The Lord of the Rings Online: First Impressions
The Review
The very first thing you’ll notice about The Lord of the Rings Online is that it’s pretty. The second thing you’ll notice is that it is very similar to World of Warcraft. If you haven’t played WoW, then don’t worry. LotRO is easy to pick up and go: left-click to select an object, right-click to interact with it. Simple. Use the W, A, S and D keys to move around, Space to jump. Simple.
This simplicity, coupled with the beautiful game engine, immediately places you on Middle-Earth, to an extent I found surprising. Even the character creation screen, which is often a bland affair in many games (I’m looking at you, Star Wars Galaxies), is rife with background activity, its looks and sounds at once creating an ambience. And the music!
I’ll discuss the music later. It deserves its own paragraph or three.
Character creation in LotRO strikes an excellent balance between facility and character customisation. You choose from the four main races of Middle-Earth: Men, Elves, Hobbits (or Halflings) and Dwarves. Each has male and female counterparts, except for Dwarves (which is fair enough - the beard would defeat the keenest discernment). Following a racial choice, you choose a class. Absent in their entirety are the otherwise omnipresent, over-used classes from your average RPG; here we have the Champion, the Burglar, the Lore-master, the Captain, the Hunter, the Minstrel and the Guardian. Yes, some of them do map to traditional MMORPG roles (which the game also provides to help you choose one), but the departure from normal terminology and the way each class uses its abilities still makes for a marked difference in gameplay.
Having chosen a name, a race and a class, it’s time to begin, and the introductory parts to the game do not disappoint. More scripted and involving than the early quests in WoW, these thrust the player straight into the action (the Elf introduction is particularly good). Scripted elements are well paced and embarking on your first few quests is an engaging and interesting affair. The game world is rife with background information and colourful characters; nobody says very much unless they’re part of your quest, but the voice acting is good (no horrifically embarrassing faux-Scots accents here - not that I’ve yet found, anyway) and the quest text excellently written (and pleasingly free of Americanisms). The occasional, sporadic “ye” can be found with a little work, but different folk speak in different ways, which again reinforces the game’s immersion.
Money can be tricky to come by, but the trade channel in towns and cities is always jumping. Crafting quests come along very early, and require a little thought and running around to understand and obtain materials for. Questing in general is very similar to World of Warcraft and other MMOs like Guild Wars; the usual format is “kill X of this monster” or “return with Y dropped items from these monsters”. The exciting thing is that you never seem to mind. Drop rates (an often-lamented issue with WoW) are much, much higher and are usually around the 90-100% level, and you rarely have to farm more than 10 of anything. Additionally, for another point scored over WoW, you’re not penalised for playing with a friend: drop quest items (like “boar chitterlings”, for instance) drop for both of you from corpses, which means that you don’t have to kill twice as much for having two of you in the group. Quest items that don’t drop from monsters, like Athelas/Kingsfoil weed, are also farmable by each member of your Fellowship.
Finishing the introductory quests leaves you more or less at level 6, and you will have gained some class abilities by this time having spoken with your trainer (again, like WoW). Far from being shoehorned into three broad talent categories, however, your abilities are given headlines like “The Forgotten Lore” and “Nature’s Wrath”, and they’re rarely as bland as “deals X-Y damage to target”. Arcane blasts will stun a foe or make it less resilient towards the same damage type, for example. Another welcome change is that your various abilities all seem to have their own animation and visual effects too, unlike WoW which lumbers you with a single racial “special” attack anim. Yawn!
Using your abilities also provides benefits over and above base levelling, too. As you use your abilities, you will discover Deeds which set you targets to attain, with rewards available for reaching them. Some Deeds concern your ability use, making them more powerful as you use them. Other Deeds are governed by your actions in-game, and can provide Titles which append themselves to your character’s name. Surviving to level 5 without being defeated in battle, for example, rewards you with the Title “…the Wary”, and killing (admittedly lots) of spiders in an area can result in your being tagged “Spider-Foe”. No doubt greater titles are available later in the game, and I can’t wait to find out about them.
So what’s bad about The Lord of the Rings Online? Well, having played World of Warcraft a significant amount, I have to say that LotRO plays in a very similar fashion. Quests are very similar, though they’re better written and don’t seem to suffer from being quite as irritating. Combat is much the same; you press number keys to activate your abilities on monsters which run up to you and thereafter don’t move. It all smacks very much of WoW, though the cool and unusual slant to many abilities smacks more of Guild Wars (especially those of the Mesmer).
Summary
So while LotRO is better written, better rendered and better scored than WoW, it still doesn’t depart much underneath from the tried-and-tested mechanics of other MMOs. But maybe this isn’t a bad thing. I mean, WoW currently runs to 10 million subscribers. If it ain’t broke, eh? I must apologise for comparing LotRO to WoW incessantly, but WoW is one of the most popular games in the world, and LotRO owes much of its underlying gameplay mechanics to it. But I’ve tried to show that LotRO scores heavily with its fabulous immersion and by being steeped in lore.
Score
Graphics: 9/10
Excellent bloom and shadowing effects make this an extraordinarily pretty game. It ran fine on my test rig at full settings, rarely dropping below 30fps. A few weather effects wouldn’t have gone amiss, but the visual effects are impressive and the water must be seen to be believed.
Immersion: 9/10
This is Middle-Earth, without question. It’s as simple as that.
Sound: 10/10
Voice acting is above the usual standard. The musical score is lovely, and similar to that of Morrowind; it’s lively or sombre or bombastic, but never gets in the way, and never jars with the on-screen action. The instrumentation is good too - guitars, flutes, oboes… Fantastic stuff.
Gameplay: 8/10
LotRO is competent and easy to get to grips with. It doesn’t dare much and doesn’t really innovate, except for the excellently-conceived Deeds, Traits and Titles system. As engaging as that is, though, you’ll still be doing the same old stuff for a while.
Lasting Appeal: 8/10
Its similarity so far to WoW worries me slightly, plus I haven’t yet checked out PvP or end-game content (I’m only level 10). But I can’t see myself getting tired of this game any time soon.
Verdict: 88%
It’s good. It’s very good. And it may one day be a WoW-beater.