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The Daily Grind: What does it take for you to go back to a game you enjoyed?
I'd been on a bit of a break from City of Heroes when the announcement came that it was shutting down. And I'm not alone; some of my friends had also been taking a break, but when it came to light that the game's days were numbered, they came back in a hurry. Everyone wants a chance to remember the best parts of the game before there's no part of the game left to remember, after all. But it doesn't just take a shutdown notice to revitalize your interest. Sometimes you might just be taking a few months off before you go back to a game, sometimes you're waiting for a content patch, sometimes there's an annoying system you want patched into oblivion, and sometimes it would take nothing less than a full reworking of the design team's philosophy to bring you back to a game. So what does it take for you to go back to a game you enjoyed but left? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
There and back again... A writer's return to Lord of the Rings Online
Returning to an MMO after an eight-month absence, after barely playing for a month, is like waking up in a strange grocery store after a vicious blow to the head left you with amnesia. You've got this shopping list in your hands, but you've got absolutely no idea where any of these items are. It will say things like "Ned wants milk. You can find the milk southeast of me." Who is Ned? Where was he when you met him? Where is "southeast of him," when you've got no friggin' clue where he is?Such was my return to Lord of the Rings Online. I had a quest log full of tasks that were almost familiar to me, but my memory lacked the proper synapses to form where they began, and more importantly, where I had to journey to complete them. I found out the hard way that "the hills northeast of Bree" are not the hills on the map in North Bree-lands, but rather a small cluster of hills more on the west side. In the process I drove a friend of mine crazy with my mindless ranting about how the quest descriptions couldn't have gotten more vague if they tried.After a while I got my groove back. I remembered where Brandy Hall was in Buckland. I remembered where the auction house, the trainers, and a few more quest-givers were. Once I had a sense of reference I stopped harassing my friend about "where the frack was this dude" and became familiar with the Google maps portion of the Lorebook on the official site-a nifty feature added after I stopped playing. Instead I started complaining to her about why all these gold resellers are hawking their wares in the middle of Bree? In three years of World of WarCraft I've added none to my ignore list. I fear there's a cap to my ignore list in LoTRO because at the rate I'm adding those bastards I'll hit it by week's end.
