EG7 or Daybreak if you prefer, since they seem to be pretty much interchangeable at this point, seems to be doing rather well right now. Yesterday, MassivelyOP reported an 11% bump in "monthly active players" over the same period as last year for Lord of the Rings Online, an increase the company rather self-effacingly ascribes to the impact of Amazon’s Rings of Power TV series.
As I think I may have mentioned in a previous post, I watched the first episode of the Amazon show, which I described, unenthusiastically, as "alright". I went on to say that a week had passed since then and I hadn't gotten around to watching episode two. I still haven't.
I haven't even bothered to find out whether the show has been either a commercial or a critical success but I did chat about it, briefly, while I was having a birthday lunch with a friend earlier this week. She'd asked me to get her an expensive boxed set of the books and it turned out part of her reason for doing that now rather than any other time in the last quarter century or so was not unconnected with the show.
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Grey and yellow wouldn't be my choice for a promo. |
Put like that, I guess LotRO, fifteen years old and famously stolid in its reverance for the source material, qualifies as a safe haven for anyone looking to rekindle old fires. It would be interesting to know how many of the 11% are brand new to the game and how many are prodigals returning to the fold.
I suspect Standing Stone (And by implication Daybreak Games and by further implication EG7.) are about to add a percentage point or two to that enviable uptick. This morning I received two emails from the EG7 stable, one of which I'll get to later, the other asking me if I'd be interested in the new expansion, Before the Shadow.
I've never bought an expansion for LotRO. Indeed, other than the base game and a few months' subscription, I've never bought anything from Turbine or SSG at all. I hadn't been thinking of starting now, either, until I read Wilhelm's recent post.
As Wilhelm says, $20, is a pretty reasonable price, even for a mini-expansion. It sounds even better in sterling, where it comes in at just £15.29. Even so, I wouldn't be considering it if it wasn't for one thing; the new levelling experience.
I do like the low-level game in LotRO. It's solid, entertaining and old-school in the best way. It might be fun to start a new character and play them up through whatever the new zone or zones are - some sort of hobbitty-shire experience I think it is. Not only would it be interesting in its own right, it would also make for a convenient fresh start in a game where my other characters are mired in previous poor decisions and lumbered with bags full of items, the use of which I no longer understand nor care to learn.
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I'd have to say this looks a lot more appealing. |
the fairly solid grounds that LotRO is free-to-play, I always have it installed and I've been back for brief visits many times over the years. Also, playing through something that other people are also playing and talking about is always a bonus for the blog.
Mitigating against the idea is the other email I received, this one directly from Daybreak, wearing their Darkpaw hat. I was somewhat surprised to receive notice this morning that the new EverQuest II expansion, Renewal of Ro, now has a firm launch date and it's less than two weeks away.
As the website has it, "The next expansion for EverQuest II, Renewal of Ro, is set to launch on November 30, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. PST". That is pretty much when you'd expect but I was on the beta forums only a couple of days ago and I had the impression things were lagging a little this year. Then again, when aren't they? I'm sure it'll be fine.
I've already bought this one, of course. The only question is when I start playing. The 30th is a Wednesday, which should give me a couple of days to get started before my working weekend. Then again, based on prior experience, I'll probably be doing myself a favor if I wait a week until everything's working properly.
It's nice to have something to look forward to, anyway. I might not be able to
join in with the frenzy when Dragonflight lands (Any date for that,
yet? Oh, yeah...) but I should at least have something to talk about.
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Yeah, the Dragonflight expac drops on November 28th. Retail WoW is hip deep in prepatch stuff right now.
ReplyDeleteThe more I think about it, the more likely I am to watch Dragonflight from the sidelines for at least a few months. I'm still trying to justify coming back to a game that moved in a direction and tone, storywise, that I dislike in spite of my curiosity over a more exploration based expansion. Maybe it's also that I know that Blizz has done the bait and switch before, so I'm pretty much expecting this expansion to be driven in the end by the major faction leads and that the ending boss is (pick one): an Old God, a Dragon Aspect, a Major Faction Lead, or a Burning Legion member. Hell, it could be all four wrapped into one for all I know.
I guess I'm jaded, because WoW's formula has worked for so many years for so many people. I can read Kayrliene's and other bloggers' posts and see how they're happy with the overall tone of the game (minus Shadowlands) and I just... I don't play MMOs for the same reason, I guess. Even as I play through the questing zones in Wrath Classic I can detect the changes in tone that make you as a player to be this superhero who hobnobs with the rich and famous rather than what you really are: a survivor.
The "hero" issue is very hard to avoid if an mmorpg is successful enough to keep putting out expansions for years. Almost all of them launch with PCs as nobodies, often not even citizens or soldiers but prisoners, refugees or amnesiacs (Or all three at once.) but over time every character becomes first competent, then exceptional and finally godlike. It's hard to see how it could be otherwise in the games that use traditional vertical progression as WoW does and even horizontal progression like GW2 still leaves you with characters who've been involved in amazing battles with incredibly powerful adversaries and won - without that, there's no game.
DeleteI used to dislike it but over time I've come to accept it and now enjoy it. It does depend how it's presented, of course. I think both EQ2 and GW2 do a good job of keeping the characters grounded while acknowledging they're now in the very top echelons of society. Just because you're rich and famous doesn't mean you don't have problems, even in a game. Personally, though, I do prefer the early levels, when guards are more likely to move your character on than snap a salute and when the local bandits present as much of a threat as a flight of dragons.