When Lord of the Rings Online came out a year and a half ago, it got it hooks into me deep. Deeper than any other MMO. It was a combination of factors: I was finally getting into the lore, the graphics and art design were unparalleled, I liked the unironic game world, the deeds system appealed to the achievement whore in me, I had a group of friends playing, the narrative thread in the game gave it the drive of a single-player RPG, and – most importantly – I had the time to sink into an MMO. So I hit it. Hard. For about two months.

And then I stopped.

I've visited off and on over the last year, but never earnestly. In addition to a gaggle of alts, I left behind an Elven minstrel on Nimrodel, Delia, who's within spitting distance of the level cap. And I aim to get here there. The Mines of Moria expansion will be out soon. Delia will be ready.

Read the first Lord of the Rings Online game diary after the jump.

Going back into an MMO after a year away isn't easy. First there's the issue of patching the client up to the latest version. So my first night back with Lord of the Rings Online had no Lord and no Rings, but plenty of Online while the client updated. I let it do its thing in the background while I messed around on various websites and browsed the LOTRO forums, read a few developer diaries, and then wandered off elsewhere on the internet. It's like deciding to make chicken for dinner and then realizing that chicken is in the freezer and has to be thawed. By the time LOTRO was ready to run, I was sick of sitting in front of the computer. Time to play some Geometry Wars to decompress. And that's the rest of the evening. I'll make chicken, as it were, tomorrow night.

So skipping ahead to my second night back with LOTRO, here's the other thing that's difficult about getting back into an MMO after a year away: "Holy cats, what is ALL THIS JUNK in my inventory? Look at all those buttons ON THE HOTBARS? Who can bothered to know all that stuff?" It takes about an hour of wading through grays and reading tooltips and hunting for hotkeys just to get back into the swing of things. At which point it's "Oh lordy, what are ALL THESE QUESTS? What are these places? Who are these quest vendors? WHERE DO I GO?"

The temptation at this point is to go decompress with some Geometry Wars for the rest of the evening. But I did spend all last night patching the game, so I might as well have something to show for it, right? After about two hours, it starts to come back to me. You can't get [redacted] hours /played in a game without burning patterns into your brain somewhere: attack sequences, geography, town layouts, and so on.

One option is to roll up a new character. But I'm here in Lord of the Rings Online to hit the level cap. This is about getting my level 45 minstrel ready for Mines of Moria this fall. After soloing for a bit and dying twice because I got a little overambitious against some Misty Mountain goblins, I faced the third obstacle of getting back into an MMO: pick-up groups.

(Read the next Lord of the Rings Online game diary.)