Technical Deaths in LotRO

During my first days, weeks, even months of playing Lord of the Rings Online, I died several times.  You could say that Death and I became “besties” and well, although it was usually some sort of mob that killed me, I blamed the deaths on a MMO player’s worst nightmare – lag.

If you’re new to the MMO world, then you might not understand lag.  So briefly, lag is when there is a delay with gameplay.  Lag can be caused by sluggish servers or bad connections and can in severe cases freeze you in one spot, eventually disconnecting you from the server. In my case, lag was caused by bad connection to do with my modem and phone company.  Something I didn’t find out until much later.

So why do I say lag caused my deaths?  Easy, while I was waiting for my connection to disconnect so I could reconnect again, I would die by some mob if they happened to see me or if I was in the middle of battle.  In fact during the early days of playing, I think the longest I played for without being disconnected was about an hour, on a good day, and five minutes if not.  It was frustrating and if it was not for my love of the LotR and the game, I might have given up.

However, I soon learned that I could not only die in LotRO, I could become an accomplice in the deaths of others.  Due to my connection issues, friends would fellow with me and play the role of protector should I lag.  One friend had a Lore Master who fellowed with me in the role of protector and we became two LM’s running around the Lonelands, having a great time until we thought we could kill some boars.

Well not that hard a task really and we were going great, until Anbryth’s bear went after one boar and my wildpaw bear, Nayeli, went after a different one.  Poor Anbryth, try as he might, just couldn’t save his bear from dying and as I saw my bear was still ok, I thought I could turn and help keep Anbryth alive for a minute.

Great thought and it is the thought that counts – right?  As I turned, I lagged.  Yep, gotta love those times when you just want to kill something and the computer freezes you so you can’t cast any spells or run away.  By the time I logged out and back, both our bears were dead, Anbryth was dead and I got revived in that safe zone within the circle of stones.  It was the first time Anbryth had died in his 21 levels so I have to feel a bit bad about that.  But hey, it was nice to die with a friend for a change.

Another friend I took their death was Koshie.  He was a level 21 Hunter who helped me with spiders around Ost Guruth.  Lag got me, but I escaped while Koshie did his job to protect me until the connection disconnected.  Unfortunately the spider got Koshie and  I came back to find myself all alone and looking for him, unaware he was quite safe up in the rez circle of stones, away from the spiders.

I think I should just set up a permanent camp at those rez circles.  I am there often enough to warrant a claim of squatter’s rights.  I have heard a couple of times that a LM’s job is to die and I kinda think that the people who said that were joking.  But well if they weren’t, then I play a LM exceptionally well.  The thing is though, I think as a LM I should be healing my friends, not getting them killed.

The last day of my first month playing, saw me log into the game, lag and die all within the first 10 minutes.  So although I have died at he paws of wolves and bears a lot during the early months of game play, I blame lag as the cause of death.  

If you have a constant lag issue, please check your modem connections and persevere, the game is well worth it and the friends you meet and kill are too. 🙂