I'm Very Worried About Something....

by Light of Arnor



Editor's
Note: While I'm tempted to leave out a disclaimer and see just
how many people Light of Arnor's clever writing will trip up, in the
end I decided it's probably best to state things up front--this is a
bit of satire. Light of Arnor first posted it on the href="http://forums.lotro.turbine.com/showthread.php?t=44810">Official
LOTRO Forums, and I was so tickled by it that I asked his
permission to share it here. Enjoy! 
style="font-style: italic;">

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After looking at the lack of
information that's been released for Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows
of Angmar (LOTRO), and after looking at the way Turbine gave everyone
exactly what they said they were going to give in Dungeons &
Dragons Online (DDO), I'm very worried about some things. I'd like to
list them.



1. I'm very worried that players consistently fail to make the
distinction between one game and another. A lemur is a mammal, and I am
a mammal, therefore I will essentially be a lemur. Man, I'm scared
about this. Truly petrified. Can you feel the fear?

href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album02/Ringtail_Lemur.jpg"> alt="Lemur"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album02/Ringtail_Lemur.thumb.jpg"
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 101px; height: 150px;" align="left"
hspace="5" vspace="5">

2. I'm very worried about the way World of Warcraft (WoW) has such
cartoony graphics, and how LOTRO is, well, another MMOG...so by golly
there's just too high a possibility for my comfort zone that LOTRO
might have cartoony graphics. I'm very worried about this...so worried
that I need to post it myself. The other 20 times people posted it in
the last 2 weeks has done absolutely nothing to resolve my fears in the
slightest. Afterall, they are, well, them....and I'm, well, me. It's
all about me being more
comfortable about...um...oh, yeah, this game we hardly know anything
about (which, by the way, has just escalated my fear to Threat Level
Orange by simply thinking further on it). WoW is, afterall, the game.
I'm taking a Prozac now.



3. I'm very worried about the ability to roleplay in LOTRO. You see, I
just know the devs aren't
going to invest 10's of millions to hire rigid CSR reps that
incessantly hover over new players to slap the lore 2x4 upside their
head when they create characters named HumpFrodough, or Geemleesux.
Therefore, the burden of roleplaying responsibility will, suddenly,
despite all attempts to avert it, fall upon me and the friends I play
with. No instant disintegration of l33t spe4k players. No instant
gratification of punitive retribution towards those that I decide are
inadequately roleplaying in my space. Nope, and I'm worried about this.
2 Trazadone and some Valium for extra relief!



4. I'm very worried about this "no evil races" policy. I've played
MMOGs. I know MMOGs. My singular perception, taken over a monumental
MMOG gaming experience of a whopping 5 years, has qualified me to
attain peak experiential evidence that certifies that any MMOG without
player competition is irrefutably flawed, doomed to fail, and
ultimately destined to create a ruinous cheap src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album02/prozac.thumb.jpg"
style="width: 98px; height: 150px;" align="right" hspace="5" vspace="5">
imitation of the world of Tolkien...a world I have unilaterally decided
must consist of my own personal beliefs in game design and player
interaction. It's very worrisome. I might have to take a Xanax on this
one...hourly.



5. I'm very worried about my ability to have, well, the important
things. Will my sideburns be over 4 inches? Will I have the ability to
look 80 when I wish? Will I have the option to create a morbidly obese
onyx-skinned elf who's 5-foot-long hair flawlessly sways in the wind as
I run smoothly through the Balrog-infested woods of Lorien? I'm worried
about how perfectly unique I'm going to look. I'm entitled to that, ya
know. I pay good, hard money to be able to make whatever I want, and I
should have the ability to look unlike anything else in Middle-earth.
Nothing's helping. I'm calling my Psychiatrist (thank god for speed
dial).



6. I'm very worried this world isn't going to be big enough. Shaving
down Eriador from 10 hours corner to corner to 5 hours corner to corner
is a blatant violation of the lore. Hundreds of miles of barren
landscape are what the books were all about. I read chapters 4-360 in
RotK, where Tolkien systematically described, in detail, down to genus
and species, every single plant and href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album02/Everclear.jpg"> alt="Everclear"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album02/Everclear.thumb.jpg"
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 150px; height: 99px;" align="left"
hspace="5" vspace="5">animal in a 10,000 square league grid. If I
can't see every single one of these miraculous adventure-propagating
visual stimuli then, well, I'm gonna get style="font-style: italic;">really worried! I don't care that,
once all the expansions are released, it would likely take an entire
day of my real life to cross from Eriador to the edges of Mordor...from
the southwestern tip of Rohan, to the Lonely Mountain. That's just not
enough and I'm beginning to perspire....right here....at my
computer...for all of you to see. Help! (Switching to Everclear
now...the Psychiatrist was enjoying WoW and won't call me back.)



7. I'm getting extremely worried about the end-game. What are you going
to offer me to keep me fresh and excited like a teenager on their first
date? I'm gonna quit my job, hole up in my mother's basement with a
month's supply of pizza and Jolt, and spend 3 1/2 weeks in a
mind-numbing (is it the Everclear or the lack of sleep?) dash to the
finish of what developers spent 3 years designing. What then? I don't
care if 99.9999% of the rest of the server will still be romping around
the Shire in some twisted attempt to actually enjoy the game's design.
When I'm toe-to-toe with the Balrog I'll expect you to have several
hundred other quests and incentives. Whatcha gonna have for me then,
eh? Lord above, I'm really, really worried
about this one! 5 weeks to cap in DAoC, 4 weeks to master 2 professions
in Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), and I burned through DDO beta in alt="Puffer Fish"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album02/Puffer_Fish.thumb.jpg"
style="width: 150px; height: 114px;" align="right" hspace="5"
vspace="5"> 10 days. Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, Batman! What are
they going to do for the end-game? I think I'm going to scream. It's
just too much to worry about. Time for 100 mg Thorazine IV with a
pufferfish chaser. Perhaps the chef didn't dilute the pufferfish toxin
out adequately....a sedative mixed with rapid-onset paralysis is my
only recourse here. The anxiety is just too much.



8. And finally...I'm rigid with fear about these forums. Nobody cares
about me, the newcomer. I pop topics repeatedly all over the different
forums. When's beta? Nobody cares to give me a straight answer. I'm
thinking about buying this game (well, at least this Saturday,
stuperous on Schlitz Malt Licka', I'm thinking about buying it). So,
why can't I get a straight answer on beta? Reading's for wimps. Give me
an answer...I'm the only one I've seen asking this, so I must be the
only one who actually cares. Everyone here seems to be hung up on this
lore thing. It's just a game. Tolkien wrote some pretty good movies, (I
saw the second one and those elves at Hummer's Deep rocked) but what's
with all this "that didn't happen in the books" stuff? Who cares? It's
just a game. Something to keep me busy for a few months. You didn't
think I drank this much and took all of these sedatives for fun did you?



Heck, I'm just plain worried.

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