/dev/null/kevin

This past weekend A few weekends ago, I helped stress test the new Lord of the Rings Online Game.  It's a MMORPG similar to World of Warcraft.  I'm not a big online gamer, but the both the download and account were free, and I'm a big LOTR fan, so I deiced to try it.

Short Review: Pretty Good

MMORPGs never really were that appealing to me.  The idea of continual payment never sat well with me, nor did the idea of the game never really ending.  Many of the early MMORPGs weren't that good: lots of repetitive tasks and high death penalties.  WoW really raised the bar for MMORPGs and it's the standard by which all others are now judged.  However, since I don't really play WoW I can't compare, so I will just list the features the I liked and didn't like.  I'll let the WoW players make up their own minds.  In talking with some WoW players, it sounds like LOTRO has borrowed/stolen many of the good features from WoW.

Good Stuff

• Fellowships - You knew it was there, right?   Fellowships are quick ad-hoc groups that players can form to tackle a larger challenge.  Smaller than a guild or raid party, you can easily join, and leave, a fellowship.  Members get a private chat channel, split all money and experience earned, and share in any quest tasks or items.  Those last two items are the most important because you don't have to worry about those limited spawn areas where a group of players are camped waiting for their chance to kill the quest target.
  

• No Death Penalty - Dying really has no penalty, other than transporting you back to your "home" city (which you can move).  Your equipment may take some damage (I never checked) but there is no need to retrieve your body or anything like that.

• Instances - Small, or large, parts of the game can be instanced to a player or group based on their situation.  Unlike the traditional MMORPG, parts of the game are linear, meaning that a location may change based on how far into the story you have progressed.  A town may get attacked at some point, so for everyone who was part of that battle, the town will show damage from that point on.  I didn't get far enough into the story to see how much changes, but the few examples that I saw seemed to work.

• Lots of Content - Granted, I just started the game, but there was no shortage of things to do.  Also, the automap feature lets you zoom out to see all of Middle Earth, so you can see how much content they have the capacity for.  There was also no shortage of quests.  I had anywhere from 5 to 10 active at any one time and most are interesting or move the story along.  There are also many types of quests covering all aspects of the game.
• Kill Quests - Typical monster quest: find it, kill it.  Or kill X many Ys.
• FedEx Quests - Take this object to Joe, or just talk to Joe.
• Skill Quests - Build or farm something.  You can either do it yourself (assuming you have he skills), or find another player to do it.

• Auto Journal - Will so many quests (and quest chains), the journal keeps track of all conversations relating to the quest, where you need to go to achieve the quest, and where to go back to collect your reward for the quest.
  

• Lots of Races - You can start off the game as a human, elf, dwarf, or hobbit.  Each starts the game at a different location on the map so each gets a different set of training and low-level quests.  I think that this makes for great replayability, as you won't get bored with the same stuff over and over again.

• Quick Transportation - Covering large distances quickly can be achieved by spending a little money.  You can only travel to a place that you've visited before, but you'd expect that.

• Ability to Become a Monster - I never did this, but it was advertised that once I became 10th level I could go a place to join the forces of darkness.  I don't know more about this than there are some limitations places on your character, but it sounds fun!
  

Bad Stuff

There wasn't too much that I didn't like, and I will say now that some of these problems might have workarounds that I just didn't find. 

•  With fellowships such an integral part of the game, there wasn't an easy way to create one quickly.  As it is now, you must invite each player one at a time.  It seems like there should be a "invite all players on the screen into a fellowship" command.
• It also wasn't immediately obvious how to leave a fellowship.  While I did figure it out (double click on yourself (i.e. talk to yourself), and then right-click on the second image of yourself to get the menu of options) this feature wasn't in the "Social" Tab with the other fellowship options.
• Inventory control seemed kind of random.  You have 6 separate bags to put stuff in, but when you pick things up it goes into a random bag.  Thus, it's hard to keep stuff sorted.  Also, as you acquire and sell items, your bags become fragmented.  Not a big deal but why not just have one large bag?

While the game makers say that you will interact with characters from the books (and movies) you won't be directly involved with the main quest of the the ring.  You will, however, follow a parallel story to the main ring story.  I'm curious as how they will keep things moving along since there is a linear element to this game, but as a MMORPG there can't be an ending.  Do the highest level chracters simply have the option of joining the huge battles of Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith or Mordor?  How does becoming a monster change things?  Answers to these questions are compelling reasons to try the game.