michel-delving
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The Road to Mordor: Making your alts work for you
I have a confession to make. My name is Justin, and I'm a Lord of the Rings Online altoholic. I know. I have a problem! I'm weak! DON'T STARE WITH THOSE ACCUSING EYES! I always start out in games with the best of intentions: I'm going to stick with just one character, at least until I hit the level cap. I'll only make new characters to reserve names I like. I won't get class envy and wonder what's on the other side of the fence. I'll stay strong! I'll be an oak! And then I turn out to be a willow tree, blowing about in the winds of whimsy, and suddenly I end up with alts staggered all over the leveling track. It's all right; I've come to embrace my altoholic tendencies because it really is who I am as a gamer. I like to sample everything, to try out different approaches to the game, and if I don't end up with a maxed-out uber-raider, then I can live with it. If you follow this pattern and are prone to rolling up a lot of alts in LotRO, there are several advantages you can gain over the monogamous players out there. Today I want to take a look at how you can make your alts work for you, if only to give you an excuse to keep rolling them!
The Road to Mordor: Do-over! Do-over!
This past week I took a break from kowtowing to the haughty elves of Lothlórien and their super-secret elf club to start up a couple alts. It was ultimately a good decision, as I ended up both digging my new lore-master and getting to sample first-hand the many changes that Turbine made to the new player experience. In mega-patches like this recent one, revamping the starter experience tends to be overlooked by all. Unless they're itching to roll an alt -- like I am -- current players won't be on hand to witness the changes, and completely new players to the game lack the knowledge of how it used to be in order to appreciate how it's been improved. But unsung improvements or no, Turbine's done an excellent job of smoothing out an already-engaging lowbie journey with a startling number of tweaks. I certainly didn't expect there to be so many, but since I have done the 1-20 run umpteen times in the past few years, it felt like a breath of fresh air to me. So what's all sparkly and different? Is the road to Mordor paved with good decisions (see what I did there)? Reroll a baby-faced adventurer with me and hit the jump!
