Review – Lord of the Rings Online –Part 1 : Starting Steps

Let’s get this out of the way, Lord of the Rings Online, is a big game. A great big game. No seriously, huge. Miles of a virtual Middle-Earth spread from chin to nethers and filled with all manner of Tolkien-ish stuff to get yourself involved with. Consequently my standard way of reviewing a game – sitting around and working my way through it and coming up with a yeah or nay seemed somehow, insufficient. Further, writing 1000 or so snarky words isn’t very likely to convince you, dear reader, that your time and hard earned entertainment dollars will be well spent playing it. There is too much for a basic overview to do any kind of justice.

So I’m not even going to try really. Instead, as you’ll notice in the titles there is that it says “Part 1.” Over the coming, um, weeks I guess, I’ll be doing a series of reviews regarding different parts and aspects of the game and going into the fine detail that people expect from a reviewer of interactive media. The first, as those emboldened titles would lead you to believe, is a look at the opening parts of the game.

To start, you can download a free 10 day trial from Turbine’s Website. There are two options that you’re going to want to consider. The first is that you an download the whole game at once. It’s not altogether a small thing. Weighing in at several gigs of delicious data the downloader will give estimates like,”7 hours” for the whole package to arrive. It took me about an hour over my cable connection though, so your results may vary. I bring this up only to shed some light on their other option, which is to download the game in pieces and stream it from the background. I didn’t get to try this particular method, but it seems to download the parts in the order that you would play them. It’s kind of a cool thing really, especially if you don’t want to wait to get your elf on.

Once you’ve downloaded and run the installer, the game pops right up and asks you what server you would like to play on. They’re exotic and Middle-Earthy names like Landroval, and they don’t really mean much of anything. Further, they don’t give a whole lot of information regarding what kind of server it is. For most MMOs, different servers have different Player versus Player rules, or are roleplay only or some combination thereof. Considering the quest based (and PvE) nature of the game it’s not a big deal, but some kind of information about the server you’re selecting would be nice.

Not knowing any better, I picked the one at the top of the list – Landroval in this case.

Later, it seems you can move around to other servers without any kind of issue, but I haven’t found a way to easily bring your character with you. So see what you’re friends are on before you make a commitment.

You’re then plopped into Character Creation. First you select your gender and race. So you have your choice of 4 kinds of human (Gondor, Rohan, dirty Lake People or be from the suburbs of Bree), 5 flavors of Elf, or if you prefer to shop at Baby Gap – you can select one of the 5 varieties of Dwarves or Hobbits . Gender of course, includes boy or girl, unless you want to play a Dwarf, then it’s only dudes. No girlies because they seem to breed asexually. Yes, I know Middle-Earthers, there’re no lady dwarves in the books, and the beards would probably bring up awkward questions down the line. I digress though.

Then you get to change what your person looks like. Do you want fair or dark skin? Short hair or would you rather look like a hippy? Waifish thin or Jenny Craig reject? There are also facial hair options that range from porno goatee to Santa Claus. Except for the handlebar stash, there’s no real way to make yourself look ridiculous, which is nice.

What you do get it some really great information regarding the races while you pick. So you get lore about the race, where they’re from, in game statistics and all that. Of particular use is that it gives rough ideas about how the races are named. So dwarves have Norse sounding names like Thorin and Gimli, while the Gondorians have elvish names. I assume it’s there to help you find a name that will work within the context of the game world. Nothing breaks immersion quite like running into somebody with xxxL337HAXXORZ69xxx over their heads.

I headed into the internet looking for a translator before naming my Gondorian ­Adatir, which means, “To look again.”

Finally, you get to pick your class. For those of you that don’t know any better, there are only 5 or so true wizards in the entire world of Middle-Earth, and you don’t get to play those. Instead, the Classes are slightly more mundane and they include your classic Tank/DPS/Healer, but are more robust than that, with most of the classes serving 2 (or more) roles.

So you have, for example, the Minstrel classes for increasing stats and healing. Or the Rune-Keeper which can do either Damage or Heal. The fact that the classes can do more than 1 thing at a time really allows you to do things by yourself if you’d like.

For n00bs (like myself), it can be a little overwhelming honestly. While I can build other characters and other classes (up to 9 per account) picking your first can be just a bit daunting. To compensate, Turbine has rated how difficult each class is to play, ranging from Beginner to Expert. So a class like the Guardian, a role involving standing in front of smaller, weaker comrades and sucking up damage, is marked as a Beginner Class. While a class like the Captain – a mix of buffing, healing and pets, is considered more difficult to play. It’s a pretty good implementation honestly.

If you choose to use it of course. I picked a Warden – a medium tank style character that can chain attacks together while rocking out with spear and shield. It’s labeled as an Expert class due to the micromanagement of attack chains and secondary abilities like being able to hurl javelins at range.

Once you’ve got your character set up, you’re dropped into jail. It’s different if you’re not playing a human character, but your first experience of Middle-Earth will be breaking out. It’s a cleverly designed tutorial really, teaching the basics of equipping items and using attacks, and (most importantly) looting bodies. There’s then a *Spoiler Alert (?)* encounter with a Black Rider to instill some serious terror into your level 1 newborn. There are worse ways to teach somebody how to play.

Then, as a human, you’ll find yourself in the town of Archet and tasked with talking to the person who helped your emancipation. This, is your first Quest. There will be more; I promise. What you’ll notice early on, is that the Quests will have the loot that you’ll receive listed with the quest. Further, you can also choose to tell the quest giver “No.” I love that. I’ve frequently wanted to tell quest givers in normal one player RPG’s to go kick rocks, and I can in LotRO. No, I will not go looking for your Kingsfoil. Certainly not for your worthless trinkets, thank you very much.

The opening quests are super basic, and teach you more about the game. So there’s a couple of basic quests, like going off to talk to somebody, and opening doors and buying stuff from shops. Again, we’re learning and coming to grips with the interface. If you’ve played MMOs before, the starting area will probably bore you. I found it lasts just long enough. Besides, if you really want to, you can skip it all anyway since the quests are all optional.

Eventually, you’ll be tasked with leaving the same confines of the walls and have to go outside. It’s here you’ll encounter your first enemies. Specifically, you’ll encounter an entire kennel of wolves. Lots of them, and they seem to leave you alone. Until you start hocking javelins at them that is. So you’ll wander about, get some new quests (one of which required hunting these ubiquitous little doggies) and kill a bunch of wolves, boars and the occasional spy. I wish that there were just a little more variety though. There are different flavors of boars and wolves, but they look the same and are only differentiated by the amount of HP that they have. I’m hoping that later areas will have more types of enemies that I can introduce to Mr. Spear and Mrs. Shield.

I should take this moment to comment on other people. My first encounter with somebody else was an awkward moment in a doorway. I was working out how to open it when she emerged. We took a moment, staring at each other, confused. My mouse cursor tentatively moved towards the little box that allows for speech. But before I could think of something clever (or crass, probably would’ve been crass) she ran off, and was gone. It seems love was not in the cards that day for Adatir, although whether the person holding her strings are themselves a “her,” I’ll never know. The alternative gives me the creepies though.

Anyway, especially early on, you can see people doing the quests you are also doing. After completing the, “Go Stab the Bandit Spies” quest, I ran back to the quest giver and saw another avatar standing there for a moment, before a cloak magically appeared on them. They then ran off to places unknown. It turns out that cloak is the reward for stabbing spies. It’s an odd feeling, knowing that you’re one of several heroes saving the world. Unique, just like everybody else.

I’ll take this moment to describe the combat. On a basic level, it’s very simple. All you have to do is point the cursor at whatever it is you would like to die and click. There are options to have your dude (or dude-ette if you’re into that) run up automatically if you would like, to streamline the process further. I left the default, “I can run myself thank you” option on.

If you do nothing else, you and your new nemesis will trade blows until one of you shuffles loose your mortal coil. However you can do quite a bit more than that, especially playing as a Warden and probably the rest of the more advanced classes.

On the bottom of your screen are a variety of different abilities that you have learned. Click on one and, boom something graphical and pretty will shock and amaze. Often different powers will grant different boosts to stats, deal additional damage or pain on thy enemies or heal. Spamming specific attacks is kept to a minimum through the use of timers. Most of these attacks are wasted on the wolves and boars in the starting area though, especially if they increase a stat for the remainder of the combat. Wolves and bacon tend not to last that long.

Wardens also have a whole secondary set of skills at their disposal. By landing specific types of attacks in a certain order, it allows the use of a more powerful attack. So say, you bash twice with your shield, it opens up a special attack where you boot your foe in the guts. Two quick stabs and you’re on your way to a more precise and furious shanking. Combining the different attacks to get to the more interesting and powerful attacks becomes a kind of sub-game in the combat. It’s one that I enjoy rather a lot actually. I’m always clicking on something and that goes a long way towards making me feel like I’m doing something cool instead of watching somebody do something cool.

In any event, I’m 7 levels into it, stabbing boars, wild dogs and creepy bandit types and finding myself having an unnaturally decent time with it. At times it’s like I can see the underlying loot and abilities treadmill, the gears running just below the surface and I don’t really care. I know I’m being manipulated on a super basic level, and yet I keep on going. I kill something with a spear (or a shield bash – I love those!) and get XP and loot. I apply said XP and loot to gain new weapons, which I want to play with. Playing with those new sharp and pointy things nets me more XP and loot and before I know it, I’ve gained a level and have new abilities. Of course, my session wouldn’t be over until I’ve rocked out with my new Super Stab of Bree or whatever and the cycle continues.

I’m still far too early into the game to see how any of that relates to the end of the Third Age, but I’m willing to have my puppet strings pulled enough to find out.

Like I said before, there’s a 10 day free trial available on the Turbine Website, so if any this sounds like something that you would enjoy, I fully endorse spending a couple of hours to find out. In the meantime, I’ll review additional aspects of the game as I reach them. Furthermore, dear readers, if there is something you would like to know more about, let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to seek it out.

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Tagged as: Lord of the Rings Online, MMO, Review, RPG, turbine