Creepy crawlies in LOTRO

If you’ve ever played LOTRO, even for the first few levels, you’ve probably encountered a neeker of some kind. These are rather over-grown bugs that are a staple baddie in the game. You fight small ones at low levels, and bigger ones at higher levels.

Thing is, those little bastards are *creepy* when they get bigger. I never realized how creepy until the other day.

Aethgar was riding north out of the Shire, headed for the lake in Evendim. He was roaming along the banks of the river where there’s a broad sandy beach. It’d be a lovely spot, if not for the native wildlife. Salamanders roam the area, and he was collecting teeth and scales from them, and at the same time cutting down on the neeker population (in Evendim the locals call neekers ‘norbogs’ but trust me, they’re just big fat neekers).

It wasn’t too bad until he came upon a spot called, descriptively enough, the Sand-Mounds. This is where the neekers breed, and the place was *crawling* with the wretched things. To the point where I started feeling all itchy and creeped out. The hairs on the back of my neck actually stood up as I watched all these insectile appendages waving back and forth at me.

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I took some screenshots (click to enlarge), but when the things aren’t moving they don’t look like much (plus Aethgar was killing them right and left before I thought to take screen shots. I wasn’t even controlling him, it seemed. He’d totally taken control away from me while I just averted my eyes and shuddered). Huge kudos to the animators at Turbine who managed to so expertly capture that… insectness… of their movements that people tend to have a very instinctual aversion to.

I was nothing but relieved when Aethgar had finished killing enough neekers to placate the healer up at Evendim lake. He rode away from the Sand Mounds as quickly as his horse would carry him, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

It was a beautiful day at the lake. Shortly after this shot, Aethgar leaped in for a swim, and I swear I could feel the cool waters washing all that insectoid filth off of me.
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I really do love LOTRO. I love that I have a lifetime subscription so I never feel the slightest bit pressure to play it. I play it when I want to experience Middle Earth, which for me happens fairly often. I love the art-style…the same one that so many people hate. IMO people who hate the art in LOTRO are…well, crazy. OK, the avatars aren’t the best, but the world is lush and beautiful and I never get tired of gazing up at the sky.

I joined a Kinship the other day. I’m still not sure it was the right move. I kind of hate the intrusion of Kinship chat. I tend to just lose myself in idle wanderings through the world; I don’t often use fast travel, preferring to ride hither and yon, seeing what’s over the next rise, gathering cabbages and taters for dinner, mining a bit of ore, helping the odd adventurer out. It’s a total escape for me — a place to decompress. I always come away smiling.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled ranting

OK so I’ve tried to leave the negative attitude at the door, but the pressure’s building up inside of me and I’m going to blow my top if I don’t rant soon.

So here goes!!!

Why can’t people just accept MMORPGs as a defined genre and stop trying to change them?

You don’t see FPS players complaining because the newest FPS has lots of guns and a targeting reticule. You don’t see driving game fans bitch because they can’t get out of their in-game cars and walk around. You don’t see sports game afficionados requesting an option to turn down the gravity in their games.

But MMORPG devs…they can’t catch a break. A new game comes out and people complain about some or all of the following:

  • The game has (too many) quests
  • The game has too much grinding [though grinding is almost never defined but seems to boil down to “there were moments I wasn’t riveted by what I was doing”]
  • The characters have levels or skills that require too much time to attain
  • The game world is too large and requires too much travel
  • The game world is too small and doesn’t feel immersive
  • The characters have the same old boring stats
  • There’s no player skill because success of actions depend on character stats, not player hand-to-eye coordination
  • The game is too shallow
  • The game is too complex & I don’t want to read all those scary words that tell me how to play

The list goes on and on and on, but many of the things people complain about are exactly the aspects that make these games MMORPGs (questing, stats, a big world to explore, stat-based actions).

May I not-so-humbly suggest that the people who are so tired with the staple aspects of MMORPGs…. STOP PLAYING THEM! There’re a ton of different game genres out there to play. If you’re sick of questing and exploring and planning out character progressions… go play a different kind of game. Play an online shooter, or one of the new MMORTS-type games. Dig out Planetside and play that. Get involved with one of the browser-based empire-building games. Jump into Burnout: Paradise and have a hoot driving around with your buddies.

Go somewhere, but just, please, stop peeing in our pool, because there are literally millions of gamers who like MMORPGs the way they are.

This rant was triggered by someone talking about Dust, the new console-based FPS announced by CCP. The comment said something like “Wow, this really makes Aion and Champions Online look like tired old retreads.”

WTF??? So a new *shooter* makes a couple of MMORPGs look old and tired? That’s like saying “My new BMW sure makes our living room couch look old and tired.” How are the two even remotely related, aside from being things you sit in or on? Dust and Aion are both games, and that’s about where their similarities end. Dust is a player-skill based shooter played on a gaming console, and Aion is a MMORPG played on a PC. They could hardly be less similar, so I see no value in comparing them.

MMORPG burnout does happen. Have the class to recognize it for what it is, and go play something else for a while, rather than miserably sticking around MMORPGs crapping all over everything that comes along.

Hey Cryptic: Give us better clothes next, kthxbye

Yesterday an acquaintance said on Twitter: “I’m pretty unimpressed with the graphics of CO. Jackets and other items look like crap. Only good costume is a sleek one.” (I’m not linking because this person has protected her updates.)

Y’know, she’s absolutely right. In the midst of having great fun making truly outlandish costumes for my Champions, I’d overlooked that the basics are so bad. Look at the Drifter pics in my last post. Look at how his pants drape around his shins. They look bloody awful. His shirt is totally nondescript and boring, too. There weren’t any ‘normal’ looking shirts — he’s wearing (iirc) a t-shirt with a ‘creased’ texture applied. No hats to speak of, either. Doh! Silly me, see comments for how badly I mangled this point.

Cryptic has done a great job with things like wings and other accessories, and if you’re making a spandex-clad Super you’re going to be fine. But if you’re trying to make someone more ‘normal’ looking, you’ll find your options are both limited and pretty bad.

I don’t know if Cryptic can fix this easily: my guess is that there’s more to it than just creating new art assets — there’re physics involved with cloth, after all. But I hope they can.