Here’s where, after sheer bliss in the leveling up experience, LOTRO finally becomes a letdown for me:

I love a good Endgame.

I like finely tuned content that’s measured for max level players, solo or in groups. No sloppy scaling, or easy + hard modes. Give me the challenge directly and if I can’t beat it at first, I keep approaching it different ways until I can.

LOTRO’s Endgame lacks.

Lothlorien: It’s a break in the story, allowing the characters and the readers / audience to take a breath before jumping back in, but for gameplay this makes it the most minor of zones. This is LOTRO’s current Endgame zone? Ugh. Bad design decision. Flower picking while avoiding ‘protected’ mobs? Fun the first time, but not so much in repetition. Repetition is required, for rep.

Moria: Great, but it’s not an Endgame locale. Most mobs seldom go above level 56. I think I’m a typical player that measures my own desire for challenge on any given day according to mob levels. The lack of level 60-62 mobs in Moria just plain sucks.

Dungeons: Too much of a narrow ladder climbing towards a small handful of raids. I’d love to enjoy these instances more casually, exploring them fully from scratch, but that’s impossible to do with PUGs just interested in ‘hard mode’ runs for the Radiance gear. I don’t want to go on a rushed tour with a guide! These could be really fun to do with friends, but I’m the first to max level in our Kinship and there’s little incentive for everyone else to catch up.

3man Instances: Cool, but also not Endgame. Nelg, Nazrin and I blew through these several levels ago, they’re much easier than we anticipated. If Turbine could come up with some seriously challenging 3man instances rated for level 60 players, that would go a long way to keeping me busy.

Raising the level cap?

My biggest concern is that devs are talking about raising the level cap, which makes me feel that rather than create a significant Endgame, they’d rather make it a moving target. I’m not even that thrilled with more levels for expansions, let alone between them.

If leveling up is the only game, then please, please, please give us tools like Sidekicking, Level Pacts, etc. for friends of disparate levels to play balanced content together.

Bots?

A secondary concern is this talk about scaling content ’skirmishes’, via ‘customizable soldiers’. Even as a pet-class fan, I’m not much interested in playing with bots to pad out team just so they can create one-size-fits-all content. Meh.

Is it just me, or do a lot of the upcoming features sound like compromises to stretch content? I’m not encouraged.

I’m in a bit of a lull right now with LOTRO. I’m still logging in to hang with friends, but I’m not feeling compelled into activity.