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Lord of the Rings Online Re-Reviewed
With the Siege of Mirkwood out, we decided to revisit Middle Earth, and discovered that much has changed
Written by Dave Taylor, 29 January 2010
We've been playing LOTRO since launch, on and off, tending to drop out when level capped and coming back with new Books or expansions, but this isn't a review of Siege of Mirkwood - you can read that in MMOZine itself.
Lord of the Rings Online - Skirmishes are new private instances for varying levels and from solo to Raid level. Lots of fun.Instead, we decided to go back to the beginning and take new set of characters through, and in the process discovered that Turbine has quietly making a whole raft of changes to the game, rather than just concentrating on the new high-level content.
Since launch, LOTRO has had a variety of new elements added which have been fairly publicised: Hobbies, Outfits, Housing - they all seem to be centred on the role-player, although Housing has benefits for Kinships (guilds). Actually though, the interesting improvements are the refinements that have gone in.
Most obviously, it's easier and less grindy to level through the first 50 levels. Partly the quest drops have been improved, so gathering quests are much quicker now. But more importantly, they have looked at quests hubs and locations. The Barrow Downs now has quest givers for quests in the downs, rather than sending you back and forth to Bree, which removes the tedious travelling. This sort of re-siting of quests givers happens in several places.
Some new places have been added in, with next to no fanfare. For example, there's a whole new cave ruins section south of Ost Guruth complete with new quests, and a joy for would-be scholars. Again, some of the crafting has been made less of a painful grind.
Some of the Epic Quests which required Fellowships to be able to complete now have a Solo option, so if you have a group, you can play the full version, but if you don't, you're not left stuck, you can choose to solo it instead.
Reputation factions were added with quests for drops and crafting, which both rewarded with XP and the ability to buy some better items, though often these are outclassed by quest drops by the time you have ground your way to sufficient reputation to be able to purchase them.
360Zine Issue 53
For our latest Lord of the Rings coverage, click here to download 360Zine Issue 53 for free.These are big sort of changes - it's as if they looked at the entire chain you are required to go through to get from one level to the next and aimed to streamline it, and it has made the game much more playable as a result.
But to add to the playability, Turbine has also realised that removing some of the tiny frustrations of players is equally important. You can now get a (slow) mount at level 20, though you still have to do the ridiculous mount quest at level 35 to get the proper one. Now you're on horseback, you don't have to get off as often - you can talk to quest givers from horseback, and even ride into instances, etc on horseback, where you will be automatically dismounted, but even so, better than riding into a brick wall until you remember to dismount. You map places on horseback. All of this makes playing less of a pain, and sometimes recently it has felt with some MMOs that the developers have forgotten that games are meant to be fun, not annoying.
The Map interface has been overhauled - in addition to the quest tracking that works on the mini-map, quest icons appear on the main map, the location co-ordinates appear under the mini-map. There's a legend on the main map that shows a list of currently tracked quests, with their locations flashing when you mouse over the text. (They really should also make the inverse true, so that if you mouse over a quest icon on the map, it flashes the text so you can see which quest is near to your location easily.) Fellowship status on quests, which was added to the Quest log, is included on the map, so you can see on the map whether others in your fellowship are on the same quest.
The Trait interface has been upgraded (several times) so it's easier to manage them, and see how they stack together. Traits have become a huge part of LOTRO as you effectively have the same system on your allies in the new Skirmishes and your Legendary weapons, which are the two big additions from the two expansions. You can only get a Legendary weapon (upgradable, levellable weapon that provides huge stats bonuses) if you play Moria because they aren't available until past level 20, but you can take part in Skirmishes from level 30, whether you've bought Siege of Mirkwood or not. It's better if you have, but you are allowed to try them out without owning it.
If you want to know more about Skirmishes, read our guide and introduction to them in the GamerZines Guides section, link in the Links section above and to your right.
LOTRO is vastly improved game on the launch version - as well as the additions, the refinements make for a much better experience. Is it perfect?
No, the inventory system, for example, is a gaping hole in the game, an incredibly weak system when held up against the rest of the interface. Really, Turbine, just take a look at the popular inventory add-ons for Warcraft and implement the ideas, or at the very least, give us some sorting tools, make it easier to lock/unlock items, enable sale of vendor trash, etc.
The accelerated levelling that occurs now can leave you behind in your crafting. Crafting has also been somewhat nuked by the items that can be acquired elsewhere, and needs looking at.
These things aside, we'd urge you to go back and try Middle Earth again if you gave up on it before, or to play the trial if you've not sampled it yet. It would have been simple and obvious for the developers to just continue working on the content and gameplay for the next level up, but by paying attention to their original starting areas, they have delivered the game we'd always wanted LOTRO to be.
Lord of the Rings coverage available in 360Zine Issue 53 - click here to download it for free!
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Just noticed in the second paragraph, second sentence, you might want to add 'been' some where in the line that reads, "...Turbine has quietly making a whole raft..."
zwolf
6 February 2010 @ 16:42PM GMT