How To Grind Away The Shiny And New

Putting aside technical issues, I would have to say the one thing that is annoying me about Lord of the Rings Online so far is that the game out right encourages grinding. Unabashed, unashamed grinding. Want to get a neat title? Cool, go kill 40 orcs. Want to get a new trait that you'll need to be an effective player? Even better, go kill 70 more orcs. Why? Because we're bored.

That same mentality pervades the game, through all levels. Every zone has countless grinds. Many of them you won't need immediately, but you will later on in the game so if you don't complete them now, you'll look like the jerk level 60 running around taking all the lowbie kills just to get your trait.

It even runs into crafting, where you need to craft and craft again to achieve some level of success at your profession. Want to make the next tier of items? Fantastic, go make 25 capes. Want to master that tier so that you can start making critical items and maybe make some money in the process? Super, make 60 more daggers, then make 25 more with your critical item in your bag and you might just get that special purple dagger. Oh, and I hear you want to make your way up the tiers of your crafting guild so you can get some good recipes? That's awesome, just be sure to make as many of these useless pattern turn ins as you can, but you can only make one of each per day. Good luck with that and see you in a month!

Then once you get to raid level, you're grinding the raids to get your gear! Some grinding is ok. It's part of the medium that we're all accustomed to and we even expect/appreciate a certain level of it, but when it's a core design decision it's bothersome. It seems that at just about every turn, if Turbine had to figure out how to get from point a to point b or how to advance the characters, they just assumed a grind fest would be acceptable.

Maybe it's that I'm enjoying the PvE aspects of LotRO, or that the crafting has not yet felt like it's intruding on my other activities, or possibly both, but despite this glaringly odd design decision I'm still liking LotRO. It's also possible that because those are the two aspects of an MMO (PvE and Crafting) that I missed most while playing Warhammer Online I'm overcompensating via the abundance of both in LotRO. Whatever the case, I'm worried that I will get annoyed with it soon. I'm already annoyed at the idea of it, and I'm guessing that the "shiny and new" feeling of Middle Earth will wear off at some point and I'll have to decide whether the grind is worth it or not.