Lord of the Rings Online is a casual MMO very much in the mold of World of Warcraft. After the stress test ended, I hoped I could play some more and will likely pre-order it. I don’t see this becoming my primary game, but I usually have a “serious” game and a “relax” game. My serious game at the moment is EverQuest 2. LotRO is well placed to be my “relax” game.
Here are the pros and cons I saw in my six or so total hours of play over the weekend.
Pros:
Familiar Interface: The UI is nearly a copy of World of Warcraft’s. Brent from Virgin Worlds says it is even more like Dungeons & Dragons Online, but I never played that. I have played WoW and felt instantly comfortable navigating about in LotRO.
Class Variety: There are very few character classes you have seen in the same form in another game. My character, a minstrel — the “healer” class — had a combat focus (you have to build combat chains to unlock the good buffs) that will make “healbot” play impossible, and the other classes have similar differences from “normal” MMOs.
Fun Quests: Lots of quests, many of which you just may randomly encounter in the wilderness.
Achievements and Skills: Doing certain things starts you automatically toward earning an achievement, which may grant you a title or an ability you can use to customize your character — similar to WoW Talents or EQ2’s Abilities.
Lore: This is Middle Earth, after all. Any place Bilbo or Frodo went in Eriador, you can visit as well.
Instances: The instances are focused and fun and (I have been told) may allow you to affect the persistent world when you complete them. There are scrying pools here and there that apparently allow you to look back into a previous version of the world that you have already passed so you can join a friend in an earlier instance.
Cons:
Button Mashing: Brent nailed this one. I had about six different Anthems at the end (combine damage and buffs) and two Ballads (heals and group buffs) and to be honest, I had totally forgotten what any of the Anthems did, specifically. I knew I had to hit all of them to build up their Achievements, and I had to get up to Tier 2 Anthems before I could cast the Tier 3 Ballads — the “good buffs”. Fights were just mashing random Anthems to cast the buffs and healing myself occasionally.
Classes: The class selection is good, but depart from lore. You’d expect classes such as Archer, Burglar, Armsman — but what you get is really far more standard and the characters can do things not found in any Middle Earth book. The sight of heavily clad adventurers in the Shire in the timeframe of the game should frighten and alarm the residents!
PvP: There is no PvP in the sense of WoW or EQ2. Instead, there’s a special battleground zone called the Ettinmores where high level players can go to meet the legions of Angmar, who, in LotRO, are played by players who create monster characters to fight the good guys, gain control of the keeps in the zone, and gain destiny points to use to buy abilities for their player character.
Vague Game Roles: Fellowship battles are very much an exercise in chaos and it’s not clear what each class brings to a Fellowship as opposed to just adventuring by themselves.
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Anyway, I do like the game. I don’t think it is deep enough — yet — to be my only game, but I will play it.
