No, My MMO Is the Best!

I enjoyed a flawless install last night and logged in with only a minor hiccup. Turbine shut down all its servers to install a hot fix late in the afternoon. But the game was only down for less than an hour and I got to play nearly the entire evening.

Lukenbach is still only level 47. As such, I stuck to the Angumar zone. Which wasn’t as bad as it sounds, as my guild reported throughout the evening the opening MoM zone completely clogged with rapid hordes of level 50 players, all competing for the same mobs. I’ve experienced that before in WoW, particularly with Burning Crusade and patch 2.4. It’s negative fun to fight with five other players for a spawning goblin, so I’ll continue chipping away at level 50 before I venture forth in the new content.

With so many returning kin in chat, I read a multitude of conversations where chirping crickets formally nested. Unfortunately, a good chunk of the talk revolved around WoW bashing. Now, I’m not WoW’s biggest fan, as evidenced by the fact that I don’t play it anymore. But my opinion of WoW isn’t a zero sum game. I can play another competing MMO without loathing WoW. It’s true that Lord of the Rings Online does some things better than World of Warcraft. The reverse is also obviously true. Who plays what has more to do with personal preference than empirical merits of either game. My fondness for LotRO stems largely from the aesthetic: plain and simple, I think it looks and plays better than WoW. Does that make WoW the devil? Of course not. Plenty of people have tried a competing MMO like LotRO and gone straight back to playing WoW. They obviously think the latter looks and plays better. Who’s right?

Let’s all gather in a circle, hold hands, and agree that everyone is.

PS: WoW is the suxxors.