LOTRO, A veteran casual, solo, RPer's take

As a veteran gamer who's played almost every MMO available since they appeared, but has never gone as far as to parse a log, power level, or even play more often than a couple of times a week - and almost always solo, I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents worth...





How buggy is it?



I started playing LOTRO toward the end of February, during closed beta, and as a good little tester I submitted well over 100 bug reports.  Only one or two of those reports were graphics/sound related (I started out playing on Vista, switched to XP, then later switched back to Vista).  The worst bugs I experienced were quest-related (progression failures, no-spawns, etc.), and they were mostly during the first month of play.



Granted, I never got over level 12 before open beta character wipes, but during the last week or so of closed beta, I reported only about 10 minor bugs - some of them actually just suggestions.



During open beta, I ran across a few more bugs, but all minor, and some related to the huge increase in population.



Since the game's gone live, I've only submitted one bug (which has already been fixed)



The only other major MMO I can remember that had such a smooth launch was DAoC.





How different is it?



For anyone who's played a lot of MMOs for a long time, it's near impossible to find one that doesn't blend in with all the others.  LOTRO has one advantage - an almost unfair one - in it's licensing.  It'd be very difficult for any MMO that had free use of JRT's universe to not appeal - especially to fans of the stories. 



That said, I'd love to be able to say that LOTRO is unique in so many more ways than just its license - but it ain't.  This game, with exactly the same mechanics, class types, ect., but without the licensing, would probably fall into the already overflowing pot of soup that is all other MMOs today, with the exception of one area:  Monster Play,



Monster Play has the look and feel of RvR that DAoC has (or had - I left it before the first expansion came out).  For anyone who loved that aspect of DAoC but are looking for something fresh, you might look into the monster play aspect of LOTRO.





What's good about it?

There are several things about LOTRO that, while not unique, are done exceptionally well:



Quests - As a casual, nearly exclusive solo player, the questing system in LOTRO really appeals to me.  Quests come in two veins; 'Storyline' and 'everything else'.  Storyline quests are much like epic quests in other MMOs, but you don't have to wait until level xx to start, as in some MMOs.  Storyline quests are laid out as books, and each quest is a chapter.  There's usually a cutscene or at least a voice over that adds nicely to the pedestal effect (more on that later) that triggers at various points of completion .  Most chapters are soloable early on, then lead up to some finale requiring a group.  In fact, most chain quests, storyline or otherwise, work this way.



The storyline cutscenes, the solo-solo-solo-group type of progression through these and other chain quests, and the actual stories of the storyline quest all make for an appealing, well done questing system for folks who, like me, primarily solo and don't get to play a whole lot.  Because certain 'checkpoints' along the chain require you to group, you're never too far away from several other players who prefer to solo (or not), who also happen to be looking for a group to do the same quest that you are.  Grouping for me usually goes something like this:  Get my next chapter quest, see that it 'recommends' (trust me - this means requires) a group, look at my chat window, respond to any of the several folks in the LFF channel who are on the same quest as me with an "I'm in!", do the quest, then either stay grouped just 'cuz it was fun or say my goodbye's and head off to the next chapter.



Enviroment - The graphics and world in general are all done well, but as an RPer, the environmental aspect that stands out above the rest is the music.  I'm not talking about the player music (which I keep turned down), but the in-game music.  It is some of the best, most fitting, and engulfing music I've had the pleasure of listening to in any MMO, and it adds immensely to the experience.  Even my wife, who is no gamer but has gotten used to years of me plunking away at one game or another has mentioned on several occasions how pretty/interesting/cool the music coming out of my speakers is.



Farming and Cooking - I'm not sure why I mention these, but I think it goes along with the whole Tolkienesque atmosphere.  There's just something I love about farming pipeweed or veggies out in the open fields at sunset right outside of Staddle, and then cooking up something nice from my harvest (sans pipeweed, of course).  It's hard to explain why this would be a strong point of the game, but any farmers/cooks out there casual enough not to care that farming is a lot harder than it was in beta will know what I'm talking about.



Roleplay - If you like to roleplay - be it light to moderate to heavy, LOTRO might just be your new home.  The credit for how well this has been done can't really go to Turbine, however, but to the players themselves.  You see, Turbine never announced an official RolePlaying server like so many other games have done.  Instead, community members got together and decided to create an unofficial roleplaying server (Landroval).  This has turned out to be a good thing for both roleplayers and roleplayah hatahs (you know who you are!).  Since nothing's official, roleplayers on Landroval can't complain that other players on that server aren't roleplaying, and non-rp'ers on Landroval can't complain too much that there are an inordinate number of roleplayers on their server.



Grind XP vs Quest XP - Turbine got it right here.  Start the game, and it won't take long to figure out that attempting to grind XP is a lesson in futility.  The minuscule amount of XP you'll get for killing mobs is laughable - however, complete 3 or 4 quests and DING!  This is Tolkien's world - filled with rich stories and never-ending quests - and you won't easily forget it.  This does, however, put the burdon on Turbine to keep sufficient quests available for even the most hard-core gamer.  Yes, I'm only level 19 at the time of this writing, but I've not once had to go around hunting for a quest to do.  I have, however, had to delete ones that I'd outgrown before getting around to finishing them.  And if Turbine's announcement of the first LOTRO (free) expansion before the game had even gone live is any indication, I don't think I'll be running out of quests anytime soon.



Is there anything you don't like about it?



Short answer - nope.  However, I do consider certain aspects of the UI to be on the 'weak side', in comparison to other MMOs:



The 'who' command - It works, but that's about it.  It seems geared more for finding grouping candidates than for actually locating a person/class/guild/etc.  I think a tool for finding fighting mates is fine, and even necessary, but a 'who' command is supposed to have ample filters to allow things like searching for the cute elf chick I helped when I was playing drunk Saturday night, whose name started with Arw and who was about level 12 at the time!



The auction house - It needs an upgrade.  Where searching for items in other games is as simple as dragging the item to the search bar (which causes the syntactically correct spelling of the item to automagically appear as typed text) and hitting enter, you'll have to type that puppy out by hand, remembering to type the SINGULAR version of the item - not the plural version listed in your inventory stack, unless it's blueberries, in which case apparently one blueberry is still a blueberries.  Also, basic keyboard editing features are missing, like tabbing around text boxes (the gold, silver, copper amounts) or using shift-combinations to highlight text.  And since I'm bashing the AH UI, the scrollbars are bugged in such a way that if the window is empty, try scrolling anyway - stuff might just appear after all.  Anywho, it needs some work.



What time is it? - While you can easily type one command to see local (real world) time and a different one to see server (real world) time, you can't determine what time of day it is in game, except by "looking at the sun".  This could be by design as part of the 'immersive experience', but when you have quests that tell you to go talk to XYZ at night, it'd sure be nice to be able to tell whether it was morning or evening - and at times, you just can't.



Dance, baby! - Ok, this is by no means a factor to base your decision to play LOTRO or not, but c'mon!  Yeah, we all know white folk can't dance, but what about hobbits and dwarves?  If you log into LOTRO for the first time and type /dance expecting to laugh as hard as you did after typing the same command for your gnome in WoW, prepare to be dissappointed.  Instead of wild tiny hip-thrusts and ass-slapping, all you'll get is clapping - and even then it seems as if your character's saying, "Oh please, do I have to?!?"



WTF is a pedestal effect?



One thing every MMO must do in order to become successful is to create what I call a "pedestal effect".  It is the near impossible task of grabbing each player and making him/her feel that they are absolutely vital to the survival of the world they've just entered - that in fact, the world has been waiting for their arrival, and that there is no time to waste in doing what no other up to this point has been able to do - save the world.  It is, to put it more simply, to place each player on a pedestal in such a way as to make the player feel like they are the most important player in the game.



To do this for one is easy, but to do this for thousands simultaneously is really, really hard.  Throw into the mix the fact that each of those thousands can talk to each other and that "special" feeling becomes even harder to maintain.



This "pedestal effect" is more important than most people realize, and the lack of it can kill what might otherwise be a good game.  Not to name other MMOs, but there was one in particular recently that tried a trial of.  I downloaded it (large download), installed the client, played for 15 - 20 minutes, logged off, then uninstalled the client altogether.  Guess what?  Everyone but everyone I spoke with who had also tried this particular MMO did EXACTLY the same thing I did.  Why?  Because my toon was plopped right down into noobsville, with a couple of "here, go do this and get out of my hair" quests to keep me busy.  Talk about not feeling like a hero!



Now, to make my point about how important this "pedestal effect" is, anyone who's played the particular MMO that I haven't mentioned will know exactly which one I'm talking about.



LOTRO, on the other hand, has probably done the best job of implementing this pedestal effect of any other MMO to date, and it starts with the very first time you enter into the world.





Aww, it's over!



So, that's my two cents for anyone who might be interested in checking out LOTRO.  I've tried to be objective rather than just plug the game outright, but the bottom line is - I like the game quite a bit, and for me, with the other games getting a bit stale, it's been (and will continue to be for a while) a nice change.



See ya in the pipeweed fields,

Caleb Oakley, farmer, cook, pie-eating champion