Warning! Explicit content contained herein.
I won’t write much about this, but as I’m sure you’ve heard LOTRO is going Free to Play. I’m fine with it. Turbine has done an amazing job with Dungeons and Dragons Online, and while I like LOTRO it’s never held me strong enough to stay subscribed until end game. This will allow me to pay $5 here for a zone, complete that zone in a month or two, and then pay for the next zone, all at my own pace.
Not to mention, I wasn’t subscribed anyway, so I don’t have the right to complain. All those people that WERE subscribed or had lifetime subscriptions, they have a right, but not me. I wasn’t helping keep this game or it’s community g0ing strong and so I can’t really be upset by the thought of being able to justify playing it again, nor can I be angry that it might “ruin the game and bring about the end times of video games!” as so many people seem to be fearing.
LOTRO has another thing going for it with the switch to free. Right now it’s arguably the second best, or maybe lower, subscription MMO on the market. After this it will be the single best free to play game period. They stand to make an amazing amount of money with this as people come running from games like Allods or Florenzia or Wizards 101. Also, to all the lifetime subscription people out there who may be upset, you knew that lifetime didn’t really mean lifetime. Besides, it’s an online game, and those were supposed to be the most dynamic games. Embrace the change.
On to World of Warcraft and some of the things that really PISS me off about the game. I know it’s said that it is the most polished game on it’s kind and that may be true, but that doesn’t mean that it is without flaws and glitches. Glitches like mobs getting stuck in rocks. This has happened to be A LOT the last couple of days.
Another thing that drives me insane is that, for 90% of the game (I.E. until you get into Northrend and get the quest gear) your characters armor looks like total crap. My pally is currently in a blue and gold shirt, black pants, gold shoulderpads, pink belt and silver gloves, with a yellow miners hat on. Who the fuckity fuck thought that this was a good idea?
I can understand having appearance gear. It wasn’t in the game to begin with and they just don’t want to spend the time to implement it (PLEASE DO THIS!) but I can’t imagine the developers sitting back and watching people level up in beta and no saying “You know Mike, everyone looks like ass….maybe we should make them, I don’t know, match a little?”. Then again maybe that happened, and that person was fired.
We all want to progress, and in WoW part of that is the look of your character, but that doesn’t begin to look better until almost end game. Maybe there should be a decent look throughout that steadily gets cooler and cooler as you go, but either always matches, or give us appearance gear, or at LEAST dye’s so we can make it match.
Manifest Pixel 
Lifetime still means lifetime though. After the switch over I will still have access to everything I have now, plus I’ll get 500 free points every month to spend in the store (if there’s anything I care to buy). The only difference, based on what I’ve read, is going to be an influx of new players, which will be good for Turbine, but possibly bad for chat.
Hopefully they are trying to fix the chat issue. Either by dividing up chats into zones, or having GMs around to kind of police the chat like Fallen Earth does.
Yes, I’m for dyes in WoW!!!
That would solve SO MUCH of the “wow…I look like a clown” feeling. They’ve even already got a profession that makes dyes, Inscription, so it could just be added to that.
I’ll second that. Maybe if they look at STO (and) others, Blizz will see that not everyone will want to dress in all black like ninjas. I for one, might get a new piece, think, “That looks cool!” and modify the rest of the gear to match. It would also solve the problem of the ever more outlandish elements of the costumes. We don’t all need massive shouler pads that make us look like Queen Amidala.
WoW is flawed, but it is still the best MMO out there, I think.
I have to disagree with you on the shoulder pads. If my shoulders could look like planets cracked and oozing lava (here’s hoping for that in Cataclysm) I’d love it.
I kind of hope they make the early level shoulders bigger and more interesting. It’s kind of WoW’s signature style at this point.
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Thanks. I don’t get too many comments and I appreciate it.
I stumbled on this looking for LOTRO info. My bro is a WoW kinda’ guy…and I’ve played before. But this article absolutely had me laughing, literally, out loud! 🙂
Thanks! It’s always good to get great comments like that. Feel free to link to it anywhere and everywhere 🙂