People are creatures of habit and routine. It’s not necessarily a bad thing because it’s what anchors us, keeps the chaos at bay, and helps us get regular tasks done. The problem is when you tip too much into routine that you fail to do anything outside of it, turning every day into a photocopy of the previous one and leeching all color out of life.
If we have a tendency to be like this in real life, it stands that we take these same habits into our online video games as well. In a way, MMOs are even better suited for habit and routine because they’re designed to encourage us to get into gameplay loops and never, ever leave. Yet the best part is often when you do diverge from the beaten path to see what’s around that unknown bend…
So let me tell you about how I play Lord of the Rings Online. My main character — a Minstrel — is always at the level cap and focused on doing every bit of new content that releases. That way I can comment on it for this column and not feel as if I’m missing out on the freshest batch of zones or quests. When I get through all of the new stuff, she goes into hibernation or something until the next content drop releases.
Having a main character plowing through the entire game like that leaves me with a small army of alts that have a lot more freedom to do whatever. I’ve got a lowbie Burglar and Lore-master who are trying to do a completionist run of every deed and quest in every zone. I’ve got a Mariner who’s currently working on fully deeding out Moria. Recently, I’ve been taking another Lore-master through just the epic story of Corsairs of Umbar and Legacy of Morgoth.
Having been there, done that with the main narrative thrust of the game takes so much pressure off of feeling as if I have to catch up and see the latest. Rather, I’ve been investing more into laid back sessions where I set general goals but encourage myself to get out of my usual questing flow and perhaps see something I haven’t before.
I’ve had some friends ask why I’d be foolhardy enough to try for a completionist run. And it’s hard to explain because yes, I see why that might be an impossibly tall task. Eriador alone might take a full year or more to do, and that’s before the first expansion. Seriously, there’s a whole lot of content that the devs added. Throwing yourself full-force at such a mountain of stuff to do is a recipe for quick burnout and aggravation.
But it’s a totally different thing when you casually saunter up to such a giant goal and calmly start nibbling at it. In a way, having tens of thousands of quests and dozens of zones ahead of you completely eliminates any temptation to power through ASAP. You know it can’t be done fast, so why not take it slow and at a pace where you can metaphorically smell the roses?
I’ve found that devoting myself to finding and accomplishing every quest in a zone, even if I don’t need it for a deed or XP, conjures unforeseen benefits. The best of these is that I’m experiencing stories and seeing areas that I don’t normally when I’m in that routine rut. I’ve been in this game for 18 years now, and yet through this method, I’m finding corners of Middle-earth that I’ve never once beheld.
And that’s not counting other benefits such as absolutely stocking up on virtues, getting some cool wardrobe gear, and maybe finding some new favorite questing paths for the future.
It’s not as if the developers want you to become mired in routine, anyway. That’s one of the great things about festivals, that they shake players out of their normal day-to-day activities for something different for a while. But you can look past that to things like exploration deeds that encourage you to seek out places you normally might not. There’s even a certain pair — Floid and Dewitt — who are hidden in extremely out-of-the-way places in this game simply to reward those who take a left-hand turn when quests and the crowd are turning right.
This is simply my encouragement to you today: This is a huge game world with a lot of amazing sights and experiences you might miss if you’re hell-bent on rushing to places or stuck in a rut you didn’t even realize had you trapped. Give yourself permission to get out of it and poke around like a curious hobbit. You never know what you might find.
Every two weeks, the LOTRO Legendarium goes on an adventure (horrid things, those) through the wondrous, terrifying, inspiring, and, well, legendary online world of Middle-earth. Justin has been playing LOTRO since its launch in 2007! If you have a topic for the column, send it to him at justin@massivelyop.com.
