Reaction to Helm’s Deep
Helm’s Deep is a curious beast to me because it’s the game I’m currently playing. While I know class changes are coming and the non-disclosure agreement for the beta dropped recently, I didn’t engage in the beta because I was just busy learning more about the story (I had abruptly ended my last soujourn upon leaving the Mines of Moria, and a minimum of 100% more experience on just about everything is a great motivator to reach cap).
The situation works like this. LOTRO currently has a rather open system of play. Depending on your class, you can do a lot of things adequately because you have a ton of skills and part of the fun of play now was being able to shift your use of skills accordingly depending on the need for a particular role in party or solo play.
Helm’s Deep changes this by introducing RIFT-style talent trees for classes. There are three distinct trees, and choosing a main tree for a class grants you an inherent bonus to a particular style of play for that class. A Guardian picking a tanking tree, for example, would naturally gain more threat without needing to do anything aside from picking that tree add skill points in.
This specialization is perhaps a poor man’s RIFT soul tree, but according to the breakdowns made public by forum goers, the 8 classes and their general playstyles are all there and their fundamental playstyles have not changed; you just can’t do everything willy-nilly like you can now. Skill bloat has also been addressed, leaving newcomers to the game with fewer skills to worry about as they develop their characters because of how the trees are designed.
The reaction to Helm’s Deep has been mixed. Vocal detractors of the changes made to character development started talking after the NDA dropped and comparisons to the infamous NGE have been made. There are also people who are cool with the changes; they’re not ecstatic that things are changing, but they’ve accepted the changes or are happy with the remedy to skill bloat.
To someone who isn’t as strongly invested in the game, but is interested in trying it out, the way people are acting in the forums outside the New Player Help zone looks less than inviting. When negativity is perceived as a strong source of zealous discussion, passersby are less than enthused about being a part of that community.
Divisive Discussions
Divisive discussions are not new to MMORPGs. No MMORPG is going to wow everyone, and that’s fine. If Helm’s Deep is not someone’s cup of tea, they’re welcome to leave and come back when they miss the feeling of being in Middle Earth, like I did after a year’s hiatus.
That said, the other thing I wanted to discuss about Helm’s Deep is something that happened after the NDA drop occurred and people started talking about it on this thread: lines of communication.
As I understand it, the marketing push (or at least the honest discussions from devs regarding how things in Helm’s Deep worked and if LOTRO will continue past its license renewal date) has left many people anxious about LOTRO’s future. The lack of openness about Helm’s Deep when it’s two weeks away from release also doesn’t put people at ease.
One line of communication was recently crossed out when Fredelas, a player known for his Riders of Rohan Hytbold reconstruction guide, was permanently banned without much explanation. Part of the discussions led people to think that this was the result of Fredelas noticing and pointing out a factual error in a comment by community manager Sapience.
What’s been noted in his exchanges is that the some forum goers have been receiving “sarcastic, paternalistic communication from the community team throughout beta,” which eroded the foundations of a perfectly good line of communication that existed.
While someone named Fredelas_The_Free made a comment elsewhere asking people for understanding and acceptance and for people to not quit LOTRO and use him as a rallying cry, a point of contention still stands: why isn’t the community management team trying to better foster the community?
While I can understand stress and the sinking feeling of dread from reading through page after page of depressing commentary, that shouldn’t prevent some sort of respectful manner of discussion from springing forth. I can sympathize with reading through a ton of disheartening thoughts, but I certainly hope Sapience and the mods, as well as the players who enjoy LOTRO, can bounce back from negativity and manage to find enjoyment in what they’re doing, assuming they all care for the game as much as I think they do.
Change is coming in LOTRO, and while it can be disheartening, this is no time for dread to get the better of the players and the people working at Turbine. Here’s to hoping they can stand together to fight the encroaching horde of uruk and goblin-kind. They certainly have my spear and shield, at the very least.
Victor Barreiro Jr. / Victor Barreiro Jr. maintains The Devil’s Advocate and ArcheAge columns for MMORPG.com. He also writes for news website Rappler as a technology reporter. You can find more of his writings on Games and Geekery and on Twitter at @vbarreirojr.
LINKS:
- Last time on The Devil’s Advocate: A Deep Sadness with Culture
- Lord of the Rings Online: A Helm’s Deep Preview!
- Richard Aihoshi discusses critiquing Free-to-Play