LOTRO: Welcome Back Weekend

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Dec 16, 2009

Filed under: Notices 66 comments

It’s a free weekend in Lord of the Rings Online. Thursday Dec 17 through Monday Dec 21 you can play for free. You don’t have time because it’s the holidays, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

I’ve already used all my character slots on the Silverlode server, but I’m still in the “settling in” phase of MMO playing where I’m leveling lots of characters at once. Just getting a sample of each race, class, and crafting profession is a major undertaking. The only character worth noting is “Rubytuesday”, my Hobbit Hunter. (That is, I’m a Hobbit who is a hunter, not a person who hunts Hobbits, although now that I think of it that would be pretty hilarious. Unsporting, but hilarious.)

lotro_rainbow.jpg

I’m curious what other Tolkien lore-fans out there think of the writing and I’d love to read your thoughts on it. My own take:

One one hand, I’m really impressed at the quality of the text. They were careful to have all the races speak in the appropriate “voice” and style. This would have been the first thing I’d expect them to screw up, and I’ve found very few spots where anyone seemed to hit a wrong note. (Exception: Some of the bandit taunts feel wrong. Nobody should utter the words “You want a piece of me?” in Middle Earth. Sheesh.) On the other hand, they took great liberties with the setting.

You can argue that the work, as written, doesn’t work as an MMO and that liberties had to be taken. I won’t argue with that. If we’re going to accept the idea of an LOTR MMO, then we need to be open to a few heretofore heretical ideas. Certainly a game where you fought nothing but Orcs and Goblins would get old extremely quickly. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to cling so faithfully to the source material so as to render the game a dull, unplayable mess.

In the books, it was a huge deal when the Hobbits returned to the Shire in war-gear and on mounts. It was a spectacle, and a really important moment in the story. The heroes came back to find the Shire changed, but they had changed at least as much. But that doesn’t work in an MMO. What are you going to do? Bar players from entering the Shire? Bar them from wearing armor and riding mounts? That’s not going to work. So the Shire in the game is thick with members of all races of Middle Earth, riding about on exotic beasts and resplendent in outlandish, brightly-colored armor. After seeing this, the gaffer himself wouldn’t look twice at our heroes when they returned.

On the other hand, some of the additions to the story are perplexing and there are ugly seams between the canon and non-canon events. A lot of the quest content in LOTRO was messily grafted onto the original material with a hot glue gun.

For people who don’t obsess over the Tolkien stuff and are just looking for an MMO, I’d say LOTRO is like World of Warcraft with a more polite and mature userbase. It’s absolutely worth a look.

 


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66 thoughts on “LOTRO: Welcome Back Weekend

  1. Ross says:

    Been playing it since beta. I personally love the game. Yes, it has its faults, but no game is perfect. Except Thief and Thief II. Ok, so no MMO is perfect.

    The epic story line is quite good. For the most part, it takes place just on the periphery of the Fellowship. You’re essentially following behind them and dealing with events that could potentially jeopardize the Fellowship.

    Oh, and if you happen to get yourself into the Ettenmoors, you can be an orc and actually do some Hobbit hunting. Some of those little buggers are tough.

  2. The Crusader of Metal says:

    Seeing that rainbow makes me remember of Eregion and its own rainbow. At night.

  3. SolkaTruesilver says:

    Where do the dwarves start?

    (Let me guess… hum… in a Dwarf Fortress maybe? :) )

  4. Joshua says:

    “For people who don't obsess over the Tolkien stuff and are just looking for an MMO, I'd say LOTRO is like World of Warcraft with a more polite and mature userbase. It's absolutely worth a look.”

    Yep, that’s pretty much it. Friends of mine who loved WoW but got bored tried playing LOTRO and didn’t find enough new to keep their attention. If you didn’t like WoW because of the graphical style and/or immaturity level, LOTRO is a definite alternative.

    I’ll agree that the Epic Storyline is really good, but the manner in which it’s told is somewhat shoddy. Since you end up doing so many side quests between main Book quests, it’s hard to keep track of what exactly is happening. Things become much more apparent on a second play-through. I remember thinking the whole way through Book 2- “What’s this whole Red Maid thing all about?”

  5. Joshua says:

    Solka, the dwarves and elves both start in the Blue Mountains northwest of the Shire. The Dwarves are focused around Thorin’s Hall, although they soon leave the area.

    The humans and hobbits both start in Archet, one of the villages around Bree. After you complete the Starter instance(~level 6), the Humans go on to a different village, and the Hobbits go back to the Shire.

  6. I’ve played LotRO off and on since beta and have attempted to level a couple of different characters.

    Notice I said “attempted”.

    The problem with LotRO is that the game REALLY starts to drag around level 35 or so. The quests become dull and repetitive. Travel becomes a giant PITA. And good luck trying to find a group for the many “group-only” quests.

    If the designers could have maintained the momentum and fun that they established in the beginning levels, LotRO would be an outstanding game. But at some point it’s obvious that they got tired, and as a result, so does the player.

    Leslee

  7. bbot says:

    Team Fortress 2 is also doing a free weekend, as part of the Demoman/Soldier megapatch extravaganza.

  8. Eric Meyer says:

    You mean Eregion has a “Rainbow in the Dark“, Crusader of Metal?

  9. Rob Conley says:

    Personally I liked poking around and seeing the sights. Just the other day I found where Galadriel’s Mirror was in Caras Galadon.

    As for the liberties Turbine takes, yes there are many but as you progress in levels you will notice they don’t add a lot in the way of monster types. In Bree you have Bears Boars and giant flies, in Lothlorien you have yet again more Bears, Boars, and Giant Flies.

    I think they make an effort to not to go overboard with their “palette” of monsters. Drawing as much as they can from Tolkien even it if is one sentence throw away line (like the Neekerbreekers)

  10. Rosseloh says:

    I’ve been playing since July 2007, so 3 months after release.

    Anyway, while I am quite the Tolkien buff, I also enjoy the MMO genre. While some people look down on the gameplay of this game, and games like WoW, I like it quite a bit. So, I can ignore quite a bit of sloppy implementation of “Lore” and still have fun.

    Actually, I hate to say it but, now that I’m actively leveling my 4th or 5th character, I tend not to read the stuff anymore…. But the first time around I was quite amazed at what they were able to do with the limitations they had.

    Oh, and the Old Forest was actually scary for a level 12 wandering around. Say what you might, but I still get lost in there, even after the new map was added.

    Oh, and so people don’t get their hopes up: I’m pretty sure the “Free” in the Free Weekend only counts for subscribers who have left the game. You can still get a trial account for free, but you’ll also have the trial limitations. Those who used to have an account but canceled get full access back for the weekend.

  11. bargamer says:

    I quit playing LOTR Online after I hit max level with my Champion. Everything was just a “Korean grind.” Crafting was a grind, leveling, questing, and especially titles were a massive grindfest. Add to that the fact that you pretty much had little-to-no freedom with your “build” except for gear, and I just stopped playing.

  12. ZWeekendExtender says:

    Shamus, I know you meant Monday, the 21st but I couldn’t help myself. Keep up the great work!

  13. MelTorefas says:

    I have to admit my experience with the game went like this. Step 1: Get to level 10.
    Step 2: Roll a creep (as the Monster PCs in the Ettinmoors are called)
    Step 3: Never ever look back.

    I greatly enjoyed wandering the Ettinmoors, completing quests and murdering hobbits (sometimes at the same time!) with my Warleader. Wish there was some way for them to implement creep play more broadly, but I sort of don’t see how. Still, playing a Troll was probably the most fun I have ever had in any MMO.

    That being said I have actually DLed the client in preparation for the weekend. Conveniently, I am done with classes on that day, so I am looking forward to giving LOTRO another whirl. Mostly because of Shamus and his writing skills.

  14. Judiah says:

    I’m actually a life time subscriber to LOTRO.. and I never play it.

    The RP, setting, and text is awesome.

    And you can smoke a pipe!

  15. Langwulf says:

    I’ve been playing LotRO since beta, and thus I’ve been apprehensive of Shamus playing it – but though nitpicky and critical, he’s humorous and fair. But really, it’s a very good game.

    From a lore standpoint Turbine has been very successful in finding the seams in the lore and opening them up. Some things have been derided as lorebreaking (the rune keeper class for one) but for the most part they have stayed true to the work. I think they’ve been successful in finding the balance between what works in an MMO and what works according to the lore. It has some problems, but all games do.

    Two things really stand out for me. One is the epic quests (the Book series), where you “help” the fellowship or the Free Peoples. You don’t get to be Aragorn or Gandalf, but you’re the hero that’s doing background work which helps them. The other is the world they have built. The Shire feels right. Bree feels right. Rivendell feels right. But they also expanded into other areas mentionned in passing and made them real places in Middle Earth.

  16. Dawn says:

    Wait, there’s a section called Ettinmoors? Like Ettinsmoor north of Narnia? That’s not on any Tolkien map I know…

    I think that just broke the concept for me.

    Clearly I am too book-immersed to play this game.

  17. Andrew B says:

    Also a lifetime subscriber (although not played for a while since my kid was born).

    Pros: Pretty. Some fabulous lore-nods (including Gandalf’s stone in Amun Sul). A lot of the show-piece quests fit very nicely into the feel of LOTR, if not the actual cannon. The community is pretty solid and sensible. (At no point have I ever felt that participation in game life is valued more than participation in real life.) It’s as close as you can get to Lord of the Rings in a current MMO.

    Cons: That’s quite far from LOTR! A lot of the little, MMO staple quests fit appallingly badly (ok, so how many boars do you want slaughtered this time?). Level 35-40 is a pain, as posted above. Lower level groups are hard to find. (Although I don’t really know how ANY established, non-WOW MMO could deal with this, but would be interested in hearing ideas/solutions.)

    I, personally, think it would have been a better LOTR game if they’d strayed more from the “classic” MMO structures (healers, resurrection etc) to fit the lore, than to stray from the lore to fit the game. Of course, it would have been a worse GAME overall probably, and certainly less successful!

  18. Drew says:

    Dawn: It’s misspelled in the above post, but the Ettenmoors are absolutely a “valid” location in Arda:

    http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Ettenmoors

    Just not a plot-central location.

  19. Daemian Lucifer says:

    “Certainly a game where you fought nothing but Orcs and Goblins would get old extremely quickly.”

    You werent bored by borderlands,and you have just 4 types of enemies there.

  20. Rick W says:

    Dawn: The Ettenmoors are north of Rivendell, west of the Misty Mountains, and just south of Angmar. At least on the map in the book, and I’d assume they’re in roughly the same area in the game.

  21. Jazmeister says:

    Dawn: Don’t forget that CS Lewis and Tolkein were buddies and would chat about fantasy writing a lot. This could be a friendly nod to each other’s works.

    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inklings)

    From a purely game perspective, I love playing as the Warden. Turbine hooked me up with a press account and a couple of level 50 characters and one was a Warden – I love the gambit bar.

    For those who don’t know, the gambit bar logs the last attacks you’ve made, and depending on what’s in it at any given time, you can use a different finisher. Two spear blows and you can use a big spear blow. A spear and then a shield bash enables “the boot”. Follow that with another spear instead of finishing, and you can perform “onslaught”.

    This means that you can go all out attack to clean up weaker individuals, but if a big guy blunders in and starts threatening you, you can start healing yourself and hunkering down. You can manage aggro too. I haven’t played much of the game at all, so I’m not sure how the aggro abilities compare to other classes, but I’ll definitely play a Warden again when I get my own account.

  22. Mantergeistmann says:

    It’s interesting that everyone dislikes the 35-40 level range. If I recall correctly, that’s the Evendim -> Forochel bit, two of my favourite zones in the game.

    Lore-wise, I thought they did a good job keeping the basic feel of the world, and even at more specific parts, thought they did a good job for the most part (with some exceptions, such as the Rune-Keeper, Gollum being west of the Misty Mountains, etc).

    I also like how they make you feel truly a part of the story, like what you do is actually having some effect on the world. If you’re playing a human character, Boromir tells you before the fellowship leaves Rivendell that he’d rather have you along than all the hobbits, which really went some ways to making me think “wow, I’m actually pretty awesome here.”

    And as far as killing all the boars go… they kind of hung a lampshade on that, as you can get the title “Pork Chopper” if you kill at least one in a certain number of different areas.

    That’s another thing I’m a fan of: titles. LotRO is the only game ever that has managed to get me to kill mobs outside of quests, simply because of the title/deed system. I love it, especially the ones that reward you for running around and exploring.

  23. Chesapeake says:

    I suspect a number of folks complaining about the grind from the mid-30s to the early-40s did it before Evendim and Forochel were released. It is a whole lot better than it used to be.

    I am a Tolkein nerd and a huge fan of LotRO. In my judgment, every effort was made to keep true to the spirit of Tolkein’s work even if they didn’t always succeed.

  24. krellen says:

    Lorewise, the early parts of the game are excellent.

    In the 30s, you start encountering far more “drakes” (which all look very much like dragons, only smaller, complete with wings) than canon lore would suggest possible. Complete with several quests to specifically hunt them.

    Having literally grown up immersed in Tolkien lore, that, along with the strange “Earthkin” beings introduced around the Last Bridge, bugged me enough (along with the grind and WoW-like mechanics) to quit the game.

    I do admit they tried to stay true, but they seem to have let just a few too many MMO cliches and tropes sneak in to really make it work for me.

  25. Tesh says:

    LOTRO would be one that I’d be happy to have a life time sub for, if only it were in the Guild Wars price range.

    That said, the troll breaking through the wall in the Dwarf starting area did freak out my toddler to the point where she wouldn’t sleep in her room for fear of a troll busting through her wall. She made me sleep in the front room with her on the couches for a couple of weeks.

    Yeah, I’m a bit more careful these days what she happens to see me playing.

  26. Blackbird71 says:

    (As a disclaimer, I haven’t tired LotRO as of yet, so I have no idea if they’ve handled this well or not.)

    What I’d look for in an MMO with a detailed IP like this with a lot of established canon is a game that allows my character to live in the familiar world without having to become the hero of that world.

    I find that this is usually what ends up breaking the lore, when your self-created character supplants the known heroes by retracing their steps and recreating their adventures. I’m perfectly content carving out my own adventures in such a world, no matter how minor they may be. If I want a major epic adventure with a well-known story, where I play the protagonist and save the world, then I’ll play a single player RPG. When I play an MMO, I do it to create my own story, not to relive someon else’s.

    Honestly, I think LotRO would appeal to me more if they made it less LotR and more “The Hobbit,” following the style of Bilbo rather than the path of the Fellowship. “The Hobbit” was really just a simple adventure for some gold: a delve into some goblin-infested caves, a dark forest full of spiders, and culminating in a fight with a dragon. Exciting, fun, full of danger, a mountain of treasure for a reward, yet in the end it was nothing earth-shattering; with the exception of a small town and a mountain, the world was relatively unchanged. The only thing to happen of epic proportions was the dicsovery of one particular miniscule piece of jewelry, but its significance was yet to be understood.

    I guess my point is that not every adventure has to be the “stop the ultimate evil and save all the civilized world” sort of thing. Not that there’s anything wrong with such quests, they can be great fun as well. It’s just that they get a bit silly when a few thousand other people are all doing the same thing.

  27. Adamantyr says:

    I have a lifetime subscription to LOTRO, but I haven’t spent nearly enough time playing… my highest level character is 26 now. I do enjoy playing it, though, and right now I’m rather off WoW and looking for a change.

    Lore-wise, I really enjoy the work they’ve done. Places in the game with no book counterpart have names that fit. I’m certain that the professor himself wouldn’t find fault with them. (What he’d have thought of the game itself… I doubt he’d find much to like about MMO’s.)

    LOTRO also has, in my opinion, one of the best crafting systems available. The gear you can make is extremely good, far more accessible if you’re not the group/instance type, and allows individual achievements.

    The housing is a mixed-bag… no housing system equals Ultima Online, which allowed complete floor-plan design and placement of crafting facilities. LOTRO doesn’t give players crafting stations, which seems logical… but they obviously decided at the last moment to keep the facilities in public areas, probably so the instanced areas didn’t get overcrowded with high level players. The maintenance costs are small but a bit annoying… even UO abandoned rents eventually and just tied homes to accounts.

    Travel does suck in the game. Mounts are still restricted to level 35, which is ridiculously high. They have a level 20 “starter” mount now that moves slightly slower than a warden on forced march now, but they should have just lowered the normal mount to 20. Why Turbine has failed to do what Blizzard has already done with mounts is beyond my comprehension.

    I’ve definitely noticed that leveling up has slowed down as I’ve advanced in level… prior to Mirkwood, the leveling curve acceleration actually put players in a bit of a leveling hole; all the quests available were too low-level to be worth doing. (This problem is FAR worse in DDO.) I noticed after Mirkwood that a bunch of new quests were opened in the Bree-land areas, so it appears some effort was made to pad out the quests.

    I haven’t tried the instances yet. My brother, who has a higher level character, tried to do one a month or so ago, and walked away disgusted. Five hours and they weren’t even a third of the way through the quest chain.

  28. Rosseloh says:

    Oh, I forgot to mention Tom Bombadil. One of my favorite characters in the books, and they do perfectly representing him, down to his curious speech.

    ——SPOILER——
    And, during Volume 1 Book 1, you get to experience his power first hand when he saves you from Sambrog the wight.

  29. Menegil says:

    @ Adamantyr: Tolkien loathed the very thought of anyone fussing with his work and taking “liberties” with it. That is why he never supported any adaptation of his work to any other artform. After reading his Letters, it becomes quite clear he would utterly despise the post-Peter Jackson era of bastardization of his work.

    That said, I agree with the great professor. I revere his work as both an academic and a fiction writer, and hang my head in disgust in his stead after seeing people take advantage of his work in this manner. For those reasons and more, not the least of which is the utter lack of originality, I did not even get past the starting areas.

  30. Rutskarn says:

    Hm. Might give this a shot, at least a weekend’s worth.

    Especially if I can find a mechanical squirrel equivalent to hawk.

  31. =Dan says:

    LOTRO suffers from the same thing all MMO’s suffer, namely “Grind”. I played the game for a year straight (from August 2007), however after leveling my Champion to 50 I played a little longer and quit. I can’t understand why anyone would want to go through the game or any MMO 4-5 times.

    Pros: Great graphics, mature players, really interesting quests (at levels 5 thru 20 or so). Hobbies were a nice idea…Liked finding little details from Tolkien’s life and writings (Like Roverandom and the inklings).

    Cons: The grinding is terrible, to the point where I am consciously aware of the fact that I am grinding. In other MMO’s I’d played I would grind as I went through the game. In LOTRO I would actually spend days grinding my craft or hobby to level it up. The crafts require active awareness of your grinding. I’m sure I am not explaining this properly. It was immersion breaking for me…
    That and the excessive travel time between quests.

    And, as for whether Tolkien would have liked anything based on his writing, I wouldn’t bother to hazard a guess. Claiming you know what anyone would have said or done without having a relationship beyond reading their correspondence is too much like reading tea leaves. Tolkien was more than the sum of his writings, as is any one who commits their thoughts to paper.

    =Dan

  32. Mischa says:

    Anyone who thinks that MMOs are not addictive only has to look at threads like this one. Any thread will contain comments that contain both “I leveled my character to 50” and “Quests stopped being fun at level 20”. (Sorry to paraphrase you, Dan. Just an example.)

    Why do we do this? (Yes, me too.) Why do we keep grinding when the really fun parts stopped a long time ago? Why don’t we move on to another game?

  33. Rutskarn says:

    Mischa: From a psychological perspective, MMO’s exploit the most effective kind of positive reinforcement: random, occasional payouts. It’s the same reason people get addicted to slot machines, despite the fact that pulling a lever is neither fun nor profitable.

    1. Shamus says:

      Rutskarn has nailed it. Although I’ll add that MMO’s are even a little more insideous: They begin by “paying out” at an incredibly high rate. You’re getting little doses of positive feedback once a minute during the tutorial. It tapers off very very gradually. Pretty soon you’re getting rewards and progress once every five minutes. Then every half hour. Then every hour or so.

      Eventually you’re sitting there with a level 55 character and you realize you’re about three evenings away from your next meaningful accomplishment and you think, “Why am I still playing this thing again?”

      It combines our inclination to seek positive feedback with our general poor perception of gradual changes.

      Having said that, I have a history of dropping MMO’s when they hit the fatigue point for me. It forms a pretty predictable pattern:

      Dark Age of Camelot: 35
      City of Heroes: 30
      WoW: 37
      Champions Online: 30

      I doubt I’ll ever get a character to max level in any game.

  34. chabuhi says:

    I no longer play MMO’s. Most of the major ones appear to be quite appealing “on paper”, and I’ve played most of them, up to LOTR in beta Usually I played at least one char, though rarely past level 10 or 20. Only on a couple of occasions have I made it beyond the low levels. In WoW, I think I got to 25 or 35 (can’t bemember which) – back when the cap was 50 (or 60 – whatever the original cap was). I got a char to 43 in EQ.

    There are a lot of reasons I dislike MMO’s and prefer single-player experiences: Immersion-killing xXkewlD00d843Xx players are a small part of it. My preference for solo-play (okay, so I hate other humans, sue me) is a small part of it. But, generally speaking, I can get past those minor points. For certain, the main reason for me quitting is always the grind.

    I think I often like the story aspect in games more than the actual gameplay or getting phat lewt. That’s why I’ll sink many more hours into, say, Fallout 3, or (currently) Dragon Age than I probably ever did in WoW or EQ (well, maybe not EQ or UO – I killed a LOT of time in those two). Aside from the social aspect (okay, I don’t *really* hate the rest of you), MMO’s, for me, fail to capture the kind of adventure that I find more often in single-player games.

    Or, maybe it’s just that I come from the last generation to actually read books ;-P

  35. Coffee says:

    Can I do it? Can I?

    Okay then…

    Breakin’ the lore! Breakin’ the lore!(bam bam!)
    Breakin’ the lore! Breakin’ the lore!

  36. Vegedus says:

    I’ve been in the market for a MMO for a little while, and I’m definitely interested in LOTRO. Too bad that, yes, indeed, I won’t have time at all to play that free weekend.

  37. 1d30 says:

    What do you guys think about a game where you don’t have a very strong sense of what your skill is?

    What if there were no stats on your character sheet?

    Of course you’d see yourself getting better at things, like failing less often at making gauntlets or being able to kill Orcs faster and without taking as much damage.

    But what if you had to use guesswork and experimentation to decide whether you could take on a Troll or successfully use Mithril to make a sword? Obviously that would remove the psychological incentive Rutskarn mentioned.

    But would that relieve you from grinding?

  38. cassander says:

    Rutskarn>

    You are absolutely 100% right. MMO’s are a brainhack. They’re like fast food, scientifically designed to zero in on what we find pleasurable. But frankly, so is almost everything else we do. Just because it’s a hack doesn’t mean we don’t really enjoy it.

    d30>

    I think that would make it worse. With hard numbers, you get at least an idea of what is better than what, but if how is someone supposed to know if a “crushing” hit is better than a “smashing” hit? think that system would increase, rather than decrease, the ability of casual players to participate, since they’d be even more clueless.

  39. LK says:

    A few gameplay notes I liked when I was dabbling with the 14-day trial: I was never at a loss for quests to keep advancing, and I was never unsure of where to go next to keep finding quests.

    The quests do seem to do a very good job (in the lower levels where I was playing) of continually pointing you towards more available quests of slowly increasing level.

    As far as new-player experiences go, the game was doing a very good job of making me feel like I was never lost in a wide open world. The world was open to me but I was given very easy to comprehend directions to advance through it.

    This really pleased me, and by contrast when I used to play WoW years ago I was frequently at a total loss as to where I should be going next for quests and level-appropriate combat. (I do believe they have improved this since then, though).

    Gameplay-wise it’s non-groundbreaking and fairly predictable but I was very pleased with the overall competence of the experience that I took in during the trial.

    The only reason I didn’t sign up for the game was that I couldn’t see myself juggling it with an EVE Online subscription.

    (oh, and Thorin’s hall is gorgeous and IMO puts the cartoony dwarven settings of Warcraft to shame. What it lacks in whimsy it makes up for in regalia and tasteful grandeur.)

  40. Moon Monster says:

    Hah, ditto on the ‘I stop when the grind sets in’. I have a long, long list of middle-level characters. I think the highest ever was in EQ2, got to 60-something, which isn’t bad considering the cap was 80 at the time. A lot of stuff to do in that game, and ways to keep it interesting/varied. Shame it looks so dated…

  41. CuChullain says:

    I found quests a little odd in the MMO environment in that you’d see a bunch of people doing the same quest as you at the same time.

    One early quest I remember from my brief sojourn into LOTRO is one where you need to kill a Kine (like a big cow). I arrived at the duly-appointed Kine killing area, only to find that someone had beaten me to it by a few minutes at which point I had to wait around for the Kine to re-spawn so I could kill it. And when I was done, there were another couple of gamers waiting for their turn.

    It was some of the least immersive gaming I’ve ever encountered.

    And it couldn’t have been fun for the Kine, either

  42. Joshua says:

    LK, if you liked Thorin’s Hall, you should really check out Moria. I really like the main hall(can’t remember which number it is). In the movies, the hall was certainly *big*, but rather non-detailed. In the game, the hall is more realistic in its size, but much more elegant in design.

    Forochel is 45+, IIRC, not 35-40. However, it is probably one of my favorite areas in the game. I’ve gotten several gorgeous screenshots of aurora borealis when glancing at the bay. The music is nice as well. Evendim is very pretty, but a huge hassle to get around.

    As far as the game dragging around 35, I’d agree. Although there are problem spots earlier, you start seeing a lot more Fellowship-based quests, and it’s sometimes hard to find one(just try finding a full group for Fornost!).

    I wonder if one of the problems is that a lot of quest chains start with solo-capability, but then end up with, “you’d best bring some friends along for the next part”. That’s usually the part where I post a few times on the LFF, and after 15 minutes of no response, give up and move to something else. That’s usually why I end up with a bunch of quests that are the end of chains, and don’t get them finished for a couple of months. I wonder if it would be better to START these quests as a group, so a group would be inclined to go all of the way through the chain.

    Either that, or give more incentives for players to help others with quests they have already completed or are not yet at that point in the chain.

  43. Miral says:

    As I’ve mentioned before, I played LOTRO a while back and it was a lot of fun but ultimately got too annoying to play around level 10 or so, when they started introducing team-only quests. (Or those sufficiently difficult that you really needed a team.)

    I really wish someone would make a good MSOG (basically exactly the same as an MMO, with ever-expanding content etc, but single-player-PvE only and permitting cheats). PvP and teaming just don’t appeal to me at all (at least not required teaming; it can be fun to team occasionally). I guess I’m just a loner.

    Games like Dragon Age (moddable RPGs) come close, but I can’t think of any game that’s taken the next step. (Maybe there is one that I just haven’t heard of.)

  44. LK says:

    Miral:

    It’s a sci-fi setting, but Freelancer also comes sort of close in that it has had more mod content released for it than I care to think of, and you can host a persistent single-player experience for several players on a dedicated server.

    This gives you an online, persistent gameworld where all of the content is focused around the single-player experience, but you can team up with your friends if and when you want to… and even get a mini-MMO (MO?) of your own running if you gather enough friends on the server.

    One of my promises to myself when I have more discretionary income is to lease a dedicated server to maintain a small Freelancer community for a while and see where it all goes.

  45. Sam says:

    I really wanted to like LOTRO. The first 10 or so levels were a blast to play. It had its similarities to other MMORPGs I’d played in the past, but it was strangely more entertaining. Then it turned into “higher fantasy World of Warcraft,” and the image was shattered. I really enjoyed how quests that required you to pick up 6 bear claws would have a 100% drop rate…for the first hour or so of the game. Also, my highest level character, who had earned the title “The Invincible” for not dying through level 10, was murdered by a random high-level goblin that just appeared on screen from nowhere. Crap drop rate? Random super-monsters? It’s WoW all over again. I can’t go back to it.

  46. Smirker says:

    I’m playing LOTRO and love it. I’ve only been in it for 8 months or so, but I have one high level character (who is a Supreme Master of a trade skill) and working up another character now.

    Siege of Mirkwood has revamped several of the lower areas and frankly I’m not experiencing much of that mid-level grind sensation like I usually do in MMOs. Also, the community is super helpful so if you need a recommendation of where to go or for something to do people are eager to share advice. SoM also has the new Skirmish system – which I didn’t think I’d get into much — but I’m having a blast with it. You can set the difficulty of the the fight and they just last up to 30 minutes. A lot of hectic fun (in some of them) and you can do them solo or in groups! And.. you can do them from anywhere in the world! Well, not if you’re in an instance.. but otherwise it’s all good! :)

    Edit: One other thing, the experience from the skirmishes just seem to be sick/awesome. If nothing else and you DO find yourself not wanting to care about the various areas of the game at lvl 35 or so you can easily repeat these skirmishes for fast, easy (or hard if you make it considerably higher level) experience.

  47. Andrew B says:

    I suspect that the travel time issue with LOTRO is probably a conscious design decision. After all, when you boil it down, a lot of the story of LOTR is “Then they walked a bit. Then they walked some more. Then they did some walking.” Make the world too small/easily transversible and you lose that sense of epic travel which is, to my mind at least, part of the LOTR. Game Vs Lore. Pays your money, takes your choice.

  48. Ian says:

    I was just reading this post when Codemasters (the UK publisher) sent me an email advertising it. However for me it’s not a weekend.

    “The entire duration your account will be active is from 23rd December until 30th December 2009.”

    That’ll give me something to do while the missus spends quality Christmas time with her parents.

  49. Andrew B says:

    @Ian, yeah, Codies do different offers. You might also want to enter the competition (http://www.lotro-europe.com/competition/ ) too. Surprsingly good prizes for us Europeans, who normally get the bum end of any LOTRO deals. 14 day free trials on offer for EU peeps too.

    And may I recommend Evernight as your server of choice? ;)

  50. Haviland says:

    I started playing LOTRO again after I picked up the first expansion for effectively free.

    Like many, I’d quit once I’d maxed out my Minstrel as I was gated by the need to get a full fellowship for the Book quests.

    I think it’s still the most beautiful game ever when the graphics are maxed out. I don’t mind travelling, it’s so pretty. It’s not too much grinding, it’s fun again.

  51. Smirker says:

    A small note on the writing.

    They actually did a really good job keeping it near the canon from what I’ve observed. When I was first doing the epic book in Trollshaws I was surprised by several things (Don’t want to put spoilers here) but not long after I had a long trip to the US and I re-read the Fellowship of the Ring — it was actually eluded to and that Elrond would be ‘making sure it was taken care of’.

    I am not the biggest Tolkien geek – but I am a strong one and I love how the game helps flesh out some things and brings more of it to life. I don’t completely agree on some areas (like the Trollshaws in general) but its not too significant deviation to me and it certainly helps liven hings up as well.

  52. Andrew B says:

    Oh, and on the Hobbit Hunter thing. I’ve always sniggered whenever I click on my “Man Hunter”. He’s got a fine Village People ‘tash too.

  53. Matt K says:

    I never played a MMO before until this week. I would try out LOTRO but I just got Guild Wars Trilogy ($15 at Best Buy) and I really just started (and I am enjoyeing the 30 min I’ve played so far).

  54. RudeMorgue says:

    I'd say LOTRO is like World of Warcraft with a more polite and mature userbase.

    One that never ceases to remind you of how much more polite and mature they are than the WoW userbase, how much better LOTRO is than WoW, why WoW really isn’t the game for them, and how (at least as of earlier this year) the bugs in the game should not be complained about because the game is so much better than WoW.

    My impression? The fear effect was pretty cool, the graphics were very nice, but I don’t like not being able to swim and the game itself was rather dull. Nice people, though.

  55. foolsage says:

    Joshua wrote, “After you complete the Starter instance(~level 6), the Humans go on to a different village, and the Hobbits go back to the Shire.”

    Actually, the race of Men remain in Archet, albeit a little later in the timeline… so it looks a tiny bit different after the events at the end of the tutorial.

    *********

    Krellen wrote, “In the 30s, you start encountering far more “drakes” (which all look very much like dragons, only smaller, complete with wings) than canon lore would suggest possible.”

    Drakes weren’t all that uncommon in Middle-earth. What were very uncommon were true Dragons (descended from Glaurung). There’s only one true Dragon in LotRO, and he’s actually undead, raised by foul Necromancy during the Epic Story, and available to later fight in Helegrod. Drakes in Middle-earth aren’t terribly powerful or sentient, while Dragons are both.

    *********

    Joshua wrote, “Forochel is 45+, IIRC, not 35-40.”

    Forochel has content for levels 40-52 or so. Some players will find it tough to go there solo before level 42 though.

    *********

    As for about , well, they’re… . As an avid Tolkien fan who’s read the series at least once per year for over three decades now I firmly disagree with a good 95% of the lore complaints people have raised. E.g. complaints that Rune-keepers don’t belong in Middle-earth – . They shouldn’t be all that common, but then player characters are generally assumed to be extraordinary and rare. It’s true that player characters themselves can and do violate the lore, e.g. by having people casting flashy spells in the heart of Michel Delving… but it’s hard to prevent PCs from doing things like that without removing a lot of the freedom players enjoy. In the quest to make a fun game, Turbine allows players to violate the lore, but I don’t agree that Turbine themselves violates the lore – instead, they’ve done to great lengths to incorporate everything to which they have rights, and to allude to the stuff they don’t own rights to. E.g. the capital of Eregion as mentioned in the SIlmarillion was a city called Ost-in-Edhil, but Turbine doesn’t have the rights to the Silmarillion… so instead we have ruined Ring-forges in Tham Mirdain.

  56. GuiguiBob says:

    I’ve been playing LOTRO for a few months now and climbed up to lvl 52 with a hunter.

    The story is really interesting and well written for an MMO(granted my previous experience was with Rune of magic), makes questing flowing rather well in the best zones. Forochel, Ered Luin and Bree (haven’t tried the new Low-lands). The new skirmish system is really cool and from what I hear they’re working on making the epic quest soloable.

    Too many quest lines start solo then the finale you’ve been working on for 5-7 quests is a group instance with nobody doing it. Some quests lines demands way too much back and forth across the large zones.

    in short, a good game with a few shortcomings. But surprising writing in a MMO. It will be interesting to read an LP if you go there.

  57. Ian says:

    @Andrew B

    You can suggest whatever you like but if my sister and her husband are on a different one I’ll have to bow to peer presure. Still I loved my champion running around the country side with someone who had a flag working for me was great.

    No flag no country that’s the rule!

  58. Blackbird71 says:

    @CuChullain (42)

    Actually, kine are cows, it’s an old word for the plural of cow.

    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Kine

  59. Pyfiend says:

    I am a lifetime subscriber to LotRO, I have been active in the game since the pre-launch beta, and I have tried (and discarded) other MMOs since LotRO’s launch.

    I do not play this game to level up…or even to max out a level or a class or a stat. (Although I certainly don’t complain when I do.)

    I play this game to hang out with my fellow Ring-heads.

    Now we are not so hardcore that we can quote the lineage of Aragorn all the way back to Isildur (well…okay, some of us are…), but we at least know who they were, and we can get into wonderful discussions of the books versus the movies versus the MMO.

  60. Zaghadka says:

    Hmm. Copious verbage. Not what you meant, I hope. [/nitpick]

    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/verbage

  61. OEP says:

    The fatigue point can really vary depending on the social structure in which you find yourself.

    I could not get past 16 or so in eithe Warhammer or LOTRO. I have 7 80’s in WoW. But that might be because I found a group of folks that I really enjoyed playing with in Wow.

  62. NotYetMeasured says:

    I’ve been playing LOTRO since late Alpha and still love it.

    The slow patch (worst at around level 39 when you don’t really have multiple options in terms of zones to visit and quests to do) should be much better now that they’ve added the Skirmish system at level 30.

    I think they’ve done a good job balancing “The Lore.” Adding Rune-keepers that can zap with lightning, burn with fire or frost, and heal really pushed the low-magic envelope they had established at launch. But most of the things that are out of character are safely, mildly humorous. The other day I made my way through a maze of twisting passages and grand dwarf-architecture, past chasms, critters, and goblins, and when I got to the first really big camp an NPC said “Did you have any trouble finding us?”

    One thing I don’t like is the insistence on using, in my opinion only in certain places, English intended to match Tolkien’s own. A smattering of NPCs using “connexion” and the cockneyish personal-pronoun-as-possessive (“bringing some pie to me gran”) seem to me to be more out of place than to set the mood.

  63. Malkara says:

    You should all clearly just play Shadows of Isildur.

    http://middle-earth.us/

    MUDs ftw. ;)

  64. Terrible says:

    Given its addictiveness, do you think it would be possible for me to play it just until it stops being free? I’ve never played an MMO before, and I’d like to see what everyone is talking about.

  65. Monsieur Vatel says:

    Blackbird: That’s actually my perspective on role-playing in general. I like the idea of an immersive environment, but I hate the idea that everyone is always waging a perpetual war against “Evil”. Whether it’s by a DM or a computer program, I find railroading in pursuit of a pre-established story to be tedious, tedious work.

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