Lord of the Rings Onlines introduces Wordpress for character & kin profiles
Last night when I went to login and start battling foes on Lord of the Rings Online a new alert jumped out at me. LOTRO introduced character profiles and blogging system for its members. As any self respecting SEO, I went to check out to see what was going on. After logging I found that LOTRO is using Wordpress to give every member and kinship a profile page.
Without trying to control my urge to test it out, I did a blog on how the Wordpress Dashboard works so other members who many not be used to Wordpress can get a quick run through and seasoned veterans who don’t have an account can get an idea of the capability.
Being a noob to the world of MMRPGs I am not sure if this is common practice to give everyone a Wordpress account using but never the less I think it is pretty amazing. There are some items that I would love to see changed and here is a list.
– Customization of a theme (ie…access to the theme editor and/or ability to select other canned themes)
– Allow for more Widgets (currently only two available)
– Allow for link list to be placed directly on the page (currently in drop down navigation setup)
These items could be in the works and it is only in beta right now and developers are seeking user feedback. I am going to try and customize my profile as much as possible using the arbitrary text widget that is available but who knows what the limitations or restrictions are.
Why would a large video game enterprise give away and/or spend so much time developing a free service like this for its users? Simple. Get more users involved by adding additional free services to grow the community, the brand and awareness of the LOTRO gaming experience. It’s branding genius especially in the age of the Web 2.0
phenomenon.
I am sure there are people that are going to blog heavily, not my goal as it is tough just trying to manage the kinship website, add friends, and just stay active (I can see kinships using it to their great advantage) and connected. Some questions do arise about the long term uses of a free LOTRO Wordpress account.
1. Will people tend to game instead play on their profile?
2. What will future updates be like to keep interest high?
3. If your subscription expires does your WP account as well?
It is a pretty good move in my opinion to keep growing LOTRO as whole since the game will be a long time coming before members get to even battle the likes of Sauron.
The beta version will really give us an idea of where this will be going and no doubt in my mind that users will get cracked out on it fairly quickly to get their profile all pimped and friended up.
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LOL. Toby, you gaming nerd! When are you going to join us in some Left 4 Dead?!
Totally a gaming nerd but it kept me safe and out of trouble
Probably won’t switch games for a while but did pick up EVGA GTX 280 overclocked edition last night. I can’t game tonight, bummer, but will see how it is tomorrow night.