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The Daily Grind: Do you start over when you return to an old game?
So you've decided to return to a game that you played in the past. A fine choice, really. But that leaves you with an interesting dilemma. You could log in on your existing character, but that would mean re-learning things, trying to figure out where you had left off, and all of that. Or you could just wipe the slate clean and start over, kicking yourself back into the earliest stages to re-learn the game from the ground up. On the one hand, your high-level character in Star Trek Online or Guild Wars or whatever game you're returning to might very well have benefits that are difficult to replicate. On the other hand, it's possible that a lot has changed since the last time you played, and it might be easiest to restart from the ground level. So which do you generally prefer? Do you like to restart after a long absence, or do you pick up where you left off and muddle through anything you might have forgotten? 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!
The Road to Mordor: The reset scenario
At this juncture of my Lord of the Rings Online career, I have zero interest in starting over. I've attempted two fresh characters over the past six months, and while the "newness" was enough to sustain me for a while, I simply didn't have the time or energy to get them through the long, long, long journey of content to meet up with my Captain. So I've made peace with the thought that my main will be my only character through the completion of the game, barring Turbine releasing an incredibly compelling new class or severely streamlining the leveling process. That's OK, really. I'm content. Yet I also like to engage in mental hypotheses in which I am forced to restart -- a reset scenario, as it were. If I woke up tomorrow and found that my account was completely blank, or if I were thrown back in time and had to start all over again, what would I do? Would I choose differently or the same? So here we go: the reset scenario. Let's assume the game is more or less how it is now and I have all of my current knowledge. If I had to start from scratch, how would I forge a different path in the game?
The Road to Mordor: A fresh start
I don't know about you, but sometimes I fall into the trap of forcing myself to do something in a game because I feel internally obliged to do it. Somewhere along the line, "setting a goal" became a Bataan Death March that absolutely had to be accomplished before I'd allow myself to do what I truly wanted. In my case, it was the stubborn determination to get through the remainder of Rise of Isengard's content even though I had slowed to slogging through it, feeling burned out on my Lore-master after well over a year of constant play on the character. So I sat back and re-evaluated. My reasoning for finishing Isengard was to make sure I was at the top of the game and could evaluate any new high-level content that came along for you guys, which was a noble reason. But the truth was that in so doing, I was playing something that was leeched of enjoyment for the time being and really needed to be put aside. Once I realized that, the solution was obvious. A fresh start. That's what I wanted: a completely fresh start to the game. Hey, it's still (sort of) a new year, so why not? And once I gave myself permission to do that, my adventures in Lord of the Rings Online brightened up considerably. I might be weird in this, but I absolutely love starting over from scratch in long-term games from time to time, even though it means scrapping (or putting aside) a whole heap of achievements and the effort spent acquiring them. This week I'm going to look at my fresh start with LotRO and why it has me buzzed to log in for the first time this year.
Breakfast Topic: Back to square one
So I finally did it. I transferred my Hunter, once and for a long time my favorite character, from our original PvE realm to our new PvP home. It was the most excitement I've had about the game in a while. I giddily headed off to Hellfire Peninsula to begin journey to Level 70 before the arrival of Wrath. That giddiness rapidly turned to unease when, upon pulling, I realized that I had forgotten how to play a Hunter.I mean, I know my CTRL-1 and my Aimed Shot, which was instinctive to me... but I fumbled around for my Scatter Shot, forgot which bars I had put my traps on, kept pulling aggro because I had forgotten to turn Growl on, and realized that I didn't have a single key bound to this character. As decent as I might have once been, I was now clumsy, slow, and had to -- shamefully -- click on my abilities. Whenever I had to feed my pet I needed to open my bags to select the food because I no longer had a macro for it. Whenever I pressed my mount key combo -- which was standard across my other characters -- I would Track Beasts instead. After two years of not playing a Hunter, I was back to being... a noob. Have you ever had to start from square one? Are there characters you stopped playing for a long time and found that you'd forgotten how to play them? Or perhaps you took a long break from the game due to school or other RL concerns and started playing again only to get completely lost? I'm sure it's happened to all of us... right? Tell me I'm not the only noob in the house.
Player vs. Everything: Starting over
Most of us have spent a lot of time playing our favorite games. Chances are good that unless you're totally new to the MMOG world, you've got at least one character at some ridiculously high level, armed to the teeth, sitting on a big pile of gold amongst the trophies of your slaughtered foes. You might even be part of a guild and still play that character with your guildmates on a regular basis to go topple foes of ever-increasing power. It's good to be a dragon-slaying, world-destroying, gold-hoarding demigod of awesomeness. That's why it's so tough to start over, sometimes. Whether it's rolling up an alt on your current game or picking up an entirely new game, it can be really frustrating to go from a bloodthirsty, battle-hardened warrior who wades into combat swinging an enormous, glowing two-handed sword to some level 1 nobody with a leather jerkin and a knife. All of your accomplishments on your old character seem pretty far away when level 3 wolves are having you for a light afternoon snack, and a brand new grind stretches out interminably before you. Is it any wonder why plenty of players don't even bother with having alts and stick to the game they like?
Shadowbane resets with Patch 22, on test servers today
I'm not sure if anyone's still playing Shadowbane since its release five years ago, but its developers are about to do the most radical thing you can do to a virtual world: they're hitting the reset switch.As of Patch 22, showing up soon on the test server for the game, the team has decided that "it would be best for the longetivity of the game" to completely reset all server and character data. They also say that there are certain items in game that make it unbalanceable, and so they're just starting over from scratch. There are a few other big fixes coming in the patch, but as they say, this will definitely be the "most talked about" change.And players are taking it surprisingly well. Over on the forums, most players seem happy that developers are taking major steps to fix the game. The servers will apparently use the Vorringia mapset, and lots of players are happy about that, as it's a popular choice. A few players are unhappy that they're losing everything, but the general consensus seems to be that making the game balanced is more important than keeping individual player data.Interesting. It's hard to imagine a more major game flipping a reset switch like this and surviving, but maybe Shadowbane will prove it's possible to reboot and keep a core audience that loves the game more than their own assets.[Via Wired]
