The following post was original published here on September 30th, 2009. When the blog turned a year old, I noticed that it was one of the top posts on the site (along with being one of my personal favorites). Except, when I posted it, a lot of you hadn’t discovered us yet. So, here’s a …
Tag Archive: LotRO
I’ve Hit the Sticking Point Again in WoW
Over the last couple of days, and partially due to Syp‘s great Road to Mordor columns, I’ve been playing more LotRO than I have in the last quarter year. As I reloaded the game, I couldn’t but feel a little deja vu. I’d been here before, reloading the game exactly as I had almost a …
The Multiverse – Episode #23: “The Little Things are Best in Space”
Hey gang, Another week, another Multiverse! This week we touch on the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning trailer, FFXIV’s recommended requirements, the cast of DCUO, and more! We have a clarification from last week, too. It seems that the reported 200k new subscribers for LotRO were actually beta applicants. Still impressive, in my opinion! Thanks to …
Two Crashes in Two Weeks; The End of Dragon Age and Vanguard; The (re)Beginning of Darkfall
I’ve had the worst luck with hard drives these past two weeks. First, I had one die on me right after recording Episode 22 of The Multiverse. I went out, caught a couple of 500GB drives on sale at Best Buy, put them in, and was happy with my new terrabyte. Yesterday morning, however, I …
LotRO’s Death Penalty Just Doesn’t Fit; Do MMOs Still Need Death Penalties?
I’ve had an interesting few days in LotRO. Namely, they’re interesting because I’ve found myself logging out within minutes of getting online. The reason is that, as a result of some unfortunate logout positioning, I come back online in the middle of a fight. Without fail, I’m always at about 30% health and unbuffed. Being …
Guided Experience: How Much Handholding is Too Much Handholding?
Over the course of my last couple years MMO hopping, I’ve noticed a great divide in how some games approach progression. Effectively, your time in a game can be broken down into a series of micro activities and macro activities. Micro activities would be things such as questing, crafting, and exploring the zone you’re in. …
Turns Out Freemium is a Great Move!
It’s a good time to be a LotRO player. I’ll admit, I’ve been taking a break for the past couple of months, but Syp’s recent developer tour leaves me wanting to log back in (parts one and two here). When the news first dropped that the game would be switching models, there was a lot …
The Multiverse – Episode #21: “Overhauls for Cash”
Hey Gang, Sorry for the silence on the Multiverse front. We’ve been recording this whole time, honest, but a mix of travel and technical issues have kept us from getting them out to you. Well, that ends today. We begin with Episode 20, in which we group up with the MMO Voices podcast for our …
My Thoughts on the Evolution of F2P
The topic of RMT has been huge the last couple of years. When I first started blogging in June of ’08, F2P was almost universally derided by the subscription-game crowd. It was tied with notions of poor quality and a “buy now” herd mentality driven by manipulative game design. I don’t know how true any …
What Happened to LotRO – How We Arrived at Free to Play
Wow, I’m shocked. When I read the news on Massively this morning, I had to sit and let it sink in for a minute: LotRO is going Free to Play this fall. Wow. Which was quickly followed by, how will this impact the game and what does this mean for my lifetime subscription? More importantly, …
