I sup­pose every MMORPG fan likes to claim their game of choice has the best play­ers. I often come across posts about “kid­dies” in this MMORPG or poorly main­tained forums for that MMORPG. I don’t heav­ily fol­low such things, even with LotRO, which prob­a­bly saves my sanity.

I have no real inter­est in spe­cific exam­ples of how well LotRO stacks up to the com­pe­ti­tion directly in this regard.  I’m sure each and every online game has groups of peo­ple who are fun to play with and groups that just cause grief.  Per­haps there are games out there with com­mu­ni­ties some would con­sider just as good or bet­ter. What I do know is that I feel that the over­all com­mu­nity for this game should be held in high esteem. Most of the time if I read some­thing pos­i­tive about the game on a third party site it’s a ref­er­ence to the com­mu­nity. It’s deserving.

I don’t know the exact rea­sons for this and I don’t know how any­one could. Maybe it has to do with the sub­ject mat­ter or the way Tur­bine mar­kets the title. Maybe it has to do with the quest setup or the pre­sen­ta­tion. I can’t argue that LotRO attracts an older (and there­fore sup­pos­edly more mature) fan base largely because Tur­bine offers no infor­ma­tion on that either way. Hon­estly, given some of the younger peo­ple I know I’ve played with, I don’t know that age nec­es­sar­ily mat­ters in the first place. It’s not a mat­ter of age as much as it’s a mat­ter of attitude.

If you need help with a quest or have a ques­tion, you’ll almost always get an answer (of course, it depends on the time of day and whether any­one is on that is famil­iar with it). Peo­ple rarely goof around in chat chan­nels that aren’t related to what they need (which nor­mally wouldn’t bother me, but I have seen those sit­u­a­tions where groups of peo­ple start polic­ing the chat because of it). I see very few com­plaints about kill steal­ing or ninja loot­ing and, hon­estly, who knows how many of those were sheer acci­dents any­way. While not every­one I’ve grouped up with for a quest has been super talk­a­tive, I have never once come across some­one who I’d label a prob­lem. In fact, a major­ity of the time the peo­ple are friendly, help­ful and will­ing to play again another time.

Most notably, peo­ple in the game tend to be extremely patient. I’ve been in sev­eral groups where a player or two is a bit far­ther away than we all thought or needed to fin­ish a cou­ple of things out­side of the game first. Never once has this caused an issue, although I admit it’s got­ten close to try­ing my own patience. The friend­li­ness in these sit­u­a­tions comes across very well and I think it just makes you want to play more. On the flip­side, I have seen some more “hard­core” play­ers and Kin­ships for those of you into those things.

I think in some ways this is why LotRO is gen­er­ally cited as “casual” friendly. It’s not that the game is sim­ple (although it is acces­si­ble), it’s that there is a large amount of other play­ers under­stand that other peo­ple have things hap­pen­ing around them in their own lives and are accept­ing of it. There is def­i­nitely a strong layer of “this game is not the most impor­tant thing to me” and I think that’s very pos­i­tive. As some­one who is more of a casual player (despite how often I write about this game haha), who often has to leave sud­denly (although I always try to stick out the quest we’re cur­rently doing) or can’t play for days at a time this is a very big deal.

LotRO is also the first game in which I’ve felt like join­ing a Kin­ship (or Guild) was actu­ally a social func­tion as well as way to help char­ac­ter pro­gres­sion. I’m rather quiet in-game, but I’ve never felt out of place or unwel­come. Most of the time I seem to wind up in util­i­tar­ian groups that are hell­bent on com­par­ing equip­ment, max­ing a char­ac­ter and fig­ur­ing out when the next raid is. A lot of MMORPGs can feel more like a sta­tis­tics class than a game. I don’t think that’s the case here, although there are cer­tainly peo­ple who get into that.

While I spend lit­tle time on the forums, I’ve rarely come across some­one who I would con­sider prob­lem­atic. There’s lit­tle in the way of trolling and any­thing I’ve won­dered has always been answered, no mat­ter how inane it might have been. The forum has its stereo­typ­i­cal users, but what forum doesn’t?

This extends to the Lore­book, which offers a huge amount of player updated guides and infor­ma­tion. The over­all ded­i­ca­tion to it is pretty remark­able. Even in the short time that myLotRO has been around, I’ve found some great posts by quite a few very friendly peo­ple. The use of myLotRO itself is incred­i­bly novel and gives quite a few addi­tional rea­sons to make friends and keep up on what they’re up doing in the game and in their own lives.

There are always bone­heads out there, though. There was a small rush of them when the expan­sion hit, but it quickly faded away. They remain rather rare. Gold spam­mers seem to have mostly given up as well, prob­a­bly largely due to the community’s instan­ta­neous report­ing of them. Insanely annoy­ing play­ers seem to be almost instantly put on ignore by every­one and quickly dis­ap­pear, appar­ently both­ered by the fact that they’re not get­ting much of a rouse out of anyone.

I don’t think there’s a way to write this post with­out seem­ing unfair. I’m sure every game, even those peo­ple like to com­plain about reg­u­larly, has its won­der­ful peo­ple and won­der­ful groups. All I know is that is that LotRO has been espe­cially strong in this regard for me and I’m hop­ing as though it will stay that way until it inevitably dies off.

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