Just wanted to give some love to Lord of the Rings Online! I was extremely surprised picking up this game for the first time recently.
Unfortunately I started playing a couple of days before the WoW Forever beta, but I think LotRO will become a permanent addition to my MMO repertoire between WoW sessions.
My favorite LotRO experience was the open beta. Characters were capped at a very low level but most of the world was open to explore. So as a plucky hobbit thief, I snuck around some preposterously dangerous areas. In that game, when there are powerful enemies present, it has an Eye of Sauron effect on the screen, like when Frodo puts on the ring. So I’m sneaking around/running for my life in these dark, deadly areas, all while being oppressively harrassed by THE EYE at the edges of the screen and filling the ambience. So visceral I remember it 20 years later.
That sounds like such a cool experience! I’m really not surprised you still remember that 20 years later!
I’ve always noticed this with MMOs in particular, that the most memorable moments are when we weren’t following an objective, or just doing another raid, they tend to be us players just goofing off and having fun with the world the devs built.
My most memorable WoW memory was when I participated in my guilds “Naked Fun Run”, which was a no gear, level 1 fun run from north Kalimdor all the way to the southern point. Seems like while we were off in Azeroth goofing around, plenty were doing the same in Middle Earth :)
Haha definitely. I ran a game with my WoW guild called Find Soybean (my character). I posted screenshots of all my characters scattered across Azeroth and the guild had to track me down and be the first to do an emote to me. So yeah, shenanigans are always the most memorable :D