I would come home from work and play this for hours every day, do raids on the weekends, for years, started in 2011 and finally quit in 2021. Loved the game and everything about it, it was a beautiful world which rewarded hard work.
Then standing stone games took over.
This may be my own personal animosity about these type of companies/people so maybe a little explanation; I was 14 mowing lawns raking leaves and shoveling snow around our neighborhood for money and behind one of my customers houses was a 69 dodge dart. It was beautiful, flat tires, mice living in it and rust like a colony of termites attacking from the ground up. I worked for that old lady for a year to get that car, and then I had to get tires, battery, brakes, some weird porcelain thing on the firewall as well as a bunch of other things just to get it going, took another six months for all of that. I was so proud when 16 year old me was able to drive my own car to school, but then the very next day some kid with rich parents came to school with a brand new 1985 mustang who did nothing to deserve it but be placed in the right newborn nursery basket at the hospital. All my friends were oooing and ahhhing over that car and forgot about mine, I told myself I didn't care but it still hurt, taught my whole life that hard work will pay off. Turns out being rich pays off more, and much quicker.
I had 5 characters I took to level 85, burglar, hunter, rune keeper, guardian and captain. That's 5 times I wanted determination for a character so I killed hundreds of worms in the trollshaws for the deed (plus fifty other deeds), 5 times I would grind instances like the grand stair or the mirror thing or ... I forget the names, just so I could get enough tokens to get the cool moria armor. The watcher in the water ! Forgot about that one, 5 characters I repeatedly did that brutal instance with. 5 characters I quested as much as I could to become friends with the elves enough so that I wouldn't die in Lothlorien when I step into the woods (remember that one?). 5 times I did mirkwood. I hate mirkwood. 5 times I would grind that fangorn instance and do all of great river so I could get the cool jewelry and the spider eggs to make ... ok I forget what I had to make but it was cool and took a lot of grinding. 5 times I rebuilt Hytbold. <--- that was a time consuming ordeal back in the day. Then you had to get some blank ring drop from warbands, max out your crafting ability and trade your finished product to some guys outside the snowbourn great hall. Then there's trading all the turbine points I've acquired to get the west rohan expansion, doing almost every single quest there 5 times over to get enough deeds. Doing all of gondor, mordor, dale lands and dwarf holds. It wasn't until I had finished all of Ered Mithrin on my 5th character (I stopped working on my guard and took a beorning all the way through the whole thing without all the grinding I did on the others) again, wasn't until I was completely done with 5 characters capped and thinking about working on one of my lowly alts that it really got to me. Aria of the valar. I put in years of work, YEARS of work on my characters and rich people come along and not only are they instantly the same level as me, they have better gear, better virtues, better everything.
Yes this game is free to play, just like life, and just like life it's better to be rich so you can get what you want quicker and with less effort. Or no effort at all in the case of some people. I haven't quit life yet, still hold onto the delusion that my hard work will pay off some day. I have quit this game though, as beautiful and fun as it was for a decade I am done.
