LotRO hasn’t seen a new hobby since the addi­tion of Fish­ing many months ago. Play­ers have been ask­ing what’s next, but Tur­bine has pretty much kept a lid on the sub­ject. Every so often they’ll make a com­ment about when we could expect to see a new one (gen­er­ally “after Moria”), but that’s the extent of it.

Com­ing up with hob­bies that are simul­ta­ne­ously use­ful and fun seems like a dif­fi­cult task. It’s impor­tant that they’re sim­ple, but still com­pelling and worth­while to play­ers. It’s also impor­tant that they don’t greatly affect the bal­ance of any­thing else in the game. Fish­ing was prob­a­bly the most glar­ing omis­sion from LotRO (seem­ingly every other MMORPG under the Sun has it), but since that’s been added in since launch there’s noth­ing miss­ing that’s seems quite as obvious.

For the most part, I per­son­ally expect hob­bies to mostly have cos­metic effects. While cooked fishes can be eaten, the main goal of fish­ing (aside from being a time waster) is to catch big tro­phies and hang­ing them on your wall. I imag­ine that most future hob­bies will have a sim­i­lar approach.

Keep­ing this in mind I came up with a few hob­bies I thought would be fun addi­tions to the game that fit within Mid­dle Earth. I thought it was impor­tant that each hobby have some level of inter­ac­tion as well, sim­i­lar to how fish­ing is cur­rently set up. Sure, it’s noth­ing more than click­ing at the right time, but it’s something.

What’s dif­fi­cult is that many hob­bies could eas­ily fit within pro­fes­sions already in the game. Wood work­ing, metal work­ing and jew­elry mak­ing all encom­pass sev­eral real-world hob­bies. Com­ing up with some­thing sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent from what’s already in the game is not a sim­ple task.

Some pro­fes­sions cur­rently allow you to craft in-game hous­ing items cur­rently. I’d like to see more of that, if noth­ing else.

Any­way, here are my ideas:

Paint­ing

The trou­ble with paint­ing is that you’re inevitably stuck with pre-made designs. Given the rel­a­tive rar­ity of paint­ings in the game cur­rently, how­ever, I think this would be a good fit. Hav­ing more items to hang on your house’s wall is never a bad thing.

To keep things on track, rais­ing your paint­ing level could allow you to paint more elab­o­rate paintings.The key here is find­ing some level of inter­ac­tion from the player beyond sim­ply click­ing “paint” and wait­ing for a meter to fill up, while also allow­ing that inter­ac­tion to affect the outcome.

Per­haps paint­ing could involve mak­ing swipes across an in-game can­vas. The more accu­rate these are, the more suc­cess­ful your paint­ing. To account for this, each paint­ing could have var­i­ous forms. For exam­ple, an Aver­age Land­scape could result from decent accu­racy and an Exquis­ite Land­scape could result from per­fect accuracy.

I know some peo­ple are not big on things in MMORPGs that they come across like they’re pun­ish­ing those who aren’t quite as quick with their reflexes. I’m sure there are other ways to deter­mine a painting’s quality.

Glass­blow­ing

Glass­blow­ing could poten­tially have a few uses. Sculp­tures could be made out of glass for home use. Per­haps glass insets and baubles could be made to affect be added to recipes for other craft­ing pro­fes­sions as well. I also felt it would be inter­est­ing if this allowed play­ers to make their own vials and con­tain­ers for Scholar use.

As for inter­ac­tion, I had two ideas:

1.) Have the player blow at set inter­vals by press­ing a but­ton. The more accu­rate, the bet­ter the result.

2.) Have the player blow by press­ing a but­ton quickly, but with­out going over a set mark on a meter. The key would be stay­ing between the low and high end of the spec­trum. Going over the mark would result in a poorer result.

Per­haps a more gen­eral hobby such as “Glass­work” would be bet­ter to use here. This could also encom­pass stained glass cre­ations, for example.

Gar­den­ing

I could see gar­den­ing being a hobby that rewards those who are patient. Gath­er­ing seeds, plant­ing and tend­ing your plants and then see­ing the results of your labor could be a small thing that could inter­est quite a few people.

Obvi­ously play­ers can already farm, so the key is com­ing up with com­po­nents of gar­den­ing that don’t inter­sect with the pro­fes­sion. Offer­ing plants for hous­ing items is an obvi­ous move. I think col­or­ful flow­ers could also be used to add accents to char­ac­ters’ equip­ment. They could even be dis­trib­uted as an off­hand item for fun.

Board Games

Board games are  some­thing I think might be wel­come. LotRO has more options for gen­eral social­iz­ing than many MMORPGs. Play­ing and lis­ten­ing to music is a good exam­ple of this. I feel that board games are a nat­ural exten­sion of this idea. Allow­ing play­ers to gather in cer­tain areas (per­haps pubs or other places of inter­est) and play a few basic board games would be an inter­est­ing con­cept. There will be those who love it and those who sim­ply don’t see the point, but that’s expected.

Games like Chess or check­ers seem most obvi­ous to me. They’re sim­ple and have existed in some form for so long that it’s well within rea­son to believe peo­ple might be play­ing vari­a­tions of these games in Mid­dle Earth. I sup­pose the Risk and Man­cala style Flash games Tur­bine used for Mines of Moria could be worked in as well. There are also dozens of poten­tial card games.

I don’t think there nec­es­sar­ily has to be an spe­cific reward here. A sim­ple menu addi­tion keep­ing track of wins and losses would be suf­fi­cient. Per­haps on spe­cial ocass­sions, there can be a prize for the per­son who won the most games on a set sched­ule, however.

Hunt­ing

Hunt­ing seems like a rel­a­tively easy inclu­sion. There are already ran­dom ani­mals run­ning around Mid­dle Earth that exist solely as mov­ing scenery. Allow­ing play­ers to hunt these ani­mals for meat and a new set of tro­phies could be fun.

In addi­tion to the typ­i­cal ani­mals out there, I could see a group of rare ones let loose through­out Mid­dle Earth as well. I think this could help enhance the “hunt­ing” aspect of the game, as opposed to just hav­ing play­ers kill ran­dom deer and foxes they come across.

Per­haps this could be com­bined with trap place­ment as well. Say you’re after rab­bit meat and you’re told Ered Luin has a breed you’re inter­ested in gath­er­ing. Set up a trap, set up the bait and let it go. This could pre­vent play­ers from sim­ply run­ning around and range attack­ing every­thing to death.

I’m no game designer, so I’m sure there are many rea­sons why my ideas wouldn’t work out as well. Other ran­dom ones such as bird watch­ing and bug catch­ing crossed my mind, but they seem dif­fi­cult to work out in an inter­est­ing way. Does any­one have some­thing they’d like to see in the game?

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