LOTRO: The first 10 levels

For class on Thursday, we had to read Taylor, T.L. "Gaming Lifeworlds: Social Play in Persistent Environments," Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture.  In this article, Taylor argues that the experience of playing an MMO is inherently social.  She claims that players must interact with other players in order to be successful, as each player is specialized for certain tasks, and no player can therefore succeed on his/her own.

     My experience in LOTRO so far does not corroborate this thesis.  However, I cannot say that I was surprised by this fact.  The first 10 levels in LOTRO have played very much like the first 10 levels in WoW, and, given my previous experience in WoW, I knew what to expect from the beginning.  Generally, at the very beginning, the quests that one undertakes function as tutorials.  As most people are still either learning the basic controls and game mechanics, or at least how their particular class functions, and due to the resulting simplicity of the introductory quests, there simply is no need for the help of other players at low levels.  This effect is compounded in a game which has been out for a long time.  At the beginning of a game's existence, level distribution among players will be even.  However, by the time a game has been out for several years, most players will have reached the higher levels, if not the maximum.  As such, there will be very few players in lower level zones.  While this does not necessarily invalidate Taylor's thesis as pertains to the endgame, I feel that the article would have been well served with this caveat included.  My experience in WoW, was that trough most of the time I spent leveling my character, I only occasionally needed to interact with other players for particularly hard quests, or specific services.  However, at high levels, the social aspect became unavoidable, as I needed to be a part of a large groups to experience endgame content such as raids or PvP battlegrounds.  It remains to be seen if LOTRO will turn out to be similar.