Lord of The Rings Online: An Unusual Audience

I play Turbine's Lord of The Rings Online. I have for over 18 months now, and I have been very impressed with it. It is a game with a rich lore base; specifically, the story that is the father of all modern fantasy. It is a game that looks pretty and runs well, and is built on fairly solid mechanics. It is a game I have reached the "end" of, even after the expansion pack. And I still play it. I still play it to the point where I have purchased the game's lifetime subscription plan (at the featherlight cost of $200), and intend to play it for the foreseeable future. Why, I hear you ask? If there's not much challenge left in the game, why bother?


For me, the answer is in the community. LoTRO is a strange game, not for its design or its gameplay offerings, but for the players that inhabit it. Unlike any of the MMOs I have played in the past, this one offers something that the developers didn't necessarily intend - an enjoyable human experience. The best intentions of a game designer can lead to some serious replayability in any game, but when using the aging model set forth by Everquest and refined by World of Warcraft, it seems unlikely that a current generation MMO is going to grip a given player for longer than the average seven months. What, then, is supposed to keep your subscriber base happy? Other players.


I can admit to being a roleplayer. I sometimes toy with the idea of writing fiction (which is substantially harder than writing about a character in a game), and I jump at the opportunity to create a story within the world of a game. This is decidedly a minority sentiment in online games, but what some call a minority, others call a niche. Perhaps to Turbine, they recognized a niche and sought to make use of it. LoTRO is based upon lore from another generation - my mother read Tolkien's works, and so did her parents. Players from both of those generations are signing up to experience virtual Middle-Earth, and many of them share my interest in roleplaying. The result? The first MMO I've experienced in which the average age of a player is likely to be greater than 25. Older players mean more maturity (for the most part), and the community is a rich one as a result. I've written works with these people that I would enjoy to someday adapt to a world of my own. The interactions have proven solid enough for me to want that.


Sure, there's still a fair share of hardcore gamer-types, griefers, and other assorted stereotypes that comprise every online game. But beyond that is a group that strikes me. It was worth paying $200 to remain a part of, even before my time playing made that subscription plan a wise financial decision. Is Turbine on to something? Is the basis for a game the primary element that attracts a demographic?