Hooplah.Org A Story of Graceful Stumbles

Leapfrogging MMOs

Yesterday Matt and I went to go see Shrek 3. Even though it certainly wasn't a great movie - the plot turned from conflict to resolution way too quickly and awkwardly - I still enjoyed it because it involved actually leaving the apartment. I've been begging for us to go see a movie for weeks now, partly because we've been sitting on roughly $50 in free movie vouchers, but also because we finally have the time to do these things. I almost don't know what to do with myself with all this time on my hands.

Before it was all about rushing home to be here at 5PM, logging in, clocking in 4 or 5 hours to our other "job" and be done just in time to go to bed... so that we could wake up at 4 or 5 AM and repeat the process all over again. Though I still feel a tremendous amount of guilt for doing it, quitting WoW feels like it was the best thing I've done in a while. It had it's rewarding moments, but in the recent months they were scarce. Blizzard's decision to change the game in a way that ruined what I had spent a year + helping create is what ultimately drove away this Beta 1 tester, this person who once wrote a 2 page long bug report describing how the footprints in the snow weren't lining up correctly. This person who was on the Blizzard's Friend list was driven away when the one MMO company I thought could be trusted slapped me in the face. And with each passing day I can't believe how good of a decision it was to leave has turned out to be.

Considering the type of relationships I have, it's ironic that quitting an MMO actually saved my relationship rather than ruined it.

Though we have quit WoW for the time being, we haven't been completely MMO free - Matt had gotten into the beta for Lord of the Rings Online some time ago (August 06 I think?) and I got into the same beta in October 06. We played it off and on, nothing extreme, since we were still trying to juggle WoW at the same time - but when the game was released last April, we knew enough about LOTRO to be confident that it'd be worth at least a few weeks of fun to buy it in retail. It also came with the perk that if we bought the collector's edition of the game it'd only be $9.99/month. That equates to almost 2 accounts for the price of one, and though money isn't our problem, it's still nice that no matter how much the monthly fees for MMOs are increased (and they will increase - I think they were only $11.99 when I first started MMOs in 2002) the $9.99 will never change. So far the game has been alright - just choosing between a DPS class or a healer has been the hardest part for me. Having been a healer for the past 2 years, I really wanted a change... but every time I hear the group say "damnit, we need a healer" I get a pang of guilt.

Proof that I am a nerd: I am extremely excited for housing in LOTRO, which is supposed to be released this fall. Having my own hobbit home in a mound of dirt? FTW I think.