A Review of Lord of the Rings Online

BanthaFodder · February 2007

Hello, I thought I'd do a review from my experience in the stress test beta of Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. I hope you enjoy it and if you don't agree with me then that is fine, this is my opinion and that is yours. Please remember this is not the final version of the game, this review is on the current version. I must say though that this was a very good beta considering where they are at, little lag and hardly any bugs.

Overall Score : 8.9

Starting Up: Nicely Done

9.4

After downloading the beta version of the game I launched the launchpad and immediatly in my toolbar next to my clock, an icon of the Ring appears. Apparently this icon updates you when something has happened, such as a server down time or announcement by the devs. I quickly started to enjoy this little feature. So after looking at this I waited for my game to update, then it told me to select a server. This is one part I did not completely adore because in order to switch servers I would need to exit the game completely. Nonetheless I am not someone who has characters on a bunch of different servers so it isn't a huge matter to me. So, I select the Meneldor server and enter the game.

Character Creation: Needs Work

8.0

Immediatly I am shown a character, specifically a man with red armor and a spear with what looks like, Bree, in the background. First however, you select a species; Man (female or male), Dwarf, Hobbit (female or male), and Elf (female or male). After viewing the movie for elf, I selected elf (male) and arrived at a screen. this new screen let me choose a profession, either loremaster, hunter, and a few others. Because I always wanted to be an elf with a bow and arrow, I chose hunter. The next step was to make a name, origin, and actually make my character's appearances. This was the ok part, but not grand.

The name and origin part was well done due to the fact they give you ideas such as the common begginnings and endings of names of whatever race you chose. I named mine, Ahrilion. The bad part about this whole process was the character customization; it was very simplistic, you basically scroll through a couple options, the only real customization is the hair color and eye, with each region having t's different set of colors which is interesting, but again, very simplistic. However, this was it, and I was ready to begin the game and enter Middle-Earth.

Graphics: Nice

8.5

If you have played World of Warcraft and are familiar with the graphics and art of that game, it may look familiar (though not the same) in Lord of the Rings. It isn't as cartoony, but still resembles the graphics and arts seen in the popular MMO, WoW. The graphics are also not superb, though very nice in some areas, they are not great in others. Character's faces are not that good, they were even better in Star Wars Galaxies. However, the graphics aren't as horrible as they may sound, the character movement is handled nicely with the graphics, including jabs with your spear or using the bow and arrow. Note: I usually had my Graphics at High, but a few times I set it at Ultra high and noticed little difference.

Sound: Very Good

9.1

Lord of the Rings Online has some very nice sound quality AND a very nice soundtrack. The music in this game makes you feel like your in a forest with trolls, or walking through a cold rocky dwarven port, or perhaps a lively town such as Bree. There is a bug I noticed, though perhaps they'll fix it; you rarely hear a bear roar even if there isnt a bear near you, at first I payed no attention to it, then I started to notice it when I was in the middle of a field with no bears. Also, it would have been nice to have heard some music from the movies, even if this game is based more on the books than the movies.

Beginner's Area/Tutorial: Very Good

9.6

I won't tell you the story or what happened beause I found it very interesting and well done, but the tutorial does a very good job at showing you a few of the basics such as looting and killing, plus interacting with characters and items. After doing the tutorial in the loading screen there is a movie with a narrator, which is a nice feature, and you soon enter the multi-player zone.

Dwarves and Elves both start in the same zone, Thorin's Gate, elves in a ruin and dwarves in a city, however both end up in the larger Thorin's Gate zone. You do a few quests (they don't get boring) and kill creatures until you reach level 5 in which you will engage in a instanced final mission which was also well done. After this you exit the Beginner zone and enter wherever you shall be, however Thorin's Gate will still be there except the non-beginner version. Overall the Tutorial and Beginner parts of the game were very well done.

Movement: Not Good

8.3

Although some people think movement wouldnt be a huge part in a review; I found it important to note. In the game you can only own a horse at a much later level (I believe in the 30s or 40s). Although many would say that is fine, it could change to a lower level, and perhaps have the horses go slower for those levels. Nevertheless that isnt the major concern. When moving on hills, be very careful, it is incredibly easy to slide in this game, and the edges of linear planes is very easy to spot. To add on to that, falling from high points doesn't make much sense. You don't receive damage to your health unless you fall from a very very high point (in which you die), instead you get a movement subtraction for a period of time. Swimming in the game is also very slow, you would think a hunter elf with light clothing could swim very fast...apparently not. However there is a nice feature, the ability to sort of rent a horse so it can take you to a location youve discovered, only problem is they like jumping off cliffs so you die.

Lag: Great

9.7

Once and a while you will encounter lag, and it is pretty bad when you do, but as I said once and a while so it isnt that bad. I noticed very little lag throughout the game, usualy only appearing in the crowded places or overlooking a huge zone which is expected.

Community: Very Good

9.2

Although this is Beta and not the final release nor community, I felt that the community so far in LotRO was very mature and at the same time fun. No offense to any WoW players, but you wont find a WoW community here. The community however is not very social, once and a while there will be a conversation on OOC, but it generally isn't bustling with chat in a crowded area, this is a minus considering its a MMO. There is also the constant mention of the Silmarillion (Middle Earth bible basically) and if you say something false about the lore expect a huge debate about it. Again though, this is only a beta so you can't fully expect the community currently to be the same in the Final Release.

Combat: Good

8.7

Combat in LotR treated my Elf Hunter Ahrilion of Mirkwood very well, even with the bits of trouble. The motions the characters make such as jabs and parrys were nicely done (though not the best). However, I must warn you that there is an agreement amongst players that the Burglars are underpowered. Plus, Hunter's arrows seem to agro the creatures even if your fellowshipers (word?) are fighting them, which is a bit of a minus considering arrows are the main attack of the Hunter.

Non-Combat/Roleplaying: Bad

7.6

Maybe I havent encountered anything, but so far it seems quests and combat are the main thing to do. Although you can still craft. The bad thing is there is no type of housing in the game, nor does it seem like there is much space of RPing or hanging out. Though they are commited to providing housing after Launch, it was still pretty displeasing to not have any type of housing or place where players can hang out. Eventhough there are pubs, inns, and bars, there is nothing to lure players to go inside and hang out. Still, crafting is somewhat fun in the game especially if you farm to make pipe weed hehe. Except the problem with that is there isnt a huge pull for some of the crafting, so I think they need to tweak it a bit, maybe add better shapes or animations when smoking different weeds, or giving a slight buff.

Quests/Xp: Good

8.9

The main way to get xp in this game is to do quests, either solo or with a fellowship (group). While doing these quests, I noticed they were actually pretty fun, although you might run into the kill X number of rats quest, most of them have a story and don't revolve around killing everything on Middle Earth to the point of extinction. Theres plenty of non-combat quests too. There is also the very fun and enjoyabe deed book which awards you stat increases (traits I think) or possibly a title you can use. the deed book quests are usually given to you by triggering them, maybe after killing a wolf (wolf-tamer) or killing some enemies of the zone (Guardian of the ***). The one problem seems to be how fast you gain levels in the game. Although some people really grind I was already level 8 in one day ( I dont grind), perhaps because the first levels are supposed to be easy. None the less I noticed a lot of high levels players and it seems that leveling is too quick in the game.

Environment: Wonderful

9.6

I must say Turbine did an EXCELLENT job at creating Tolkein's world. Although I will expect a ton of people to say the opposite, most will be expecting stuff they saw in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, however what you will find in the game is more of the Hobbit and other books. Perhaps I prefer Peter Jackson's depiction better, but the one in this game is still very good, save for Rivendel which I don't like very much (nothing like the movie or the LotR books depiction, instead it looked like the Hobbit depicitions). Remember though, they were modeling the game not after the movie but after the books by Tolkein.

In this game don't hope to go to Moria or Isengard, or even Rohan and Lindon, you will be in Eriador but the region is HUGE; it includes the shire, Bree, Misty Mountains (Moria is in those mountains but its not in the game yet), Rivendel, and a ton in between. So there is plenty to do between now and the expansion. You also get to meet a few of the fellowship, but I won't spoil it for you, some people don't know.

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Anyways, thats my short review. If you don't agree with my then that is alright by me, I just thought I would post a review since they lifted the little contract a while back. I feel like I forgot to mention something, if you know what I forgot to mention lol please tell me and Ill write up about it or post what you thought about the subject.

BanthaFodder · February 2007

Hehe, guess no one is interested.

Mars505 · March 2007

Khalathwyr · March 2007

Nice review Bantha. I gree with alot of what you stated, both the good areas and the areas for improvement.

Cabe2323 · March 2007

Originally posted by BanthaFodder

Hello, I thought I'd do a review from my experience in the stress test beta of Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. I hope you enjoy it and if you don't agree with me then that is fine, this is my opinion and that is yours. Please remember this is not the final version of the game, this review is on the current version. I must say though that this was a very good beta considering where they are at, little lag and hardly any bugs.
Overall Score : 8.9
Starting Up: Nicely Done
9.4
After downloading the beta version of the game I launched the launchpad and immediatly in my toolbar next to my clock, an icon of the Ring appears. Apparently this icon updates you when something has happened, such as a server down time or announcement by the devs. I quickly started to enjoy this little feature. So after looking at this I waited for my game to update, then it told me to select a server. This is one part I did not completely adore because in order to switch servers I would need to exit the game completely. Nonetheless I am not someone who has characters on a bunch of different servers so it isn't a huge matter to me. So, I select the Meneldor server and enter the game.
Character Creation: Needs Work
8.0
Immediatly I am shown a character, specifically a man with red armor and a spear with what looks like, Bree, in the background. First however, you select a species; Man (female or male), Dwarf, Hobbit (female or male), and Elf (female or male). After viewing the movie for elf, I selected elf (male) and arrived at a screen. this new screen let me choose a profession, either loremaster, hunter, and a few others. Because I always wanted to be an elf with a bow and arrow, I chose hunter. The next step was to make a name, origin, and actually make my character's appearances. This was the ok part, but not grand.
The name and origin part was well done due to the fact they give you ideas such as the common begginnings and endings of names of whatever race you chose. I named mine, Ahrilion. The bad part about this whole process was the character customization; it was very simplistic, you basically scroll through a couple options, the only real customization is the hair color and eye, with each region having t's different set of colors which is interesting, but again, very simplistic. However, this was it, and I was ready to begin the game and enter Middle-Earth.
Graphics: Nice
8.5
If you have played World of Warcraft and are familiar with the graphics and art of that game, it may look familiar (though not the same) in Lord of the Rings. It isn't as cartoony, but still resembles the graphics and arts seen in the popular MMO, WoW. The graphics are also not superb, though very nice in some areas, they are not great in others. Character's faces are not that good, they were even better in Star Wars Galaxies. However, the graphics aren't as horrible as they may sound, the character movement is handled nicely with the graphics, including jabs with your spear or using the bow and arrow. Note: I usually had my Graphics at High, but a few times I set it at Ultra high and noticed little difference.
The graphics will be even better since they have a High Res client for the game that is being released with the game. Some people already have it and there are screenshots going around with that client. The High res client comes with the Preorder DVD and it is tons better on the textures, etc.
Sound: Very Good
9.1
Lord of the Rings Online has some very nice sound quality AND a very nice soundtrack. The music in this game makes you feel like your in a forest with trolls, or walking through a cold rocky dwarven port, or perhaps a lively town such as Bree. There is a bug I noticed, though perhaps they'll fix it; you rarely hear a bear roar even if there isnt a bear near you, at first I payed no attention to it, then I started to notice it when I was in the middle of a field with no bears. Also, it would have been nice to have heard some music from the movies, even if this game is based more on the books than the movies.
Beginner's Area/Tutorial: Very Good
9.6
I won't tell you the story or what happened beause I found it very interesting and well done, but the tutorial does a very good job at showing you a few of the basics such as looting and killing, plus interacting with characters and items. After doing the tutorial in the loading screen there is a movie with a narrator, which is a nice feature, and you soon enter the multi-player zone.
Dwarves and Elves both start in the same zone, Thorin's Gate, elves in a ruin and dwarves in a city, however both end up in the larger Thorin's Gate zone. You do a few quests (they don't get boring) and kill creatures until you reach level 5 in which you will engage in a instanced final mission which was also well done. After this you exit the Beginner zone and enter wherever you shall be, however Thorin's Gate will still be there except the non-beginner version. Overall the Tutorial and Beginner parts of the game were very well done.
Movement: Not Good
8.3
Although some people think movement wouldnt be a huge part in a review; I found it important to note. In the game you can only own a horse at a much later level (I believe in the 30s or 40s). Although many would say that is fine, it could change to a lower level, and perhaps have the horses go slower for those levels. Nevertheless that isnt the major concern. When moving on hills, be very careful, it is incredibly easy to slide in this game, and the edges of linear planes is very easy to spot. To add on to that, falling from high points doesn't make much sense. You don't receive damage to your health unless you fall from a very very high point (in which you die), instead you get a movement subtraction for a period of time. Swimming in the game is also very slow, you would think a hunter elf with light clothing could swim very fast...apparently not. However there is a nice feature, the ability to sort of rent a horse so it can take you to a location youve discovered, only problem is they like jumping off cliffs so you die.
Lag: Great
9.7
Once and a while you will encounter lag, and it is pretty bad when you do, but as I said once and a while so it isnt that bad. I noticed very little lag throughout the game, usualy only appearing in the crowded places or overlooking a huge zone which is expected.
Community: Very Good
9.2
Although this is Beta and not the final release nor community, I felt that the community so far in LotRO was very mature and at the same time fun. No offense to any WoW players, but you wont find a WoW community here. The community however is not very social, once and a while there will be a conversation on OOC, but it generally isn't bustling with chat in a crowded area, this is a minus considering its a MMO. There is also the constant mention of the Silmarillion (Middle Earth bible basically) and if you say something false about the lore expect a huge debate about it. Again though, this is only a beta so you can't fully expect the community currently to be the same in the Final Release.
Combat: Good
8.7
Combat in LotR treated my Elf Hunter Ahrilion of Mirkwood very well, even with the bits of trouble. The motions the characters make such as jabs and parrys were nicely done (though not the best). However, I must warn you that there is an agreement amongst players that the Burglars are underpowered. Plus, Hunter's arrows seem to agro the creatures even if your fellowshipers (word?) are fighting them, which is a bit of a minus considering arrows are the main attack of the Hunter.

Non-Combat/Roleplaying: Bad
7.6
Maybe I havent encountered anything, but so far it seems quests and combat are the main thing to do. Although you can still craft. The bad thing is there is no type of housing in the game, nor does it seem like there is much space of RPing or hanging out. Though they are commited to providing housing after Launch, it was still pretty displeasing to not have any type of housing or place where players can hang out. Eventhough there are pubs, inns, and bars, there is nothing to lure players to go inside and hang out. Still, crafting is somewhat fun in the game especially if you farm to make pipe weed hehe. Except the problem with that is there isnt a huge pull for some of the crafting, so I think they need to tweak it a bit, maybe add better shapes or animations when smoking different weeds, or giving a slight buff.

Also there isn't much roleplaying going on currently because we are still in beta. But I did see plenty of people hanging out at the prancing pony playing music on their instrucments (which is a really nice RP tool /music and using the keys you can make 24 different notes and create your own songs) Also the fact that they have mood emotes in the game that actually change the look on your characters face will help with roleplaying as well. I would say that of the current MMO's out LOTRO is the best one for Roleplaying.
Quests/Xp: Good
8.9
The main way to get xp in this game is to do quests, either solo or with a fellowship (group). While doing these quests, I noticed they were actually pretty fun, although you might run into the kill X number of rats quest, most of them have a story and don't revolve around killing everything on Middle Earth to the point of extinction. Theres plenty of non-combat quests too. There is also the very fun and enjoyabe deed book which awards you stat increases (traits I think) or possibly a title you can use. the deed book quests are usually given to you by triggering them, maybe after killing a wolf (wolf-tamer) or killing some enemies of the zone (Guardian of the ***). The one problem seems to be how fast you gain levels in the game. Although some people really grind I was already level 8 in one day ( I dont grind), perhaps because the first levels are supposed to be easy. None the less I noticed a lot of high levels players and it seems that leveling is too quick in the game.
Environment: Wonderful
9.6
I must say Turbine did an EXCELLENT job at creating Tolkein's world. Although I will expect a ton of people to say the opposite, most will be expecting stuff they saw in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, however what you will find in the game is more of the Hobbit and other books. Perhaps I prefer Peter Jackson's depiction better, but the one in this game is still very good, save for Rivendel which I don't like very much (nothing like the movie or the LotR books depiction, instead it looked like the Hobbit depicitions). Remember though, they were modeling the game not after the movie but after the books by Tolkein.
In this game don't hope to go to Moria or Isengard, or even Rohan and Lindon, you will be in Eriador but the region is HUGE; it includes the shire, Bree, Misty Mountains (Moria is in those mountains but its not in the game yet), Rivendel, and a ton in between. So there is plenty to do between now and the expansion. You also get to meet a few of the fellowship, but I won't spoil it for you, some people don't know.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyways, thats my short review. If you don't agree with my then that is alright by me, I just thought I would post a review since they lifted the little contract a while back. I feel like I forgot to mention something, if you know what I forgot to mention lol please tell me and Ill write up about it or post what you thought about the subject.

Other then those two comments I added I would agree with your review. I think the game has a very very good shot of being successful. Will it be WoW successful? Maybe it is possible it could reach WoW type numbers in NA/EU, but it won't reach the world wide numbers of WoW. I think Turbine has a big winner here, which is nice I always thought AC was better then EQ back in teh day and Turbine never got what the credit they deserved for that game. I predict that the game will have over 500K subscribers in NA and around the same maybe a bit higher in EU, so a total of around 1 million. I wouldn't be suprised though if it caught on huge with the casual gamers and shot up to the 2 million mark. LOTRO has the ability to bring in non Gamers to the genre. Blizzard was successful by bringing in Non MMO players to the MMO genre, but they were still Gamers (diablo 1&2, warcraft, starcraft, battlenet people) I mean Blizzard has said they have 40 million battlenet users so 8 million of them becoming WoW players is impressive, but not really that hard of a stretch.

LOTRO has a chance of pulling people who have never even played WoW into the MMO field. If the positive reviews keep up and they get a lot of advertising out there. Also they need to have good box space on the shelves. That is where they will get a lot of their casual players from. The person that walks into Best Buy to get their new DVD and sees Lord of The Rings Online sitting there.

airhead · March 2007

Good review... I agree with most of it. Some things are more important than others to different people for different reasons, and everyone just needs to weight the points accordingly. The areas that Turbine did really good on (graphics, performance, starter-areas) are all the FIRST-IMPRESSION types of categories. This will help bring in players who know about LOTR but have never played an MMO. How many subscribers are in this group? It could be huge or not... i don't know... but it makes predicting subscribers really hard to do.

There is a lot of room for improvement and expansion as well... but those things don't have to be 'finished' at this point in time. They can always add class talent-trees, hundreds of different traits/virtues for more character customization, increase world-size 10-fold LATER.

What needed to be done well at the first has been done well. If the people come, then they can do the other stuff. I don't see how they could have done a better job actually... it's just wait and see at this point.

Markaj · March 2007

Very nice review. I think this is a pretty balanced representation of the current state of the game for the seeker. Thanks

BanthaFodder · March 2007

I'm glad you liked the review.

I had seen those new screenshots and when I first saw them I was a little confused, maybe they updated the graphics lol. But then I read on to find out they are releasing a Hi-res version which I plan on getting. About the RP, I went into the Prancing Pony and only saw one person but a bunch outside, but it was probably just the timing. Im sure there wil be plenty of RPing when the game comes out, it just didn't feel like there was a huge ability for RPing like there was in SWG. But again, this is just Beta, and most of the people I saw were perhaps more interested in leveling and getting items because it was a Stress Test.

airhead · March 2007

yea... there are two categories that (although important) probably are premature. Role-playing and community. RP is not going to happen in beta, and THE community doesn't exist yet because the game has not been released. The beta players now are just closed-beta players... more than likely more experienced savy gamers I would guess.

Once release happens, there's going to be a lot of first-time MMO people, because of the license and the fact that turbine did such a good job on graphics and startup. Will these savy gamers take the time to help these noobs, answer their questions, invest in the games future? If yes, then community>9.0. If no, then community < 5.0. here's hoping for a >9 group of players to be in lotro....

tessa · March 2007

Thank you for your excellent review. I also agree pretty much with everything. I greatly enjoyed the quests which, as you said, weren't just about killing so many mobs but generally contained an interesting story. I also appreciated the fact that even at fairly low levels, I felt like the tasks given seemed important and even allowed my character to interact with important characters from the books or recognizable areas (for example: Weathertop, Tom Bombadil's house). I plan to play at release and to pre-order the game and hope even non-gamer LOTR fans might play as well.

-Tessa (female gamer and LOTR fan)

BanthaFodder · March 2007

Thats true airhead. Of course I think one problem that will occur when the game comes out is people expecting it to be a replica of the movies. The game was based more on the books I think, and you will probably see a bunch of people whining at first that it doesnt look like the movies, but hopefully that will die down quickly, as it is close enough. However I think it would have been nice if some areas of the game were more like the movies (like Rivendell) hehe, but the current Rivendell is fine.

Cabe2323 · March 2007

Originally posted by BanthaFodder

Thats true airhead. Of course I think one problem that will occur when the game comes out is people expecting it to be a replica of the movies. The game was based more on the books I think, and you will probably see a bunch of people whining at first that it doesnt look like the movies, but hopefully that will die down quickly, as it is close enough. However I think it would have been nice if some areas of the game were more like the movies (like Rivendell) hehe, but the current Rivendell is fine.

The game is only based on the books. Turbine got the IP rights from the books. EA has the IP rights from the Movies. So Turbine can not use anything from the movies or even close to the movies or they will end up getting sued by EA.

BanthaFodder · March 2007

But there are some things in the books that were in the movie so it might get a bit confusing. For instance, the Hobbit Rinvendel is described a bit differently than the LotR Rivendel, the one in the game is more like the Hobbit version, I think I would have perfered the LotR book version, but that is being picky.

dand3 · March 2007

From what I understand, there will not be officially designated role-playing servers. However, I expect that there will be at least one unofficial hard RP server, and one or more soft RP servers; these I'd expect to have a slightly different community than the non-RP servers.

BanthaFodder · March 2007

That's probably what will happen. Although I'm hoping there is plenty of RP on the server I'm on hehe.

Firewolx · March 2007

Ey bantha, could you provide me some information about the some of the things i wanna know.

* PvP, 1. How does it work? Are there ratings, guild matches, battlegrounds, special zones or raidable places. How can you PvP when there are only good guys? And other information.

* How about guilds? Is the guild feature good or bad, is there Guild housing/Guild bank. And other information.

* How about the classes? Are they balanced?

* How about raiding? If you know something about raiding, could you provide us some information?

* Are the Qs from LotR online lineair ( with a story-line, bit like Guild Wars ) or is it just like WoW that you move to a town, you see 10 Qs and you can grab them all and do them how you would like them to do ( my favorite )

* WIth the new patch that combat/leveling is more difficult, is the leveling now more fun?

Thanks for the information if you reply to them:)

btw great review.

Kaynos1972 · March 2007

Good review but your scoring system is flawed.....

Something that need work = 8/10 ?, something bad get's 7.6 ?!?! If it's bad or need work give it an appropriate scoring. In my book something perfect should be 10, excellent 9, very good 8, average 7, need work 6, bad 5 and so on.

Ahiles · March 2007

This is possibly the worst review ive eevr read. Abit like that thread showing the PVP, when in fact it was just a pve raid on the camps.

You RP CAREBEARS sure live in your own little world i will give you that.

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A Review of Lord of the Rings Online

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