My review of Lord of the Rings Online

I have beta tested LOTRO online and from the initial impression the game is "so-so". However, yesterday I went to CompUSA, plop down $50 bucks and bought a copy of LOTRO for a second look at this game. The game has become much more polished compared to it's state in open beta. My first impression is that lot of the user interface seems to be almost identical to WoW's interface so if you are a WoW player then you will feel just right at home. Everything is customizable and movable from the keybindings all the way to the various stat display windows. A little known feature is you can press CTRL+ / key to unhinge a display window and move them around to the spot that you like and press CTRL+/ to re-hinge them, I discovered this nifty feature by reading the game manuals that came with the game from cover to cover (whoever read game manuals nowadays?).



I started by creating a human minstrel. You can customize it's features from the color of his hair to the style of his haircut, to beards and other standard character options. You can select the origin of your character and it will influence how your character looks. Example: People from Gondor tend to have darker brown skin as default but you can of course change that. I tried to make my man  from gondor with long hair but somehow I can't seem to find a hair style with long hair, I guess there's a law in Gondor against men wearing long hair styles.

After fussing a bit with my character's looks, it's time to select his profession (aka class). As a man living in middle-earth you are free to choose one profession out of a choice of 7 professions. Other races will have restricted choices. I chose a minstrel, a healer class with some melee and magic capabilities. Minstrel are very good at healing other people's morale using it's music to uplift people's spirits.

As a man, you start off in the town of Archet in Bree-land which is your newbie zone. After doing a multitude of quest you are strong enough (level 6) to then be introduced to Chapter 1 of your saga which includes a fantastic instanced encounter that moves your story onward.

After completing the introductions, you are then thrust out of newbie land and this is when your REAL adventure starts. I headed to the next nearby town of Combe which is a bigger town than Archet. Here you are introduced to a multitude of side quests and tasks as well as the destination for your first EPIC quest. Epic quests are like the main storylines of the game that ties directly to the Lord of The Rings saga, in your journey thru the epic quests you will get the opportunity to meet and aid the heroes of the Fellowship of the Ring like Gandalf and Aragorn (and no Frodo won't give you the One Ring).

The town of Combe introduces you to LOTRO's crafting system. You will be given a quest to choose your vocation (aka tradeskill packs). All tradeskills comes in a mix of 3 tradeskill called Vocation. One is a gathering profession, one is manufacturing (that is related to the gathering profession) and another profession that is unrelated to both. This allows interdependencies between the different crafting profession. You may choose new crafting vocation at anytime if you are not satisfied with your current ones and the only penalty is you simply forfiet whatever you have already learned. Everything that you craft are actually useful (to yourself or to other people). The crafting interface is easy to understand and to use. I think the Crafting system is very well implemented and you do not need to do "crafting grind" just to be able to produce usable goods. I made myself a set of light armor that are actually an upgrade to the ones that are rewarded to me from quests. As of this writing some crafting vocations are not balanced well as some tradeskills allows the practitioner to earn way more money than other vocations which are forcing some vocation practitioners to be perpetually broke (farming and cooking). Turbine has stated they will be doing a massive rebalancing of all vocations (tradeskills) this upcoming June patch.

Traits are abilities that gives you bonuses on top of the usual profession/class abilities. If you are a WoW player think of them as talents. You can earn more traits than you are able to use them since you can only use a limited amount of traits. Traits can be earned from achievements, from quests, or from levels. Some traits give you bonuses to your stat while some give you special abilities and powerful skills to help you in your fight against the forces of Sauron.

Now let's talk about graphics. The world of LOTRO is beautifully rendered. However you will need a hefty system to be able to crank up the graphics to the top. You can see water reflection, flowers in the fields, and monsters that are beautifully textured and rendered and even sceneries that are straight out of the LOTR movies. Depending on your system, you may or may not see all of these. If you have a very low end system, the world can look rather bland and butt ugly. I highly recommend using the High-resolution textures if your system can handle it. If your system has less than 1 GB RAM I highly recommend you upgrade to 1 GB at least or you will lag like hell (client lag) in towns or crowded places. I have a 2 GB machine and sometimes I lag when there are too many things being displayed on screen.

Death and Defeat. If you get defeated in battle, you do not lose XP or anything permanently except of course money for your armor repairs. If you get defeated in battle, friendly minstrels around you can revive you. You also gain a dread point  if you are defeated (which temporarily lowers yours stat - 1 dread point last for 10 minutes). LOTRO uses the hope and dread system. Basically if you have high hope, the stronger you become, the harder you hit, the more morale (HP) you have and the more resillient you are against your enemie's attacks. The more dread you have, the weaker you become and you get damaged and get affected by status effects easily. Also if you are defeated, your armor gets damaged and you have to spend more money repairing it.

Group Synergy and Combos, Kins and Fellowship. A group in LOTRO is called a Fellowship (like you know the Fellowship of the Ring). A guild is called a kinship. When you first create a kinship you can have a choice of between racial or mixed raced kinship. A racial kinship only allows specific races to join your kinship while a mixed raced kinship allows every race to join. In a fellowship, you will get an opportunity to execute group syergy combos that can have beneficial effects for your party called conjunctions. Executing different conjunctions will trigger different effects such as doing massive damage to enemies or healing your whole fellowship.

Wealth acquisition and Soloing. Of course the (maybe) most (relatively) important question of all. How do I get the phat lewtz? Many of the profesion in LOTRO can solo very well however the game really shines when in a fellowship as it allows everyone a chance to contribute to the well being and survival of the fellowship members. The are multiple ways on how you can acquire wealth and equipment in LOTRO. You can craft your own equipment, from quest rewards, monster drops and even raid for it. There is a game bank in the township of Bree (and other major cities) where you can store your excess equipment and items (30 slot bank) and even an auction house where you can sell your excess equipment off to other players. You can buy things from the auction house and it will arrive via your in-game mail box (you need to access a mailbox to be able to retrieve your mail and auction won items however).

The World and Transportation. The world of LOTRO is finely crafted, huge and alive with countless points of interest that will make explorer type players dancing with glee. You will not find wide open space will nothing on it (unlike some other games). The main mode of transportation is of course, walking. And for fast travel options and travelling long distances you can rent a fast moving horse mount from the town stables. At high levels (around lvl 35) you maybe able to acquire a mount of your own which you can use anytime and almost anywhere (with some exceptions). Humans and elves are capable of using a horse while hobbits and dwarves are limited to ponies (hey, it makes sense!). The terrain of the world range from snowy peaks to green meadows to sandy deserts that are situated on logical geographical locations that faithfully recreates the lands of middle-earth.