LOTRO: Re-downloading.

I made the fairly sensible choice to give up gaming for my final year of university so that I could focus on my studies. Here I am now re-downloading the MMO I once played since my dissertation is in and everything seems fairly straightforward from this point on.

As I have previously mentioned I play the MMO called Lord of the Rings Online. I hadn't picked up any other MMO type games like Runescape or World of Warcraft but LOTRO seemed totally appealing to me. As a lifelong Tolkien fan I appreciated the idea of gaming and taking part in the story. I'd also recently started watching The Guild, a webseries freely available on Youtube about the lives of a guild of gamers. Though the show tends to be watched by pre-existing gamers, I found it as a non gamer and instantly wanted to find something. As soon as two of my friends from university mentioned LOTRO I was on board. Pictured above you'll see my character. I'm currently a level 63 Elf Hunter on my main account. I also have a Loremaster and a Warrior as my alts, but personally I prefer hunter. I like long ranged attacks way better.

Why do I love LOTRO so much?

I think the reason I found LOTRO so appealing is that it wasn't just a game. It gave me a simulation of places I'd read in a book. This allowed me to feel closer to them. Very soon I was running through The Shire, hunting trolls in the Trollshaws, speaking with Fellowship members, drinking a pint in the Prancing Pony. Anyone who appreciates the films should at least try out the game. There are often really social people to play along with and it's a lot of fun. The download takes forever but it will be totally worth it. I'm looking forward to winding down from my dissertation by killing some orcs. Therapeutic, much?

What I find interesting about gaming is that there is such an interesting response to female gamers. Female gamers either seem overly fetishised or tokenistic. The typically desirable image of the female gamer seems to be the fantasy of male gamers wanting a girl with similar interests. I can assure you, fellas, that when I'm sat gaming in an old band shirt, pyjama bottoms and a mass of tangled hair tied up I'm hardly an image of desire and I'm sure that goes for a lot of female gamers out there. In fact there were times that people didn't believe that I was female because of the high percentage of male gamers.

I'm really looking forward to experiencing the Rohan expansion. If you don't hear from me over the next week, I am probably beast slaying. Toodles.