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Did Lotro Screw up in its Implementation of Titles?

Some time ago in a post about artificially creating value I discussed the way that Guild Wars dangles hard to get titles in front of players as carrots to keep them motivated while World of Warcraft dangles epic gear with uber stats. At the time I felt that titles and other vanity rewards were a better way to go because they don't create an unbridgeable gap between hard core and casual players.

Lotro has gone in for titles in a big way. Just look at an incomplete list of titles you can get within the game here. It seems that you cannot trip over the corpse of a dead wolf in Middle Earth without earning some new apellation. Some titles do indeed represent major achievements like defeating a raid boss but there are so many glorious sounding titles for minor achievements that all titles have become devalued. Many players don't even bother to display their titles and fewer still care what the various titles mean. Contrast this with Guild Wars where titles are harder to come by but are genuinely valued by players.

Its probably too late to change now but it seems a pity to me. In my opinion Lotro has missed a real oportunity to make titles a desirable goal. They have managed to devalue all titles by making too many of them and making most of them too easy to get.
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Comments

Thallian said…
Some of the killing quest ones later have very cool appellations and are not easy to get, but require a large grind. That said I don't think grinds are good and I totally agree with you.
5:49 pm
mbp said…
Hi Thalian, I have been thinking about this again and perhaps they should colour code titles just like they do gear. Go from common or garden grey up to uber orange for the really hard to get titles. That might give hard to get titles back the cachet they deserve.
8:05 pm
Green Armadillo said…
I definitely agree on the topic of LOTRO titles - I've long maintained that Turbine shot their system in the foot by requiring players to unlock most of the best titles en route to traits. Guild Wars may or may not have gone too far on the hard scale, but LOTRO's are definitely too easy. Maybe a title rarity system would have helped, but I agree that isn't something you can tack on after the fact.
8:24 pm
mbp said…
High Green Armadillo, welcome to mindbendingpuzzles. Good point about traits. Titles have become a nuisance that you "have through" in order to get the trait later on. All in all it devalues what could be a nice part of the game.
10:13 pm
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