LotRO Reloaded

Posted by Stropp on January 5, 2008

New computers can be a joy. Games that previously could only be run on low settings can now be run at their maximum as smooth as silk. The new computer smell. It’s like owning a new car.

Other upsides to owning a new PC is that you end up getting rid of all that cruft on your harddrives. I’ve always been a hoarder, so I never get rid of anything until it’s absolutely necessary. My garage and spare room are testament to this. Even my bank slots in WoW are proof of never getting rid of anything. (Although I did have a bank/bag cleanup the other night.)

However, one of the downsides to buying a new computer is that you have to reload all of the software that you use. It’s a process, especially with MMO games, that can be long and tedious.

Even though I haven’t been playing it lately, and since I have a lifetime subscription, I decided to get LotRO reinstalled last night. Unfortunately I’d lent my disks to a friend so that he could use the buddy code that came with them. That meant downloading the whole thing, a massive six gigabytes of install.

Surprisingly it only took a couple of hours to do the download since I was getting an excellent download speed, and the patch didn’t take long either. It looks like Turbine keep their downloadable client up to date. Nice, considering I’ve done a couple of long downloads and then had to spend a couple of hours patching.

After installing I decided to get into the game and have a quick look around. It was getting late by that stage so I didn’t plan on staying long.

The first thing I noticed was that there seemed to be more servers available. I can’t be sure of that, but it appeared that the list of servers was longer and there were a couple of names I couldn’t remember being there. That’s surely a good sign for LotRO. Games that are in trouble, or that aren’t going anywhere, generally don’t add servers; they remove them.

Once I logged in, there were a couple of messages that I had received some new attributes. One of those was the ability to recall to a guild house. There was also a housing tab on my character panel. I did recall hearing something about housing in Lord of the Rings Online, but I didn’t realise that it had been implemented. Nifty.

Other than that, I didn’t see anything else really different. I ran around for a few minutes killing wolves. Chatted briefly with the guildies. And logged out.

Lord of the Rings Online is one game I’d really like to spend more time in, but with a renewed interest in WoW, Tabula Rasa on the sideline, and a whole swag of new games on the horizon, I’m not sure I’ll be able to give it the time it deserves.

Lucky I’ve got a lifetime sub.

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