Lord Of The Rings online Gold

Background

Recently, Lord of the Rings Online released a content update. Two major pieces of the content update stuck out, continuing a trend that had started midway through 2009. Namely, the new epic book was soloable, and the entirety of Volume I was made soloable. The reasons for doing so make a lot of sense; as new content is added older content tends to be forgotten by the player base. Even last year, shortly after the release of Moria, I found it incredibly difficult and sometimes downright impossible to find groups who were willing to do the epic quest line.

This ended up frustrating a good portion of the playerbase who had not been around to do the content in its heyday. I gave up, and this was a year ago. It got to a point where there would be 3 or 4 of us spamming LFF, GLFF, and our Kin chat every few minutes, desperately begging for someone to come along. Quite often during the wait, one or more members would end up dropping, not able to stand waiting any longer.

I simply cannot imagine how much more difficult it was to find groups right before Volume 3 was released. By that time I was on my 5th alt to pass the level 50 cap, and I simply didn't even bother attempting to look for a group anymore.

Enter Volume 3. Volume 1 was now revamped to include solo content. "Oh Joy!" I thought. "I can finally finish Volume 1!!!". My heart leaped, and I immediately set aside a weekend to finish Volume 1, which happened to be about 3 weeks after the initial release.

This is where things got confusing for me. During my foray into the hitherto unknown stories exposed by Volume 1, I encountered a lot of adventurers; adventurers who were doing Volume 1. Not just a few; quite a bit, actually. At one point I started counting all of the people I ended up seeing, hitting all of the same NPC's required to do Volume 1. I counted at least 4 full fellowships-worth of different people during my first day. But we were all doing it alone. As I progressed, doing book after book, I realized the sheer absurdity of what was unfolding before my eyes.

Could it be possible that so many people had simply given up on grouping to get these quests done that they just come out of the woodwork when it's finally soloable? The worst part about it is that this was weeks after the initial release; I can't imagine how many more people were doing it the previous 3 weekends.

Ever since then, I've been putting a lot of thought into the state of grouping in LOTRO. When I gave up on doing Volume 1 last year, I assumed that I wasn't getting any LFF hits because no one wanted to do the content at all. It was easy to come to that conclusion. But this recent experience has essentially shattered that premise.

Grouping Experiences

The crux of the matter is finding out why people are having difficulty grouping. I've seen many forum posts lamenting how the modern MMO player prefers solo content, since LOTRO is obviously altering itself to cater towards soloers. I think this is a misconception however.

The fact of the matter is that people volunteer to pay a monthly fee to be a part of an online game. It is a little absurd to assume that people who pay to be in an MMO prefer to be solo; why else would they have joined an online game in that case? It's far easier and cheaper to purchase the latest single-player action-rpg game than it is to maintain a subscription to an MMO, if solo-style gameplay is your preference. I feel safe making the assumption that the majority of players in the game are willing and ready to play group-based content.

Now this hearkens back to an experience I had in January 2009 when I very first began to play LOTRO. Moria had recently been released. My friend, a level 40 hunter, had joined a month prior and enticed me to play by telling me how much more interesting and well-written the quests are in this game, compared to "that other one". So I joined, and quickly attained level 20. I quickly fell for the epic story line; I was a huge LOTR fan, and being able to parallel the fellowship was exciting. I saw all of these areas that were in the book! Oh boy! The Barrow Downs! I read about it, and now I was IN IT!

This elation came to a screeching halt when I reached Chapter 11 of Volume I. Bombadil took me to Othrongroth. I entered the dungeon, fearing nothing. I ran in and... was slaughtered very quickly by 3 dourhands and a half-dozen crawlers. This was my introduction to group quests. No big deal, I clicked the handy button that says search for others on this quest.

Nothing. Wait 15 minutes. Nothing. Wait another 15 minutes. Nothing. Kinda frustrated. I ask my friend why this fellowship finder isn't working. He says no one uses it, just use the LFF channel. Oh wonderbar. I ask in LFF for help. Nothing. Half an hour of asking, still nothing. I talk to my friend again, and he stops what he is doing to log on his level 40-something hunter to come help me. Luckily he's powerful enough so that we can do the dungeon ourselves, but words can't explain how frustrated I was from this experience.

We ended up joining a kin a little while later, and discovering GLFF around the same time. But this first experience was almost disastrous to me, because during that one hour of futile searching for a group, I was frustrated to a point of almost deciding the game wasn't worth actually subscribing to (I was still in my 10-day trial at that point).

Over the next few months I gradually was able to group more. For the most part play was still solo, but with group play interspersed periodically. There were disasters, but there were also some great experiences as well. On a whole I was pretty pleased with the community of LOTRO. One of the best groups I was in, many of the members ended up crafting me new armour to replace the shoddy quest armour I had at that point, around level 25.
So in general, grouping itself usually ended up being a good experience. Of course there is always the disaster group, with someone jenkinsing the whole thing either intentionally or accidentally. But those were the exception to the rule. In fact even to this day, I have to say the quality of grouping partner I find in LOTRO is generally very honorable. I join PUG's for instances, and almost always there's an unspoken rule about legendary weapons which everyone seems to follow; only roll on weapons of your own class, and if no one in the group is that class it's a free roll. It amazes me to see people doing this time and time again, but it makes me feel good about the groups I join.

Given that grouping is generally a pleasant experience, I feel safe removing "bad group experiences" from the list of potential reasons why people have difficulty grouping.

Perks and Itemization?

Perks and itemization. I think everyone agrees that LOTRO is currently pretty lacking in this area for its endgame content. I won the Durchest HM piece on Thursday night. I saved up quite a bit of DKP to ensure I won that roll finally... and when I finally went to barter the piece, I swore. I took a major hit on my stats for an extra 10 radiance. I guess it's mostly my fault for not examining the piece before saving up all those points, but I made a logical assumption that since it drops from the most difficult raid in the game, it will probably be the best available armour.

I got over it quickly. I don't really play for the gear. I'm a Bartle explorer-type personality and I'm happier just doing new things I've never done before. So I'm happy moving onto part 2 of BG tomorrow night now that we finally have the hang of Durchest HM.

But that's only one type of personality in an MMO. The fact of the matter is that there is a significant portion of an MMO population who lives and dies for the gear. I don't particularly agree with that mindset, but there's nothing I can do about it; they exist, and they are needed in order for the game to have a large community.

Last week my kin put out a survey, asking us to rank the raids in order of importance. The only options were Watcher, DN, and BG. I suggested we add Rift and Helegrod to the list because I have not once stepped foot in either of those places. One member said "I refuse to do rift. I only have a few hours a week to play and I refuse to waste my time doing something that won't get me anything useful". Again, I completely disagree with that sentiment, but that doesn't change the fact that a significant portion of the population feels this way, and there is no way around it.

So content must at least partially cater to the people who want rewards above all else. Judging by how difficult it is to get groups for older content, I feel safe saying that there may actually be a majority of the population who feels this way.

I suppose skirmishes are the first step towards this goal. It's a good step in theory, but skirmishes end up failing here as well. Even with the pumped up skirmish mark bonus for group skirmishes, I still rarely see anyone playing them in groups. The reasons here are numerous in my opinion. First off, the itemization is a problem; hardly anything is worth buying with marks. I won't go into detail there, because there are already numerous threads on the subject. Another problem is the death penalty. When you die, you get penalized a substantial amount of marks. What incentive is there to attempt difficult content then? If you get more marks for doing easier content, what do you think people are going to do? Another problem is logistics, and I'll hit on this later as well. It takes quite a while to organize a group. Yeah in theory the marks per hour for raid and full fellowship skirmishes blow solo out of the water. In reality, not so much. How long does it take to organize a solo skirmish? Less time than it took to read this sentence. How long does it take to organize a raid skirmish? I don't know. They always fall apart before we can get a full raid with the required class makeup. Everyone always says "let's just go for a fellowship" or just gives up completely. So an A for effort, but unfortunately in delivery it falls noticeably short.

End Gating

My kin has had significant issues trying to beat Durchest 2.0 Hard Mode. We've downed him in HM twice since the Volume 3 patch. The last time was last week, and we were able to take him down on our very first attempt. What made the attempt so successful was the fact that for the very first time, we had the exact group makeup that was required. What are the chances this is going to happen regularly from now on though? I don't know. We'll soon find out I guess.

So why is it so hard to find the exact group makeup needed in my kin? We've got probably 14 or 15 active raiders now. I can remember when we had 24 or more, so many that sometimes we'd run two raids in a night simultaneously. But those days are passed; many raiders have left LOTRO and are on to bigger and better things. But even with 15 people we shouldn't have trouble getting a group together right? Wrong. The radiance system is killing raids. Here's a typical situation we run into:

Okay we've got 12 people signed up for the BG run! Oh wait, we don't have a lore master. But that's ok, someone has a lore master alt! Oh wait, they don't have the required radiance on that character. Oh but our burg has an LM with the required radiance! Oh, but then we don't have a burg. An hour of frustrated permutations later people start either having to leave due to other commitments, or we just give up and do DN to get crud we don't need or want. Radiance gating sucks. Radiance grinding sucks. I know you said it's not going away Turbine, but guess what... while radiance is not going away, something else IS going away: PLAYERS.

Make up your mind. Either keep radiance and make class makeups more flexible, or remove radiance altogether. The combination of requiring an exact class makeup and a specific amount of radiance is supremely annoying and does nothing but make people sick of the grind. I honestly think I'm going to puke if I have to do sword halls one more time (because guess what, no one does warg pens or dungeons!).

Which brings us to the heart of the matter.

Logistics Logistics Logistics

The logistics of organizing a group is difficult. People want to group, but the problem is that it's hard to find the group in the first place. In my very first week in LOTRO I learned that the built-in group finder tool is useless. The majority of groups in this game are found by kin chat, LFF, and GLFF.

GLFF is probably where the majority of PUGS are formed. But there's a problem with it; it's actual usage is not in fact for finding fellowships, it's for people to participate in out-of-character chatter. I know it's not a turbine tool, and it's created by players to fill a void that is lacking in LOTRO, but even that tool is rarely usable due to all the non-fellowship-finding chatter going on.

A lot of people aren't in it, either because they don't know about it, or because they turned it off because the constant OOC chatter annoyed them. I'm certainly guilty of shutting it off myself frequently. I joke that its name actually stands for "Good Luck Finding Fellowship", but everyone agrees that my sarcastic joke is pretty accurate.

In order for this game to survive, this game needs grouping tools. This game needs grouping tools and it needs them now. The current single-quest system is not useful. It's hidden away and no one uses it because it only works with one quest at a time.

A grouping tool should be a fundamental part of the user interface. It should not be based around a single quest, but rather an area. When you get a quest to kill orcs in Dol Dinen, there should be a button on the quest dialog that says "Accept and add Dol Dinen to my group wishlist". Possibly even have another button; "Accept and start forming group for Dol Dinen quests". Maybe even one more; "Accept and automatically join any open group for Dol Dinen as soon as one exists".

When starting a group for an area, there should be a UI that lets you specify what area the group is for. Pick from a dropdown of group-oriented areas, sorted by whichever area you are currently closest to. Once you pick the area, you pick the size of the group you want. Then you pick the roles you want. In each slot you specify either a class or a role, so you can end up with a list like this:

Dol Dinen – 6 players: Myself, Captain, Tank, Healer, DPS, Debuffer. As soon as you hit "Create", it looks through the list of everyone who has Dol Dinen on their wishlist. If there are any captains, it pings the captains and tells them "Soandsothelion has created a group for Dol Dinen and you qualify for one of the slots. Join?". It doesn't have to be a popup because that can get annoying, but maybe it plays a ping sound like an IM and shows a star in a Grouping "Chat" Tab. You can then click "Join" on the UI and you'll join the group instantly. Or if it fills up it politely tells you that you missed the opportunity. Heck, maybe even there's a queuing system where the person who has been on the waiting list the longest gets a 15 second window where they get first choice as to whether they go or not, before it moves the opportunity to join to the next person on the list.

This can work. There are people who want to group. I want to do Warg Pens and Dungeons of Dol Guldur. I am sure there are others who want to as well, but we are having enormous trouble connecting, due to the lack of tools in this game to adequately connect players who want to group.

This game needs grouping tools and it needs them now.