There and back again... A writer's return to Lord of the Rings Online
Filed under: At a glance, Lord of the Rings Online, Opinion, Hands-on
Returning to an MMO after an eight-month absence, after barely playing for a month, is like waking up in a strange grocery store after a vicious blow to the head left you with amnesia. You've got this shopping list in your hands, but you've got absolutely no idea where any of these items are. It will say things like "Ned wants milk. You can find the milk southeast of me." Who is Ned? Where was he when you met him? Where is "southeast of him," when you've got no friggin' clue where he is?
Such was my return to Lord of the Rings Online. I had a quest log full of tasks that were almost familiar to me, but my memory lacked the proper synapses to form where they began, and more importantly, where I had to journey to complete them. I found out the hard way that "the hills northeast of Bree" are not the hills on the map in North Bree-lands, but rather a small cluster of hills more on the west side. In the process I drove a friend of mine crazy with my mindless ranting about how the quest descriptions couldn't have gotten more vague if they tried.
After a while I got my groove back. I remembered where Brandy Hall was in Buckland. I remembered where the auction house, the trainers, and a few more quest-givers were. Once I had a sense of reference I stopped harassing my friend about "where the frack was this dude" and became familiar with the Google maps portion of the Lorebook on the official site-a nifty feature added after I stopped playing. Instead I started complaining to her about why all these gold resellers are hawking their wares in the middle of Bree? In three years of World of WarCraft I've added none to my ignore list. I fear there's a cap to my ignore list in LoTRO because at the rate I'm adding those bastards I'll hit it by week's end.
LoTRO in many ways seems unchanged from my last visit in May. I was afraid there'd be few low-level folks, with the mid-teens areas barren. I was wrong. My fears of having trouble completing early Chapter quests have proven somewhat unfounded as I see people still "lff-ing" for the chapter I'm on. Since launch Turbine has added a ton of content, but due to my still low-level it's largely irrelevant. I do hear from friends that Evendim (new content added around June) has given the 25+ crowd something to do. I recall that being a complaint when I last played.
After hitting 70 in WoW recently and having some adjustment problems to this whole "don't need to gain XP anymore" bit, my curser wandered over the LoTRO icon on my desktop. I reminded myself I had still had a little more time left on the account, and, really how bad could the patch be? Not that bad, I found. After about an hour I was patched up, back in game, and wondering what all these buttons did.
My goals were really quite simple, in a geeky way. I'd swapped out my behemoth 21" CRT monitor that was the size of the Death Star for a sleek 19" LCD widescreen that I could plug my Mac, PC, and Xbox into and switch between them all easier. All I wanted to do was load LoTRO and set it to the new resolution. That took about five minutes. After three hours, I realized I'd gotten hooked on the game again. The aforementioned friend went from being exasperated at my bumbling around to being quietly amused and muttering things about me "finding the one true MMO." Well, ok, she didn't put it quite like that.
Once I hit seven consecutive days of playing the game, even for a little bit, I realized my renewed interest was not fleeting. I realize this may sound a tad "cry me a river," but one of the problems of covering a variety of MMOs is it's hard to get roots in a game. My old EverQuest 2 guild used to joke that I served as a sort of early warning device for big content patches; if I was logging in, it was because something newsworthy was about to occur. Because of that, my friends tend to view my commitment to MMOs in the same way they view Lindsey Lohan's commitment to sobriety.
It would be disingenuous of me to proclaim that my newfound love for LoTRO was boundless. However, it has become a solid choice for my leisure MMO-the MMO I play just for kicks, not to cover. This piece became a happy accident from playing again; not the reason I logged in for the first place.
It's not to say the game is without faults. The economy, at least the mid-teens area, seems a tad conservative. Until I got into the mining/hides minigame, upgrading my skills took a back seat to fixing my stuff. I play a guardian, and I believe repair costs for them are getting adjusted in a forthcoming patch. I still have adjustment issues with the idea of the hotkey queue. While I like the hand drawn look of the map, I wish it gave me more details. I wish the quest log gave a little more detail.
Where I think LoTRO knocks it out of the park is setting and story. Until now, I've had two "woah" graphics moments in MMOs: Seeing the ice bridge in Scars of Velious in EverQuest, and first walking up to Ironforge in WoW. I can now add a third: Standing on Weathertop in LoTRO. I haven't gotten to Rivendell yet, so I may be adding a fourth. I like how the Chapter epic quests follow the story line and you're helping the Fellowship. I like how Turbine cranks out the content upgrades. With content like Evendim costing you nothing, LoTRO's content patches offer you a good value for your money. There's a decent, helpful community in the game. I had some basic newbie questions about how to raise mining and asking them in the Advice channel yielded help, not derision. It was a welcome change from WoW's General chat.
A friend of mine recently asked me, "So, is LoTRO worth trying again?" My answer is, "Yes."
_thumbnail.jpg "Aion Beta: Asmodian Ascension Quest")
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Seth said on 9:35PM 2-10-2008
That first glimpse of Ironforge was my first 'Whoa' moment.
My second was in LotRO in the Old Forest. It was my first trip into it and I stumbled upon Tom Bombadil (SP). I thought, "Man, they sure did this right! He's just as annoying in this game as he was in the book!"
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Sheldrake said on 11:48PM 2-10-2008
I also just recently returned to LOTRO after dumping WOW. I was here for the LOTRO launch but just didnt feel the love. I am very pleased with it now and looking forward t book 12 coming out this week. I agree with what you said about Weathertop... all the landscapes are fantastic... the player animations less so however.
I also got into a small friendly kinship and I am leveling my way up to 50. This game has the features that WOW should have (after 3 years of development) like housing, cosmetic armor, etc... If you havent given LOTRO a try it is well worth your time. The box has also lowered in price as well. My server, Landroval is a very busy place, plenty of people (and friendly) to play with. LOTRO is gem and is getting better!
-Sheldrake
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Woop said on 5:25AM 2-11-2008
Funnily enough I returned to LOTR this weekend. I previously played during beta testing but decided not to subscribe at the time. However with Tabula Rasa (fun, innovative in places, but too easy to reach top level tier) and Pirates of the Burning Sea (you have to love the sea battles at first, but oh my what a shallow game for a mmo) behind me I was looking for something else to try.
LOTR looks smashing on my new machine (I didn't have a mega hi-spec dx10 comp during beta). They have absolutely nailed the visuals. Agree that the map and quest log are a little lacking however. Encouraging exploration is essential and a fun part of any game like this, but once in a while you do end up scratching your head as to where to go.
So I'm enjoying my return, but wonder how long I will last this time.
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Patchouli Woollahra said on 6:08AM 2-11-2008
Mark,
Consider giving Turbine some more time regarding the gold farmer adverts. These goldfarmer public channel spams have started exploding on many popular MMOs in recent months. Patch notes for Book 12 make brief mention of improvements to the reporting tools ingame for dealing with these specific nuisances. In fact, Tabula Rasa has a specific one-shot command ingame that accelerates the support ticketing process to cope with the profusion of such spammage.
and in the meantime, run a ignorelist clear every month or so, I find it does well as a means to give people another chance to behave... if they haven't gotten themselves ganked by GM first.
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Ghen said on 8:05AM 2-11-2008
I agree on the ignore list thing.. I've cleaned mine in numerous games with no ill effects. Either the people grow more mature with the game or they stop playing that character/server ;)
Deus Innomen said on 7:39AM 2-11-2008
There MUST be something in the water.... I logged in for the first time in 6-8 months last night, too!
And I agree, man I do enjoy this game and it looks like maybe all it needed was time to mature post-launch to really garner my interest. This is exactly the point that I'm glad I paid for that lifetime subscription, it afforded me the ability to be able to put the game down and resume it at any time.
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Tony said on 12:31PM 2-11-2008
The game has improves significantly with each patch. I liked it at first, now I love it. Like mentioned it does have its issues... the next patch is going to have further gold seller reporting options at least. Economy wise, you really have to rely on your profession, but there's always people who undercut the accepted normal price annoyingly. I imagine these things will continue to even out as time goes on.
I mean, really, let's remember that WoW had its share of issues its first year. There were components in it that barely even worked. LotRO is really just getting started and it's clear the developers (much like Blizzard) are proud of what they're doing and genuinely want people to enjoy it. I think that will only result in great things.
The thing is I can play this game at this point and just not get annoyed by it. You can get through to the end solo if you wish to, but there's also tons of fellowship related quests to do if you wisht too. Quests where I have to kill 50 wargs for 5 warg paws are INCREDIBLY rare (and usually it was just because you should be killing Warg Type A instead of Warg Type B)... I can't even make new characters in WoW for these reasons and more, reasons LotRO seems to have addressed. It does very little to artificially extend the length of the game, which I appreciate (and is so pointless in these titles given how much there is to do to begin with).
For only $20 you can't go wrong with it. And now thanks to a special, I'm only paying $10 a month instead of $15.
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Tony said on 12:37PM 2-11-2008
Also, I forgot to stress how great it is playing a title where I feel like I am having an effect on the overall story. It's integrated into your little quests and major quests to a point that I've never appreciated in other MMORPGs. On some level it benefits from my familiarity with the license, but even if you've just saw the movies you can pull a lot from this. For example, some of the things in Rivendell are quite exciting... and I'm not even really a big Tolkien fan.
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Shawn said on 2:12PM 2-11-2008
It's intriguing to realize just how many people returned to LOTRO very recently, myself included. My story is exactly the same as yours, and this is a whole new game to me, well worth my time and money.
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Deus Innomen said on 7:14PM 2-11-2008
The One Game... I mean, Ring to rule them all, indeed. ;)
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