My last post - trying to put everything together - hoping for change - knowing it wont happen ...
The game is changing alot starting maybe like early 2020 and in the same breath most casual lore breakers were added.
Just think back to all the ups and downs that have happened, some of them in no order:
- Pandemic free "VIP"-like months
- super Coupon to get free Lotro
- War of Three Peaks worst pricing ever
- Free Premium Wallet, Trait Trees, most content <95 perma free
- mega 15th celebration with free valar + everyone gets a boar to ride around + cosmetics some people paid like 50$ themselves
- breaking down Bree homesteads
- releasing brawler as the weakest class
- discovering Lotro in fact had something like pvp and trying to modernize it
- (a random rock in bree or a random chicken escape from ettenmoors)
- the huge LI 3.0 revamp
- the huge LI 3.0 fiasco (literally letting people left behind without a clue how to start to new system and so much more)
- the carry-all madness with no intent to resolve its countless issues/flaws
- opening class race combos
- class overhauls over and over + trait point resetting
- removing reputation bonus for skirmish currency to make it fully obsolete or adjusting yule festival deed rewards so every character gets 250 coins less (that means doing 63 MORE of the same quests just to get what others gotten for free!)
- disabling pets in instance without any options to let them stay
- alot of plans promised...
- ...
- and now: giving more race of men options while force deleting established, well-known avatar looks from the playerbase while practicing more drastical lore breaking and making randomized characters a full grown freak show.
Facing this i think the thread title is right. Lotro is changing, probably a forced change of directions. What does it mean for long-term players? Well LTA does not matter much for the future because they already spent their biggest amount. Some 5+ years players will like some of the changes, maybe enough to stick around. Newer players wont be much found by this update - i even expect FEWER new players. The Intros are clunky and especially stout-axe intro is designed with veteran players in mind. A new player trying this could find multiple problems. But most important i would declare this game trash if I just started now, clicked randomize on humans and witness the first 10 results - this is what i would expect to find throughout the game and probably would leave Lotro before creating a character.
Personally i think this 35.1 "Update" Shift is due to internal and modernized beliefs within SSG and ruthless cutting the roots from the games origin itself favoring politics and multicultural represantation of the real world over Lotros own basis of existence as a themed MMORPG
One step to accelerate this is by killing the legacy and flushing in the new. That's precisely what happened to Avatar looks. And to all critiques and all kinds of uproar there is still the most proved way to deal with: typcial and way to common attitude of silence and waiting until other discussions rise. Personally i am also sad for Tolkien and his legacy - it saddens me if someones legacy gets distorted for commerce or because someone wants to print their own beliefs over the work they claimed to represent; disregarding the original work. Saddens me more when i am involved just like now with Lotro as an extension of Tolkiens Legacy.
The avatar update even got rushed - one trivial short round of beta testing and full release with all it's flaws so everyone can have something to be upset about - and THEN fix the things that should have been fixed in Beta so discussions will shift to other topics leaving the rest of legacy fans, nostalgia players and true lore admirers behind - as usual.
Everyone belonging to these groups has a reason the fear the Lotro future (and not even because of lagg or outdated engine), but everyone within these groups probably already knows that the majority wont care - neither does SSG. Maybe they still do care for the money of proven cash-cows - but there wont be much risk involved since they hardly leave as long as the displeasure towards an update is small enough.
In my 10+ years here an avatar update didn't even cross my mind to have fear about. Especially since they did one in 2017 and it was fine for all nostalgia players (and people that just like the legacy looks way better!). Now the game feels ruined for some - i heard in the SSG stream the officials said something like they are trying hard to bring everyone fun. I dont believe them that's a plain lie. You can update skills, rework trait trees, change events - whatever. But the character is literally the personal reflection for some players (who enjoy this part of RPG and do care alot). This alone makes this the worst update. They lorebreaking perspective is another hit towards immersive RPG players.
And NO! A player who thought he/she settled in Middle Earth (Online) aka Lotro can not just look away or ignore it when doing a humble farm work in the shire seeing a black woman, claiming being raised in Bree-Town and with a beard that puts Gandalfs to shame; being a fully blind champion fighting every evil of Middle Earth while wearing an elegant evening dress and hitting with a pretzel in the right hand and a mug in the left; riding on a boar towards the party tree slapping other hobbits with a giant fish while having a literal hobbit as a pet occasionally switching to a kite with a snowman on it she exchanged all her Mithril for!
Some lore-breakers could be seen as fine or part of a greater purpose for individualized fun (you can run around having 100 axes or draigoch statues in your inventory and so on)... while others are so drastic that they hurt the Lord of the Rings Identity.
Since the game wanted to be about Lord of the Rings I really do see the future problem of LOTRO not deserving its own name anymore.
It surely is no longer the game many immersive players praised as most outstanding point of Lotro, female beards alone are not the final nail in the coffin for the immense amount of Lore and Immersion given as of today. But it's a statement of direction - just as the deletion of legacy avatar composition - and that's what this thread wants to be about. As of now i start to regret comitting so much to Lotro because i stayed because of the fantastic atmosphere, but the game is taking away more and more of what i loved about it; it's adapting a mainstream style and murdering it's own uniqueness.
It's still Lotro - just everyday a bit less.
Gwaihir [DE] - Specialized in Festivals, UI-Settings, Character-Management and Efficiency, scenic Screenshots, cinematic Videos, Showcase-Videos, Game-Guides, Opinions - Ultimate Grand-Master of Bullroarer's Challenge within Greenfield during Spring Festival - my favorite place in Lotro :) - Edit [Update 35.1]: It's still Lotro - just everyday a bit less.