Stuck

A few posts back I complained about hitting a little wall in Lord of the Rings Online. I don't feel a burning desire to play as much as possible like I had with another MMO that won't be named for fear I'll hear its siren song again. I had a blast playing when my hobbit hunter was lower level, but I'm stuck in a funk now that I'm in the mid-20s. I read about this kind of thing happening, but I hoped it wouldn't hit me until I was in my 40s. What to do?

Time to roll an alt and give my main a short break. I played a minstrel up to level 7 and that was fun. So either I will go back to playing that character or roll a new loremaster. That is assuming this patch ever finishes downloading. The Book 11 update was released today. See here. While the patch notes list some interesting things such as player housing, I don't see anything that will benefit me now. Hohum.

P.S. My work schedule is leveling out, which means more time for play and more time for blogging. Woot.

One Dwarf, One Elf, and One Woman

The other evening the kids helped me create three new characters in Lord of the Rings Online. If you're a parent and a gamer, you understand how there are things you can do when the kids are awake and things you can't do. For example, playing healer on a difficult dungeon run is out. Designing alt characters or crafting items or posting auctions is possible. My son leans towards characters with brightly colored mohawks and odd facial tattoos (uh oh) but my daughter is a good helper. At six she has a knack for designing a good-looking toon.

We created a dwarf champion, an elf loremaster, and a human minstrel. The original plan was to make a dwarf minstrel and a human captain, but I felt the dwarf racial abilities were more suited for champion then minstrel. I played the dwarf champion through the first few levels in the newb zone. I shouldn't rush to make a decision after playing a class for 3 levels, but the champion's game play didn't interest me. The human minstrel, however, has me hook, line, and sinker.

The one problem with my human minstrel is that the character is a female. My daughter wanted me to create a woman character, and what dad can say no to their little girl... so Elisawyn was born. This wouldn't be a problem except for two reasons: 1) this is an MMO and 2) I may join a light RP kinship.

I tried roleplaying a female character in D&D for a few sessions. Difficult and a bit weird. Pretending to be a bard in Middle Earth will be hard enough. My minstrel is only level 6, so rerolling her as a male wouldn't be an issue. On the other hand I've known guys in WOW that played female toons and it wasn't much of an issue. Plus roleplaying online is different than roleplaying while sitting across the table. What do you think?