Forged by Fire - LOTRO's Finest (Interview)

For decades, Console Gaming has been the craze within the gaming industry. As of late, MMORPG's have come into their own and developed a loyal fanbase to rival that of Console's. DeadlyTECH.com is proud to have had the chance to interview the leader of one of Lord of the Ring Online's premeire Kinships. Our interview shows that LOTRO isn't your ordinary MMO, "Rolandeschain" isn't your ordinary leader and FbF isn't your ordinary Kinship.

DT.com: Roland, I appreciate you taking the time to chat with our readers. Please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your history with MMOs, if you would.
My name is Mitchell Cunningham, I'm from Chattanooga TN and have graduated with a bachelors in MIS from Tennessee Technological University. My history with MMOs started with Ever Quest and continued on to LOTRO.

DT.com: What was the first online RPG you played and what would be your favorite?
My first MMORPG was EQ but I only played it for a week and dropped it. The game itself was a good game but for someone that had never played a MMORPG was a little hard to get into. What I consider to be my first MMORPG would have to be Final Fantasy XI. I had played several other FF and loved them so Final Fantasy was an easy transition into the MMORPG world. My favorite MMORPG to date is LOTRO though, LOL, would be funny if it wasn't though :P

DT.com: What attracted you to LOTRO? Was it one specific facet of the game or just the Tolkien franchise in general?
My first attraction to LOTRO was the story line. Always loved the LOTR story lines and have read the books several times. But the overall deciding factor for me to start playing LOTRO was that several of my friends and I wanted to all jump in and play a new MMORPG. LOTRO was coming out so we decided to try it out.

DT.com: Please tell us a bit about your own characters, their names and their origins.
My main character is Rolandeschain, which is a level 60 Guardian (Tank). I picked a tank as my main toon because I had never played that type of class before and my other friends decided to pick DPS classes so the mixture was a good combo to level up with. My next toon that I started leveling up was Jakedeschain, which is a level 52 Burglar. The main reason I picked this class to level was the Kinship had a high demand for them. The last toon that I’ve leveled was EddyDean a level 60 Hunter (DPS). I leveled a DPS class mainly for farming purposes but later fell in love with it. The name behind all my toons comes from the Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I've used Rolandeschain as a gamer tag for years and decided to carry it a bit further in LOTRO with my other toons.

DT.com: Your Kinship, Forged by Fire, is known as one of the premiere kin’s in LOTRO and for good reason. Can you tell us about the kin, the origin of the name and what server it resides on?
lol, Forged by Fire actually didn't start out as Forged by Fire. We were called There and Back Again, or TABA. There were disagreements between several officers and the leader, so there was a split in the kin. The co-leader, Rutgor, decided to form Forged by Fire (because the kin was forged by fire or drama). The kinship itself has went through several changes over the course of 2 years. Usually the changes involved the needs of the people in the kinship. In the beginning we were a kinship that thrived on helping people level. From there we've changed to an end game raiding kin and through the help of fantastic members have become one of Vilya's premiere kin’s in end game content.

DT.com: How many active members do you currently have?
It's hard to come up with an estimate of how many members FBF has, but we generally keep around 30 members online at a time. We have, including alts, a total of 443 toons in the kin.

DT.com: How did you come into running your own kinship in LOTRO and what is the overall goal when it comes to the size of your kinship?
There has been three leaders in Forged By Fire. The first leader was Rutgor who helped get FBF off the ground and running. The second leader was Wildxcard who is a real life friend of mine and helped the kin get into a position of raiding. Which lead me into obtaining the leadership position. It was an easy transition from Wildxcard to myself when it came to leadership. In regards to the overall kinship size there isn't a rule of thumb here. The larger the kinship the more active it can be but it also can lead to more problems within the kinship. So there is a fine line to walk on the size of a kinship and one that i try to juggle on a daily basis.

DT.com: One of what seems to be a core issue with a lot of Kinships is leadership/officer participation. How active is the leadership of FbF in regards to kinship events and other areas such as questing and raiding?
I try to have every officer in my kinship participate in the kin somehow. Whether it's by leading raids or by helping others with different parts of the game. I've found that by having a active officer core and leadership in a kin that it helps players enjoy the MMORPG experience and overall makes them enjoy their kinship. Active officers also help to achieve a family type atmosphere rather then just a acquaintance type of atmosphere.

DT.com: What type of regular events or Kinship gatherings do you organize that promote solidarity and loyalty within your membership?
Like I stated above I try and promote officer activity within the kin. These come in officer events. I've assigned each officer a different category of the game and made them in charge of helping kinmates and organizing events in those different areas to promote solidarity within the kin.

DT.com: What is the best part of running the kinship and what aspects, if any, could you really do without?
The best part of running a kinship is getting to know each one of my members and to see them achieve different aspects of the game. It's a good feeling to know that your kinship has taken down one of the hardest instances in a game and it took everyone in the raid doing their job in perfect team work in order to pull it off. The one ugly side of kinships in any game is drama. I like to promote a family type of atmosphere but like any family you are going to have disagreements with each other from time to time. This would be the one thing I wish I could do without.

DT.com: How would you describe the connection between new in-game content (newly designed areas, new Instances, etc.) having to lead your kinship into these challenging areas? Is it a welcomed challenge?
It is welcome challenge to have a new area or a new raids to take down. One of the best parts of a MMORPG is to figure out the way the programmers have designed a particular boss fight to go down. I also take a thrill out of trying to beat new content and trying to beat it first out of all the kinships on the server and of all of them playing LOTRO period. Sometimes, like any challenges, new content can be frustrating and it's a fine balance to keep on pushing people in a raid to try and get it down or call it and come back another day.

DT.com: What has been your favorite content update in LOTRO so far?
Without a doubt the best content update for LOTRO was "The Rift". This instance has been the best raid LOTRO has produced and one that they should look back on when designing new instances. The reasoning behind this was because it was challenging and it was fun to learn. It meant something for your kinship to have downed the Balrog (the last boss).

DT.com: What in-game goals would you like to see your Kinship achieve in LOTRO?
One of the main goals my kinship has is raiding. Once new content comes out as a kinship we try and figure out the strategy behind it and afterwards we farm it for the loot that they drop. So as a kinship one of our main goals is to down new content, something we have achieved time after time. I would have to say another goal for FBF is to have everyone of it's members "geared" out to the best of their abilities. I like to see people that are fully geared out in the latest gear running around and they have the FBF tag below their names.

DT.com: If any, can you name some things that you’d like to see Turbine do different with Mines of Moria or LOTRO as a whole, either currently or moving forward to future content updates?
Turbine needs to asses what direction they are heading with the game. Here lately they seem to head towards a PvP content updates but if they are gong to head that way they need to do it fully and integrate "creeps" into the game itself and not have them in one area. I personally though would like to see them head more into a raiding updates, something they have slacked on greatly. One thing is for certain though is that they need to come up with an innovative way for people to keep playing end-game content.

DT.com: Can you tell those who may be interested in joining Forged by Fire what sort of requirements or members you might be looking for?
Right now, the only requirements that there is for joining FBF is for players to have a toon above lvl 50. FBF is mostly an end-game kinship that helps players focus on meeting goals for end-game play, that being said it is harder for players that are lower lvl to obtain help within the kinship. Other then the level requirements I like to look for players that have a level head and can play their toons to the best of their abilities.

DT.com: What’s next for FbF moving forward, any big plans or should we wait and see?
Well, the plans for FBF kind of depends on Turbine. What I mean is, whatever content they add to the game we will take down, until then we will continue farming the content they have released for us and help each kinmate achieve their goals.

Roland, we appreciate you taking the time out to speak with us and giving or readers some insight into Forged By Fire. We wish you and your kinmates much success in all that you guys do moving forward. For those of you who'd like more information on Lord of the Rings Online, please visit www.lotro.com

Written on 2009-04-15