I wrote some years ago about being mostly, immune to MMO nostalgia: at the time I was talking about the trend for “classic” servers and playing older incarnations of still live MMORPG. Well, I realised last night as I played a session of Lord of the Rings Online, the first proper session since 2021, that I was feeling a whole lot of nostalgia for the game. This wasn’t me wanting to play an older version of a game as the term is so often used in MMO blogging circles; it was simply that comfortable feeling of being back in one of my favourite, and most played, MMORPGs.
LOTRO does “lifestyle” content pretty darn well. The farming/cooking crafting is particularly enjoyable, especially with a specific purpose in mind (as opposed to grinding to level the craft itself). I’d not at first logged on to do any farming – I set out to level my baby Loremaster character for some relaxed early-game questing. But a class quest took me to the class trainer in Bree, and he is also a vendor. He sells recipes to make buff food for the various Loremaster pet types, something I’d not noticed before. It is highly unlikely that I would need to buff my pet in the modern early-game as most opponents are pretty weak. Buffs in LOTRO are a special attraction to me, I’ve always loved all the buff-food cooks can make and scholar-crafted items (e.g., scrolls). It’s a deeply ingrained play style, I can remember the early days on my solo champion and how having a good set of buff items could make all the difference for soloing a class with extremely limited self-healing. Even now having some out of combat morale (health) and power (mana) regen food does reduce downtime slightly.
This meandering and highly interdependent gameplay style appeals to me – it always has even from my earliest days in the genre back in 2007 (on World of Warcraft). LOTRO remains a game that rewards this as there are a good number of reasons to want different crafting professions available. So, when I do find the time to play I’m more likely to play a few characters at least and to be switching between them to make this for that alt and then to go gather resources to make something else for someone else.
It’s Fall here in Canada, which means I’m “back to School” (i.e., University). I’m also working full time on an internship and have a research paper to start. Gaming time is going to be very limited, but I do need something to do that’s less “full-on” brain taxing than writing D&D modules. So, I’m thinking I’m going to be dipping back into MMORPGs for some very familiar and still very enjoyable gaming time! If I end up playing more, maybe I’ll have something to blog about as well, no promises though – I’m just as overloaded with study and work as ever…
GamingSF 