LOTRO Dash Commentary
Aug. 15th, 2020 12:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madimpossibledreamerSinging the praises of one specific GM who shut this down today, Proscuitto, but if asked whether I recommend Lord of the Rings Online, I'd give a very tentative yes. I'm going to get a little rambly about this because I've generally been holding all this in, so this isn't perfectly written or anything. Except if you care about, say, Black Lives Matter, or trans rights, or pretty much are anything other than ultra conservative, turn off World Chat and never visit the forums unless you got there from a specific search result about a specific quest. Today was an exception, but it is actively making me less likely to log in, and annoyed at the "we want you to group", since, really? You want me to group with people who think people dying is something to joke about? (In general I tend to solo but I like having a busy world that says I'm not actually playing a solo game, but I thought the technical difficulties that briefly turned off world chat were actually a Quality of Life improvement.) The Terms of Service do ban this, and it might just be that there's not enough GMs to moderate to the level needed, and maybe World of Warcraft has gotten this bad, too, since I stopped playing (a little while after Cataclysm? I think? Pandas and werewolves were definitely not a thing when I stopped). But basically it feels like Barrens chat (when I played) all the time and that is...less than welcoming. I play games as a refuge, and especially after the last American election it felt like the only way to escape was to relegate World Chat to a tab I never read and even then I don't feel as inclined to play.
City of Heroes (it's legal to emulate now, assuming you bought the original game, which I have) feels like a much more welcoming place in contrast. If you ask questions, you don't get the equivalent of "you're a noob or troll wasting our time" or straight-up being ignored (I stopped asking questions in lotro years ago, and usually questions only don't get answered on the CoH server I'm on either because there is no one on or because the question got lost in the scrolling chatbox). But they have more active moderators that quickly shut down, for instance, someone who was making light of covid.
In summary, you're not required to tolerate intolerance, because that's not how you get to the Star Trek better world, and even one single GM stepping in makes a huge difference when it's been pretty rare before. And the LOTRO game itself is cool, but make an informed decision when you're deciding to play (it's also free, which is a plus, but you might need to do some badge-hunting/paying of real money to unlock content-though I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that they're having a until-end-of-August unlock for content which you can find by searching Free Questing Coupon, which is genuinely awesome of them [basically it's a limited time For Those of You Stuck at Home We'll Let You Play Some Games]). And also if you ever feel not-included by a game you love, you're not alone. (I looked it up and the only results I found were basically: other games are worse, if you've been badly treated you deserve it because you were probably a troll, etc.) Keep being your beautiful selves.
City of Heroes (it's legal to emulate now, assuming you bought the original game, which I have) feels like a much more welcoming place in contrast. If you ask questions, you don't get the equivalent of "you're a noob or troll wasting our time" or straight-up being ignored (I stopped asking questions in lotro years ago, and usually questions only don't get answered on the CoH server I'm on either because there is no one on or because the question got lost in the scrolling chatbox). But they have more active moderators that quickly shut down, for instance, someone who was making light of covid.
In summary, you're not required to tolerate intolerance, because that's not how you get to the Star Trek better world, and even one single GM stepping in makes a huge difference when it's been pretty rare before. And the LOTRO game itself is cool, but make an informed decision when you're deciding to play (it's also free, which is a plus, but you might need to do some badge-hunting/paying of real money to unlock content-though I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that they're having a until-end-of-August unlock for content which you can find by searching Free Questing Coupon, which is genuinely awesome of them [basically it's a limited time For Those of You Stuck at Home We'll Let You Play Some Games]). And also if you ever feel not-included by a game you love, you're not alone. (I looked it up and the only results I found were basically: other games are worse, if you've been badly treated you deserve it because you were probably a troll, etc.) Keep being your beautiful selves.
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Date: 2020-09-25 03:59 am (UTC)