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Lord of the Rings Online General Article: Over Rock and Under Tree
MMORPG.com Lord of the Rings Online Reporter Jason Parnele writes this look at his own return to Turbine's Middle-Earth MMO, recounting some of his experiences.
By Guest Writer on February 17, 2010
I mentioned in my last article that I returned to LOTRO not to level as fast as humanly possible or pwn noobs in the Entmoors, but to slow down and enjoy the game. In fact, in my kinship recruitment thread I said I wanted to “immerse myself into Middle-Earth”. My Burglar – at the time of writing this – is level 40 and in no rush to reach the end game.
Yes, let’s be honest and call a fanboi a fanboi. I don’t take offense. I loved the books. And this isn’t a review of the game – it’s my story. In talking to friends and reading forums I found a lot of players who had been considering trying LOTRO and I thought I could share my experience. I’m not writing to promote the game. I may even discourage you from buying the game and save you $20. In which case, just mail me $10 and we’ll call it even.
As I mentioned, I blew through the first 20 levels largely in part because Turbine increased the amount of experience gained from quests and monster kills since beta. They also increased the rewards. I remember in beta the only way to get the gold required to buy a horse by level 35 was to sell the location of Frodo to the enemy. I would tell the Ring Wraiths in the cut scenes “Yo Ring Wraith, when the hobbits hop on Buckleberry Ferry just go up to the bridge and around – it takes literally like 2 seconds.” But now, by level 20 I already had a couple of gold and at 35 I could afford two horses simply by vendoring drops and selling a fur/hide on the auction house.
I was genuinely worried that my time spent in beta was going to ruin the element of surprise for my first 40 levels. For example, I already knew my way through the Old Forest to Tom Bombadil’s house and getting lost in the forest is a rite of passage every character should experience. However, the strangest thing happened – and maybe it was subconscious – I aggro’d a tree, panicked and made a wrong turn ending up at Goldberry. I couldn’t believe it: I was lost in the Old Forest, again. It’s these little things, like the in-game music that have fueled my LOTRO resurgence.
Anytime I reinstalled WoW (which was many) or tried a new game one of the first things I would do is turn off the in-game music. I’m not saying the music in WoW is worse than T-Pain without the auto tune. In fact, it’s probably really good. I’m just saying music was a distraction while I was 4-button mashing my Paladin. It’s like when you’re driving and you turn down the radio in the car while you’re looking for a house number. But so far, I haven’t turned down or off any music in LOTRO. Not even the combat music whose first search result for “combat music lotro” is: “Anyway to turn off combat music?”
To steal EA Sports’ slogan “If it’s in the game, it’s in the game!” The importance Tolkien gave to music in Middle-Earth is as Frodo is to the destruction of the One Ring. You don’t need to look further than the Minstrel class to see Turbine wasn’t going to ignore that fact. I had planned to discuss the LOTRO music system, but Justin Webb’s Lord of the Rings Online: Freebird! column did a fantastic job explaining and exploring it. One of my favorite early moments in the game happened when a kin mate announced a band was playing in The Prancing Pony. Now this was the reason I returned on a RP server. I’ve experienced a lifetime of questing and end game raids – I’m in no hurry to get to 65. The 10,000 bears I need to kill weren’t going anywhere so I rode back to Bree to hear the band. I’ll be honest; I AFK danced for 5 of the 20 minutes I was there while I made a ham and cheese sandwich. But still, the music was great and I can appreciate the amount of time they spent practicing.
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I mentioned the 10,000 bears above because I make no illusion that LOTRO isn’t the same grind every other MMORPG is. If you’re tired of killing different modeled cats over and over in WoW you’ll find no relief in LOTRO. I’ve been killing wolves for 40 levels. I suspect I’ll find more in Moria (somehow) and again in Mirkwood. Eventually, they’ll create a game (if they haven’t already) that works like the WoW tournament servers. You’ll login as max level and have instant access to all available equipment and skills. To be honest, there are a lot of upsides to that especially for PvP, but we’d all find a way to hate on it.
Another subject I can’t glaze over is the lack of players below level 40. Like any MMORPG nearly three years past its release date the number of new players is low and the older zones are barren. It was OK for the first 20 levels as you barely notice, but then the number of group quests increase. While you will never run out of quests, it would just be nice to have more players around to do the quests with better a story and rewards. I’m stuck on Vol. 1 Book 4 Chp. 8: The Unmarked Trail right now. Prior to this, I was lucky to find higher level players running friends through the epic storyline. I even ran across one level 60 character who hadn’t been able to complete it yet. It definitely cheapened the experience to be run through the quest, but what can you do? I should mention recent revamps to quests and zones (i.e. , Lonelands) have made this a little less of a problem. But it’s still a huge problem as you come into your 20s.
Levels 30 – 40 have, logically, been the hardest so far. Orion, Turbine’s Senior Content Designer, acknowledged in a recent LOTROCast (a LOTRO podcast) the difficulty for players during those levels. I actually expect levels 40 – 50 to have more direction. In my 30s I was constantly wandering back and forth between zones for suitable level quests. I probably spent as much time traveling as leveling.
Outside of leveling I’ve just been focusing on learning the Burglar class. My kin, The Grey Guard on EU-RP Laurelin, is full of knowledgeable players of every class and has been a great resource. I hope, in time, I’ll be resource for people. If you would like to email me a question on the Burglar or any aspect of the game up to level 40 send me an email: parmele@gmail.com. I’ll put together a bunch of them in a future post. For example:
Q: Are you maxing traits as you level or planning to go back?
A: I’m not maxing traits. I’m not even really paying attention to ones I’ve earned. I was a huge min-maxer when I played WoW. I used to really get caught up in it while leveling alts. I’d constantly be looking up the fastest way to level as a certain class or the optimal spell rotation. I was obsessed with damage meters and topping the charts on a Wailing Caverns run. If I decide I want to be involved in end game raiding with my kin I’ll go back and max the important ones at 65. Until then I’m just not caring – too many other things to have fun with.
Email me your questions!
I joined LotRO for the first time almost two months ago and your article mirrors my experience so far and I too am haivng a blast playing.I didn't join LotRO earlier because at it's launch after 3 movies and many bad/shallow games based on the IP I was burnt out on Lord of the Rings to be honest,despite having read the books several times.
Coincidentally I also chose a Burglar to play and find the class richly complex compared to "rogue" classes in other games.My Burglar is 62 now and I am almost done exploring the Mines of Moria and ready to hit Loth and then Mirkwood.My experience has differed from yours when it comes to fellowship quests though on SIlverlode(US) there seems to be an adequate number of people playing lower level characters to regularly find pugs for a lot of that content.Also I have regularly teamed with folks in the Kin that recruited me ,Rising Phoenix,who are running alts my around my level so have done a lot of the Book Epic Content.
From the sound of it Turbine plans to make a lot of the Vol 1 book content more acessible to players who solo or cannot find groups for that content with the next content patch which will help folks on less populated servers immensely.
I'm actually doing the same thing as the author here, I had to get away from the WoW Raid-life for a multi-tude of reasons.
My experience so far has found the game to be completely enjoyable, even relaxing. While I am lucky enough I had two good friends to start adventuring with, I actually have found the server I am on to be fairly populated with plenty of people, and the call for LFG/people to do quests and instances goes out quite often.
It took me almost 6 months to reach max level on my current character in LotRO (and I have not even been to Mirkwood yet) because I enjoy the other aspects of the game so much. I probably would not even be at 65 now if skirmishes hadn't come along with their 25% xp bonus on kills.
I'm glad you wrote up your experiences going through the game. It really is true that LotRO is more about the journey than the destination and I look forward to additional updates that make the early part of that journey more enjoyable for newcomers.
"Eventually, they’ll create a game (if they haven’t already) that works like the WoW tournament servers. You’ll login as max level and have instant access to all available equipment and skills. To be honest, there are a lot of upsides to that especially for PvP, but we’d all find a way to hate on it."
Well, it is indeed just for PvP purposes, but that is pretty much the setup for Guild Wars. ;)
My Runekeeper needs that exact same quest in the epic book! We should hookup, except I'm not on your server. Oh well. Next big patch is supposed to make it so that the epic books can be soloed if you want. Hopefully that'll make it easier to complete volume 1.
Great read. I returned to LotRO about 6 months ago and am having a blast again in Middle Earth. There is something to be said for not feeling pressure to rush through and taking the time to enjoy. Stop and fish for a while!
LOTRO really is a good game. My heart aches though when I think of what might of been. Namely, Middle Earth Online. Perhaps it is a good thing after all though. Had MEO come into being I probably would have abandoned career, family and relationships. :D
I also have returned to LOTRO and having a great time. I played in beta, subbed to the game and lost interest.
Now however like you I am taking my time and enjoying the ride. I have two classes that I play. One is a Captain and the other a Guardian. When my son comes to visit on the weekends we play together. He is a Lore Master and I play my Guardian. During the weekday I play my Captain when I have to play alone.
It is a different experience :) However so far I do find a group every once and a while. I am on the Gladden server and I do see a few lower levels around.
One thing that I really like is the lack of jerks. Being 64 years old I have no tolerance for those who wave their Epeens and treat anyone who asks a question like they are a lesser human. Its nice to ask for help and get an answer from someone who treats you with respect.
That is sertainly LOTRO's main strengths tho. It has simply one of the best and most mature communities of any MMO.
The only MMO that once came close to this, is one we all know too well. Namely SWG pre-NGE.
Pretty much all the rest of the MMO's are full of epeen jerks unfortunately. /sigh
Even Star Trek Online has an absolute horrible community. The ingame chats give you an insta DeJaVu with WoW's Barrens chat.
I am slowly, very slowly, leveling my "main alt", a hobbit warden, together with my wife's "main", a hobbit minstrel, on Laurelin. We are currently at level 34 and the main reason we are progressing very slowly is that we are spending most of our spare time on other things than gaming. The second reason is that we regularly visit Green Dragon Friday - a weekly hobbit RP event (highly recommended); not much (if any) XP is gained on those evenings.
We are duoing (and providing both tank and healer), so might have less trouble with (small) fellowshop quests than most others (especially solo burglars). While we were heroing in the North Downs, there were always enough people running around to complete the harder quests.
The lack of players though is a big problem for me.
I dont mind chilling out and taking the game at a steady pace, but there is only so long you can do that on your own before you lose your enthusiasm. Im stuck at about level 35, I can progress but there are group quests I REALLY want to do.
Thats why Monsterplay for me is the great thing about Lotro, you log on, no leveling needed, no looking for groups needed.. just join walk a ways to the action and start having fun straight away with other players.
Interesting to see that ppl are having trouble finding groups or even feel that lower content areas are desolate and empty. On German RP-Server Belegaer there are many low-level chars, I just joined a low-level to mid-level guild, and at rush-hours it's not difficult to find grps for many quests.
That may be the reason why i see all the region revamps as rather critical. Before i get to know most low-level regions now i have outlevelled them. Whole quest-lines are not worth following and completing anymore because they turned grey.
Also, what the guest writer said about having to travel between regions to get enough quests i don't agree with. Yes, it's true there is a lot of travelling involved between regions but i see this as part of getting around and experiencing the world. It makes the world come alive, especially because this way all regions are well populated. I like the idea of having to go back to regions i already had been ten levels earlier and doing some quests there again.
Apart from those points, a good read.
Edit: For all those who have problems finding groups. Have you tried the serverwide grouping channel instead of regionwide? On Belegaer the channel is called BeleSNG. You might want to try it.
@sadeyx Yah, 35 was a tough spot. I think I was 35-40 as long as I was 1-35. If it wasn't for the Skirmish system I might still be 35 (which came out in my late 30s). It was good to hear from Orion, on LOTROCast, that the devs were aware of that. I spent too much time travelling between Trollshaws, Evendim & North Downs trying to do quests (solo). Nobody was around for the fellowship quests.
None the less, I enjoyed myself - wasn't the end of the world. And yah, experiences vary server to server.
I understand the older players who are upset they're turning a lot of the fellowship quests (and now Books) in solo quests. I get that. But, I hope they get, that it's a struggle for people now to level through empty zones.
And thanks all for the comments so far - I appreciate it.
Its good they acknowledge it yea. But even if they resolve it somehow the game still needs more players.
Though I think the EU version might suffer more from this problem than US version.
I dont really know what else they can do, it sufferd from a poor release so anyone I speak to about playing it is responded with "oh yea I played that years ago and it was rubbish" If trying to convince players is tough for their friends I can see how tough it would be for the dev's
For now I'm enjoying Turbines other game, DDO on the f2p american servers... their recent new servers are full of players just the right level.
Its amazing how something simple as a bigger player population can make an mmo into a really enjoyable game.
Since I've been always playing LOTRO from start, I've never had that "comming back experience", but I do understand it from creating new alts and having fun leveling them up. As the content progressed the attention of the players is shifting too. Now most players hang around in Mirkwood, collecting coins for raid gear. Moria isn't so important or interesting anymore. And when Moria was launched the likelyhood you would find players in Eriador was getting smaller. Of course you have the occasional new player (which they tried luring in) or person who's trying the new classes, but apart from that you'll find crafting resources everywhere and little other players to either bother you, killing your monsters, or indeed to group up with for a group quest. In that case the GlobalLFF user created chat channel or kinship chat is useful to trying to get people gathered for old 'epics'.
he he cool, my old kin, the grey guard, good bunch of lads. I also was in beta and then subbed, regret now not getting the founding subscription package, £200 for ever at the time , I think, but got bored at around 35-40ish so left and played a few other different mmo's. Every now and then i get an invite to go back and try it again for a week, but when i do I spend more time learning the controls and not enough enjoying the game. Now playing Fallen earth and really enjoying that, for now. I may yet one day go back to lotro, because I do love the whole IP.
Nice spot on article. I got so sick of the end game grind of wow and worrying about making sure I had decent showings on the meters it was a nice break from that crap to go to a game where you could just have fun again. Imagine that, a fantasy game where there's fun to be had.
Another reason this game is so great is the very knowledgeable and eager to help community. Not one time did I have to ask where I could find something, or how something worked and got a reply of "l2p nub". In fact whenever anyone even tried to say that bullshit the community would be all over them for bringing that childish crap to their game. It's so refreshing to play a fun game where the idiot population is so low.
When you do get those free 5 days reactivation, or whatever... Just do Monster play!
I've been playing Lotro since closed beta,a nd I stilenjoy the game for so many reasons.
I will sometimes log on just to run a chaacter through a particularly memorable area, or try to reach a difficult place on the map just to look around and maybe grab some screenshots.
When mirkwood was anounced, I went back and got my Elf Hunter levelled up to 60, and ready to cross the Anduin, because way back at release, I had determined that he was from Thrandui's Halls in Northern Mirkwood, and would be the first of my characters to step foot in Mirkwood.
And about two years later, he was the first to take a boat and to step into the creepy and depressing decay of Southern Mirkwood. The first to begin the task of clearing goblins, orcs, wargs, and other nasties from my homeland so that one day the shadow would be lifted and green would return tothe trees and the name of the forest itself.
Yeah... I'm a story nerd. I'm the guy who READS the quest text in eery game I play, and who /bug reports when they're not clear or contain bad spelling or grammar. I'm that guy who, if a quest can't tel me clearly where to go for a quest, I /bug it instead of using the big flashing "go here" function that plluted so many games (even Lotro knuckled under to the morons and put that feature in, though blissfully it can be turned off).