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Walking Around Middle Earth: A Lord of the Rings Online Review

When it comes to reviewing Lord of the Rings: Online - Shadows of Angmar (or whatever the complex punctuation involved in the actual title really is) I am a little late to the party.  I've dabbled with it since closed Beta last year, but intentionally didn't overdo it, since this was a game I've really looked forward to since about, oh, 1984 or so?  I didn't want to see too much of what was going on behind the curtain.  I felt an urgent need, nay desire, to suspend my disbelief.

For a good first impression, see what Brad wrote over at the War Room.  Reviews in general have been pretty positive overall, although I was surprised at just how highly CVG rated it: a 9.2 is a startlingly high figure. with the consensus being that Turbine have managed a solid, polished release that builds substantially upon the rather under-performing Dungeons and Dragons Online release from last year.

Instead of going over well-trodden ground, I'll just do this in bullet-point format.

• It's a good game, well balanced and fun, which has learned a lot of the lessons taught by World of Warcraft.  The game's producer has done himself favours for his next role.
• It looks gorgeous.  With all the options turned on - just about possible on my new machine - it looks wonderful.  Looking down towards the Grey Havens from the bridge between the Shire and Duillond is spectacular and beautiful.  Emyn Hoeth at night is deeply threatening.  Bree is huge: I can only wonder what Minis Tirith will be like.
• They launched at just the right time.  WoW's Burning Crusade expansion has proven to be rather underwhelming, and its first couple of months seem to have persuaded a fair number of players that the time is right to look around for The Next Game.
• As Tobold has pointed out, the graphical style is a cracking balance.  It has fallen into neither the bilious cartoonery of WoW nor the Land of Poo colour-scheme of EQ2 and others.
• There is a ton of content: far more than a single character can meaningfully consume.
• If you like Middle Earth, this is a feast.  I ran from the dwarf-hold at Gondamon to Bree last night, which is about half the width of the current worldspace, and it took a long time.  But you felt you really were running through a living landscape.  Specifically, through Tolkien's living landscape.  The Shire in particular was wonderfully bucolic, with gentle, rolling landscapes and leafy forests separating a multitude of towns and villages.  I passed through Bywater, and over the Brandywine Bridge, but didn't have time to head up to Hobbiton or east to Weathertop or, beyond that, the foothills of the Misty Mountains and Angmar.  Everywhere I was recognising names and places from the book.  So inspired, I immediately went back to re-read the trilogy.
• There are some tweaking issues.  Admittedly, the servers are packed due to everyone being at roughly the same level, but finding the right sort of bears or wolves for various tasks can be infuriating.  Goblin stingers - a particular variety of missile-armed goblins - were in particularly short supply.  Spawn rates need adjusted.
• Codemasters - the European publishers who are running the servers on this side of the Atlantic - are as incompetent as they always have been.  The launch has been largely good, for which we can thank the mature Turbine engine.  But the servers have been down twice for looong periods up to a day or so, and it is noticeable that the US servers have not suffered similarly.  Likewise, the account-management web pages are awful affairs that simply cannot handle any sort of load, a problem I remember from D&D Online.
• Deeds are a great mechanic for those, like myself, given to "collecting" achievements.  By granting titles, they give in-character reasons to pursure goals of exploration or beast-slaying.  And by then granting abilities, they give the powergamers a target as well.  I've already seen more of Middle Earth than I would have otherwise, thanks to the rewards for doing so.

I can't wait for the landscape to expand as new releases are brought out over time.  Turbine have always been good with frequent content updates, but they've surpassed themselves with the anouncement that whole new regions will be released a matter of weeks after launch.  That's a nice way to give the game added momentum immediately post-launch.  So in June there will be the chance to head into Northern Eriador to the Shores of Evendim.

My mouth waters at what is to come afterwards.  Most exciting will be Moria, of course, which I imagine will not be restricted to one expansion, and which might justify an entire, paid-for box release of its own.  The central shaft is not called the Endless Staircase for nothing, after all: all the way from the depths of Moria up to Durin's Tower atop Celebdil. And the chaos that will be present after the passage of the Fellowship and the slaying of the Balrog will be rich with storyline opportunities.  Will the dwarfs already be looking to clear out the cave trolls and orcs and repeat Balin's attempt to reclaim Khazad-dum?  Having seen the dungeon in the starting signature quest for dwarfs and Elves, through which Gimli leads new characters, I am excited: that was the best representation of a classic RPG dungeon I have ever seen, with vast spaces and spiralling, vaulting stairways across many levels.  And Moria would dwarf it (dwarf... geddit?)

But Moria is just one area.  Mirkwood could justify a couple itself, with spiders, Thranduil and the necromancer's old base at Dol-Guldor to think of.  The Misty Mountains are a huge opportunity, with Orthanc in the south.  Gondor, Minas Tirith and Minas Ithil, Osgiliath, Rohan, Dale and the Lonely Mountain (each of those latter two facing invasion from Mordor's Easterling allies), the Dagorlad Marshes, Belfalas and the Corsairs: each of these offers huge possibilities.  Lorien, Fangorn, Umbar, the Paths of the Dead?  And then, of course, there are the other three-quarters of the content: Haradwaith and beyond.

Potential.  Lots of it.  I chose the one-off lifetime subscription option.