The quest tracker in Lord of the Rings Online has a limit of 40. Forty? Really?
Yes, old news to every other gamer on the intrawebs. I'm showing up way late for this party, but LotRO is what I'm playing so LotRO is what I'm blogging.
When it comes to the number of
quests available to the player at once, RPGs range from one quest to many quests. Diablo 2 was linear. You had one quest followed by another and another and another (except for a couple minor side quests). World of Warcraft's quest log started at 20 and expanded to 25 in the Burning Crusade. LotRO ups the ante to 40. What's next?
The advantage of one quest at a time is that your character
IS at the center of a world-changing story. No collecting bits of woodland creatures to make Farmer Bob's stew. But I find those "big story" games too restrictive. I felt boxed in when I played Titan Quest. Like I was being led around. I want to explore a world and select from many available quests. I want to make the choices for my character.
At the other end of the spectrum are games with almost too many quests. I'm overwhelmed by the number of quests Pluck has collected in the Shire in such a short time. A 40 quest limit strikes me as exteme. I hit the quest limit in WOW a few times, but only because I hadn't cleared out the old gray stuff. How am I going to manage 40 active quests? I'll have to hold planning sessions before I play LotRO.
Then it hit me... I don't need to fill my quest log. What I have is more freedom. I can take on as many or as few quests as I feel comfortable. Tonight I'm going to try something new. Instead of grabbing every quest possible, I will take two to four at a time and focus on completing them. Not very efficient, but a self-imposed slower pace is a good thing. I don't want to fall in to my
old bad habits again.
The title of the post? I have a soft spot for
LOLCATS. A guilty pleasure. Avril doesn't understand it. I'm a loser, baby.
