Last night was another outing for the illustrious ‘Other Fellowship Of The Ring’, the brave band of misfits that make up Hobbington Crescent in Lord of the Rings Online. It’s been fun on the whole, but last night really did test the old patience a bit, and very nearly led to a Breaking of The Fellowship Moment.

See here for a painfully accurate quest guide to Volume 1, Book 10:

Killed In A Smiling Accident: A yawn may not be polite, but at least it is an honest opinion.

I can now totally understand Boromir’s sentiment, one that we all pretty much shared as the evening dragged on; ‘Screw the quest, lets just go kill stuff at Minas Tirith!’ Melmoth’s concerns are spot on of course; the Book was excessively lengthy, filled with far too much exposition and a great deal of painfully transparent travel timesinks, which have indeed cemented Hunter as a required group class. The Hunter in Lotro is pretty much the ‘Wizard’ in other MMOs; fragile but with the big damage nukes, and for some universally applied reason, also gets the useful utility travel stuff.

I agree with the general dissatisfaction of last night, but in a somewhat different manner. For me it wasn’t so much that it took a very long time, and had a lot of goshed durned book-readin’ going on, but that it was an ineffective use of a group’s time. If it had been just me, soloing along on an off-night, I’d have probably found the whole experience quite therapeutic. Turbine’s Middle Earth is a very well crafted place – the lands are pretty, (except where they aren’t supposed to be), the music fits the setting well, and it’s Middle Earth! A setting I’ve grown up with, implemented with care and attention to detail. On my own, when I’ve got time to potter, I love travelling the lands.

But being in an MMO with a full static group, or indeed, a pick-up group transforms the expectations of the play session utterly. We have all gather together to combine forces against a threat more serious than could be dealt with alone! Grouping is a social activity, certainly, but also a means to get difficult things done. When it came to Book 10, and indeed, a great deal of the Epic Storyline stuff so far, there are simply large tracts of it where our time could be more productively spent.

It sounds harsh and soulless and mechanical, the stuff of Management and Time And Motion Studies and Flipcharts; certainly not the sorts of things we should be applying to a game or hobby, but for many, getting a full and well balanced party together takes time and effort in and of itself, and in turn creates expectations that something more difficult and heroic will then be done. To have put that much organisation in, only to then be told to Collect Six Daisies, or Go Talk To Geoff; it all seems a bit of a waste to be honest. Last night I think there were perhaps four times when I, as the group’s Tank, was actually required to tank anything, in the proper sense of taunting and damage absorption and it’s always a bad sign when the healer is breaking out the direct damage spells because he doesn’t have much else to do. Trouble is, those times when we did have to do it properly, we did need a full balanced group.

I think I’m basically complaining that there wasn’t enough group-required content in the escapade, which is a first for me. I usually bang on about enforced grouping as being a terrible thing; all the way back to my EverQuest days it had frustrated me. It’s massive hypocrisy I’m sure, and now that I am a part of a regular group, the shoe is on the other foot. Boo! Down with soloers! Ruining our MMOs, etc, etc.

Yes and no. What I’d really like most of all, is consistency. If you have chosen to make the main storyline content of a game an activity aimed at groups of players, (which is not unreasonable – MMO and all) then make all of it group-based, or none at all. Instanced dungeons can be the main event for groups instead, and that would be fine. Or have two different stories running through, or even the same story, but in Group or Solo selectable modes. The point is to have consistent expectations in the playerbase throughout.

I have no idea what Vol 1, Books 11 to 15 are like in this regard, or any of the yet-to-be-started Volume 2 in Moria, but so far there has been a lot of both types of gameplay interspersed. I don’t mind the occasional interlude in a story where everyone needs to go from Site of Awesome Fighting A to Site of Awesome Fighting B. Technically that part is soloable, in that we all need to travel across anyway, but on the whole, we as a team are there for the Sites of Awesome Fighting, not the bits in between.

There certainly shouldn’t be any ‘Now Go Kill 10 Soloable Boars, Each’ steps, if the story as a whole will require a group to complete. What would be the point? Done badly, it can annoy everyone. Groups get fatigued and bored, underutilised for much of the proceedings, while soloers get stuck, frustrated and resenting the need to shout for pick-up groups they don’t really want to take part in.

[LFF] v1b2c3 annoying roadblock plx!1!

These extra steps may serve to provide exposition; there were certianly a lot of walls of text last night, but with five other players waiting to get on with things, however politely, that kind of thing tends to be just clicked through in a group. A soloist on the other hand, has the time and liesure to absorb the proceedings and can make the time to read it all. Again, the conflicting styles.

Lord of the Rings Online so far has been a mixed bag. Some of the Books have been very good, well-paced, interesting and varied in content. Book 1 was a great early start, involving Bree, Strider and Old Forest, a good ‘in’ for us into the existing storyline and lore. Book 2 was good too; Radagast and the Red Maid, all tightly placed with not too much running about and lots of suitable Elite monsters to fight. Books 4 and 5, helping Legolas and Gloin respectively, had a lot of back and forth, but the instances involved kept things moving along well, and were interesting.

Some of them have been a nightmare of timesink travel though; Book 3 was mostly conducted from the back of a horse across the North Downs. Book 6 was entirely soloable, which seemed a bit of a waste. Book 8, despite being the thrilling denouement of the ‘at launch’ epic storyline, still had us travelling all over the place to fulfil a shopping list before the final push could start and then there was last night’s courier-tastic proceedings, Book 10, which often had us carrying notes between people standing in the same room, and then from a guy in Evendim to a guy in Angmar and back, no trivial trip sans Hunter, for no better reason than we needed A Special Bag. Mind you, I did get to run off with a Palantir, leaving the rest of my Fellowship to die, so that was cool.

(Incidentally, most of these people are stood next to magical mailboxes, which allow the sending of items to people! GAH!)

Perhaps these Books aren’t meant to be done in one sitting? If not, why not, damnit! I’m sure we’ll keep at them, but not before a week or two of solid instance-based monster beating to counter the nasty taste of excessive travelling we’ve now all got. Perhaps I have become a massive philistine, just glossing over the elaborate and painstakingly crafted storyline, but in recent years I feel like I’m only just starting to play MMOs properly, only to find this curious indescision on the part of designers on what ‘properly’ even is anymore. I just wish they make their minds up; am I meant to solo these games, or group for them?