MMO's & The Modern Man (err...Woman)

An honest, irreverant look at various MMO's from a typical player's point of view. OK, maybe not a typical player. Maybe a hardcore emo PVE but PVP lovin' chataholic with alt tendencies. What's that? A new beta!? BRB...

Author: Astrialla

Oh it's a bitter day, a bitter day indeed. 

I'm back on Coruscant.  Again. 

For those of you not Playing SWTOR Cause You're A Not A Sheep I salute you.  I, my friend, I am a sheep. I am hooked and immersed and heedlessly spending my gaming time leveling alt after alt to the magical point where they get a starship and then abandoning them to the whims of fate.

I'd like to point out that the first alt was not my fault.  I joined a guild (I nao rite!) and the guild leader turned out to be the smarmiest, slickest thing since petroleum jelly and within a week I was trading snerky tells with him and rebuffing invites up to see his ship.    But then the guild got juvenile guy heavy and a bit meh.  Hey, I'm all for some flirt now and again but when guild chat turned a corner into locker room territory (did you see the **** on that toon? Dude!? Gotta get me sommadat! etc), I realized that alas, snerkfest or not, the guild was a little too bros before hos for me and gracefully bowed out by inventing a sudden need for an RP guild that would fulfill all my gaming dreams.

But - and you know there's a but - guild leader extraordinnaire did not drop off.   Tells galore, and escalating and oh dear.  Time to log out for a bit before he feels the need to explain what exactly he means by lowering his shields and hey.. still want to play so woot! Make an alt! Yeah!

I blame him.  I made an alt, she wandered all over a new and special planet and woot! Leveled her up to go to ... Coruscant.  Well now I'd already run Coruscant on my first toon but this was a bit different.  Different main quest line, ship was just as hard to get, and I got to wondering hmmmmm what else do different classes experience on Coruscant. 

And thus the Great Alt Coruscant Experience was born.  Stop judging me.  OK so I've made more alts in the last 2 weeks than I have in my whole gaming career (snerk.. career...) and none of them have gotten over level 20.  OK so most requests for additional group members are for healers and I have every healer class in every variation but I can't join groups cause I don't want to play them cause hey... they're not the unleveled alt.

It's a sickness.  It's a curse.  It's never going to end because I've only been doing lightside toons and I've not even dealt with darkside and what on earth do they go through? 

On top of it all, apparently I have a rather telling conversational style in general planet chat as this morning I got a ... "darling! Is that you!? I'd know that turn of phrase anywhere.. let me fire up my ship engines and let's explore unseen space!" tell from out of the blue.

Gah.  Time to make another alt.

Oh Gods of Gaming and Random Escapism, Hear My Plea....

I've got a problem in gaming.  No, I'm not talking about the hi my name is Astri and I'm an altaholic or the fact that the hour of twilight trailers keep catching my eye.  I'm talking about a real issue and one that those of us that are loyal and diligent in our gaming encounter around this time every year.

We're hooked on Festivals. You know you want them.. you know you check the festival vendor and see what the new cape/hat/housing item looks like then how much it is going for on the general auction house.  You know you're racing around to your faction npc's, finding your lil gathering/kill xx mobs quests and slamming them against your forehead with an empty can crunch and a howl.

OK so maybe that's just me.

Regardless, this year is an issue.  I thought for sure I'd be in great shape what with SWG biting the dust (RIP Life Day) and no need to run around putting up posters and blowing up piles of presents but no. Not the case at all.  This year there's SWTOR with it's Oh I'm So Cool I'm Releasing Mid Holiday atitude and the game has the affrontery to actual be fun and engaging and there's 3 other games that have festivals going on and what is a girl to do? 

Now contrary to popular believe I actually work for a living (don't judge me) and have to spend an outrageous amount of time at my place of employment.  No, I don't wear a lightsaber to work.  Anymore. When work is done there's family and friends and well the truth of the matter is that I only really get a few hours of playtime a day and that's only if I stick to my very strict no more than 4 hours of sleep a night rule.

So come the holiday season I'm ready like that speed filled lady on the Target commercials. I've got my lists of festival items, approximate time needed to quest for each item, and the possible worth of said items in both sentiment and resale.  This year I had a huge sharpie scribbled black wreath over the SWG section of the grid but other than that, things looked under control.  Even the insane time requirements needed to get all the baubles of EQII seemed doable this year, but then along came SWTOR.

Now I've rolled more than one character on SWTOR - I know - that's actually not like me to alt before leveling a character to cap.  But my healzor has a light saber (bzzzzzzrrrtttttt bzzzzzzrrrttt) and the smugglers got this very cool blaster (pew pew pew pew pew pew!) and then there was the whole I'm a blind Jedi thing too. No I'm not fruitlooping on you - there's a race called Miraluka that is completely blind and who doesn't want to run around like Helen Keller meets The Terminator?  So I've got 3 different toons to get at least leveled enough to get their ships and there's the whole new guild joined and make friends there thing (Yes! I joined a guild! I know! I don't join guilds!  I can't help it.. SWTOR has all my gaming rules smashing like pumpkins on November 1st) and my few hours of gametime each evening zips by in a flash. 

Before I know it it's time to head out of game and what have I done?  Have I gotten my winter cape with the holiday danglies on the hood? No. Have I secured the Wreath Of Joy & Peace for my front door house ingame? No.  Have I run the horserace over and over and finally prevailed by blind luck, allowing me to get yet another horse but this one with a different saddle?  No. 

All I've done is kill some black sun and curse at SWTOR for their feeble rail based space game.  OK so maybe I got my Miraluka to feel her way down a few ramps on her starter planet and kill insane fleshythings that aren't supposed to have blasters.  And ran a fun instance with my healer who now can actually heal (check the bottom tabs on your skill trainer people... there's more than one .. voice of experience here.... dies of embarassment.... ) But on the whole there's little to see for my efforts and the festivals are waning as I type! 

So last night I tried hopping game to game and doing a bit of everything. I ran my lil hobbity bundle of goodness to the party tree to collect apples, then off to my lil elf thing in EQII to collect any number of insane housing items, then back to SWTOR to see about some rakghoul thingies (i'm supposed to infect myself ON PURPOSE? Wha?), then back to LOTRO and yeah who am I kidding. 

I'm skipping the festivals this year.  Curse you SWTOR and your bzzrrrt pew pew blind soul!

So here we go! After saving a part of my gaming budget for what, the last year and a half? I finally have SWTOR in my hawt lil hands and am ready to play! 

I got into the very end of the Beta-ness and into Pre-Launch but now i'm locked out of the game.  That's right - locked out.  Can't play, can't post on the forums.  And NO I didn't get banned again for trying to tie holiday themed bows on the NPC's errrr.. ears.  This time I got banned for Not Reading Properly.

Now those of you who know me IRL know that's kinda funny given my propensity for reading.  But yes, when I saw all those "Make sure You put In your dang Tootin game Code or Come December 23rd You're gonna be in a World of Hurt" notices on the login screen I said to myself, "Hey - I did that already.  Put it in way back when I got my Pre-Launch invite - no biggie.".

Biggie. The notices meant SECOND game code.  One came for pre-launch, another apparently came for the actual launch.  World of Hurt. Went to login this morning, rubbing my hands with glee at visiting yet again my lovely Consular of Goodness and Healz and got "there is no active subscription on this account".

Seriously. Seriously? Went to the SWTOR site and got an image of the domed entry hall to some huge building and the words "WAITING ROOM.  With a lil blurb saying that there's so much traffic to the SWTOR site that they're controlling the traffic and having people wait to enter.

Have you ever stood around in a "get into your gaming site" waiting room before?  First of all there are no chairs anywhere.  Second of all even though you can't see them you can feel the presence of 154 thousand other intent on playing SWTOR nuts right there as they stare at their screen, willing it to change to the main page of the SWTOR site... 

Now truthfully I'm so Uber Free that this was actually the first time I ever had to que to get into a game site before as opposed to the actual game.  But I was patient (snerk) and after about 10 minutes voila - I was at the SWTOR main page.  Woot!  Logged into my account - tracked down my second code via the Origin site, went to enter my game code on the SWTOR site and could not enter it.  It kept flipping me to the main SWTOR page every time I hit enter after putting in my code - a trip back to my account showed that the code was still unentered.  Now I know there's this thing called Shedding Load where if servers get too overloaded they just reroute users back to a safe page but this was a bit much.  45 minutes later I finally got the code in.  Made sure my contact info was up to date.  Made sure my security questions were in place. 

And then I tried to play but was told that in order to play I needed a valid sub again.  Hmmm.  Went back to SWTOR, stood in the waiting room and met a kewl Ithorian named Binkles, got into the site, went to my account - and even though there's 30 days free game time with the purchase of SWTOR,  I signed up for a sub cause they won't let you play without doing so.  Selected my sub length, hit enter, and got routed back to the main SWTOR page.  Shedded. 

It's been 3 hours now.  The one time I got past the actual select your duration screen and to the select your payment screen I wound up with a screen saying "you have already purchased this product.  Please select another product."

@!#&*#

Can't play SWTOR.  Can't get my sub info in and apparently I'm one of thousands. Poor Ellanen, my lovely Consular at Large.  She's all alone on some swampy planet, with only her lizard companion to aide her and he's just got one eye.  *Wipes tear*.  I'm on my way Ellanen!  Don't worry!  Qyzen will take care of you till I get there... err... Qyzen?  Hey leave those bugs alone.. you don't know where they've been...

Brace yourself.  It's another SWG is ending what will I do the sky is falling blog post.  Except this one is not about the game ending - it's about the people that played the game. The crazy, lovable, laughfilled, smexy, kind, infuriating people that made my first MMO so astounding that I'm still looking for another game that will give me the same experience.   And I'm not cursing SEO, or the game itself - rather I'm pissed as hades at the people that I played with. 

You know they (yeah.. they.. those folks over there lounging around and laughing at me) say that you can never recreate your first heroin high.  Or your first drug of choice high - you pick.  I think it's the same with MMO's - you truly can't go home again and the first MMO you play impacts every game after.   I started SWG and spent the first 3 months playing solo.  I had no idea what chat was let alone how to use it and I actually hid when I saw other players near a quest area I was working in.  Stop laughing.   When I did finally make it to Kashyyk and teamed up with a charming Jedi to rob some ruins, I was amazed at how much more fun it was. 

So I started grouping with people.  And joined a guild (RIP Ghost) and then created a guild and then joined alliances and then of all things got into massive RP scenarious where we were literally creating  week long Jedi trials for folks.  Crazy amounts of fun and endless escapades of groups and parties and player built festivals. I made friends, I made enemies, there was drama and reconciliation and through it all there were people that I considered great friends.

They're all gone now.   They shut down the server (RIP Tempest) but they were mostly gone long before that.  And in all this time since I've not found them in any other games. Nor have I found folks like them - it's as if they disappeared from this galaxy when that galaxy ended. 

Where did you go?  Out of the core 10 people that used to meet to mess with HK or save the Tat civilians from the Tuskens - I've kept in touch with one and though we both play LOTRO we've yet to meet ingame.  And why is it that I've yet to find their equal in any other game?  Surely there are other kind, nutty, people out there playing MMO's - why am I not finding them?

I'm forced to come to the conclusion that it's me.  I'm not the same traveler that left the station and whatever kind of player I am now is not a type that draws the good, charming, creative people that I loved playing with in SWG.  So I guess I should be pissed at myself rather than them.  I just wish I could /hug some of them again, /slap others fondly - erase the memories of some and spend time making new memories with others.  I miss them and as SWG ends there goes any chance I have of ever experiencing the joy and connection I had with them ever again.

I'm raising a glass to the Tempest server.  I'm screenshotting my houses, and bringing my toons to the Jedi Shrine that I used to visit with K.  On December 15th I'll log them out there and fondly wish everyone well that was such a part of my SWG experience.

And then I'll try and be a better person ingame.  I'll try and be kinder, laugh more, be more creative, be more courageous.  I'll do my best to be half the person that my friends on Tempest were.

So there I was hopping around various MMO boards, inserting my 2 coppers here, my 2 credits there, and suddenly I realized that it's happened.  The fluff bunnies are gone.  You know the ones, the carebear comforting ones - the ones that know your RL name cause they /hugged you at that crucial moment ingame when you really needed a buddeeeeee.  The ones that remember birthdays, always let you finish your train of thought in tells even if it means endless, endless tells, and make sure to gather up support for you on the board if you lose a loved one/ragequit because you lost the frikken roll again to a class that CAN'T USE THE GEAR/can't play for a month cause your interwebs iz disconnected.

I tried to trace it back - I even ran to LOTRO and the Landroval server boards to make sure (phew!) that the daily coffee thread/ride ride chinchillas was still in place (the last Keepers of the Kind eventually make their way to Landroval it seems) but other than the coffee thread and a few hearty "Gear for Noobs!" announcements on general chat in EQII, it seems the Good and Pure of Heart have mostly abandoned the common MMO's. 

But where have they gone?  I checked everywhere - I even looked in on Star Trek Online. Yeah! I went there! All I saw was the raiders, the pvp'ers, the rp'ers, the altaholics, the levelmongers and the hangoutanddanceonthemailboxers. Oh, and the trolls.

So we've lost the carebears.  Why?  And more importantly, how do we get them back?

And yes.  We want them back. We want good people playing, people with instincts other than auto-loot and spamduelrequest.  We want folks that will do runs for others even if they don't need the run - we need the folks that play squishy classes not just cause their kin is short a caster but cause they actually LIKE healing.  We need that balance, that fill in the gapness that the Calm and Considerate bring to the gaming table.

So how do we do this - this get them back thing.  I vote for re-investing in player housing.  That's right. I said it - player housing.  Think about the releases of the last few years - AoC - no housing, Aion - no housing, Warhammer- no housing.  And I'm not even going to talk about the 4 beta's I've slogged through in the last year - NO housing in any of them.   No wonder the Gentler Ones have left- there's no place for them to call home. 

We need player housing back!  Good housing - not that LOTRO poor excuse for a hobbit hole with oddly spaced limited placement of items that spend more time in storage than in your house.  But housing in an active game - don't get me wrong, I love my SWG house.  But the game is dead (RIP Tempest) and it's no fun decorating a house that you can never ever have hot tub parties in unless you invite the NPC's.  And housing that is important to the dev's as well as the squishycore players.  Housing that is updated regularly and allows players to spend endless pointless hours creating a home they can never live in.  This is what our carebears need! 

And yes, yes, EQII has some great housing moments.  But the game overall is dated (ducks the hurled fruit) and while it's fun to play truthfully the squishy classes are pretty boring in groups (gets asbestos suit on just in time to avoid incineration).  We need a new game with new content that has well created housing to lure those usually playing a squishy unless they roll a tank just in case it helps out carebears.

I bet there is some game somewhere with amazing SWG meets EQII housing with the build the whole dang thing from the ground up from Istaria thrown in.  And all our carebears are running around leaping with glee and thinking rarely but fondly of the rest of us as we can't get groups, mope when no one remembers our birthday, and give up on ever getting that hidden title from getting hugs.

I did a beta over the weekend.  Yeah, that one, the everyone's talking about it except no one is allowed to talk about it. 

Yep - that's right. I'm a beta geek.

I really tried to break the game this time.  I leapt into rubble filled corners trying to get stuck, engaged too many mobs at once, mashed buttons randomly during peak load battles and generally did all the stuff that gets me into trouble in my regular released pay to play games.

No such luck.  A review of my notes shows that I fell through the world once, had a slide show moment during battle twice and had a quest glitch out on me once.  4 things.  4 things in a weekend of playing - it's sad really.  Where is my feeling of being crucial?  Of being needed so that the dev's can fix the game and release it to the seething masses?

Where is my screwed up beta version of a game that will allow me to send 435 bug reports (my own personal best) to the devs?  *Insert foot stamp and pout here*  Instead I got a game nearly ready for release on a technical level, along with a server rampant with people fired up to beta... with little to actual discuss.

It could have gotten ugly.  It could have become one of those snarling cyclones of player driven angst, with endless waves of highly intelligent beta geeks roaming the landscape and ganking npc's in the hopes of crashing the servers.

It could have gone all AoC beta, with everyone permalocking thier caps key and filling the chat window with WTH IZ MAI STUFF I PUT IN TEH BANK??.

Or worse, it could have gone all Aion beta with the discussion being mainly about one game mechanic (flight) and how it works and if it works and woot it works and hey is that a goldseller spam in beta?

But no. It was calm. It was polite.  It was not a beta - it was a tea party with everyone discussing the pros and cons of the game mechanics as opposed to experiencing the glorious feeling of breaking something so well that the entire zone freezes up and the bug reports pour down like rain upon the stuck in place land.

I came. I saw. I beta'd.  But if that buncha devs expects me to come back for the next round of testing, they better get their game good and broken before I show up.

Hey, they said, play this Minecraft game.  Yeah, it's solo play for now but they'll make it into an mmo later and you'll for once be ahead of the learning curve when they do... hey.   Play Minecraft.

Well I've been ignoring Them for years so I did not.  I took a look over someone's shoulder and saw a kind of Legolike world and blocks being put up in endless rows of walls and went meh.  Not For Me.  I don't care if there are flowers and trees and crafting and it's browser based... NFM.

But you know that I can't resist the charms of a persistent yet witty friend, even if they are urging me towards my doom.  I finally went to the site and downloaded the trial version.  Tiny download - seamless install. Very rudimentary screen and a few vague choices about what kind of environment I want to create and I pick at random and start the game.  Suddenly I'm in a small house, 2 torches flaming away on the wall and that's it.  One hole in the wall that serves as the door.  Meh.

There's a bar across the bottom of the screen and that's it as far as the interface. I hit the I key and a popup shows up - inventory.  I can drag things apparently onto the bottom bar via the inventory - and there's a set of 4 squares at the top of the popup window for crafting.  After coming from a frenzied EQ2 raid I was more than meh... I mean.. where was the cool skill bar and uber popup windows?

It's a sunny day outside and I wander out into a rather engaging landscape.  Trees, flowers, grassy hills, water, sand, stone, cliffs, pigs, sheep... and everything is made of blocks it seems.  It's a pretty easy world to immerse yourself into in spite of the square nature of things and I meander a bit looking at this and that and then decide to hit something since that is pretty much all I could do at the time.    Being the kind, gentle soul that I am, I hit a flower.  POP.  The flower goes kaboom and when I move close enough there's a pop and it appears in my inventory.

OK - so that's kinda fun.

I hit a tree. POP.  Wood in my inventory.  Dirt gets kapowed - POP.  I'm running around giggling and hitting everything POP POP POP and ignoring my friend tapping me on the shoulder and saying "Save.. hey save... listen.. save." every 2 minutes.   Suddenly I notice that there's a definite lessening of light... it's getting to be night! I'm still happy and kaboinging around - my friend is now sighing and shaking his head.  It gets dark and this sorta moon thing rises like a bit of undigested .. yeah you get the picture.  I start hearing this crunch crunch crunch sound....

And I'm dead.  Kaput - screen asks if I want to load a file or create a new one.  Of course... I had not saved so no file to load.  Create a new one... random selection again and this time I walk out the door of my two torches house and I'm on a large island floating mid air - and I start hollering cause clearly this one I need to save.  Amazing experience walking out of that house and finding myself in a floating world. Saving apparently means plopping a file onto your own drive - very smart. 

So... about that dead thing. Wha? This time I actually listen to my buddy and go inside when night falls.  I block up the door opening with dirt and then stand there, listening to the crunch of footsteps all around the house and realize I've no idea when it will be light outside because I can't see out.  All I can do is listen to the relentless patrolling of evil that is going on outside and feel my unease mount.  Can they dig?  Do they know I'm in here?  How do I get out without them mobbing me?  What if they find my now quite clearly dirt doorway? How many are there?  What do they look like?

Will I ever kaboom a flower again?????

(to be continued)

Hello again all! It's nice to be back after a break for vacation and then a rather fierce focus on catching up at work.  How's your new year going?

For me, it's been a bit of a shocker. You know that whole Star Trek Online thingy where you got into the Beta cause of having a File Planet sub? Yep. I have a File Planet sub and yes indeedy I went ahead and beta'd my heart out for STO.  Nothing shocking there - you know I'm hooked on the new and have mad haxxor typing skills when it comes to reporting bugs.

But I did not buy STO.  That's right.  I downloaded the files, then lived through the patching, then made what has to be the most adorably mixed up alien ever in character creation, then played her for a few weeks but did not buy the game.  I did not pre-purchase so that I could get the uber special collectors item perks, I did not even buy the regular version of the game.  Mai Gawd y not?

Hold on to your hats - I'm not ill and did not suffer a sharp blow to the head. I just did not like the game. I loved some parts of it, don't get me wrong. But I found that just liking or even loving parts of a game is no longer enough for me to shell out $50.00 to $80.00 and a sub fee on top of that.  Same thing happened when I trialed Fallen Earth.  I loved parts of it but could not in the end justify buying something that was more an experience of obligation and less an experience of intense immersive fun.

STO has a fantastic character creation system and a super fun mapping setup where you drive your ship around a mini 3d version of all the star systems.  VERY spiffy.   Having an away team and bridge officers was a blast and beaming here and there was immersive and effective.  But I could not drive my ship from the bridge... something that even clunky old SWG lets me do... and communication on a server wide or even an inter-regional scale was difficult at best.  Auto-grouping is annoying, and even the multiplying tribbles in my inventory could not generate enough giggles for me to overcome the lack of basic funds at lower levels.  I wound up just looting in space in the hopes of getting enough junk to sell and maybe afford one or two of the dozens of upgrades my gear and ship needed.

When I think back on when I started SWG, it was pretty annoying too.  Trying to unlock Jedi while running around dealing with server lag and then hearing everyone screaming when they changed the game - this was not fun.  But somehow I did not expect something different at the time and I just kept playing and learning and it wound up being years and years of life on Tempest (RIP Tempest!).  So.. clearly it's me that has changed. 

I fume at huge, slow downloads now. I mutter at patches bigger than the original game download files, and I no longer drool at prespecialadvanceorder offers of l77t gear or skills.  I judge a game on the crafting and housing as much as I do on the leveling possibilities and the class interaction and while I'm forgiving about lag and bugs I'm relentless in my insistence on basic grouping and communication tools.   It's not that the game has to be perfect.  It's that we have to be able to enjoy the game as players.  We know a new game is gonna be buggy and laggy.  But if there's nothing there other than solo grinding without even a discussion in chat to cut the dryness then why not just play a standalone FPS?

I will say this.  Back when I started SWG, there was no server wide chat.  Groups were with those you ran into when in the area for the quest at hand and everyone was juggling several goals at once.  But what a feeling of community and comraderie and there was never a sense of competing with the game or beating it.  It was all about exploring and finding the way around something or the skill to get through it.   Perhaps the change is in the gaming community as well or perhaps I've just lost the ability to find my peers ingame to hang out with.   But no matter how fun the character creation is I'm not going to buy another game until I feel that connection and excitement to the game and community that makes the price seem small in exchange for the fun.

I'm not buying STO.  Or Fallen Earth or Global Agenda or any of the other MMO's out there that leave me feeling isolated on a server full of people.  I'll hang with LOTRO and trial/beta what shows up here on MMORPG.com and in my inbin. But until the MMO's start adding in the community tools and let the players interact with each other in a way that is fun, I'm not buying.

It's nearly midnight and of course I've just wrapped up a LOTRO run, patched in Istaria's latest and made sure I got my SWG woots and yay happy new years in.

And in a few minutes I'll log off here and go toast with my family and friends and say my resolution.

I know for most gamers it's play less.  For me, this year, it's gonna be play more.

I resolve to actually play more.  Not stress, go emo, fall into drama or get sucked into guild or group management crap till I can't find a moment to answer a tell let alone go questing.

I resolve to stick to the meaning of play - which has within it the actual enjoyment of the process. If I am not having fun, I'm not sticking around.  

I resolve to play fair.  To play well and to play with... I resolve to enjoy the folks that I know ingame and treat them well.

I'm sure there are many different resolutions out there... to buckle down, be more focused, take more responsibility and tow the line more.  Not for me. 

In 2010 I'm going to play more. 

It's a windswept night and you're a hobbit trudging along a strange road with a few of your pals and a weird guy that's ok if you happen to like human rangers.  Up in the distance looms a mountain with a flattened top and standing stones perched on the flat height like jagged teeth.   You know the mountain don't you.  It's Weathertop and the first time I wandered into the Lone Lands in LOTRO and saw that pivotal mountain rising up out of the land I had to stop and marvel at how perfectly the devs made it.

Questing on and around Weathertop still sticks in my head as some of the most awe inspiring moments of the game for me.  For the last year I've been hanging out in the mines of Moria which, while grand and truly massive, are dark, creepy, decaying, crumbling and filled with a lot of stuff that wants to eat a tasty little minstrel snackcake.  So when the new expansion came out and it brought us into the area of Mirkwood I was a bit underwhelmed.  Yay.  More dark and depressing places.  Woot. More grey on grey environments. Sigh.  Places like the Shire and Weathertop shine like jewels in my ingame memory as I slog through another rancid pool of bubbling mud and target giggling orcs that shout, "Die!" and "Kill Heeeeemmmmmm" in a frenzy of gender ignorance as they stab at me.

After a bit of questing and my usual "run the entire area of the new map to open up every overhead view I can as well as get all the horse travel locations" escapades I headed back into 21st Hall, the central spot in Moria to repair, sell, check the auction house and just breath easy in a safe corner for a bit.  But hmmmm.. what was this?  A big new area chock full of NPC vendors all offering pretty shiney sparkly stuff?  Yes indeed.  I found the skirmish camp.

Skirmishes are new.  They're instances that you order up like ham and eggs at a diner except you get a way bigger menu than they offer you at Denny's. On top of that, you get a buddy to come fight with you.  Yep. You get your own NPC teammate that sticks with you and fights or heals or whatever you want. Interested?  I thought you might be.

There are 3 parts to the skirmish process. Part one is you set up your NPC soldier.  You can make them a tank, a healer, a caster, a dps ranged, a buffer.. basically any of the classes in the game. You can also get them traits that are attacks, heals, buffs etc and you can make them particular races or dress them up like 3 dimensional paper dolls. I made a tank since I'm a healer and yes, I picked a hobbit lad to champion me.  I know what you're thinking - how can I fight with hobbit feet as fine as his so close to me, but I'm a woman of focus and I do just fine.

Part two is you pick your skirmish.  There's a join window that lets you determine if you want a group skirmish, a solo skirmish, what level range you want it to be in and which particular skirmish set up you'd like to use.  I noticed one titled "Stand at Amon Sul" and it tickled the back of my mind a bit so I chose it in solo form and headed in.  A few moments later I was standing on Weathertop.  Windy, stormy skied, Weathertop and I nearly shouted outloud with surprise and, well, joy.

Part three is the skirmish experience itself.  Every skirmish has an objective that is spelled out at the beginning.  You'll need to defend a town, or clear a camp, or find items or any number of things.  While you're doing the objective there are usually waves and waves of bad guys coming to wipe you out.  You've got your soldier that you brought with you and any NPC's that are part of the skirmish scenario and you just do your best to stay alive and reach your objective.

"Stand at Amon Sul" took me by surprise as far as location but then it really got me with the actual experience of the skirmish.  Check this out.  I'm on Weathertop and there is my lil fearless Warrior Soldier Tank hanging out and ready to fight.  There's also another NPC that is a ranger and my instructions are to defeat all foes that attack and keep the ranger and myself alive.  There's a central bonfire in the middle of the area with two torches as well as 5 unlit bonfires in a ring around the outer edge of the plateau.  I learn that the bonfires can be lit with the torches and when lit they add a buff that assists myself, my warrior hobbit and the ranger. 

Since I can't direct the ranger and my warrior has no "light bonfire" command anywhere that I can find or ever have seen it's up to me to light fires.  So I happily do so as a distant horn sounds in my ear, I'm warned that bad guys are starting their attack, and the ranger starts notching his first arrow.  The torch gets lit at the central fire and then carried to an outer bonfire to light it.  There's a timer on the torch so if I'm lucky I can get 3 outer fires lit with one torch run.  I'm feeling like this is a breeze, fighting the first wave of batlike things and skeleton guys when suddenly,  the first bonfire I lit goes out.   Yep.  The bonfires are on a timer and so I'll need to keep running around and relighting them if I want the benefit of the buffs.

Which, by the way, I want.  Distant horns are sounding faster and faster and wave after wave comes at us.  3 to 6 at a time, with me healing and dps'ing, my warrior guy bravely facing ghouls, ghosts, skeletons, bats, firebirds, and more in an escalating series of more and more mobs. I'm tossing out a heal to the ranger (he has to live, remember?) and saving my lil warrior's skin then yelling at some zombie looking thing and stunning him for a few as my crit lands.  And did I mention I'm running around lighting bonfires in the midst of all this...

A brief pause as I learn that we've beaten back the first wave of attacks (FIRST wave? Wha????)  and then it's round two. Then three.  I'm ready to run down the mountain and strangle that blasted horn blower.  Then notice is given that a particularly mean fellow is taking the stage and we're fighting a boss as I'm healing, dodging, attacking, lighting, healing and somehow the 3 of us down the boss and fight off the swarming adds at the same time.   I swear I /hugged the ranger when it was all over. I lived, the ranger lived and my lil warrior guy lived and I was cheering and hollering and having more fun than I've had ingame in the last year.

Skirmishes.  Love 'em.  Try them out, let me know which ones you like best, and what soldier you're using.  And if you don't play LOTRO you might want to check it out.  Few things are more fun than a night on Weathertop, fighting ghouls and keeping the wonder and magic of it all alive.