Lotro Log #1 – 16th June 08

Current Level: 11
Epic Quest: Prologue, Chapter 3

I have long held the belief that writing a single review of an MMO beyond covering the question “Is it broken?” is largely pointless. Due to the nature of the genre, one person’s experience can and will differ vastly from any other persons. This is my second attempt to play Lotro and I am finding it remarkably different from the first time. The biggest contributor to this is the fact that I am playing a hobbit rather than a man, so consquently I am in a totally different zone. Well actually, lets go back to the beggining.

When you first start a character, you are thrown into this linear instanced single player tutorial section which gets you going and provides a bit of action straight of the bat. This sequence had Black Riders hastling hobbits looking for Baginses and such things. Once you have learnt how to both click on things, and click on other different things, you are graduate to actually being able to play with other players. You find yourself in a non-instanced newbie area which is sectioned off from the rest of the game. Actually i was most disappointed to find that it was the same place that the humans go at this point so I had already played through it. At level 5 you run out of quests here, do a story mission, and then I was sent back to the Shire to start the proper game.

While Bree-land felt a bit sparse of quests and towns, there being a mere two before you ended up wandering into Bree, the shire is a sprawling mass of hobbit villages and seemingly endless quests. I think that for the proper Lord of the Rings related experience, it is definitely best to start as a Hobbit. It just seems the right place to start. You potter around doing relatively unimportant quests of no real consequence, which is appopriate to the ramp up that I know is coming later. You also get to see ‘famous landmarks’ like Bag End. Here’s a holiday snap.

Enjoying

* The shire is beautifully constructed. It’s largely based on this marvellous piece of art which Tolkien seemingly doodled on the back of a napkin. All those villages are present. You start in Little Devling, and find Michel Delivng, Waymeet, Hobbiton, Bywater, Overhill, Needlehole, Tookborough, Brockborings, Scary, Frogmorton, Woodhall and Stock. Each village has a distinct look, and has a lot of content which is usually about 4-10 quests.

* Playing a Minstrel. There is something oddly badass about whipping out a lute and playing chords as a bear comes charging at you. The minstrel is basically a healer/caster, but using a lute instead of magic. The reason for this is that characters in Lotro don’t have hit points, they have ‘morale’. Apparently the only effect of being gnawed by a bear is a slight loss of morale. Anyway, the minstrels little tunes boost morale which sort of makes sense, I guess.

Hating

* There is some pretty blatant attempts to waste the players time going on. There are these postal delivery and pie delivery quests. Both have the player trying to delivery post and pies between the various villages while avoiding hungry hobbits or nosey hobbits. Most of these quests take about 5-10 minutes of boring running from one town to another, and if you can mess up at the last second and have to start all over if you get too close to one of the hobbits. It’s rather aggravating really.

* Group quests. Well I haven’t found many of these so far, but I’ve got one in my log that doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere any time soon. The server I am playing on seems a little dead and no-one seems to be around to do it. This is a problem I had with Wow as well. The only option really is to wait till I really outlevel it and come back later.

Desire to Continue: 9