One comment you will often hear from player playing Lord of the rings online is how the game is their vacation spot, the one place they go to take a break from other MMOs, their home away from home. I know I made comments to that effect. None of us though would pretend it’s a perfect game. Lotro has a ton of flaws, both small and big but we like it just the way it is. In fact if you look a bit deeper you can hear the same kind of comments from long time players of many of the older and/or smaller games, they love their games just the way it is, with all their flaws and qualities.
I have a theory about why that is. These players simply play their game without a long list of expectations about what their game should be. When I pick up Lotro, I know fully well what I’m getting into. Since I’m not looking for something that isn’t there, I can appreciate better what is happening right now and the flaws even become endearing quirks. I’m not constantly frustrated by seeking something that isn’t there.
Opposite of this are players who are looking for something specific in their game. They might know what it is they’re looking for or not but until they find whatever they are looking for they won’t be satisfied. They will pick a MMO, play it until they confirm if the desired feature is there or not and if it’s not present, leave for another game.
What I find sad is that while they are looking they are missing most of what the game has the offer. In fact, the rest of the game becomes an obstacle. For example, if I’m looking for the perfect raiding experience, all the leveling game will seem like a chore to me. I’ll hate every minute of it and if the endgame does not live up to my expectations, I’ll be pissed at the game and probably write long angry post about how it was the worst thing to happen to humankind.
I might never even stop to think that maybe I’m the one responsible for my own terrible experience. In many ways, I find that incredibly sad.
Recapturing that first mmo feeling
One thing you’ll often hear veteran players talk about is how you’ll never experience that first mmo feeling again. I can tell you today that its false because I’m re experiencing it today with swtor and the only thing you need to do is to play the game without any expectations of what it should be and play it for what it is. Suddenly, Taris that I hated the first time around is now great fun because I’m paying attention to what is happening and getting into the whole storyline instead of just being in a hurry to get out of there and level.
Of course you can still find the game horrible but at least you’ll hate it for what it is, not what you think it should have been.
So I’ll end today post by asking you to consider what kind of player you are. Are you currently seeking that elusive feature and missing the whole game? I know I was doing that quite recently, and just by being aware of it I was able to look at a game in a new light and rediscover it.
LOTRO really is my MMO vacation spot … it just seems to be a very relaxed, chill atmosphere that I really appreciate. I can’t play too long, and I never come back for more than a month, but it’s the only MMO that feels like it rewards pure exploration. At least, that’s how it feels for me.
I both agree and disagree with the point you make here. I agree with the premise, that we have to be fair and judge each game for what it is without allowing all our emotional baggage towards other games and features and the inkling of what we want get in the way. It’s a very idyllic thought, and I hope to live up to it one day.
Still, I’m having a hard time doing so. It’s hard to ignore a vast library of game experience each time you play a game. I try to go into new games and judge them only on their own merits, but honestly, I’m terrible at it. I might survive a play session or ten, but eventually my experience catches up with me, or, more accurately, I finally become unable to continue to silence my game experience, and comparisons start being made. I’m not sure what to do to stop that. How did you recapture it during your second play through?
There’s a conscious effort to be made that’s for sure. I’m trying to remember exactly how I went about it.
First thing I did was to play the game without a set goal in mind. I already had a level 50 character, knew what most of the game was about and I was mostly looking to spend some time and just relax.
In fact when I think about it I think that was the key. I started playing the game simply to relax without any real goal in mind, kinda like what I was doing with Lotro. I would run after whatever grabbed my attention at the moment whether it was pvp, quests or just exploration. Playing a game without a voice running through your head telling you your wasting time because you need to do X or Y is in itself a huge improvement.
The second big thing is to not mind the flaws. I know I hate the whole space station aspect in a lot of the planets. It’s annoying but I’ve been telling myself that in the grand scheme of things it didn’t matter so much and soon enough I stopped paying attention.
I mean, I’m like you, been gaming since I was 5 and I make comparisons all the time. I don’t remember where the idea came from but I know I’ve been working on silencing that critic voice. If I listen to it all the the time I won’t enjoy any game ever again and I love game way too much to let myself be brought down.
Don’t know if that answered the question but good comment. I’ll try to think more on it to come with something more coherent.
Enjoyed the post but I don’t buy the strict dichotomy
I think there are some players who are looking for something specific, although honestly, they ought to wait a bit after release and read the reviews if they are that specific, and save the money if the game doesn’t have their desired feature.
If you read my own recent post, you can see I’m one of those players that tried SWTOR and left- in my defence, I tried it at the urging of some friends and was willing to over look a fair amount, it was more the net experience and disappointment the Legacy feature Bioware touted. And I’ve gone back to a game I do enjoy which has many of the structural issues of WOW or SWTOR, but I simply enjoy playing it.
In the end, players invest a lot of time in a MMO and money (if there’s a subscription) for the purpose of entertainment. If it doesn’t entertain, it is time to move on. I do think the MMO community is pretty jaded by the current state of the art and is looking for more than endgame-grind and kil-this/fetch-that quests. For that reason, I have hopes for Guild War 2 but if GW2 doesn’t work, I enjoy Rift and will continue that.
[...] if anything this proves what I was saying in an earlier post. A lot of players simply hop from game to game with a crazy list of expectations that no game can [...]
Subscriptions cause trouble here. Stopping to smell the roses when you’re on the clock never really works out.