join another one and pretend like I'll play there all the time because I likely won't. I play on E mainly now, with my wife and our friends there, which is hard too because of time zone differences, but that too is a whole 'nother post. XD
Anyway, yeah, that's my dilemma there, in short. What do I do? Which is rhetorical, and this post is me mainly thinking aloud, and I have no idea what to do. Chances are it'll be to step down and stay in kin, unless some other option presents itself to me, but I can't think of one at the moment. It just makes me sad, is all, because I put a lot of effort into those characters and now they're basically useless, gathering digital dust, and yeah it's only a game but that depresses me a little. Mreh.
LOTRO has been frustrating in general for months, mainly because of the slow, inevitable grind to a halt I saw on Silverlode with my once-proud raiding kin there, and because the current highest end game content is just so, so frustrating. I've yet to beat it a single time on any single toon and just alkdwpoawkdawpokdwa FRUSTRATING. It's only a game, yeah, but the kin kind of ground to a halt after trying that so often, to the point that we couldn't get enough people to try it or anything else, so we moved to a new server. There I leveled another toon to the cap, geared her up, annnnnnnnd now I can't beat the same raid on that toon. To be fair, we're still building the kin there and all, and I haven't been able to try the raid much due to vast time zone differences that we're trying to fix now, so I am remaining hopeful that we'll get it down soon - we're going to raid on Fridays and Saturdays now so I can stay up late enough to do the whole thing, as opposed to Saturdays and then some weekday when I can't start raiding at midnight my time, so that's good. There's a new raid coming out in March or so too, which brings hope, but I really, really want to beat this latest raid at least once before then, if I can, just to say I did. XD
The Future!
Ok, moving on. Future! March (or thereabouts) also brings another game into the mix, which ties into my earlier rambling about the Star Wars universe. My current MMO future interests are all tied up in a new Star Wars game on the horizon, SWTOR. Brad is super hyped for it too, and maybe that's a big part of why I am, too; aside for my love of the Star Wars universe and the special space it'll always hold in my heart for being my first MMO, I really, really can't wait to get to play an MMO with him again. Don't get me wrong, I'm a LOTRO lifer and will always keep my fingers in that pie, especially since that's my wife's jam and where she prefers to spend her MMO time, but I really do miss playing with Brad. It's been the main way that we stay in touch with each other, which may be sad, I don't know, but it's how we roll. I mean, we e-mail and text now (yay for cellphones! \o/), and have the odd phone call, but MMOs are how we mainly interact. So yeah, so so so excited for that, omg. You have no idea. XD I spent a significant chunk of today talking to him on gchat about SWTOR, about what classes we wanted to try, and how to duo them, that it spilled over into me looking up more videos on the game and to reminisce big time, leading to his rambling, rambling post. XD There's no launch date set yet, and while we're both signed up for the beta neither of us have been fortunate enough to try it yet, though here's hoping as the gold date gets closer (Spring 2011 is the current vague one) the beta opportunities will expand and allow us to get on board asap.
I've also been thinking about the DC Universe Online (DCUO) game that launched a few days ago, but I missed the boat with the big beta testing on that, and thanks to being recently screwed over liekwoah with the Final Fantasy XIV (GARBAGE) game that was also meant to be played on consoles too, I can't bring myself to try it. There's also a little stigma with me not digging CoH and wondering if this will be like that, and of course SOE is also developing DCUO so yeah, lots of factors to make me wary there. I honestly do hope it's good, though, as I know lots of people who liked the beta and one of my good friends is playing it right now omg I think (hionlyonechoice!) and I hope she's loving it! It's just not something for me to hop into now, especially since I'm still playing LOTRO, have an active WoW account (note to self, go cancel that already before it auto-renews >.<), and am just itching to throw money at SWTOR.
OH YEAH, the other thing SWTOR has going for it? It's made by BioWare, who made the KOTOR games that I loved and that were kinda what segued me into SWG and MMO gaming in general. It's kind of like a perfect storm that way; back to the genre I loved, by a company I love, and will get to play with Brad again, it's just ... I better not be overhyping it, haha, but yeah, omg. This is where my future hopes lay, along with still following LOTRO (so, so happy I went lifetime, can still just pop in whenever and no worries about having to pay any more, unlike WoW, which ajdaowkdowaid *goes to cancel it now* DONE. And wow, they removed the little Orc .gif that'd cry after you canceled, heh. Yes, I've done that many times. >.>). It's been on my mind a lot lately, especially today since we had a half-day off because of the snow and I just threw myself into it and, well, worked myself up a bit, if it wasn't obvious. Obviously rambling post is obviously rambling. :D;;
So yeah, that's all I have to say about that. Wow, if anyone (myself included) is able to actually read all of that, I'll be surprised. XD tl;dr: I have spent a LOT of time playing MMOs and am conflicted with my present situation, and am looking forward to a change in the future. :)
Wow, I spent over an hour on that and still have so much more I could add/change about that, haha, but no, need sleep. Didn't mean to be ranting on this long, whoops. *hops into bed!*
Welcome to all of you brave (or bored) souls who decided to venture beneath the cut. Pull up a chair, grab a beverage of your choice, 'cause if this winds on as long as I think it may, we could be here awhile. XD
Where to start... well, there's a lot on my mind, really, but I'll try to keep it streamlined from past -> present -> future, since that makes sense, hehe. Basically I've been anticipating the new Star Wars MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR), and that's got me reflecting on my current MMO jam(s), the Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) and, to a much lesser extent since I hardly play my briefly renewed account, the World of Warcraft (WoW). The past comes up because my first MMO was also a Star Wars one, Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), and then there were many more in between, heh.
The Past!
It all began way back around when I started my first full time job in Marystown. I moved down to live with my aunt in the late summer / early fall of 2003. It was my first real job, I wasn't long out of UNB, and I had a Star Wars vibe going on because, well, what was my first major purchase after getting a job? Why, an Xbox, of course. Old school one, huge black effing brick of a console, haha, which still sits on a shelf by my TV, dusty yet 100% operational. I had that in mind to buy before even getting my first car (a second hand, green '95 Cirrus that would randomly refuse to start for me at times, mreh, had it for ~6 months before getting the green '97 Grand Am that did me until I got ol' Blue with my new job in Carbonear, but I digress), talking it over with my buddy Mark beforehand. He was leaning towards a PS2 but veered to the Xbox side when he got his new job in Gander, a few months before me. Hearing him talk about how much he liked the Xbox (we'd rented the PS2 a bunch of times while living together in NB but never an Xbox), it convinced me to look into it, and reading about one game made me want to give it a shot: BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). Once I'd talked to Mark and read up on KOTOR, my mind was made up, and I soon had myself a shiny new Xbox, which came bundled with some game called Halo or something, heh, and a snowboarding game, and I picked up KOTOR separately at the same time. I still remember getting home from St. John's and all but ripping open the boxes to set up my Xbox and to try out KOTOR in the living room, haha.
Anyway, once I got settled into Marystown, it became apparent that I needed to get a new computer as well. My old one had served me well all the way through law school, and I believe I had it for... hmm, not sure now, but at least a year or two while I was at MUN before UNB, so it was really showing its age. The point was, I had a new job and some wherewithal, and a sweet deal boarding with my relatives (I paid a flat weekly rent and that covered everything - all utilities, food, cable, internet, the works), so I could afford to replace my old machine with something more modern. So I did, spurred on as well by my best friend Brad and his own recent upgrade. He had also been telling me about this new game he'd been playing, a new genre of gaming called Massively Multiplayer Online gaming, which sounded omg so awesome. And on top of that, the game he played was a Star Wars one, SWG, made by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE).
He told me so, so, SO much about it and I was already hot and bothered for Star Wars thanks to my Xbox that I was practically salivating to get my hands on it. I won't lie; hearing all of this and looking into it myself was a huge, huge incentive to upgrade my computer and I made sure whatever I got would be able to handle SWG. I didn't build it myself but I went to a mom & pop PC store in Marystown and picked out the components I wanted, and they ordered and built it for me. The sad part was, being such a small, remote community (there was no Wal-Mart there at the time, Zellers was as good as it got, ugh), I couldn't get my hands on a copy of SWG. :( I hadn't dabbled much in online purchasing then, though now that I recall it I did order some law school supplemental texts from Chapters while in NB, hmm. Maybe it just never came to me, I dunno. Anyway, my PC was ordered but I had no SWG waiting for it. I told Brad about this and, with me sending him some money (I think, or he might've owed me some and he took it off that? Who knows after this long), he picked it up for me in Saskatchewan and mailed it to me way out here in NL.
And on that fateful day that my computer components were magically melded into an amazing machine, lo and behold, what should arrive in the mail for me that day as I walked in the door, computer under arm? Why, a package from SK! That was such a happy, happy day, my friends, I kid you not. I get warm and fuzzy just thinking about it now, ahhh. What a joy it was, to not only set up a brand, spanking new machine, but to have a shiny, new piece of software to install on it right away. It was like... like getting a brand new, state-of-the-art oven and baking brownies or ooh maybe chocolate chip cookies right away, omg, now I want cookies. ANYWAY. It was an epic day, and I installed it and let Brad know I was around, probably by e-mail because I don't think I had a cell phone back then, nor did he, haha.
I still remember meeting up with him in game, on Tatooine I believe it was. It was daytime in game, a dusty, windy atmosphere, and I remember getting off of the landing shuttle and seeing someone speed up to me on a speeder. Here it was, Brad, or Ban Couthri as his known, and he twinked me out something fierce, haha. I think he gave me a speeder myself, lots of credits, some weapons and armour, and maybe even ... yeah, an ore harvester, hahaha. You see, you could mine for ore on land in the game, the resources in SWG were just... god, this post would be HUGE if I even tried to explain it all, it was such an incredibly detailed and perfect game, I just. They should have sent a poet. *wipes away a tear* But yes, you could only place so many of the harvesters, depending on level / land size, I think, and he gave me one to use myself for him, haha. Quite the welcome wagon, and it was a lot to handle at first, but I quickly fell in love with the game.
I won't go into much more detail, only to say that out of all the games I've played since I've never seen a more satisfying approach to character creation / development, and making your own toon unique and customized to your liking. Still hate SOE so much for how they effed that up, rarar. But yes, I played that game. I played the hell out of it. Haha, for those of you who know me and know how much time I've spent in LOTRO in the past, and still do but not as much as I used to... even at my peak of LOTRO playing it couldn't hold a candle to my SWG days. Not even close. For months I'd play from morning to night, playing my entire lunch hour home from work, immediately after work (through supper) until I went to bed, and on weekends / holidays / snow days I'd get out of bed and start playing, bringing my food down next to me, and would play until I went to sleep. Even on work days I'd say I'd still get 7-8 hours in a day, easy, usually more. It was kind of obscene. And embarrassing. >.>
And then they changed it. ;_; Damn you, SOE. :(
That's a whole 'nother post in and of itself, and I don't want to relive that right now, haha, plus it's in the best interests of time if I just move on. XD So yes, move on I did, from game to game. Brad and I tried out other games after that - I think I was the first to buy WoW and played that alone, making an Orc rogue on one server and playing by myself for awhile, but didn't get much further than level 15-16 before I stopped. It was nowhere near as fun by myself and I didn't have any success with meeting people, so I just moved on. I tried City of Heroes (CoH) after and wasn't too happy with that, though at this point I was RPing on journals, which became my new main pastime, and had met a friend that way who played CoH so I tried it with her (April and her boyfriend [who didn't rp], I believe, for those who know who may know who I'm talking about), but it didn't last. Then I think I stopped for awhile, until Brad got into WoW and then I jumped right back on the MMO boat with him. We played the hell out of WoW, pre-expansion style, going to level 60 which was then the cap, and raiding with some people we'd met. Raids in WoW though are just, well, wow, heh. I've been spoiled by the 6- and 12-person events in LOTRO, because 20- and 40-person events are HARD to organize, let me tell you. We never did get much done, and what little we did do was in conjunction with other, larger groups or PuGs - I think there were never more than a dozen or so people in our guild.
WoW was fun, but didn't last as long as SWG did. After that, I think Brad migrated to GuildWars, which I also picked up but it never really appealed to me. I didn't get very far into it at all, and I think by the time I did give it a shot, Brad was burned out on it and didn't play much, so I didn't either. At this time I was oscillating between MMOs (WoW) and journal RPing, which is a good thing since that's how I met
believeitup and so many other important people in my life. ♥ There may be other games, but I'm not sure.Then there was a long, long gap where I didn't play anything at all. I switched jobs and came home, and I think I was dabbling back into WoW around then during the move, but by myself and never did get back into it, really. Brad was itching to play something too, and this was how Vanguard came up. He went and bought it before I did, after we'd discussed it for awhile, and once he did then you just know I had to as well, haha. XD I did, actually buying it online since it wasn't in stores here in Carbonear, and it was the first time I ever bought a game online and downloaded it. Which took FOREVER haha, my connection here still sucks and thankfully back then it was only... well, I think it was over 1GB, which just seemed obscene at the time, haha. XD But yeah, we downloaded it and tried it and... it was just, no. Too hardcore - dying meant losing xp, gear getting damaged, and a naked corpse run, it was pretty darn hardcore indeed. And it was a mess, glitchy all over the place and buggy, even though it had some cool ideas. The idea of Diplomacy as a way of leveling instead of fighting was nice (diplomacy was like a card game, getting new cards as you did better, it was neat), and the crafting system had a cool approach, but yeah, overall it was too borked.
Thankfully, not too long after we'd taken the Vanguard plunge, we'd both put our names in the hat for the LOTRO beta test, and, as fate should have it, both of us were selected to test the game. Fun fact: my first toon was actually a Lore-Master, Eadon, who I still have on Silverlode today but still isn't anywhere near the level cap. XD But yeah, we played that a LOT, from closed beta through to launch and onward. We did take a break for... hmm, a few months or so, where we hardly played, but then close to Christmas of that year, December 2007 I think, we both got into it again. Sara and I were dating by this time, and in early 2008 she started playing too, and I've pretty much been playing it regularly since then. Brad has been off and on, more off than on lately though he did play a fair bit last fall.
The Present!
Haha, ok, we've reached the present! God, if anyone actually reads all of this you deserve a cookie. ♥ But yeah, to cut to the chase, right now my wife and I are Officers in a LOTRO kin that we don't play with any more, that hardly plays themselves any more and hasn't for awhile. We've been playing on a whole different server since... well, I remember making my toon on E last January, so about a year now, though only the last 6-7 months or so to any large degree, I think. Could be wrong on that, but yeah, point is, we don't play on the Silverlode server where our toons are officers any more, not with the kin anyway. And the current situation I'm facing there is whether to remain an officer or to step down, or to just leave the kin altogether. The dilemma is that, well, those characters are the ones I made on Day 1, in the beta mostly, and I've spent so. Much. Time on them. More than I should admit, haha, which is still bad considering my earlier statement that I spent way more time in SWG than LOTRO, and I've got 5 65s on LOTRO (two of the same class even, one Burglar on each server), heh. I mean, I hate seeing them collecting dust on Silverlode and not getting any play. :/ But I honestly cannot see myself ever being active again with that kin, so why delay the inevitable / take up space as an officer? My mind, though, has me thinking it's an all or nothing thing, that if I quit as officer I should quit the kin entirely, but that may not be true. They've recently made a distinction for former officers who no longer play as much / can perform the regular duties, like an officer emeritus or ex-officio, which is an option I guess, but yeah. Even if I were to leave the kin, I still couldn't honestly join another one and pretend like I'll play there all the time because I likely won't. I play on E mainly now, with my wife and our friends there, which is hard too because of time zone differences, but that too is a whole 'nother post. XD
Anyway, yeah, that's my dilemma there, in short. What do I do? Which is rhetorical, and this post is me mainly thinking aloud, and I have no idea what to do. Chances are it'll be to step down and stay in kin, unless some other option presents itself to me, but I can't think of one at the moment. It just makes me sad, is all, because I put a lot of effort into those characters and now they're basically useless, gathering digital dust, and yeah it's only a game but that depresses me a little. Mreh.
LOTRO has been frustrating in general for months, mainly because of the slow, inevitable grind to a halt I saw on Silverlode with my once-proud raiding kin there, and because the current highest end game content is just so, so frustrating. I've yet to beat it a single time on any single toon and just alkdwpoawkdawpokdwa FRUSTRATING. It's only a game, yeah, but the kin kind of ground to a halt after trying that so often, to the point that we couldn't get enough people to try it or anything else, so we moved to a new server. There I leveled another toon to the cap, geared her up, annnnnnnnd now I can't beat the same raid on that toon. To be fair, we're still building the kin there and all, and I haven't been able to try the raid much due to vast time zone differences that we're trying to fix now, so I am remaining hopeful that we'll get it down soon - we're going to raid on Fridays and Saturdays now so I can stay up late enough to do the whole thing, as opposed to Saturdays and then some weekday when I can't start raiding at midnight my time, so that's good. There's a new raid coming out in March or so too, which brings hope, but I really, really want to beat this latest raid at least once before then, if I can, just to say I did. XD
The Future!
Ok, moving on. Future! March (or thereabouts) also brings another game into the mix, which ties into my earlier rambling about the Star Wars universe. My current MMO future interests are all tied up in a new Star Wars game on the horizon, SWTOR. Brad is super hyped for it too, and maybe that's a big part of why I am, too; aside for my love of the Star Wars universe and the special space it'll always hold in my heart for being my first MMO, I really, really can't wait to get to play an MMO with him again. Don't get me wrong, I'm a LOTRO lifer and will always keep my fingers in that pie, especially since that's my wife's jam and where she prefers to spend her MMO time, but I really do miss playing with Brad. It's been the main way that we stay in touch with each other, which may be sad, I don't know, but it's how we roll. I mean, we e-mail and text now (yay for cellphones! \o/), and have the odd phone call, but MMOs are how we mainly interact. So yeah, so so so excited for that, omg. You have no idea. XD I spent a significant chunk of today talking to him on gchat about SWTOR, about what classes we wanted to try, and how to duo them, that it spilled over into me looking up more videos on the game and to reminisce big time, leading to his rambling, rambling post. XD There's no launch date set yet, and while we're both signed up for the beta neither of us have been fortunate enough to try it yet, though here's hoping as the gold date gets closer (Spring 2011 is the current vague one) the beta opportunities will expand and allow us to get on board asap.
I've also been thinking about the DC Universe Online (DCUO) game that launched a few days ago, but I missed the boat with the big beta testing on that, and thanks to being recently screwed over liekwoah with the Final Fantasy XIV (GARBAGE) game that was also meant to be played on consoles too, I can't bring myself to try it. There's also a little stigma with me not digging CoH and wondering if this will be like that, and of course SOE is also developing DCUO so yeah, lots of factors to make me wary there. I honestly do hope it's good, though, as I know lots of people who liked the beta and one of my good friends is playing it right now omg I think (hi
onlyonechoice!) and I hope she's loving it! It's just not something for me to hop into now, especially since I'm still playing LOTRO, have an active WoW account (note to self, go cancel that already before it auto-renews >.<), and am just itching to throw money at SWTOR.OH YEAH, the other thing SWTOR has going for it? It's made by BioWare, who made the KOTOR games that I loved and that were kinda what segued me into SWG and MMO gaming in general. It's kind of like a perfect storm that way; back to the genre I loved, by a company I love, and will get to play with Brad again, it's just ... I better not be overhyping it, haha, but yeah, omg. This is where my future hopes lay, along with still following LOTRO (so, so happy I went lifetime, can still just pop in whenever and no worries about having to pay any more, unlike WoW, which ajdaowkdowaid *goes to cancel it now* DONE. And wow, they removed the little Orc .gif that'd cry after you canceled, heh. Yes, I've done that many times. >.>). It's been on my mind a lot lately, especially today since we had a half-day off because of the snow and I just threw myself into it and, well, worked myself up a bit, if it wasn't obvious. Obviously rambling post is obviously rambling. :D;;
So yeah, that's all I have to say about that. Wow, if anyone (myself included) is able to actually read all of that, I'll be surprised. XD tl;dr: I have spent a LOT of time playing MMOs and am conflicted with my present situation, and am looking forward to a change in the future. :)
Wow, I spent over an hour on that and still have so much more I could add/change about that, haha, but no, need sleep. Didn't mean to be ranting on this long, whoops. *hops into bed!*
