World of Warcraft spoils players and therefore makes playing other MMO's very difficult. Recently, I reactivated my LOTRO account. My reasoning for this was to have a place to escape from the World of Warcraft in an effort to prevent the all too common burn out. So, I play a little LOTRO with my Casualties of War buddies maybe once or twice a month.
The issue I am facing with LOTRO, which WoW is directly reponsible for, is that I am finding it difficult to do my questing. In WoW, I just grab a few quests then I let the little arrow, provided by my questhelper mod, guide me around till I reach the area where I need to complete the task set upon me by the quest. LOTRO has a built in quest assistant that is in beta, but it's not very helpful or it could just be me, who knows. Because of it's flaws, I'll have to inevitably read the actual quest, which is just foreign to me, n order to figure out where I need to go, but even that can be confusing because the main map doesn't show the names of all the small town like areas, even after you uncover them. This makes doing and turning in quests cumbersome to a person who is use to a mod leading him or her around by the nose.
I do enjoy LOTRO, but having to spend so much time trying to figure out where to go just to do a simple collection or talk to X quest is really annoying. Why can't games be more like WoW? Everyone says that LOTRO is just WoW with a different skin, but I just don't see it. Sure the game is beautiful, without requiring a top end system to see it. The sounds of wind blowing over the mountain tops, the babble of the brooks and waterfalls make the game come alive and add lots of fantastic atmosphere, but how good is that if there isn't some mod or in game helper dragging me around from place to place pushing me to complete quests so I can level up faster and get on with the job of End Game pursuits?
How can people be expected to enjoy a game, who's sole purpose is story line and intricate questing, if they can't figure out where to go next to kill mob X and collect Q? Even Warhammer Online had a system that would color areas of the map letting you know where to go. How hard is it these days for a game to make questing less complicated? Everyone knows that questing is the only way developers can justify XP, which is the sole vehicle that propels characters towards end game loot and glory. Why else would you play an MMO? For tradeskilling or story line? Come on, if that was the case, then LOTRO and EQ2 would be on top not WoW.
There's so much wrong with this text I don't even know where to begin. I was looking for the one line that would set everything right: "by the way, I was being sarcastic" (I still hope I just missed some intrinsic uttering of this line due to it being late, or me being too drunk to notice it)
ReplyDeleteWow did one thing very thoroughly: they changed the word MMORPG into MMO(G) forever
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ReplyDeleteWhy would you think I was being sarcastic? Isn't the goal of all MMO's these days to get to end game, raid, get loot and brag about how they have X dungeon on Farm status.
ReplyDeleteYour not suggesting that storyline and questing keep people playing MMOs are you? I mean, people play EVE and there isn't a set story line, they just farm and kill each other.With WoW there is a storyline, but how many actually follow it or pay attention to why they are collecting 12 pirate hats.
Your kidding yourself if you think it's anything other than a means to an end game.
Hmm. Ok I will bite and just say that LOTRO has the absolute worst quest log and map indicator ever.
ReplyDeleteEven the new system is iffy. But I think you are just baiting people with this post.
Sad thing is you are right, sarcastic or not
Sadly, I'm not trying to bait people. If they could clean up the quest information a bit, then the need for a quest helper program wouldn't be really necessary, but with both of them doing a half ass job, it makes relying on the helper hard and confusing.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I slug through it because I really like the game and it's atmosphere, but GOD, the quest lay out and helper are just terrible. Either do it better or don't do it at all because your just causing issues with your player base, when it fails.
I don't think you need a helper program at all, and people should read quests and enjoy the story line without having everything handed to you in a mod, but I think my sarcasm got away from me a bit.
Forgot to add, that part of the reason they added a Mod in the first pace is because they wanted to be more like WoW, which is always a mistake. The quest assistance stuff they implemented in WAR only made the PVE seem bland and in a game like LOTRO where story is everything and it is EVERYTHING, you don't want to start shifting your stance to create a blander experience.
ReplyDeleteDone now I think
My experience with the quest highlighting thing in WAR was pretty poor. There were a few cases where it was completely wrong and those were mainly in the later levels of the game after you learned to trust it.
ReplyDeleteI've never played LOTRO since it's Turbine :D I stopped buying Turbine games after my disappointment with AC2 and massive let down with DDO.
I have no problems reading quest text, beats the way quests used to be done in EQ1, although you sort of miss the freedom of not having to pick up a quest before hand and there was no cap to the number of quests you could have in your journal (because there was no quest journal).
On the other hand, quests were very simple in EQ, usually involving killing stuff for things to hand in to someone. :)
Like Tim I was hoping for a 'just kidding!' comment at the end of the text.
ReplyDeleteI just cancelled WoW, having gone back to LoTRO an finding I was enjoying Moria much more than Warcraft. I don't mind saying it was *hard* picking up my Loremaster again after my few-button druid.
Once I allowed my brain to wake up from WoW, I enjoyed LoTRO alot more. I could play Warcraft asleep, but wheres the fun in that?