So, I haven't played an MMORPG in a while, outside of trying out Classic WoW Hardcore servers for a week. I've had the itch to play a MMORPG again, to complete every quest in a game. But when mentally going through all of the options, I can't think of one MMORPG that didn't make leveling faster and easier over time. Leveling is my favorite part of MMORPG's and has been ever since I began playing MMORPG's back in 2001 with DAoC, followed by SWG. All MMORPG's have become a face roll in the leveling sphere, meaning you can't die unless you just auto attacked a large enough group of enemies. It's become a speed race through the content as well, leading to out leveling content.
Am I wrong here? Is there a MMORPG with a lot of leveling content I can chew through that hasn't already been trivialized with expansion releases, number crunches, and world detuning throughout the years?
Might i interest you in some Black Desert? where there is no level cap and later levels take months and even years?
That might be a bit much.
Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013 Fishing on Bronzebeard since 2005 Fishing in RL since 1992 Born with a fishing rod in my hand in 1979
To make myself clear, I don't like any of the answers to the level-divide problem. They all "fix" it by altering your characters or the content, "just for you" as it were. What kind of a game is that? It removes the meaning of advancement.
For your problem in UO, with that guild, yes I've heard of several versions of nightmares like that. Did you contact the Guild Leader(s)? Didn't you know that guild members could spar to build skills? Why did you Resurrect (takes your consent) in that guy's presence? If he did it over time, why did you not remove yourself from said guild? Why didn't you ask someone at a bank, or on a forum, about the situation?
Not to be rude, and UO wasn't perfect with such "gamers" about, but it just seems like a little bit of effort on your part could have turned a bad experience into a great one, because UO was absolutely full of great guilds. And they all (usually) were actively looking for members.
When I started, I had a tough go of it because of PKers. But I soon found a great guild full of good gamers, and they had a bunch of allied guilds that were the same, and I had more real fun in UO than any other game I've tried.
It's a game that allows people of disparate level to play together when they are so inclined, which is particularly helpful to guilds where members have a wide range of levels.
In the case of CoH this was combined with Architect Entertainment, a system that allows player created missions to be saved and played through by others.
With the two together we could make custom role-play missions for our supergroup that all members could play through regardless of their level.
When not in a group with adjusted levels the character would once again be at their natural level so would have to resume playing content suited to that, which means that if you. If one wasn't careful where they disbanded from such a group they could end out being in an area where everything could slaughter them with ease.
Regarding UO, I was no longer in a trusting mood. Accordingly I found a game where I didn't have to rely on trust and had real fun there.
To make myself clear, I don't like any of the answers to the level-divide problem. They all "fix" it by altering your characters or the content, "just for you" as it were. What kind of a game is that? It removes the meaning of advancement.
For your problem in UO, with that guild, yes I've heard of several versions of nightmares like that. Did you contact the Guild Leader(s)? Didn't you know that guild members could spar to build skills? Why did you Resurrect (takes your consent) in that guy's presence? If he did it over time, why did you not remove yourself from said guild? Why didn't you ask someone at a bank, or on a forum, about the situation?
Not to be rude, and UO wasn't perfect with such "gamers" about, but it just seems like a little bit of effort on your part could have turned a bad experience into a great one, because UO was absolutely full of great guilds. And they all (usually) were actively looking for members.
When I started, I had a tough go of it because of PKers. But I soon found a great guild full of good gamers, and they had a bunch of allied guilds that were the same, and I had more real fun in UO than any other game I've tried.
It's a game that allows people of disparate level to play together when they are so inclined, which is particularly helpful to guilds where members have a wide range of levels.
In the case of CoH this was combined with Architect Entertainment, a system that allows player created missions to be saved and played through by others.
With the two together we could make custom role-play missions for our supergroup that all members could play through regardless of their level.
When not in a group with adjusted levels the character would once again be at their natural level so would have to resume playing content suited to that, which means that if you. If one wasn't careful where they disbanded from such a group they could end out being in an area where everything could slaughter them with ease.
Regarding UO, I was no longer in a trusting mood. Accordingly I found a game where I didn't have to rely on trust and had real fun there.
Oh, I completely understand your reaction to that situation in UO. Player jerks are not something most gamers want to tolerate. For the rest of it, anything I say will come off as a bit offensive, and you have every right to make the choices you do.
I'm wondering, though, given the choice of fixes: 1. The various ways of modifying the game suit each player, or 2. Remove the cause by reducing the Power Gaps (largely, not to the extreme of newbies playing the toughest content or anything close to that) Would you play game number 2 ?
Level division isn't an issue in CoH despite the lack of scaling as there are systems in place that allowed characters to be temporarily at effectively higher or lower level when those of disparate level want to group together. These must be manually opted in to.
ESO automatically and seamlessly allows people of disparate level to play together or simply when in proximity to each other, at least with content at base difficulty. Trying to do that in higher difficulty content if the level disparity is great won't work all that well.
UO is where I had my worst guild experience. I had played for a short while but was still quite new to the game when I was invited to a guild and all seemed well for awhile.
Not long later one of the members decided to attack me out of nowhere, loot my gear, and then slay me repeatedly. I was told by a bystander that the only way to stop that cycle was to quit the guild as common membership in it was what allowed the attacks and looting to take place. I then did, but by that time the damage had already been done.
I decided at that point that UO wasn't the place for me and I left for Asheron's Call where I was immune to PvP unless I personally chose to participate which by their system would have been a permanent account wide choice at least at that time, if I recall correctly.
This shows something I have mentioned many times before, sure the MMO community matters but what matters more is the guild and the personnel experience you have had with them. I may have just been really lucky, I have never been in a bad guild. I don't think the effort I put in to finding a good one is foolproof, I think some luck is involved.
When you have a bad experience with anything it is off-putting and joining a new guild is 'going in blind' to a certain extent. It is a risk you take, but you can leave and try elsewhere. For me as I now see guilds being essential to alleviate some of the modern MMO nonsense that passes for gameplay I would not play without one. But I do realize they are not for everyone by any means.
IMO power banding is the unfortunate side effect of trying to adapt RPG style progression into a multi-player environment. No two people naturally progress at the same rate. It requires effort to coordinate and very often it requires dedicated alts.
I don't see banding as a design failure. Instead I think it's a design problem that nobody has come up with a satisfactory solution to. Some feel scaling systems invalidate the sense of progression. All of the horizontal progression systems I've seen are stuffed to the gills with filler (read boring) skills.
I certainly won't claim that I have comprehensive knowledge of all the alternatives so I've probably missed something. There's not a lot of incentive for commercial MMORPG's to explore those alternatives because they already have a proven solution: Grease the skids to endgame and focus on the largest power band they have.
I do feel that studios have swung too far down the challenge scale but I don't think that simply ratcheting the difficulty back up is correct either. I would much rather see alternative paths.
Mentoring, i.e. lowering the level of highlevel player characters, is how Vanguard allowed people of all levels to play together.
---
In theory, anyway.
In implementation, this was a PITA.
For example if you had an ability Cull, your actual character might use Cull III, but through mentoring you might just got lowered to Cull I.
IIRC for just using the ability itself this was no problem, such buttons would automatically be lowered or, if you would be under level to use any such ability, it would stop working.
However this made all macros stop working, and macros have been absolutely essential in Vanguard.
Very simple example, the core macro for a Dread Knight in group would be something like:
____________________
# 3 instant cast no cooldown aggro abilities
# Obviously only useful when grouping and in defensive stance
So if you would mentor, you would have to create a copy of this and lower the roman numbers or even remove a line. And unlike this example, there wasnt even a way to write comments, so you couldnt actually put a # at the start of the line to comment a line out. Also copy+paste didnt work within the game (you could paste external texts into scripts though). Also the total size of a macro was strictly limited.
Absolutely awful. And the reason mentoring was quite the hassle.
OTOH I found that as a mentored Dread Knight, I had absolutely no problem keeping aggro in a lowlevel group, even with just having one such macro instead of my regular one. Something actual lowlevel tanks couldnt really manage well. The hassle remained though that I had to keep copies of my core aggro macro for different levels and you could only have a limited number of macros in the first place.
---
Either way my idea for mixed level groups would be automated mentoring. You would be lowered to the lowest level of the group + 5 if you joined in, and all buttons and macros would continue working as normal, with buttons that no longer refer to abilities your current effective level cant have yet grayed out and scripts refering to such abilities ignoring this instruction.
So, I haven't played an MMORPG in a while, outside of trying out Classic WoW Hardcore servers for a week. I've had the itch to play a MMORPG again, to complete every quest in a game. But when mentally going through all of the options, I can't think of one MMORPG that didn't make leveling faster and easier over time. Leveling is my favorite part of MMORPG's and has been ever since I began playing MMORPG's back in 2001 with DAoC, followed by SWG. All MMORPG's have become a face roll in the leveling sphere, meaning you can't die unless you just auto attacked a large enough group of enemies. It's become a speed race through the content as well, leading to out leveling content.
Am I wrong here? Is there a MMORPG with a lot of leveling content I can chew through that hasn't already been trivialized with expansion releases, number crunches, and world detuning throughout the years?
Might i interest you in some Black Desert? where there is no level cap and later levels take months and even years?
That might be a bit much.
Per another suggestion in this forum, I'm playing LOTRO. BDO is a gorgeous game, but I'm not someone who can learn and master combo's, and I've also watched videos of the game and read forums where the mob difficulty is too easy.
I'm a player that wants risk involved in leveling or I get bored and quit. I'm primarily a leveling enjoyer, so if that experience isn't challenging in its own way and long enough, then I get bored and leave.
IMO power banding is the unfortunate side effect of trying to adapt RPG style progression into a multi-player environment. No two people naturally progress at the same rate. It requires effort to coordinate and very often it requires dedicated alts.
I don't see banding as a design failure. Instead I think it's a design problem that nobody has come up with a satisfactory solution to. Some feel scaling systems invalidate the sense of progression. All of the horizontal progression systems I've seen are stuffed to the gills with filler (read boring) skills.
I certainly won't claim that I have comprehensive knowledge of all the alternatives so I've probably missed something. There's not a lot of incentive for commercial MMORPG's to explore those alternatives because they already have a proven solution: Grease the skids to endgame and focus on the largest power band they have.
I do feel that studios have swung too far down the challenge scale but I don't think that simply ratcheting the difficulty back up is correct either. I would much rather see alternative paths.
I think mentoring down is a good solution. When mentored down, the mentor should face a challenge. It shouldn't be faceroll. The reward could be a gold bonus on kills, which they can alter to be competitive with daily grinds that they'd otherwise do if not mentoring. The low level player can post on a board to hire a mercenary (mentor) to help with their journey.
Either that, or add a NPC companion system that low level players can easily use to substitute as players so they can still experience the dungeons and open world group quests.
IMO power banding is the unfortunate side effect of trying to adapt RPG style progression into a multi-player environment. No two people naturally progress at the same rate. It requires effort to coordinate and very often it requires dedicated alts.
I don't see banding as a design failure. Instead I think it's a design problem that nobody has come up with a satisfactory solution to. Some feel scaling systems invalidate the sense of progression. All of the horizontal progression systems I've seen are stuffed to the gills with filler (read boring) skills.
I certainly won't claim that I have comprehensive knowledge of all the alternatives so I've probably missed something. There's not a lot of incentive for commercial MMORPG's to explore those alternatives because they already have a proven solution: Grease the skids to endgame and focus on the largest power band they have.
I do feel that studios have swung too far down the challenge scale but I don't think that simply ratcheting the difficulty back up is correct either. I would much rather see alternative paths.
I think mentoring down is a good solution. When mentored down, the mentor should face a challenge. It shouldn't be faceroll. The reward could be a gold bonus on kills, which they can alter to be competitive with daily grinds that they'd otherwise do if not mentoring. The low level player can post on a board to hire a mercenary (mentor) to help with their journey.
Either that, or add a NPC companion system that low level players can easily use to substitute as players so they can still experience the dungeons and open world group quests.
I think you guys have a good idea, but that's just for players who don't mind the "image" created. (I guess that's the way to say it.)
For me, it all smacks of "blue-ribboning" players to success. The changes to player ability, or the other way of changing MOB ability, really bothers me. I want the content, from both sides (player or MOB) to stay consistent so that I can know that I beat the content myself (or my grouping), without crutches.
Again, I don't want to sound insulting, we all have our opinions on how games should be designed, and this is mine.
In my style of game design, it's similar but more realistically simulated. You take higher leveled players with you, but because of the (much) lower power gaps, it accomplishes the same thing. Those higher leveled characters are not THAT much more powerful to the MOBs (just like to lower levelled guildmates), so their effect is in essence already reduced, and no special changes need to be made to "downsize" them.
(Special note here) UO didn't have Instances, so Dungeons areas were open to any players that came along. What they did was, as MOBs were defeated in an area, more would spawn. And if there were more players (or "levels") than the normal spawn was designed for, the Spawn heated up and produced extra spawn. It got petty exciting, IMO. Eventually the heated-up-Spawn would collapse downwards, and this gave the players a break from the very hectic activity, but only for a short time. (If some players left, the spawn would cool down as a reaction, but it was not perfect and more fun because of it.) Sometimes, in any case, you had to run or get wiped. Even that would often be fun, because most gamers are good players and would try to help the fallen, because next time it might be them who get wiped and needed help recovering their loot.
Oh yes, MOBs looted you in UO! It was just more fun than a barrel full of monkeys. This is as opposed to the cut-and-dried Scaling systems that makes it almost impossible to experience "the agony of defeat", that can often turn into making new friends and the experiences of overcoming the challenges.
To make myself clear, I don't like any of the answers to the level-divide problem. They all "fix" it by altering your characters or the content, "just for you" as it were. What kind of a game is that? It removes the meaning of advancement.
For your problem in UO, with that guild, yes I've heard of several versions of nightmares like that. Did you contact the Guild Leader(s)? Didn't you know that guild members could spar to build skills? Why did you Resurrect (takes your consent) in that guy's presence? If he did it over time, why did you not remove yourself from said guild? Why didn't you ask someone at a bank, or on a forum, about the situation?
Not to be rude, and UO wasn't perfect with such "gamers" about, but it just seems like a little bit of effort on your part could have turned a bad experience into a great one, because UO was absolutely full of great guilds. And they all (usually) were actively looking for members.
When I started, I had a tough go of it because of PKers. But I soon found a great guild full of good gamers, and they had a bunch of allied guilds that were the same, and I had more real fun in UO than any other game I've tried.
It's a game that allows people of disparate level to play together when they are so inclined, which is particularly helpful to guilds where members have a wide range of levels.
In the case of CoH this was combined with Architect Entertainment, a system that allows player created missions to be saved and played through by others.
With the two together we could make custom role-play missions for our supergroup that all members could play through regardless of their level.
When not in a group with adjusted levels the character would once again be at their natural level so would have to resume playing content suited to that, which means that if you. If one wasn't careful where they disbanded from such a group they could end out being in an area where everything could slaughter them with ease.
Regarding UO, I was no longer in a trusting mood. Accordingly I found a game where I didn't have to rely on trust and had real fun there.
Oh, I completely understand your reaction to that situation in UO. Player jerks are not something most gamers want to tolerate. For the rest of it, anything I say will come off as a bit offensive, and you have every right to make the choices you do.
I'm wondering, though, given the choice of fixes: 1. The various ways of modifying the game suit each player, or 2. Remove the cause by reducing the Power Gaps (largely, not to the extreme of newbies playing the toughest content or anything close to that) Would you play game number 2 ?
You're not coming off as offensive.
If I'm playing a game for PvE it is the interruption itself that bothers me so the power disparity really isn't a factor. It's not that I'm looking for a fair fight in that situation but rather no fight at all. So, if game 2 allows others to interrupt my play by attacking me it's not something I would play.
To make myself clear, I don't like any of the answers to the level-divide problem. They all "fix" it by altering your characters or the content, "just for you" as it were. What kind of a game is that? It removes the meaning of advancement.
For your problem in UO, with that guild, yes I've heard of several versions of nightmares like that. Did you contact the Guild Leader(s)? Didn't you know that guild members could spar to build skills? Why did you Resurrect (takes your consent) in that guy's presence? If he did it over time, why did you not remove yourself from said guild? Why didn't you ask someone at a bank, or on a forum, about the situation?
Not to be rude, and UO wasn't perfect with such "gamers" about, but it just seems like a little bit of effort on your part could have turned a bad experience into a great one, because UO was absolutely full of great guilds. And they all (usually) were actively looking for members.
When I started, I had a tough go of it because of PKers. But I soon found a great guild full of good gamers, and they had a bunch of allied guilds that were the same, and I had more real fun in UO than any other game I've tried.
It's a game that allows people of disparate level to play together when they are so inclined, which is particularly helpful to guilds where members have a wide range of levels.
In the case of CoH this was combined with Architect Entertainment, a system that allows player created missions to be saved and played through by others.
With the two together we could make custom role-play missions for our supergroup that all members could play through regardless of their level.
When not in a group with adjusted levels the character would once again be at their natural level so would have to resume playing content suited to that, which means that if you. If one wasn't careful where they disbanded from such a group they could end out being in an area where everything could slaughter them with ease.
Regarding UO, I was no longer in a trusting mood. Accordingly I found a game where I didn't have to rely on trust and had real fun there.
Oh, I completely understand your reaction to that situation in UO. Player jerks are not something most gamers want to tolerate. For the rest of it, anything I say will come off as a bit offensive, and you have every right to make the choices you do.
I'm wondering, though, given the choice of fixes: 1. The various ways of modifying the game suit each player, or 2. Remove the cause by reducing the Power Gaps (largely, not to the extreme of newbies playing the toughest content or anything close to that) Would you play game number 2 ?
You're not coming off as offensive.
If I'm playing a game for PvE it is the interruption itself that bothers me so the power disparity really isn't a factor. It's not that I'm looking for a fair fight in that situation but rather no fight at all. So, if game 2 allows others to interrupt my play by attacking me it's not something I would play.
The problem with power disparity is about player socialization and interactions with all things.
While it has obvious issues for PvP, it affects the entire game, and hurts all of the experience of playing a game with such strong divisions. Everything from being able to play with a core group despite varying degrees of play time, to the economy, to strong and stable guilds, to exploration, to forging a place in the game because of your actions as opposed to your level, to strategies for building wealth, to how much of the game world is viable to each character, on and on to the entire game and all the things a player wants to do.
So, I haven't played an MMORPG in a while, outside of trying out Classic WoW Hardcore servers for a week. I've had the itch to play a MMORPG again, to complete every quest in a game. But when mentally going through all of the options, I can't think of one MMORPG that didn't make leveling faster and easier over time. Leveling is my favorite part of MMORPG's and has been ever since I began playing MMORPG's back in 2001 with DAoC, followed by SWG. All MMORPG's have become a face roll in the leveling sphere, meaning you can't die unless you just auto attacked a large enough group of enemies. It's become a speed race through the content as well, leading to out leveling content.
Am I wrong here? Is there a MMORPG with a lot of leveling content I can chew through that hasn't already been trivialized with expansion releases, number crunches, and world detuning throughout the years?
Might i interest you in some Black Desert? where there is no level cap and later levels take months and even years?
That might be a bit much.
Per another suggestion in this forum, I'm playing LOTRO. BDO is a gorgeous game, but I'm not someone who can learn and master combo's, and I've also watched videos of the game and read forums where the mob difficulty is too easy.
I'm a player that wants risk involved in leveling or I get bored and quit. I'm primarily a leveling enjoyer, so if that experience isn't challenging in its own way and long enough, then I get bored and leave.
Lotro is a great game. I have played it from the very beginning and own two lifetime subs one is the wifes a long time. At one point in time grouping was not required for everything but there were quests that you could avoid or mobs that required more help. even if a pretty high guy came to help sometimes two players werent enough without healing and resource managment was a thing. It got super easy at one point but the difficulty select options have helped. One thing I would suggest to look at is you can buy an item that will keep you from out lvling zones it just turns of xp and if your into crafting keeping it from giving you experience not from the crafting lvl but the level of your character . It is possible to lvl to cap from just crafting and never killing a mob which whatever. a lot of lotro quests are really good and the book stories are well done. so being able to turn of xp when new to the game is great and gives you a chance to enjoy the content.
Another thing I would suggest for you down the line when you get pretty high lvl is and they changed the way virtues worked a while back is to look at investing if you buy a sub the lotro points you get in the deed slayer accelerator store items. I enjoy grinding like you do but some of the slayer deeds in certian parts of the game are just stupid. Its gotten a lot better with the newer expansions I think they put a cap on the suffering with how many things you have to kill a max amount of. At one time the numbers in every new zone just kept getting bigger.
way to long of a post sorry I hope you enjoy the game my wife and I really have had some great times together. If your ever on crickethollow hit me up we love grouping
Comments
Might i interest you in some Black Desert? where there is no level cap and later levels take months and even years?
That might be a bit much.
Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013
Fishing on Bronzebeard since 2005
Fishing in RL since 1992
Born with a fishing rod in my hand in 1979
It's a game that allows people of disparate level to play together when they are so inclined, which is particularly helpful to guilds where members have a wide range of levels.
In the case of CoH this was combined with Architect Entertainment, a system that allows player created missions to be saved and played through by others.
With the two together we could make custom role-play missions for our supergroup that all members could play through regardless of their level.
When not in a group with adjusted levels the character would once again be at their natural level so would have to resume playing content suited to that, which means that if you. If one wasn't careful where they disbanded from such a group they could end out being in an area where everything could slaughter them with ease.
Regarding UO, I was no longer in a trusting mood. Accordingly I found a game where I didn't have to rely on trust and had real fun there.
For the rest of it, anything I say will come off as a bit offensive, and you have every right to make the choices you do.
I'm wondering, though, given the choice of fixes:
1. The various ways of modifying the game suit each player, or
2. Remove the cause by reducing the Power Gaps (largely, not to the extreme of newbies playing the toughest content or anything close to that)
Would you play game number 2 ?
Once upon a time....
When you have a bad experience with anything it is off-putting and joining a new guild is 'going in blind' to a certain extent. It is a risk you take, but you can leave and try elsewhere. For me as I now see guilds being essential to alleviate some of the modern MMO nonsense that passes for gameplay I would not play without one. But I do realize they are not for everyone by any means.
/cast "Backlash II"
/cast "Dreadful Visage III"
I'm a player that wants risk involved in leveling or I get bored and quit. I'm primarily a leveling enjoyer, so if that experience isn't challenging in its own way and long enough, then I get bored and leave.
Either that, or add a NPC companion system that low level players can easily use to substitute as players so they can still experience the dungeons and open world group quests.
For me, it all smacks of "blue-ribboning" players to success. The changes to player ability, or the other way of changing MOB ability, really bothers me.
I want the content, from both sides (player or MOB) to stay consistent so that I can know that I beat the content myself (or my grouping), without crutches.
Again, I don't want to sound insulting, we all have our opinions on how games should be designed, and this is mine.
In my style of game design, it's similar but more realistically simulated.
You take higher leveled players with you, but because of the (much) lower power gaps, it accomplishes the same thing. Those higher leveled characters are not THAT much more powerful to the MOBs (just like to lower levelled guildmates), so their effect is in essence already reduced, and no special changes need to be made to "downsize" them.
(Special note here)
UO didn't have Instances, so Dungeons areas were open to any players that came along.
What they did was, as MOBs were defeated in an area, more would spawn. And if there were more players (or "levels") than the normal spawn was designed for, the Spawn heated up and produced extra spawn. It got petty exciting, IMO.
Eventually the heated-up-Spawn would collapse downwards, and this gave the players a break from the very hectic activity, but only for a short time.
(If some players left, the spawn would cool down as a reaction, but it was not perfect and more fun because of it.)
Sometimes, in any case, you had to run or get wiped.
Even that would often be fun, because most gamers are good players and would try to help the fallen, because next time it might be them who get wiped and needed help recovering their loot.
Oh yes, MOBs looted you in UO!
It was just more fun than a barrel full of monkeys.
This is as opposed to the cut-and-dried Scaling systems that makes it almost impossible to experience "the agony of defeat", that can often turn into making new friends and the experiences of overcoming the challenges.
Once upon a time....
You're not coming off as offensive.
If I'm playing a game for PvE it is the interruption itself that bothers me so the power disparity really isn't a factor. It's not that I'm looking for a fair fight in that situation but rather no fight at all. So, if game 2 allows others to interrupt my play by attacking me it's not something I would play.
While it has obvious issues for PvP, it affects the entire game, and hurts all of the experience of playing a game with such strong divisions.
Everything from being able to play with a core group despite varying degrees of play time,
to the economy,
to strong and stable guilds,
to exploration,
to forging a place in the game because of your actions as opposed to your level,
to strategies for building wealth,
to how much of the game world is viable to each character,
on and on to the entire game and all the things a player wants to do.
Once upon a time....
Another thing I would suggest for you down the line when you get pretty high lvl is and they changed the way virtues worked a while back is to look at investing if you buy a sub the lotro points you get in the deed slayer accelerator store items. I enjoy grinding like you do but some of the slayer deeds in certian parts of the game are just stupid. Its gotten a lot better with the newer expansions I think they put a cap on the suffering with how many things you have to kill a max amount of. At one time the numbers in every new zone just kept getting bigger.
way to long of a post sorry I hope you enjoy the game my wife and I really have had some great times together. If your ever on crickethollow hit me up we love grouping