Filling the Gaps: following in the footsteps of the Wildwood and the Angle

[Phantion]

Its funny you mention Guild Wars 2 because Guild Wars 2 players have largely decided that the skiffs are useless, and not a very good feature.

Do you have a statistic for that? I seem to recall logging on GW2 a few weeks ago to find whole swarms of players riding their skiffs out to fight a world-boss in the ocean; it was quite the fleet!

LOTRO is an MMO, not a life simulator like The Sims. There's plenty of things that people can do in universe that we can't do in-game because that isn't the focus of an MMO. You also can't roleplay as a Gondorian fisherman.roleplay explicitly requires the game to react to your actions. At no point will NPCs in the game consider you a fisherman by trade, you can't open up your own stall to sell fish, etc.

Well, folks who play festivals, who are really into housing, hanging out in Bree listening to concerts, etc. (*Landroval's where it's at, apparently), would probably greatly disagree with you there. There are plenty of folks of different strides who play LOTRO; it's not all about the endgame and the raiding (*which frankly, after beating the boss once, gets pretty boring - at least to me).

And as an avid roleplayer, I can tell you I don't need "the game to react to my actions." Other roleplayers do. The NPC's give me "prompts" I can use or discard as I please. Not that I roleplay any fisherman; that was just a hypothetical. Oh- and you could make fish decorations and sell them on the AH- so there's that.

And there's a huge difference between fishing, and boats. Adding in player usable boats requires a lot of through and development into thinking how it will interact with past content like all the past rivers and lakes etc. that something like fishing doesn't. Its a different situation entirely.

Still worth checking out. The only thorny parts I can think of are those involving certain death-walls (*Lothlorien - S. Mirkwood) but, other than that, it should be smooth sailing. It would be great to actually boat across Forochel rather than riding the whole way around it. "Everswim" will become more pleasant to explore. Obviously, it makes sense to have a kill-wall in a place like Sarn Gebir where Tolkien's narrative stipulates it's time to "get out of the boat and carry it" to the next safe spot, as with Rauros. Boats will make it easier to head from Buckland down to Sarn Ford in Cardolan. Entwash will be another river fun to navigate waterfall to waterfall. Same with the coast of Belfalas.

I'd honestly have a blast boating down the Anduin and navigating around the tougher spots. That's another thing some players are really into: exploring, hence this whole thread about "filling the gaps."

If the focus of a Tolkien MMO was literally just, "level to cap, work hard with teams to earn the BIS gear, then rinse and repeat the next update," the game would've died a long time ago IMHO. I'm in it for the landscape and the story. I like raiding for the story, doing instances for the story, for the experience. But endlessly trying to get the BIS gear that'll get replaced in the next level cap? I'd rather join Sisyphus behind his boulder and can't think of anything more silly - and I'll do as I please with my time tyvm

The LOTRO devs were smart to make it not just an MMO - but an immersive landscape / story experience, along with the other perks and options. They did a lot of remarkable things with Tolkien's world. SWTOR does a great job at immersion too- giving you your own ship, strongholds, various events, wandering into various cantinas on exotic worlds, etc. I also play that. I need my games to be games, not extra jobs where I'm paying to work hehehe

Cheers!