What the heck did I do during my LoTRO burnout?

I spent a lot of time in two other MMOs. If you are LoTRO geek, head to the next post down for my post burnout thoughts on LoTRO (Summary: I'm back into it, but the endgame is currently contracted from SoA LoTRO and that's a damn shame). In any case, these are the MMOs I filled my spare time with:

Wizard 101: A MMO that I was hesitant to try because it's micro transaction based and seemingly aimed at tweens. You really should not let that stop you from trying out this gem. The card based combat system is a huge breath of fresh air after years of typical turn based combat in various MMOs. The strategy of building decks and using your cards well in a fight has surprising depth.

The game is also a great value. The first few areas are free. After that you can buy lifetime access to zones for 1-2$ per zone. I've been playing for more than two months now. I've spent about ten bucks and I get to play in every single zone I've bought without ever having to pay again.

City of Heroes: this is one of those MMOs I like to visit from time to time, but never seem to enjoy for more than about a month at a stretch. A great game with exciting combat and a fantastically deep character generation system. About anything you can dream up you can come close to. Unfortunately, it's also extremely repetitive. Once the shiny wears off you get bored quickly.

Recently the Mission Architect got me interested again. It's certainly a bit of a pain to find the good missions that players have created. For every good one I find I end up quitting at least two duds. However, the best player written missions are actually better than anything I have experienced in the normal game. I have gone through some really nicely written stories. I plan eventually to start a "Hall of Fame" on this blog (at least if my normal one month burnout doesn't kick in).