Tag: LOTRO

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LOTRO: Deciding What Class to Main

Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been sampling different character classes in Lord of the Rings Online. I’m always of the mind that I should try each class, or most, before committing to one. After all, if you’re going to invest hundreds of hours into a megalithic MMORPG, why not ensure those hours are invested wisely?

Here are the contenders so far:

Mariner

This is LOTRO’s latest class and one that resonates with me. It’s a hybridization of Champion and Burglar — a sea-faring swashbuckler who dual-wields swords and daggers. There are also some thrown pot/bottle abilities in there for added ulility and flavour.

Mariner is fun enough to play, and I enjoy the nautical theme versus other, more traditional melee classes. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll ultimately be hacking and slashing 90% of the time. Hell, 90% of my abilities seem to involve sword poking.

So Mariner, while certainly more interesting than other melee classes, still seems like just a melee class.

Minstrel

I always avoided Minstrel because of its musical-bard theme. The idea of entering battle with a musical instrument is just odd when your peers all have swords and staves at the ready.

But while quirky in principle, the class is undeniably fun to play. The instrument attacks act as ranged casts, but you can also melee attack at close range. So it plays like a hybrid class of sorts.

My Minstrel’s damage and survivability seem solid so far. And the prospect of getting to heal in group content is nice. So I’ll probably be sticking with the Minstrel for now.

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LOTRO: Swanfleet is Overrated and Underwhelming

Lord of the Rings Online released a new starting zone (Swanfleet) with its “Before the Shadow” expansion back in 2022. And players were widely pleased, noting Swanfleet’s visuals, soundtrack, and immersion as highlights. But now that some time has passed, its reception has soured — and understandably so.

Swanfleet, with its marshland motif and pastel palette, is certainly a joy to behold. Nearly any screenshot of the zone will capture its objective beauty (I included one with this post!). But when you pivot from aesthetics and start digging into the zone’s design, that’s where things fall apart.

Put simply, Swanfleet isn’t dense enough. There’s lots of empty space between questgivers, packs of enemies, and quest items, which makes navigating the zone a tedious bore. Worse yet, the zone’s mountainous verticality — once championed as a unique strength — necessitates scaling awkward cliffs and crags. Even the dense, pictureque ground foliage becomes a literal snag when your character gets invariably stuck on some unseen rock or tree branch.

As a newer LOTRO player, I didn’t understand how underwhelming Swanfleet was until I replayed the vanilla starting content with a different character. Archet, which acts as your first quest hub as a Man or Hobbit, excels at onboarding players. It’s scenic, focused, and best of all, dense. By keeping its content structured and novel, it engages players and dulls the tedium of lower-level gameplay. You’re constantly being introduced to new enemies and environments. Here’s a breakdown:

  • Go kill some wolves and get some herbs in the nearby meadow
  • Oh no — you’ve uncovered a sinister bandit plot to overthrow the town!
  • Go enlist the help of some nearby allies, and infiltrate a bandit encampment
  • Spiders! Spiders are infesting this tunnel and town cellar!
  • Final instance mission: Defend the town of Archet from a bandit attack

Compare that to Mossward (Swanfleet’s first quest hub):

  • Go click on some villagers to heal them
  • Investigate this recent Uruk attack by inspecting the bodies (more clicking)
  • Go collect some wood and meat around the town outskirts (boring)
  • Side quests: Deliver food to villagers, run to the river and back for a dare, and kill more wildlife (boring)
  • The Uruk investigation now leads you to other towns whose people have more mundane tasks for you (really boring)

As you can see, Mossward’s opening quest structure is much less interesting than Archet’s. And there’s nowhere near the same amount of diversity in environments or foes. Worse yet, Mossward sends you running all across the map, whereas Archet keeps your questing contained and focused in a smaller area.

It’s sad that LOTRO’s first new starter zone in decades is somehow worse than its vanilla counterpart. But it’s likely a reflection of the game’s atrophying development team and resources.

Also, people praise Swanfleet’s music, but it has some of the most ear-grating town themes I’ve ever heard in a video game:

I don’t want to come across as a hater. Swanfleet has its strenghts. But given the amount of undue praise it seems to receive, I had to push back some.

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A 2024 Return to LOTRO

After binging Starfield, I was in the mood for more RPG — but of the massively variety. World of Warcraft is usually my go-to, but the Dragonflight expansion was decidedly mid-tier. So I sought out something else.

I landed on Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO): WoW’s more clumsy and awkward cousin. Y’know, the Tolkein MMORPG with a prominent white anglo-saxon protestant influence and severely aged engine (it doesn’t even scale to modern monitor resolutions).

It turns out LOTRO released a new expansion since I last played, so I jumped on that, despite never progressing past level 20 or so. The new class, “Mariner,” a sea-faring swashbuckler, is totally up my alley. Last I played, the dual-wielding Burglar class was my favorite. And the Mariner is basically that minus stealth and plus some quirky seaman-inspired abilities like throwing bottles/pots and channeling the seas.

Despite my Mariner enthusiasm, though, I still haven’t decided on a main character. It’s a toss-up between my bald, aged River Hobbit and more traditional bearded “Man” characters. Very WASPy indeed.

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LOTRO: Main Character Wanted

I wasn’t planning on playing MMORPGs this summer, but World of Warcraft Classic changed all that. The game’s +50% bonus experience event piqued my interest. And so, after a months-long MMO dry spell, I found myself blissfully leveling a new Death Knight and Priest before settling down with a mage character.

But like all good things, WoW: Classic’s bonus experience event eventually ended — as did my desire to grind out levels in a 2008-era MMO for the umpteenth time.

That brought me back to Lord of the Rings Online and its Treebeard Legendary Server. It’s a similarly enjoyable old-school MMO: Tab-targeting, slow-paced progression — and with a modular difficulty to boot. Only, unlike WoW, it’s a game I’m hardly familiar with, which makes journeying through its decade-old backlog of MMO content far more appealing.

I could’ve resumed playing any of the low-level Treebeard characters I’ve created over the past months. But, having lost interest in them and wanting to avoid the sunk cost fallacy, I tried out the Lore-master and Burglar classes instead. To me, it’s always made more sense to sample a game’s classes before investing hundreds of hours in a main character. This way, you’ll know what you’re missing!

The Lore-master is essentially a “Wizard Hunter:” A squishy ranged combatant who depends on their pets for survivability. While I enjoyed the class’s tactical abilities and learning curve, I’m not keen on the slow-paced and high-risk-high-reward gameplay style. Plus, this is Lord of the Rings, so being unable to chop at goblin and orc baddies with a sword feels odd. I may revisit this character, however. Isn’t she cute?

I created my next character, a Man Burglar (lol), on a whim — but have fallen in love with them since. Like the Champion class, they’re a dual-weilding flurry of flash and bravado. But the stealth and debuffing abilities keep combat fresh. I particularly enjoy the meta-game of navigating around enemies in stealth: It adds an additional layer of gameplay challenge and enjoyment.

With Treebeard’s modular difficulty, satisfying progression, novel content, and great community, I can see myself sticking with LOTRO for some time. I hope to see you in Middle-Earth!

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LOTRO: Swanfleet Swamp Crotch

Since losing interest in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight’s endgame, I’ve migrated to Lord of the Rings Online. I was craving an old-school, hardcore MMO experience without brain-dead easy combat — and LOTRO offers just that: Specifically, the “Treebeard” server features slower-paced levelling and optional difficulty options.

However, after logging in to LOTRO, I wasn’t sure where to start. I’m still in that “class experimentation” phase where I want to evaluate the game’s classes before devoting myself to a “main.”

So far, I’ve tried the Champion, Burglar, and Beorning classes. But my latest character — a Rune Keeper — is my new favourite.

Continue reading “LOTRO: Swanfleet Swamp Crotch”
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2022 in Gaming: Tracking My Playtime

2022 is drawing to a close — but where did the time go? Courtesy of NZXT Cam, here’s a neat visual breakdown of what I played this year (with some light edits in Photoshop for clarity).

Unfortunately, NZXT Cam’s tracking isn’t entirely accurate. It won’t track games it doesn’t know about, and sometimes the tracking gets misattributed. For instance, this year, it says I played Counter-Strike: Source for two months and about fifteen hours — I definitely didn’t. Instead, I’m pretty sure I was playing Shadowrun (2007), but it’s amusing that NZXT Cam conflated the two. The games run on two entirely different engines, but Shadowrun largely recycles the Counter-Strike formula. Maybe NZXT Cam is making a snide comment. Or maybe it was Team Fortress 2: Classic.

Regardless, here’s a chronological reflection on the good data we do have!

Continue reading “2022 in Gaming: Tracking My Playtime”
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Searching for an MMO Home: Success

After sampling four different MMORPGs over the last two months, I think I’ve found the game for me: Star Wars The Old Republic. I’ve paid my “mortgage” (subscription fees), and with a lightsaber at my side, I’m ready to move in.

But it wouldn’t be right to move forward without reflecting on each game I sampled. After all, they all have their merits. SWTOR just happens to be right for me.

Continue reading “Searching for an MMO Home: Success”

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Searching for an MMO Home: LOTRO (Legendary Servers)

A yellowed castle nestled in a lush green forest

Over the last few months, I’d been savouring my return to World of Warcraft Classic (WoW). In preparation for Wrath of the Lich King, I brought my Warlock to level cap, made some decent profits in the auction house, and explored Outland’s surreal astral planes. And outside the game, I was diving deep into WoW lore through various Warcraft novels.

But one day, the wave of Warcraft enthusiasm I’d been riding crashed. I didn’t want to log into WoW Classic anymore. I didn’t want anything to do with Warcraft.

Continue reading “Searching for an MMO Home: LOTRO (Legendary Servers)”