I recently was doing some research on metaphor in games for a class of mine. I decided to write a paper on the metaphor of morale in LotrO. This brought to light a lot of thoughts on health as a metaphor as well and I’d like to share with you the findings that came out of the research discussion.

I came at this question from the perspective of someone who had always found the morale mechanic in LotrO to be very shallow. It broke my immersion rather than deepened it, so I wondered why.