Different Thoughts about Death in MMO’s

You might expect to see me going on and on about housing in LotRO, of course the hype got to me yesterday and after installing the patch (which took almost 2 hours total, but gave me time to read up on housing) and logging into the game I made my way to Thorin’s Hall Homestead and bought a standard dwarf house.  You might ask, why a dwarf house, you are a man of Rohan?  Well quite simply stated, it gives me quick access to Thorin’s Hall, where the superior forge is located, I am a weapon-smith after all, plus I really think the whole cave look is cool and my online friend also lives there.  I probably spent a total of 3 hours running around checking out kin-mate’s houses and taking a peek at all the furnishings available in the other races stores…I fixed up my digs the best I could, it is only a 2 room little abode, can’t expect too much.  I might upgrade somewhere down the line, our kinship was taking a collection and we plan on having a house in Breeland.  That is fine and dandy, the whole experience reminded me of playing the sims, without the happiness, hunger, and bathroom meters going off of course…

I will post screenshots soon for those of you dying to see some housing.  Our kinship decided to buy a kinship house in Bree-land.  The place is quite large and neat to look at, plus the extra binding point is nice to have as well.

Now, onto the subject at hand, ideas about how death could be a new game in itself in an MMO.  Now, I know there are much better thinkers out there than myself on this subject, I am no MMO genius or anything, so these ideas are things I have had in my noggin and just want to share here.

First off, I think that there could be a way for a game developer to create it so that when a player dies in a virtual world there could be a choice beyond the typical go back to the graveyard or rally point and return with damaged items or lower experience…there could be the ability to return to the game world as a spirit.  Now, let me explain a bit here, obviously you would not want the whole game full of these spirits, there wouldn’t be any reason to stay alive and gain levels right?  So, say for example you have been playing an MMO, the max level in the game is level 40, you made it all the way to level 20 and finally got killed.  Now, as you are presented to ability to resurrect you are also given the option, only one time, the first time you die, this option appears.  It tells you if your tormented soul wishes to remain in the spirit realm it may do so, but you will not have a leveling system and you can only use a limited number of skills, more skills can be learned by accomplishing certain tasks, such as, completing a series of quests involving haunting innocent players when they least expect it.  So, you choose to remain a spirit, now there are other spirit guides in this realm, some are good and some are pretty bad.  It is your choice to follow either path, and you gain a sort of faction with each the more you do quests with either one.  There are steps in the faction, say upon reaching stage 2 of the faction of good spirits, you can manifest yourself to be seen for an extended period of time, while you are seen you are casting a bright light and those who interact with you receive a mana and or health bonus for an hour…  On the opposite side of the spectrum, if you were to follow the bad spirit guide and reach say out of 10 levels of factions, you gain level 10, you would be able to summon along with yourself all bad spirits within a 100m radius of yourself at night near graveyards in the game, while you are summoned you would have the ability to cast fear into the hearts of the innocent people you come in contact with, nothing can kill you because you are already dead…Of course, there could be more to it than this, you get the general idea.  Without the ability to level as a spirit what is the point of playing?  For some people the simple fact of scaring the crap out of people could be reward enough…for others, the ability to be a guardian angel for characters would be a fun thing to do.

Now, there could be a quest as a spirit to get someone in the game to do a series of quests which could be either contacting a shaman healer NPC or someone else who would be able to bring you back to life, you would have to be playing as a spirit for at least 5 days time and reached level 4 on either the good or bad spirit faction to be considered for this.  Upon being resurrected you would return to the world of the living with the ability to see the spirits in the game and occasionally interact with them.  If you were good as a spirit you would gain an ability in the living world to heal others, whether or not you are a healing type or not, if you were a bad spirit and you were to return to the living you would gain the ability to shadowmeld, similar to the night elves in WoW.  I could go on and on about my thoughts on this, I think it would be something neat to test out, but then again it would add a whole new aspect to MMO’s today.

I don’t know if there is a game out there anywhere similar to this, thoughts and opinions are welcome…

The Dream is lost…

Perhaps it’s because I am an adult now, but the joy the holidays used to bring to me are all but faint memories to me now.  Halloween has been my favorite by far over the years, but now I don’t even feel like getting out the  box of decorations to put up around the house…perhaps it is because the kids are growing up and the fascination isn’t there…

I also have noticed I go through periods of different mood swings, not as drastic or even noticeable by most people I know, but I can tell the difference in myself.  I have been busy with work, well not really, but that will soon change, I am going to move over to dispatch on nights, twelve hour shifts, but that won’t be too bad, three days on and three days off…that will be a change for the better.  The same old 7 to 4 Monday through Friday deal does get really old, especially when you factor in the traffic issue I have to drive 50 miles one way to work…so I am looking forward to that.  But, that is only a small factor in my well being, there is of course the normal day-today issue of finances…but once again my Better-half has an interview today for a new job and I am pretty excited to see how that goes, she currently runs the website Cherryblossomcottage.net and she is very talented in making just about anything look nice.  But, once again that doesn’t pay the bills, so a day job is a must…  Then there is the classes I am taking online via UMUC, math and humanities, they aren’t overly difficult, but they do require time and attention.

I have been in this sort of slump many times before, and I think another major issue contributing to it is that I don’t workout like I used to.  This is primarily due to the pain I have in my back, which limits me to either riding a stationary bike or doing an elliptical machine, basically getting my heart-rate up for 30 minutes…those workouts are fine, but not enough I don’t think, I really enjoy jogging, but once again I get the spasms in my back and my calf muscles get really cramped, I need to take baby steps and get back into better shape.  I am getting a TENS unit in the mail soon, which was something I know is only a temporary fix to a permanent problem, eventually I will have to setup an appointment with the chiropractor and see if he can work his magic.

I finished my mid-term’s for my 2 classes last week.  I originally took the week off of work to get the heat fixed in the car, but of course the dogs needed to get their shots and come to find out our beagle, Maggie, has a bad hip and possibly some type of degeneration going on back there, she doesn’t even walk on her left rear leg, we have been giving her half and aspirin, but I don’t think it is helping much…  Seems like age is taking it’s tole on all of us, my wife had to go get her teeth cleaned, there is something wrong with her gums, degenerative bone or something…possibly a result of low calcium, who knows?

I really should stop while I am ahead, after all life isn’t all bad, we are all still alive and kicking, and that is better than dead…heh

Life at level 50 is good…no? Really

A lot has happened since I hit the level cap last week with our good captain.  I managed to finally get to make a trip into Carn Dum with my kin over the weekend and I got the last item I needed for my level 45 class quests…some putrid slime off of this giant beast with tentacles, the actual battle with the boss wasn’t as hard as making our way through level 54 leeches the size of volkswagen camping vans…but it was done and I got my cool new halberd of war and earring of command and what I didn’t know was that I got another legendary trait, in defense of middle earth, it is a buff that I can cast and anyone within 15m of me gets it too, it increases all stats by 50.  Needless to say I was near tears after all was said and done…so many thanks to my brothers and sisters in Strength In Numbers for making it all happen.

I have been grinding on reputation in Haudh Iarchith, the new barrow downs dungeon.  So far I have only increased a small portion, obviously the time invested into gaining reputation isn’t supposed to be small, but then again I remember grinding rep in WoW and it seems a bit easier in LotRO for some reason…On that note the dungeon of Carn Dum wasn’t as long as most I encountered in WoW either, but the battles we fought took a bit more strategic planning.  We encountered a few bugs while in there also, but overall the experience was pleasant.

I have yet to complete book 7 chapter 8, which will get me a key to enter Carn Dum, the key isn’t required as long as someone in the fellowship has it you can enter the doors as well, but it would be good to get one just in case for future use.

I have started playing my burglar, Sean, again and I am enjoying it quite a bit.  The play style is quite different than what I was used to with my captain, so after a couple days of slaying beasts in the lone lands and north downs I have once again become comfortable playing him, I went from level 20 to 25 since Saturday, with some help from friends of course…

The ability to start a conjunction is a really nice trick to have, if ever I am in a fellowship and we need some health or whatnot, I can attempt to start it, sometimes it misses, but the majority of the time it works without a hitch.  Also, another nice trick is the ability to riddle mobs, basically stunning them so I can more easily handle multiple mobs at one time.  I usually only use this when I am questing solo, it has gotten me out of a few tight spots.

I am looking forward to Book 11, the release of housing is something I read about some, but I don’t think I will get a personal abode, mainly because I am still poor…well poor by level 50 standards…hehe, still working on my weaponsmithing craft, so farming for ore is never ending, I have cut back on buying crap off the auction, now that I am part of a kinship with multiple grandmaster craftsmen, it is much easier to put in a request for an item and get the mats for it then to try to buy it on the open market.  I am looking forward to seeing Gollam and taking on a Balrog should be interesting…

Reaching level 50 in LotRO

The journey I took to hit level 50 in Lord of the Rings Online was a long and adventurous one.  A path filled with a lot of killing and fun times.  I decided yesterday that since I was around 125,000 experience points away from hitting the level cap I would not stop playing until I finished…so at around 230 A.M. in Imlad Balcorth the magic moment happened and my experience bar disappeared…I have four quests I had just finished but I won’t turn them in yet, why would I do that?  That is free XP for whenever the level cap does get raised again.  I say again, because I remember when level 15 was the level cap back in open beta…oh how long ago those days were.

I have to say I feel mentally drained after that last hard push playing Rekkr my captain.  My last skill I learned was Time of need, at first I didn’t quite know what the skill was, but then I realized it wasn’t a bad skill to have (Time of Need – You sacrifice some of your morale to gain the same effect as defeating an enemy and to put yourself in a Battle-readied State) To those who haven’t played the Captain class all this means is that you can use one of your 3 special abilities that pop after you kill a mob…  This isn’t a bad skill to have, but the cost of morale is a bit high…

I have accomplished quite a bit with this character, I think I have spent more time and energy into getting Rekkr up in levels than I should have, but at least it is now done and I can cut back on the level grind, now I just need to work on all those deeds, and reputation…it never really ends does it?

Chapter 11 is coming out the end of this month, I look forward to some new content, even though I haven’t ventured into Carn Dum or Helegrad, so that will be fun to check those out.  The addition of a Balrog into the game sounds interesting, but is it really possible for us as the players to kill such a powerful being?  I would love to see Gandalf in action, maybe some type of scripted fight like in the beginning zone of the Dwarves in that cave when he turns that Troll into stone…that was pretty cool…

Oh yeah, how do you like the scary theme of the site?  I am a big fan of Halloween, I might end up keeping this theme for a while, who knows…change is good right?

Adventures in Middle Earth – Colnor Meet Cold Steel

So, there I was, halbred in hand face to face with a fire breathing drake who wanted nothing more than to flame broil my ass and devour me whole, leaving nothing but a pile of bones where I once stood…but I held strong to my convictions and with my fellows by my side we ousted the beast and showed him who his daddy was…screenshots…

                                        

Before you say anything, let me tell you that is wasn’t by some random chance of the Gods that we happen to find this beast…oh no, we were chosen to eliminate this putrid being from the face of Middle Earth, so those young tiny hobbit children can sleep well in their little hobbit beds in their little hobbit holes in the ground.

Well, and of course a beryl shard is always good to loot too..