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By Jay "Medeor" Johnson, Ten Ton Hammer Community Member

While we sit in the doldrums of the spring waiting for nicer weather, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Wrath of the Lich King, et al to be unleashed, I thought it would be a great time to jump back into Lord of the Rings Online. By the way, in case you haven't been keeping up, Turbine has provided new LOTRO content to the tune of almost monthly since it launched. So the world is definitely different than when I last dove into Bree-town.

Waiting for the balmier days of spring? Fire up LOTRO to pass the time!

First question, why did I leave a level 12 minstrel and a slew of level 6-8 characters within 2 months of the original launch? Fair enough, I went back to WoW. I know, that’s a total shocker. It really was a case of playing where my friends play. They were playing WoW and I wasn't. I was left out and falling behind, so I went back. Well now we are all twiddling our thumbs in Azeroth wondering if beating our heads against the wall for badges, honor, dailies, etc. are really worth that gear which will provide me with +.002 more hit rating. And yes, we've seen all of the new content minus the 25 man stuff that I haven't seen since…well I've never seen any 25 man stuff. I'm at a point right now that I can leave WoW until Lich King comes out and not be behind my friends at all. I can jump back in anytime. So it’s a perfect time to dive into another game and give it a go - and LOTRO won.

Without further ado, my second impression of LOTRO:

I started a Human Champion this time on the Landroval server (stop by and say hi to Medeor). He likes long walks on the beach and hates rude people.

Combat

Typical game reviews seem to start with visuals, but I could give a rat’s backside about that - I want to smack things in the face and see what happens. LOTRO's combat system is not WoW. And this time around I like it. By level 4, I had an aura to keep up, an AoE attack, and certain combo attacks that required fervor (similar to a rage style system for warriors in WoW). You use the lower grade attacks to build fervor and then you pick between damage attacks or buffs to spend your fervor points on. The buff lengths are different and provide defensive and offensive benefits so I find myself constantly evaluating during a fight which to fire back up. At the beginning of a fight it is pretty straight forward, but as you get into the fight it depends on all of the variables like - what is the health differential between me and the mob, was there an add, etc. This is all before level 10 which I would say is pretty unique. You can still hit auto attack and just cycle through the attacks, but I really enjoy this strategic play.

The other difference in combat is the queuing system. You queue up spells while cooldowns are occurring. I’m still working on this mechanic. I have not perfected exactly how it works, only that it does.

The combat animations are decent and you can see the effects, but so far they seem a bit limited (of course my level 10 combats are limited). My biggest complaint is that debuffs put on you by mobs are put in the same bar as your buffs and on my screen (a 24” monitor running at 1440x990), and those debuffs are the size of a dime so I spend time hovering over them to see what they are, how long they are going to last and what their effects are (maybe I can change this in settings, I’ve yet to really dig too deep into the options). The time this was frustrating was when I was apparently stunned but couldn’t tell until I tried to swing back.

The community in LOTRO was very helpful to Medeor.

Community and Chat

The community has been surprisingly nice, helpful and even a bit fun. Bree is a long ways from the Barrens. I’m sure there are wingnuts, but fortunately they haven’t played (or they have kept quiet) when I’ve been online.

The chat window is actually very good. It operates pretty simply, with one really nice feature. There is an “IMs” window that shows a button for recent people you have had private conversations with so you can just click on their button and it shows you just the chat info for your conversation with that person. A very nice feature.

Maps

So far I would have to give the mapping a failing grade. While ornate, the maps are close to unusable to actually see how to get where I want to go – it shows general directions but not much more. Maybe I will get used to it and I’ll retract this statement later.

Quests and Log

Forty quests in a log – Woot! and Ugh! all rolled into one!

Being a completionist, enabling me to have 40 quests is like dumping the sunflower seeds in front of a vampire (see X Files archives for more info). I can’t move on until I have clicked all of the “done” boxes. The quest log has a nice segmentation between the different quest types and so far the quest log itself is quite handy.

The quest text is very well written in my opinion. I can find what I need to get and then where to go next – my needs are simple.

Deeds and Titles

The graphics in LOTRO - in Medeor's opinion - are decent.

I remember thinking “meh” when I first saw the titles and deeds at launch. Now I find myself killing a few extra spiders so I can get that title of Spider Hunter. Not a primary driver in the game, but a nice to have feature. As you unlock these titles or complete deeds you also unlock traits which are yet another way to increase your characters abilities. I’m still figuring these out (so far I have one and it increases my resistance to name a character LegoBaromirlass).

Animations/Graphics:

I’m typically not a fan of the photo-realistic games because all I see are flaws. It’s much easier for me to lose myself in space or cartoonland type graphics, maybe I’m odd that way. The graphics for LOTRO are good and so far I like the animations, however my one major issue is that when I use the WASD keys to turn while running forward, my character turns like he is a bus – it is a lazy turn versus using my mouse to turn which makes nice crisp turns. Maybe I can sharpen those turns through the options, which again I need to check into it.

Being able to shelve my WoW-centric focus and really check out LOTRO has been a fun change of pace for me. Whether or not I will keep rolling through their next expansion is yet to be determined, but I would like to see the Mines of Moria!