Lord of the Rings Online has posed an interesting conundrum for MMO players with its perhaps overly generous anniversary gifts. Tucked in among all the bundles and promos are no fewer than three character boosters, for level 120, 105, and 50. It’s hard to explain how huge this is, but these are level boosters that normally come only with collector editions or for large stacks of currency in the cash shop. Every F2P account can now have a character who’s just 20 levels from the cap.
But just because you have these boosts doesn’t mean you will or even should use them, right? All three of mine are sitting in my shared inventory, staring at me.
I’m not generally against character boosters, mind you. I bought several in Ultima Online in the long long ago and consider it money well spent to avoid having to do painful lowbie grinds like provocation and taming. The characters who benefitted from those boosts are my favorites, even. But I also know that when Blizzard used to hand out boosters for WoW expansions, I’d use them on alts and never play them much. I kind of already had the characters I liked picked out, and I definitely didn’t want to waste a booster on characters I actually wanted to play.
And that’s where I am with LOTRO’s boosters now. I guess the smart thing to do would be boost my main, who is only level 80, and get to to the cap to make things easier for the characters below her. But… I love her, and my next three or so alts. I don’t really want to skip leveling content on them. Honestly, that’s the good stuff in a game like LOTRO. That’s why I was playing! And yet using the boosters on characters I don’t love as much feels like a waste. So… they keep sitting in shared inventory because I can’t resolve this problem.
Do you actually play the MMO characters you’ve used level boosters on?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
