Iron Man MMORPG
One of the cool things that Lotro does is give out titles if you are not defeated in battle. Now in most MMORPGs I’ve played dying is something that seems to happen within minutes of leaving the newbie area. Either something spawns in behind you, you mis-judge the required power combinations or you just plain have an interface fail.
With my first Middle Earth character I got through 15 levels without dying and all the way the game was rewarding me and encouraging me to actually try to engage with the game rather than just trying a quest, failing and respawning.
However that level of careful investment led to a weird experience. When the character was defeated, it felt like a cheat to go back and play them. I’d ended up playing a kind of Iron Man MMORPG where if the character dies, that’s it it’s alt-time.
I even felt cheated that the character had died because I had not been able to find a group to complete the main questline. Which brings up a question of game design. Most MMORPGs seem to minimise dying as a way of avoiding having to perfect the game balance, and that’s an immersion killer.
