The Lord of the Rings Online Nailed Moria's Sense Of Scale - MMORPG.com

System · August 2019

The Lord of the Rings Online Nailed Moria's Sense Of Scale - MMORPG.com

On our recent Elder Scrolls Online livestream, myself and some buddies did a dungeon which took place in a massive underground building, almost cathedral-esque. Shank audibly said he could not get over the scale Zenimax Online Studios was able to create within the Vaults of Madness. I quickly responded saying nothing in gaming has compared to the first time I walked through the Doors of Durin and stepped foot inside Moria.

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Maurgrim · August 2019

Moria are and still is best underworld created in a game.

Thupli · August 2019

Well written! Good read!

koboldfodder · August 2019

It was one of the best expansions by an MMO ever. The two classes they added, Warden and Runekeeper, were great classes. The music for the expansion was great, and the zone of Lorien they put in was sort of the icing on the cake.

The dungeons were excellent, and the loot from them was great. They had radiance, which ended up being bad, but it was pretty good for that expansion. The legendary item system was good for that expansion, but ended up as one of the most hated things about the game once you got to level 100.

The game went down hill after Moria. Mirkwood looked great but really wasn't. That was the start of the F2P experience which meant from now on you got quest hubs. The game hit it's low point with the Isengard expansion, then got better with the Rohan expansion and it's great music. Then it took an even bigger nose dive with Helm's Deep.

Mordor was great though...but the game has been getting worse with each update.

Nowadays, people who play the game are just hoping the game goes away ASAP so another company can have a go at middle earth.

Sovrath · August 2019

koboldfodder said:

Nowadays, people who play the game are just hoping the game goes away ASAP so another company can have a go at middle earth.

There is a dedicated community around the game so "no" I don't buy that people who are playing it want it to go away.

To that end, there is no guarantee that another game developer would not only pick it up but make the game that people want in their individual heads.

I realize there is a new Lord of the Rings "mmorpg" in the making but we really don't know what that will look like. I highly suspect it will have a heavy cash shop, probably be tied into whatever Amazon services that Amazon deems important and might not have a full "open world." And will most likely be set in a different age. Some might like that some not so much.

Then there are the people, playing it now, who will want it to be tab target combat. But will it? If the game goes away we could very well have an action oriented combat (fine with me) and they would hate it.

Blackboa · August 2019

Just an FYI, in your first sentence you reference Elder Scrolls Online. Should you reference Lord of the Rings Online instead?

Sovrath · August 2019

Blackboa said:

Just an FYI, in your first sentence you reference Elder Scrolls Online. Should you reference Lord of the Rings Online instead?

He is referring to vaults of madness in elder scrolls online and then how Moria is perceived by him.

Nebless · August 2019

koboldfodder said:

Nowadays, people who play the game are just hoping the game goes away ASAP so another company can have a go at middle earth.

And I'm sure there's those that still wish Middle Earth Online had been made instead. Sorry, but I'm sure the 'people' you talk about are you and a couple of your friends, definitely not the majority of the player base.

While most of us have complaints how the game has evolved I think we're a pretty happy bunch. A good example would be how quickly the Anor VIP only server filled up when it first came one line, within just a couple of hours I believe and held up things until a second VIP only server could be brought online.

Alomar · August 2019

I wasn't a fan of Lotro's first expansion, Moria, when it came out. Yet, I'd have to agree the scale was huge and on-point. Meanwhile, that was within a themepark not even a sandbox. Oh I do miss being in Middle Earth.

Volenibblets · August 2019

Yep it sure did, almost painfully so.

Sovrath · August 2019

Volenibblets said:

Yep it sure did, almost painfully so.

In truth, and aligning to my tastes, I could do same size or larger WITHOUT the hubs.

Just a giant dungeon, no save areas. But that's my taste.

Iselin · August 2019

Yeah Moria was awesome and I totally get the comparison to ESO's Vaults of Madness. ESO has the newer graphics going for it but Moria in LOTRO is one of the best dungeons done in any MMORPG totally outclassing VoM.

The only other dungeon I can think of that was even better than Moria was Darkness Falls in DAoC.

Volenibblets · August 2019

Sovrath said:

Volenibblets said:

Yep it sure did, almost painfully so.

In truth, and aligning to my tastes, I could do same size or larger WITHOUT the hubs.

Just a giant dungeon, no save areas. But that's my taste.

In fairness, per Tolkien, Moria is supposed to be a tortuous, endless, labyrinthine (but beautiful) slog so I suppose it's quite apt.

Amathe · August 2019

Well done article.

Hashbrick · August 2019

Great article. Moria was successful because of how unknown the area was, they envisioned an umderground dungeon by using references of books, maps and scriptures and they made a masterpiece out of it. The sense of wonder and exploration was full force in Moria, you wanted to delve deeper and deeper. My fondest memories of LotRO was all in Moria, it holds a special place in my heart like pre-cu SWG did. Greatest MMO expansion ever? Well EQ players would probably argue that but it's definitely in the top 3.

Po_gg · August 2019

Moria was an amazing, confusing, dazzling place. The ruins of the former halls still showed splendour. Some of those aspects were lost with the revamps, especially the confusion part, the maze-like characteristic, which was a shame. More newbie friendly, but still a shame.

It was a polarising expansion, many loved it, also quite a lot hated it for different reasons like the claustrophobic setting, the LI, or the rune-keepers.

I loved it personally, exploring Moria in its entirety was a great journey (and originally the LI idea was really good. Rune-keepers... i didn't mind much).

Nice article, except the "you can find the ruin of Durin’s Bane – the Balrog of Morgoth (complete with its incorrect wings – Balrogs don’t have wings)." part.

That's a fact? Since when?

I believe it's up to debate - at most...

(for nitpicky people)

Tolkien did write spreading the wings, and most representations outside the books depict them with wings too. The other side's main argument is the dragon riding, from Ages before, but the few remaining balrogs after the thousands of years are probably just as different as rookie lieutenant Sauron compared to TA Sauron.

Po_gg · August 2019

Torval said:

Balrog are corrupted Maiar right? So theoretically they aren't bound to physical form like mortals are. That implies both could be true and at different points. A balrog could have different forms at different times.

Yep, to be honest that debate always baffled me... how heated both sides can be, when it's so easy to accept both, especially since Tolkien himself kept changing and rewriting things all the time, and there were years, sometimes decades, between two versions.

I always pictured early balrogs as tall, dark, dreadful foes, but "nothing extra" - I mean they had an army of thousands at Utumno (and later Angband) and were decimated during the siege with only a few survived the fall of Morgoth...

As opposed to Durin's Bane several thousand years later, which single-handedly wiped out Khazad-dûm from dwarves and elves, and needed a wizard to took it down, a wizard who died in the process as well. Clearly a much more powerful foe than those early balrogs.

wanderica · August 2019

LotRO is a game that has always kept me coming back periodically, and part of the reason for that is Moria. I will admit that after so long in Moria, I was beyond happy to kill orcs outside, and a little miffed that they sent me right back underground to grind out more in the next update to the Main Story Quests.

I had only experienced Moria through the movies at this point, and didn't actually read the books until later, so the buildup to entering the 21st hall was incredible. I was fully prepared to be let down, but it blew me away, and yes, it was the scale that did it. The graphics were decent back in the day, even though they are very dated today, and that added to it for me.

There are other zones or areas that really amazed me, like the Shire, Orthanc, the Old Forest, and Minas Tirith, but nothing nailed the scale as well as Moria. It was simply an amazingly well designed area. Great article.

Scot · August 2019

One of the best expansions I have ever played, from back in the day when every MMORPG worth it's salt did expansions.

foxgirl · August 2019

Moria is still the best and creepiest underland zone of any mmo out there.

cameltosis · August 2019

I wasn't a massive fan of Moria.

I can appreciate a lot of the world building, it was an amazing underground dungeon and looked awesome in places. But, it didn't feel right to me. To me, it felt a lot like a load of big caverns, connected by short passages, with some dwarven structures tacked on here and there.

I never got a sense of the dwarven city. Some places began to feel like it, like the 21st hall, but I found that they were mostly just dwarven background decoration without actually making it into something believable. It was the lack of buildings that got me I think. You'd have these massive walls, or caverns, or stairs, but virtually nowhere for a dwarf to actually live, conduct their business etc.

Favourite places were probably Water-works (just so weird, plus I loved the interesting plumbing structures) and the Redhorn Lodes (though, this felt like they'd just dumped mining equipment in a cavern, rather than trying to create an actual mine).

Gameplay wise, Turbine signalled its intent with Moria and it wasn't an intent I agreed with. The layout of Moria was all about creating quest hubs, rather than the more free-form way they'd been designed at release. There was virtually no group content from 50-60, Turbine had already decided that group content only belonged at endgame. The introduction of radiance (i.e. mandatory vertical progression) killed off all semblance of casual raiding, which at the time was about 50% of the raiding community (on my server anyway). Legendary weapons seemed great to start with, until you realised it was a dumb system until you hit the level cap, where it became exciting to max out a weapon, but a RNG and grindy nightmare to get to that point.

Also, the introduction of trait lines pissed me off. In SoA, I could pick whatever traits I wanted to make a lovely class to play, exactly suiting my style. Traitlines with their bonuses essentially made them mandatory for endgame, forcing you towards just a few builds. My captain in particularly went from jack-of-all-trades to a straightup backup healer, just because the healing traitline bonuses were so good.

I did enjoy the runekeeper and warden, whilst I didn't max out either I did enjoy playing with them, their different approaches to tanking and healing meant even more potential tactics for bosses, more depth in the system. I also really liked it later on when then added the proper raid DN and opened up Lothlorien, which was just beautiful.

Theocritus · August 2019

Never saw Moria....By level 40 I was too burned out on the quests to go any further....Between WoW, EQ2, and LoTRO I never wanted to see a quest again.

Existentialist · August 2019

You never forget the first time you step into Moria.

Sovrath · August 2019

Theocritus said:

Never saw Moria....By level 40 I was too burned out on the quests to go any further....Between WoW, EQ2, and LoTRO I never wanted to see a quest again.

My way of playing is never to take quests that I don't want to.

And if I "have to" but don't want to then I make the decision as to whether to go on or not.

Let's just say I miss most quests in most mmorpg's. The nice thing is that, for the most part, one can skip a lot of quests in Lord of the Rings Online.

There were a few times I just had to walk away because I just couldn't stand one of the main quests or really hating that one set of quests that remade that town (can't remember what that was)

Wizardry · August 2019

Yet again,we NEED a live video walk through,pictures do nothing to back up the article.
I was there back in the late 90's learning a lot from pro mappers,zone creation,lighting,sound effects,props,particle effects,secrets,animations,colors there is just soooo much that goes into a great map,this article is not going to prove a single thing without a video walk through.

ceratop001 · August 2019

I keep leaving Lotro because the population is low, but my heart wants to stay real bad.

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