Since the destruction of my World of Warcraft guild I have been enjoying many of the games I did not have time for during my WoW raiding addiction. In between waiting for my latest GameFly disk to arrive I have dipped my toe into the waters of the Brandywine River in Lord of the Rings Online. In an effort at full disclosure, I was burned by Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online in the past and have a very negative view of Turbine. A pathetic trickle of content was added to DDO and in my opinion, LOTRO was developed at the suffering of DDO customers.
One of the mantras of MMO development has been, “Content is King” Keep the content coming, keep the high level players busy, give them many things to grind out, give them more dungeons, give them more raids. I agree that content should be the major focus of the developers to keep an MMO healthy. However, to sacrifice everything else in the name of added content greatly diminishes the playing experience of the entire game.
The details matter. A few little features can make a world of difference. The most glaring example of this in LOTRO is the mailbox. It is TERRIBLE. The player is limited to a single item per mail. Each and every additional item requires composing another mail. This is a very minor feature, but the neglect of this item is causing massive frustration.
I was joined in my LOTRO endeavor by my lovely wife and my sister, both of whom played WoW with me. A co-worker friend of my wife already had a character our server, part of the reason we chose to play LOTRO. We picked different profession groups to be able to assist each other in leveling them up. We also have characters that specialize in different armor and weapon types. We do not always play at the same time and mailing items to each other is necessary to help each other out. The limitation of the mailbox is creating a giant roadblock to our enjoying the game.
I am a huge fan of podcasting. The creative freedom, focus on specific interests, and low cost of production makes it a great medium. To get into a MMO I will check out the podcasts for that game. They will often have great info for new players. They will describe different features of the game you might not understand and they help get you up to speed on the “lingo” of the game so I know what “LFF GB” means.
Listening to a developer interview on LOTROCast from over a year ago, the issue of the mailbox limitation was brought up. The standard canned answer of “yes we are looking into this, but have no idea when it will be done” was given. First off, I hate that answer. Have some guts and give an honest answer. Even though most people on the Internet don’t act like it, we are all adults, you can tell us the truth. Maybe the reason people act like jerks on the Net is because they are sick of people giving them condescending answers to legitimate questions about a service they pay for.
Not giving honest acknowledgment to the problem of the one item per mail limit is a virtual slap in the face of ALL players of LOTRO. Content is king, but not everyone experiences all the content. Not everyone is doing dungeons, not every is doing raids, not everyone is doing a particular quest line, not everyone is doing skirmishes, not everyone has the same profession. BUT EVERYONE USES THE MAILBOX. Put the time and effort in to improve this feature that is used by all the players.
