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62 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fantasy MMO, but for Grown-Ups, April 24, 2009

Jason McKendry "Growing old is easy. Growing ... (Everett, WA 98204) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

This review is from: The Lord of the Rings: Mines of Moria (DVD-ROM)

I couldn't help but think that, over and over, when I made the jump from World of Warcraft (WoW) to Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO). If you've never seen the original Japanese Iron Chef show, when one of the judges describes what they're eating as being "for grown-ups," it usually means that it's restrained in seasoning, elegant, subtle. A fruit ice cream that gives you more of a floral, fruity taste than a sugar rush, or an expertly-grilled cut of meat that requires you do nothing more than sit there and let it melt in your mouth. Art, in a word, the sheer beauty of which is beyond the comprehension of children.

It's sad, in a way, that it's impossible to talk about a modern Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game without talking about WoW. In essence, WoW more or less fails to be the very best at any one thing in order to be second best at almost everything. It's kind of like McDonald's. It's probably not going to ever be your favorite place to eat, but you'll probably eat there more than any other single place in your life. It's the game that everyone can agree on. When the topic is MMOs, it's a point of reference; the question isn't, "how good is the game," it's, "how is it, compared to WoW?"

What makes LotRO really shine is not that it does things in unique ways, but that it does that with a purpose, and it does it extremely well. Everything is about serving the story and the atmosphere. I cannot stress that enough. More than any of the myriad MMOs I've played to date, LotRO is an unabashed worshiper of the art of telling a good story, and telling it well.

Right off the bat, as you're making your character, you are not just told to make a "good, appropriate fantasy setting name" for your character -- you're given a primer on who those people are and where they come from, as well as a long sample list of names, suffixes, and prefixes to work with. Some MMOs will just pay some lip service to the idea of story-compatible names, for example, saying that certain character names are inappropriate, and then giving hypocritically mind-boggling examples. WoW says that you shouldn't make a character named "Technotron," but before very long, you'll come face-to-face with the quest mob (enemy character), Techbot. LotRO makes character creation fun, participatory, and dare I say it, even creative. You'll be given some food for thought as you make your avatar, with hints like, (quoting from memory) "Elven women often have names ending in -riel, -wen..." and so on.

The realistic bent to the style of the whole game makes the fantasy elements seem almost that much more extraordinary. As you're choosing skin, hair, and eye colors for your character, notice that the relatively limited palette for each selection is itself limited by where your character hails from. Will you be a dark-haired son of Gondor, or a red-headed horse-lord from Rohan? Every little thing serves the story, the atmosphere.

You don't have Hit Points (HP) and Mana, you have Morale and Power. On the surface, it sounds like a cheap distinction, but it goes deeper than that. Your Morale (roughly equivalent to HP) can be capped by powerful evils that inspire Dread, for example. When this happens, not only does your Morale total drop in proportion to just HOW evil the big bad you're fighting really is, but the whole screen rushes towards you and blurs for a moment, before settling back into place with an even MORE muted color palette. It's really wonderful theater, brilliantly designed and flawlessly executed. These little touches are everywhere in LotRO, and they add a level of polish that makes the odd bit of dodgy dialogue stand at attention and read like Tolkien.

Turbine must be given credit for their very bold art style. It's bold in a counterintuitive way; the artwork itself isn't highly stylized, in fact, it's as nearly photorealistic as it can be while still depicting a fantasy setting. The palette is restrained, drab... real. This relative dullness allows the game to really highlight visuals in the same simple way that reality does, if you let it. Run up the side of a hill in LotRO, and find yourself in a field of gently swaying white flowers, and you will stop, and just look. It's beautiful, and there is absolutely nothing remarkable about it.

Water effects are similarly mesmerizing, but the little bits of the stage that peek through here and there are more obvious with the water's surface than anything else. It handles reflectivity of objects near the surface relative to your point of view, meaning that if you are standing next to a bright copper node and you angle your point of view so that it sits before a distant pool of water, the water will appear to reflect the copper node, which is of course impossible. It is one of only two egregious examples of broken illusion I have found yet in this game; the other was an invisible wall I ran into while swimming down a stream.

I've expressed my love of random map dungeon crawls in other game reviews (like Alien Syndrome and Phantasy Star Portable), and an MMORPG (MMO Role-Playing Game) is nothing if not a truly enormous dungeon crawl. The problem with that is often how to get the user to understand where to go next without talking down to them. In the latest update to the game, which was released about a week after I started playing, you can select up to five quests to track with some text on your screen. With each of those, you can click the little ring icon next to the text and examine the quest log entry for that quest, in case you need to re-read some of the content and figure out what to do next. As far as where to go next, this is handled with a simple arrow pointing towards the nearest quest-related area for the quest(s) you are tracking. It's not quite talking down to the player, because the arrow points straight in that direction, and does not account for changes in terrain or elevation, what kind of hostile forces you may run into on the way, and so on. It's a brilliantly simple solution, though I am occasionally annoyed that I haven't figured out how to select which quest I want to get directions to, as it's not always the one that's closest.

Customization is not quite as deep as it is in WoW, with no user-created add-on support (to my knowledge), but what's there is certainly serviceable. So far, I've found myself missing only the auction-house tracking add-on, as I now have to try to guess at the value of my goods to sell to other players, and can't build a long-term reference of the market on my server. You can scale the entire user interface (UI) to your liking, and move the components around by entering a UI-editing mode with a simple key command, and then keying back out of it when you're satisfied with where things are.

MMOs are often about loot, which means you need space to carry things that you pick up. LotRO starts you off with all the bag space you will ever have, which is good and bad. For the beginner, it's great, especially if you're familiar with WoW and the very limited bag space you start out with. As you progress, I imagine it's quite limiting, because you can never replace your starting bags with much more generous ones. You do have immediate access to a vault, and you can purchase additional vault space at certain levels.

Combat seems, in a general sense, pretty standard; you target (or get targeted by) enemies who are near enough, you fight them or you run away, and it's basically Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots with 3D models until someone runs out of steam and drops dead. Between just the two classes I've played with so far, there is plenty of variety in the specifics of how this happens. Combat in modern MMOs seems in large part to be how to make each class its own minigame when the battle is joined. All I've seen in LotRO so far convinces me beyond any doubt that I will have a very unique (and likely enjoyable) experience as I make my way through all the classes.

My Minstrel uses ranged song attacks and can't take very many melee hits, but she also has strong heals, so she's reasonably survivable against single enemies of a similar level. The Warden has a unique UI widget to handle "gambits," LotRO's word for the combo-and-finisher system of play they've developed. As your Warden progresses, more gambits become available to them, and the number of moves you can drop into the gambit widget grows. The gambit widget fills automatically as you perform any of your basic types of attacks -- a quick thrust, a shield bash, or a battle cry, to start -- and once you've created a combination out of at least two of them, your finishing move becomes available, with enhanced effectiveness that relates to how the gambit was built. For example, you may use your shield bash twice, and then clear the gambit with a finishing move that improves your block rating temporarily.

Another given for the modern A-list MMO is crafting -- give players components, tools, etc. and allow them to make their own loot. LotRO again goes for the unique factor by combining sets of the basic trades (which you cannot select individually) into careers made of three parts. For example, the Armourer (British spelling abounds) is a Prospector, able to mine and smelt ore, a Metalsmith, able to fashion their ingots into chains, plates, and ultimately, armor (I mean "armour"), and a Tailor, able to take prepared leathers and create various lighter forms of clothing, as well as the connective pieces used in the heavier gear you can fashion with your Metalsmithing. At first, this system feels limiting, but in reality, it's no more limiting than any other MMO... Read more ›

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42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exceptional expansion, November 25, 2008

-BigDaddy- (Ohio) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

This review is from: The Lord of the Rings: Mines of Moria (DVD-ROM)

Turbine did a great job with this expansion.

They added two new classes: the warden and the rune keeper. I was happy with concept behind the classes.

The warden is a mix between the champion(melee AOE DPS), and the guardian(tank). Great solo class! They are officially a tank class, but again, they have decent DPS as well. They have a "gambit" system. What this is, is when you click skills in a certain succession, you will come up with a certain special skill to use. It's good to memorize the gambits and what skills get them to pop up. Some heal, others do extra damage, still others give better blocking, etc...

The rune keeper is a fairly advanced class. I thought it was a lot of fun, but there is a bit of a learning curve - especially if you are new to the game. That said, once they come into their own, they can be great ranged DPS(second to the hunter), and great healers(second to the minstrel). There is a range bar that goes both ways. The more it climbs one way, the more the skills get powerful. The reverse is true as well though. If you are blasting things with your DPS skills, your heals will be weaker(some will not even be available) - and vice versus.

They overhauled the graphics a bit. I noticed they looked sharper right away.

I like the new legendary items. Even if you are one who likes to race to the max level, you can still continue to advance because the items also level up as well. As they level they get more powerful.

Next is the new areas themselves. I have only been playing a few months, so I am not an authority in this area. That said, many of my kinsmen(guild mates) have been there. They say the graphics are really awesome, and give you a real sense of being in an underground ancient civilization. They also commented on how enormous and how epic the place felt.

As far as PvP - or PvMP in this case, They revamped and did some balances to the Moors. The moors, for those who don't know is the Ettinmoors. There is a instanced area where players fight against monster players and also do quests/objectives in a very large valley. The valley is a lot bigger than AV (Alterac Valley from WOW).

I want to point out one thing that was true before the expansion, and continues to be now: the crafting. The crafting in this game is very well thought out. It's not perfect(besides we all have different definitions of that anyway), but it is fun and relevant. I can buy items that were crafted that are pretty much in the same ball park as PvP and raid items. This makes for a decent player economy. It's not as complicated as EQ2, but more so that WOW, IMHO. A good happy medium if you will.

Anyway, as a long time 3+ year WOW player who recently moved on, I can really appreciate this game, and the great job they did on the expansion.

If you are a fan of the Lord of the Rings, or simply love MMO's with a good but not stifling story, then this is a good place to invest some time into.

*edit 2/27/09*

I still love this game. In fact the soon to come book 7(free content update) will open up all of Lothlorien! They wanted to release this content with the expansion, but decided to hold off as they only wanted to release it when it was refined and done well. I can really respect their attention to detail. As for Moria, I am loving it! It really is epic and well done. There are many different "environs" in it so you don't get bored with the same ole same ole. If you haven't yet gotten it, or were thinking of getting back into the game, now is a great time to do so!

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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Little Unknown MMO That Could...., December 1, 2008

Green Witch (Ohio) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

This review is from: The Lord of the Rings: Mines of Moria (DVD-ROM)

Just wanted to add a quick review of this online game. Awesome, beautiful, extremely well thought-out, very polished. I tried this game during late beta and couldn't get past the "noobie" area ~ thought it was boring... Well I was in between games a few months ago and saw LOTRO had a 14 day free trial and gave it a second look. Again was bored during the beginning noobie section but I forced myself to play through it... sooo glad I did! This game really starts to shine at around level 10 and only gets better as you level-up.

I would say the player base is perhaps a little older than the average MMO and is top notch! I have asked questions in the /advice channel several times and have always got a respectful and helpful answer. Try that in EQ2/AoC and chances are you will get flamed =(

Some servers are more populated than others... I started (unbeknownst to me) on a newer, sparsly populated server and ended-up switching to another server after about a month. Just go to the forums and do a search to find the more populated servers.

I have played MANY MMO's over the past decade (showing my age a bit there ~ lol) Even met my Husband in one. To compare your MMO likes/dislikes with mine: my favorite MMO was DAoC. WOW just never appealed to me and is one of the few MMO's I have not tried. LOTRO is perhaps the closest thing to DAoC EXCEPT it's "RvR" is considerably different.

Anyway, there is a lot more to this game than meets the eye at first, give it enough time (and research on their forums) and you will probably not regret it. They add free (and worth while) content regularly.

LOTRO is the best kept secret MMO out there!

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What you want to know:

I got the FSSS version from Best Game Deals. It was a sealed, US copy, with 30-days of game time. Read more

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