In the last few months of 2017, I was horribly burned out by LOTRO, and thus by the end of December, I had basically stopped playing. I decided to cancel my subscription, which I had been paying for for over a year, and I had reached a point where I didn’t log into the game for over a month.
Let me put this into perspective: I have been playing LOTRO since October of 2012. I was barely 13 years old when I started playing and now I’m a college student and I feel as though I grew up with the game. I’ve been in the same kinship for almost four years and I count all my kinmates as friends. So all that being said, I have a lot of nostalgia and memories related to LOTRO.
I played the most I ever had last summer. For the first time in my personal LOTRO history, I was level capped and tier 2 raid geared. I was tanking very difficult instances on the daily, and playing for hours a day. I was in a very difficult place in my personal life, and very overwhelmed with school and work, so LOTRO became a safe, comfortable place I could go to when I had a bad day, and in a way, the game became a second home.
But then I got my life under control, and my time in game started fading. I wasn’t as interested in Mordor as I had been in Gondorian content, and before I knew it, I hadn’t logged into the game in a month. But as has been my consistent strategy the past few years, I have never been able to stay away from LOTRO for extended periods of time.
But why? Not to say that everyone’s experience with the game is going to be identical to what mine has been, but in my five years of playing the game I have found that LOTRO is home to one of the most inviting, warm, and friendly communities of any game, ever. Despite the game’s age, the community has truly persisted.
My kinship, which I spoke of earlier, is still incredibly active and continues to welcome players with open arms. And no matter how many times I leave and return, they have always been there to welcome me back with cries of, “Mak! it’s so good to see you in game!”. And it warms my heart every single time. Even when I wasn’t playing, I would still hop onto discord to stay in contact with a few kinnies who I have really bonded with, just to catch up and see how one another are doing. One amazing kinnie, who doesn’t play LOTRO much more nowadays, has truly gone out of their way to see how I’m doing, simply by shooting me a message every few weeks.
Community is absolutely everything, and makes all the difference in the world. If every single game, and group setting in general, could sustain and continue to cultivate a community and level of friendship that LOTRO has, I truly believe the world would be a loving, more accepting, and more friendly place.
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