As you complete quests there is a definite feel that there is a passage of time and that your role in the events that unfold does have an impact on the world. It’s artificially constructed, but the feel is there for those willing to submerse themselves in it and that feeling alone may well justify investing yourself in this game. Sure, for the veteran player, mechanics like the combat model may not offer enough differentiation from WoW, but then again, can you wander around the Shire in Azeroth?
When building your character, don’t expect to do a whole lot right away except pick a race (be it a Hobbit, Elf, Human, Dwarf), class and appearance for your Middle-earthling. That does not mean, however, that character building isn’t a huge component of the game. Naturally, there’s the usual RPG schtick of completing quests and fighting monsters to level up your character. (You get far more experience for completing quests than for winning battles, by the way.) As you increase in levels you can be “trained” in various traits unique to your character class. You can also specialize in various character skills from weaponsmithing to woodworking to tailoring. This, even to the MMO noob, will probably smack of aping World of Warcraft. And in terms of design Lord of the Rings Online certainly is the Microsoft to World of Warcraft’s Apple.
The social aspects of LotRO are very well thought out. For most quests early on, it’s easy to solo your way through things. In fact, for many players soloing the garden variety fetch quests may be preferable to trying to build a team to take on such mundane tasks. But for many quests, teaming up with a few friends (or strangers) is both easy to do and wickedly effective. There are also some quests that pretty much require at least a group of two or three.
In LotRO, groups of player characters are known as fellowships. Fellowships can be comprised of any combination of character classes, but are limited to eight players (the same number as the fellowship in the first book). Inviting a player to join you in a fellowship requires only a couple mouse clicks (if that player is in view). The only problem is that the fellowship request that appears when you receive an invite takes up half the screen and -if you’re in combat already and it pops up at the wrong moment- it could get you killed (defeated).
Most of the time that I played the fellowships were created out of necessity in order to complete a specific quest. The trick is running across players who are tackling the same task with which you’re challenged. If you pay attention to the player characters moving about around you and keep a sharp eye on the chat dialog box, you’re sure to find someone looking to slay the same bandit, spider, goblin, etc. Failing that, the game’s special Social panel allows you to set your character as “looking” for a fellowship, which makes it easier to find like-minded players or for them to find you.
Once teamed up, all experience generating actions are shared amongst the group (as is the rest of the bounty). The catch is that to get the most out of a fellowship, you really have to be able to operate as part of a team. And that’s not easy if you’re just teaming with strangers to tackle a specific quest. Ultimately, players in the open beta pass by without requiring much notice from you. And on those occasions when you do need to interact with someone, most are friendly and interested in helping other player characters out, especially when there’s a mutual need. We can only hope that the final product will produce such players.
Right now it doesn’t look like Lord of the Rings Online is going to break a whole lot of new ground in the world of MMO design. Granted, I never got a chance to play the role of a “monster” which is one of the game’s unique features. But the simple fact of the matter is, having a game that takes place in a fully realized iteration of Middle-earth is an ace up the sleeve that no other major MMO can match. The apparent lack of innovation in overall game design may be a significant strike against the game for MMO vets, but for newbies to the world of MMO games, it won’t be a problem at all. And even though the game clearly has borrowed heavily from a design perspective, that hasn’t stopped Turbine from putting together a fresh new world to explore that differentiates itself enough from everyone else to make it worth a second look.
Even in the open beta, LotRO is stable to the point that I often forgot I was playing an unfinished product. In fact, I only encountered one instance where there was clearly a bug in the ointment. (A key quest-giving character had “locked” up and refused to dole out quest information. I left and returned to him later and he appeared to be working again.) I’ve seen numerous comments from other, more veteran, players that indicated the LotRO beta was far more stable and retail ready than even World of Warcraft’s final beta stages and that bodes extremely well for the final product. We’ll see how it turns out soon enough.
