Armourgate

Those of you who keep up with the news around The Lord of the Rings Online know that they are now selling game armor in the store after previously stating that such gear (with stats, as opposed to strictly cosmetic gear) would not be sold. For some strange reason this has got my feathers all a’ruffled.I’m not sure why this bugs so much, but I can’t help but feel the orcs surrounding the Shire.There has been a pretty strong response from the community against the armour so maybe Turbine will respond in kind by removing it, unless they’ve gone Saruman and will only listen to the jangling of Sauron’s (Warner Bros) chains.

Though I guess full-on Saruman would be going against WB and the fans…Anyways, they’ve gone back on their word before (saying they wouldn’t go F2P) so this isn’t terribly surprising, it just hits closer to home for some reason.

So I try to keep this blog strictly about the podcast and related notes, but I felt that this was a more appropriate venue to rant a little bit, rather than further clogging up CSTM’s comment section. Here’s something I posted there:

Something smells fishy, and I don’t see Gollum no place.

My issue is that they went back on their original policy to have gear with stats in the store, starting with stat tombs and PvMP stuff (forgivable) and now putting non-cosmetic armour in there. They say they are “responding to customer needs”, but they’re really just taking advantage of players who are too introverted (or just don’t how) to get gear from crafters or to make it themselves. And how many players were “asking for” gear in the store, I wonder? The way they describe it it could have been one person and that would have proved justification enough.

On a Massively.com article they questioned Adam Mersky about this and closed with a question about high-level gear being in the store: “Mersky says Turbine has ‘no intention at this time of selling any raid gear in the store.’”

“At this time”. Laughable, man!

Like the store itself, this does not directly effect my enjoyment of LotRO as a game but it does effect my view of Turbine (or is it WB?) as a company and that indirectly effects how I see LotRO. It doesn’t help having ads in my face every time I log in either.

So who knows what will come? Will I keep playing LotRO? You bet, as long as I can keep roving my digital Middle-earth I’ll be there. Will this effect Beneath Your Feet? No. Is it irritating, against the spirit of its source material and its author, asinine, unscrupulous, superfluous, and all other kinds of pejorative, multi-syllabic adjectives? Yes.

So this will hopefully be the first and last opinion column, but I’d love to hear from you lot. What say you about this Orc-mischief?