I was unwell the weekend just gone - I'll spare you the details, but I will say I found myself grinding harder into various games than usual to keep myself distracted from some discomfort. Well, "various games" is an overstatement. I was playing LotRO with more dedication than I have in months.
I seem to have drifted into MMOs over the last couple of years, when (and if) I have time to play - RPGs have always appealed to me, perhaps due to an interest in seeing how to use probability to recreate the world around us, and perhaps due to simply being able to disengage any sense of boredom if I see progress... Fighting huge numbers of easy-to-beat monsters isn't a problem if I can see an end goal of a few extra XP or some crafting materials... I am probably the key audience for most of the generic MMOs going right now.
MMOs work by drawing you in, getting you to do repeated tasks over and over, always promising better rewards. Really, quests are just a structure to keep us focused on the what, where and why. If you stop and consider what it is you're doing... Well, in LotRO, whenever you get to any new area, the first set of quests run like this:
"We're cold - can you go and get us some boar/wolf/bear/kitten hides?
... while you're at it, we're hungry, can you get some meat from those animals too?
... also, we are under threat! Can you go and kill some bandits/goblins/orcs/door-to-door salesmen?"
Don't get me wrong - I'm enjoying the process of doing these things; but when you think "Lord of the Rings", you think of long journeys to remote places, and epic battles, and... well, Peter Jackson's movies have a lot to answer for. Watch the trailer for the trilogy, and on the whole you want the experience to be this. Frodo didn't take a break to make a lynx-meat sandwich; Aragorn didn't stretch his legs in the morning by taking broken daggers from goblins. It wouldn't have made good viewing.
But anyway... I finally did something in game that had that feeling, something Epic! My guy was ready for his class's level 50 legendary skill quest - I spoke to the quest giver, and was basically given four goals to achieve, monsters to find in all four corners of the world. Yes, they were still "kill these things and loot items", but journeying to the most remote corners of the world, places I hadn't seen yet, fighting or avoiding monsters that were generally bigger and nastier than anything I'd dealt with before... Yes. This was my adventure.
The sense of satisfaction when I returned, after several hours of working away at it all, spoke to the quest giver, was huge... although slightly dampened when he essentially said "Ok. Well, here's the second quest...". This was further dampened when it turned out this involved looting monsters who were in an area that I couldn't reach, due to the inconvenience of instantly dying when passing a key spot on route. Still, the good news was a different quest chain let me survive... so, spend a few more hours doing that one, feeling that bit more special for doing so.
More monsters. More grinding. More loot. More victory. All with that end goal in mind - all this work for that Legendary skill! How special it must be! Several hours later, I return...
"Not bad. Ok, here's the third quest." So be it, I have a hero to help ascend to further awesomeness...
When, best part of a day later I handed these items in, I did feel I had really worked to achieve something. It was something that had more of a sense of direction that just helping hungry hobbits eat to excess (seriously, there seem to be so many "hobbits want food" quests that I'm surprised there is a single animal left in the Shire. I also noticed a lack of Elves in the area, and have my suspicions).
It was pretty much the experience I hoped I'd have from a game like this. Seeing new places, facing new challenges...
... obviously, it is impossible to sustain this sort of content for every player for all of the time, which is where the mundane grind comes back in. But having this sort of experience, something that gives a sense of personal achievement rather than just a few silver coins, some XP and a few crafting materials... Yes. More, please.
Addendum: Oh, the skill - useless. I tried it once, realised it was rubbish (at least, for the way I play), haven't bothered using it again. So, that's what all the effort was supposedly for...
... at least I can appreciate the journey, if not the destination.
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