First quests, private instances and better fellowships |
| Written by Dave Taylor | |
| Sunday, 20 May 2007 | |
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All in the interest of science, or more accurately, this blog, I persuaded some friends to buy a copy of LOTRO yesterday and install it on their laptops last night while they were over at my house. This turned the living room into something resembling NASA mission command but also proved several things. Firstly, one wireless connection for broadband was more than enough to deal with three concurrent gamers. Secondly it allowed me to try and different character class and to see how easy it is to meet up with your friends in LOTRO. (In case you hadn't realised, you can have more than one character on your game account for no extra charge, but you can only play one character at any one time.)
The first thing we did was discuss classes. We opted for a Champion, a Lore Master and a Minstrel. This gave us a melee fighter, a magic user and a healer effectively. Next we created the characters and two of us went for elves and one for a hobbit. This was where the first problem with deciding to create a fellowship from the very beginning occurred.
The elves started up by Thorin's gates, while the Hobbit started in The Shire. Two things became apparent quickly, which were that you cannot share the very introductory quests. You need to get out into the main game area - the very starting areas are "private instances" which mean that you can't join up with other characters. Secondly, while you are doing the introductory quests, including those out on the world map, you cannot leave the immediate vicinity. So, the Hobbit was cut off from the rest of us. A quick re-roll and we have a third elf Minstrel out with us and we banded together and set off to adventure, drink wine (offline activity) and see what LOTRO had to offer. While the fellowship worked perfectly, the healer wasn't needed that often because the quests are designed for one person, so when three of you descend on the goblins in Silverdeep Mines, well, suffice it to say, they weren't expecting it. It also became apparent that the Lore Master is a more capable class than I'd first anticipated. The fire and the raven make it quite capable of dealing damage, especially when combined with a melee character. So, if you're planning to join up with a set of friends, or have a character set aside to play regularly with friends, I would suggest that you each set up your character and get through the introductory quests individually and get to say level 5 or 6. Then all make your way to somewhere agreed as a starting point (Ferrin's Court, for example) and logout. Do this all well before your planned gaming session. Then when you're all ready to play, you'll all be in the same place and you'll be ready to take on some of the quests that warrant a fellowship.
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