When MMO love is complicated. The ambiguous relationship of a seasoned raider with LOTRO

I have an ambiguous relationship with Lord of the Rings Online: I seem to be part of an eternal cycle of embracing and rejecting the game. On the one hand, virtual Middle Earth calls to me, always. I love immersing myself in its gorgeous landscapes and if there's something new, I want to check it out. On the other hand, it's hard for me (as a seasoned MMO progression raider) to ignore fundamental flaws in its combat system. For reasons already stated elsewhere, the gameplay simply isn't what it used to be.

After my return to LOTRO in the spring of 2016, several of my guildies or kinnies (your pick) joined in to try out the new group content. We had fun times doing the Osgiliath and Pelennor instances on tier 2 challenge mode with Asylum. Even that bugged one (Silent Street T2 Challenge) we managed to do as intended (say no to bears, kids!) - but in the end the gear grind proved too steep to ever get a full group of twelve of us together. This really disheartened me, because what I've seen of the the Throne of the Dread Terror raid on tier 2 is actually quite good! It deserves to be played way more than it is. If you have read my thoughts on (gear) grind both in LOTRO and in SWTOR, though, you know I can't blame my friends for not having the time and commitment to invest in a game that is, unfortunately, unbalanced and broken in many ways. The most frustrating thing is that it doesn't have to be this way: I honestly believe that all issues could be solved if the developers would put their minds to it. But, as these things seem to go in MMO world, it's all about forgetting what is and adding more and more new things. Seeing all this unfulfilled potential in an MMO I so deeply care about eventually makes me feel depressed about LOTRO, after which I typically login less and less to focus on group content in more modern MMOs. Then, after a few months of going cold turkey, virtual Middle-earth starts to call again and we've come full circle.

Somewhere in the fall of 2016, around the time of SWTOR's Eternal Throne expansion, LOTRO reverted to being my 'secondary MMO'. I more or less only logged in when something new and exciting was added, such as the much celebrated housing changes. It is only now, in March 2017, that I felt like playing seriously again, to check out LOTRO's latest update 20: Battle of the Black Gate. The game is approaching Mordor and that, of course, is not something I would want to miss!

When Conrad and I logged in the other day, we found that, in our absence, we had missed an entire quest line revolving around curing Eowyn, Faramir, Meriadoc and others in Minas Tirith's houses of healing. So we spent the whole evening doing that rather than trying out update 20 (gotta do everything in the right order!). I was meaning to write a review of it today, but when I started typing this came out instead. Guess some things needed to be heard.

Ravalation must be a super confusing blog to new LOTRO readers. Especially to the masses that look for a LOTRO guide to picking Ithilien flowers in a search engine, only to end up at my call to arms to Occupy Ithilien (true story, happens every day)! There are parts of the game I really love and write super enthusiastic posts about and then there are aspects I really dislike and write critical posts about - the latter of which never fail to evoke the wrath of hardcore LOTRO fanboys and girls. I am the only blogger left (as far as I'm aware) that writes such critical posts and has first hand knowledge of LOTRO's endgame - and I'm aware that I'm writing for a type of playerbase that may no longer exist. I have promised myself to stay true to my feelings in my writings and blog about what is important to me, rather than what other people would want me to write about, though. And thus I will.

In the foreseeable future, you can definitely expect lots of posts about LOTRO's new content (update 20), but when SWTOR's War for Iokath launches, I will probably play more SWTOR instead. Quality endgame calls. And so my ambiguous relationship with LOTRO will likely continue to direct my choice of MMOs in 2017.