As an oft-time solo MMO gamer, I’m used to being spat upon by the herd-mentality masses. “Go play a single player game!” they scream at me. “Your [sic] an idiot for paying a monthly fee to play a game by yourself!” Or even, “Hey solo player… YOUR MOM!”
OK OK I’m being a bit over-dramatic but seriously, there’s a big component of the community who seems to think there’s something “wrong” with preferring to play an MMO solo. And some day I’ll do a big long whinging post about why I do it, but that day is not today!
No, today I just want to direct you to this guide to Solo Leveling in LOTRO. Why is it worth noting? Because it comes from Turbine themselves. So apparently they acknowledge and appreciate that some of us prefer the solitude of a quiet walk through The Shire to a booze-laden Tavern League Quest Marathon.
Actually, the article doesn’t feel all that solo-oriented and if you’ve never played LOTRO it’s a decent “Getting Started” article for anyone to read. If you’ve played a grouped character and want to start a solo alt, the article isn’t going to teach you very much. Hopefully future installations will be a bit more meaty with regard to the soloist.
Players tend to blame solo players in general (and especially those from WoW) for the existence of players who they don’t like in their game. This is not to say that the rush to allow solo leveling in all games hasn’t left a gap in how to train people who WANT to learn group roles in how to fulfill them, but it’s certainly unfortunate that the relationship is so adversarial. The solo market’s money is as good as anyone else’s, and it helps to fund the production values for those raids that the hardest of core enjoy so much.
Very cool article. I just reactivated my account yesterday, so I will be giving this a good read to help familiarize myself with the game again seeing as how I haven’t played in awhile.
The one game that I always wanted to be in a group was City of Heroes/Villains because the missions scaled to the number of players in a party, something I wish other games would do.
I have one character that is level 54 that got there almost 90% solo. You do need to group for some chapters of the books though then again you do not need to do the books.
The new solo instances in Moria are sweet as are the three person fellowships.
I wish LoTRO was a little more solo. I found it tough to enjoy the book (epic quests) content in PuGs… as they often just wanted to rush through.
Grid, there are solo instances in Moria? that sounds nice.
I find the rushing through of areas by groups in most MMO’s bothering. I used to play EQ2 and by god the programmers should not waste so much time putting detail in the grouping needed areas/instances as it seemed every group I was in would just kill and run and never stop to enjoy/take in the setting.
I do find most do ignore the lore and the storyline in LOTR and in fact I was helping a guy do a series of quests in Eregion (new land area in Moria update) where you are tracking the path of the fellowship of the ring and the guy says it seemed stupid to kill all these orcs just to get a cooking pot “Sam’s” they got from a camp site. I told him to read the story as the quest was to intercept before they returned the pot to Saurman that would clue him in to what path the fellowship was taking toward Mordor.
I am not a big RP type but light RP and following the story especially in LOTR is key to enjoyment of the game for me. Now standing around and speaking old english to each other does not thrill me so no hard RP but light RP is fine.
@GreenArmadillo: I think part of the problem is that most current games, most “solo” areas require a separate game design with easier mobs and a lot of mundane quests, because you are truly expected to fight alone. Maybe soloers wouldn’t have as much of a problem in groups if when soloing you simply got hirelings to fill in needed roles for a party, and fought in the same areas, with the same quests, and the same monsters as the rest of the world. It would be more efficient to join a group, but if you needed to or wanted to solo, you could, you would play your role, instead of focusing on something unrelated to it (such as DPS for healers), and the monsters wouldn’t need to be dumbed down for soloers. If someone solos from level one to the cap in a game designed like I imagine, at least they would have done so playing class roles, so while they might not be “as good” as someone who grouped the whole way in a group, at least they would have spent the time training in class roles.
Solo players’ money is as good as anyone elses, but the games should be designed so people can more smoothly transition from one type of gameplay to another.
Pete, have you read Saylah’s blog, Mystic Worlds? She’s pretty vocal about being able to play solo in MMOs. (That’s what drew me to her blog.)
@Tesh, I do read Saylah. Not as regularly as some of the blogs I follow, but I pop in once a week or so. I find her preference for grinding over questing to be curious and so different from my own preferences that its always a pleasure to hear what she has to say.