Yesterday is history….or is it? It appears we are standing at a fork in the road where the MMO industry is concerned right now. Studios are shut down or sold or both, like Carbine recently and now Trion. At the same time, we got established longtimers like WoW and LOTRO suggesting the future of MMORPGs may really lie in the past. Battle for Azeroth isn’t doing so great but there’s still that Classic WoW to look forward to (maybe). And LOTRO is…well, edging ever closer to the inevitable Mount Doom. Every now and then I amuse myself by imagining LOTRO suddenly getting 10 million subscribers, with the devs frantically trying to prolong the books’ journey even more. There’s room for much hilarity there and dwarven drinking contests. But now it appears there’s another way that has me legit excited: LOTRO Legendary servers were just announced!
“Join us this fall on a Legendary World and make a fresh start with a brand new character; see Tolkien’s bustling realm anew, whether for your first or fiftieth time. Initially, the Legendary World will begin at the very start of the game and run through Angmar, then open new regions and levels over time. Relive the legend: where everyone is here and the story is now.” (lotro.com)
I’ve never gotten over the fact that I wasn’t there for LOTRO’s launch. I was there for FFXI, WoW, Rift, GW2, Wildstar, FFXIV and many others but LOTRO came at a time when I had no time for more games. It is also notoriously not beginner-friendly at all with an overwhelming amount of content and systems to get to grips with as a latecomer.
So the prospect of rerolling on a fresh lvl0-50 server is very enticing. Or it was, until I started writing about it here. Now I remember that I only just arrived at Lothlorien on my Loremaster after years of on-and-off play. I have literally only gotten past Moria (eugh) and reliving the 40-50 grind fills me with cold dread. I wonder if these legendary servers are actually for people like me or not much rather for everyone else who always kept up with content?
This is what blogging does for you – sorting your feelings and thoughts out, killing off bouts of euphoria like a pesky fly. ALAS. I’ll smoke some old Toby and mull over these legendary shenanigans some more!
(P.S. Almost forgot that Monty pic!!!)
It almost makes me want to sub to LOTRO just to see how the quests actually were released. I did run through all of Shadows of Angmar on my main there, but I do realize that everything was unlocked when I actually did it. Therefore, the zones that the old timers had to wait on, I don’t. It’d actually be kind of weird seeing Evendim full of people.
I’m sad about Trion, because I can’t help but think that economics and the changing MMO environment into F2P was a major factor in doing them in. And to be honest, I really do like Rift. I’ve a toon somewhere in the L40s, and I never had to squint and just be patient about the storyline like I occasionally did in Wildstar and more and more frequently did in WoW.
Oh, and “Woof!” That was for Monty.
Evendim is one of my fav zones for questing but I can’t say I ever met anyone there 😉 Starting LOTRO as late as I did, it was a fairly lonely affair. but it was also oddly fitting to be wandering around ME alone.
As for Rift and Trion, I don’t really get why some MMORPGs make it seemingly forever, just see Wurm or Allods or AION etc., and others cannot. Everything going on in the background, bad management decisions, wrong Investment strategies etc. is out of reach for us players to grasp. Rift was definitely not poorer a game than many others that are still out there.