The player’s are the best part of LOTRO.

April 24, 2009 by Morninglark

Lord of the Rings Online is celebrating the second anniversary of the game. They are offering a 2 week free trial, and bonus experience. I thought it might be a good time to write a short review. I tried the game when it first came out, but due to lack of time, I put in on the back burner for later.

I recently started playing again. This time I began a new character on the Elendilmir Server, because I found out a good gaming buddy was playing there. I was invited to join a pretty nice guild, The Knights of Amon Sul. They seem like a good group of people, with a strong leadership team. They have been helpful in answering so many questions. (Thanks Kin!)

LoTRO is a very well written game, that tries to be as true to the Lore of the Books, as much as possible in an MMO environment. (Actually sometimes to the detriment of the MMO genre - but I digress)

There is something magical, and fun about starting out as a new elf, only to meet up with Elrond! If you are a Tolkien fan, it’s what dreams are made of. The quests are actually pretty engaging. The solo instances for the Introduction allow you to immediately feel like you are in Middle Earth.

After the tutorial, you arrive at your home starting town. From there you can get quests, learn a craft, take a horse to other starting areas, or visit a trainer. Most of the quests are the ‘kill 10′ or “fetch this”, but they often hide that within the lore and cutaway cinematics. I like when games take the time to hide that I am just killing 1000 more Orcs to get a million more experience.

I decided to take up a couple of trade-skills, to earn some cash. There is a hard and fast rule to making money in any game like this. If the server is new, camp sentient NPC’s like orcs, and sell the loot to other newbies needing gear. If the server is older and established, they don’t want your crummy level 10 drops. Take up a tradeskill that collects items that high levels can use to skill up their trades.

So on one I chose the Profession of Explorer. (In Lord of the Rings you choose trades in groups of three) The Explorer can gather wood, ores, and gems. They can also tan the leathers. My main chose farming. (No I don’t mean Chinese Gold farming, or BOTTING) I mean putting seeds in the ground, and growing Taters. Farming is extremely tedious and boring, which is why high levels will pay others to grow the veggies! For the most part, the tradeskills in LOTRO are nothing to write home about. They are auto-combines, ala WoW. Nothing like Vanguard or EQ2. I prefer a trade that requires I be engaged, but that is not the case.

After a week, I had enough to buy my house, and mounts for all three of my characters at 35. I also had 10 extra gold, so I can gear them up, and buy spells as I go. Now it was time to start leveling them. I am one of those players that refuses to beg. I don’t expect anyone to gear me up, or hand me money just because I am low level.

I really could not decide which class to play. None are really the class archetypes I prefer. There is no druid, or plate wearing cleric. There is no enchantress.

I created a Hunter, Rune Keeper, and Minstrel. I am playing them all, to see which I like best. I had hoped that I would know by the time they were all 20, but none are jumping out saying..YES.. I love this character. (Maybe by 25) One of the best parts of the character advancement, is the ‘Virtues’ system. As you do quests around the world, you gain many titles, but you often gain skills. They are called Virtues, and you may go to an NPC, and choose which ones you want to have on at the time. (Sort of like perma-buffs) I like it, anytime a game tries to have ways to ‘customize’ your character build. This one is nice because you have to earn each one, which again hides the grind of killing yet another 100 wolves. It reminds me of the Everquest AA system. Still a grind, but with a purpose.

The world is very beautiful. From the pretty sky, right down to the last little Hobbit Hole. There was no fault I could find with the artwork in the game. It runs smoothly, and has very few bugs that I have found. The music is ok. It’s not amazing, but it’s not annoying either.

The player-base seems to be more mature than in some games. The OOC chatter is helpful, or funny, or just friendly. I have never had to turn off any chat channels because they became too annoying. (Let’s just say, I survived the Barrens chat channel) If I decide to stay in Middle Earth for a bit, it will be the players and not the game that keeps me there.

Next, it was off to the Elven housing area. Time to get my own piece of Eriador. I chose a small cottage on a stream. It has a dock in the back-yard where I can fish. I am not terribly impressed with the housing in the game. (read this and this for more about that)

There are some things that could be better. Things that become tedious for no reason, are not fun. Games should not contain anything that becomes repetitive, unless they absolutely have to. For example, and I know it’s a small thing, but the mail system in the game is awful. You can not get any fancy UI add-on’s, like you could in WoW to fix it. It’s a regular time sink! If you have a bag full of items to send to a friend or alt, you could easily spend 10-15 minutes just at the mailbox..typing..clicking..confirming…repeat repeat. There is no batch mailing. There is no shared bank space, so you have to mail things to your Alts.

Another example is the Auction house. For some reason that eludes me, you can only list 30 items at a time for sale. I could understand it, if it were per account… But it’s per character. So it’s nothing to do with trying to control exploits, or gold sellers. For me it’s just stupid..list half my produce with one character. Mail the other half –OH NO –back to the mailbox — to another character so she can list the rest. The auction house is ‘Kludgy”, unrefined, more like the Bazaar in EQ 5 years ago. Many of the UI features, that I have come to expect are lacking in the game. It’s playable, it does the job, but it’s not as customizable as I would want. I hate that I can’t make notes on my map.

I really love the quests, the exploration, the virtue system, and the lore of the game. Most important, I really like the player-base! (The only other time I have found a group of players this nice is in a closed Friends and Family Beta of EQ2) It’s rare to find so many literate people in one game! I can actually decipher what people are saying in chat. That’s almost reason enough to play.

All-in-All the game is fun, but I am concerned I can’t find a character class that I like. Our Avatar’s, in any game, are the single most important thing. I can have fun, even if I don’t like the tradeskills. I can enjoy it if it has more raiding or PVP than I prefer. I can even play games that do not have great epic quests, or fantastic lore.

I am not sure I can stay in a game, if I don’t somehow find a way to actually like one of my characters!

Share and Enjoy: