A humble beginning in Lord of the Rings Online.
When it comes to dungeon crawling, I can't get enough and I was
intrigued when I heard that
Turbine
was releasing a Mines of Moria expansion for
Lord
of the
Rings Online. Unfortunately, I joined the party late in the
game, but I finally grabbed the title this past weekend and have to
admit I've been pleasantly surprised.
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Look Ma, I'm
smoking!
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Since I couldn't play any type of evil character, I decided to play a
grizzled, stocky dwarf. Looking through the classes, I realized I had
to play a
Rune-keeper.
Sure some of the other races can play the class as well, but honestly,
they're nothing but posers no matter how they try to argue it. Dwarves
are the caretakers and shapers of the earth itself, so if I had to play
a good guy, there was no way I could go with someone that was
short-lived (weak humans), frilly (yeah, that's you elves), and weighs
less than fifty pounds soaking wet (start bulking up hobbits!). The
character customization process was reasonably fleshed out, enough so
that I didn't feel gypped when I hit the Create Character button. Thus,
Dalmarus, Rune-keeper of the Blue Mountains, was born.
From the moment I stepped into the game, it was obvious the development
team wanted you to immediately feel as though you were an important and
integral part of the land. Upon character creation, you're dropped into
a small instance to learn some of the basic mechanics of the game.
Within the first ten minutes of playing, I could easily see the team
had taken great care to avoid a number of mistakes made by other
companies in the past.
Normally, I absolutely hate escort quests. Why? Because invariably the
NPC you're supposed to be following is a complete moron when it comes
to keeping themselves alive. They'll rush ahead, lag behind, and never
quit for breaks. This couldn't be further from the truth in the Dwarven
initial instance. On top of being smart enough to keep up with you and
go at a pace that wasn't too fast and wasn't too slow, this NPC could
actually fight. He wasn't just an extra pet that was there with the
sole intention of soaking up damage waiting for you to finish beating
the mob down. On one occasion, he actually saved my hide while I was
trying to figure out what one of my skills did. It was an amazing
feeling.
My favorite parts of the instance though were the breaks my companion
would take. Rather than just standing there for a minute, he'd tell me
a very brief story, or say how he was out of practice and needed to sit
down for a rest. I know it sounds like really small touches, but like
they say, the devil is in the details. By combining so many small (but
important) touches, the team succeeded in bringing you into the world
(and thus the game) more quickly than virtually any other game I can
think of right now.