The MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) genre lives in the bloated shadow of World of Warcrack - ahem, I mean, World of Warcraft (WOW). A few stout hearted souls will rant about this bastion of Blizzard evil, but who are they kidding? Once you try the Warcrack, you always go back! I myself have been crack-free for many years, but I try not to think about the Dark Ages too much. I'm sure even my friend Bipa the King would love to fall back into the habit if he could pry himself away from his life of Evercrack (note, this is not a reference to WOW's predecessor, Everquest).
After the emergence of WOW, the MMORPG was flooded with coypcats. I mean, who didn't want a piece of that pie? Sadly, all that is gold does not glitter, and lot of these releases are quite crappy. But in the land of Mordor where shadows lie lies one ring to rule them all, Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (LOTRO). So step across the Brandywine Bridge into the world of Tolkien, brought to you by the developers Turbine.
Like any other MMO, LOTRO starts you off by allowing you to pick a race and class. Whether you want to be a plump juicy hobbit burglar like Bilbo, an agile elven hunter like Legolas, a dwarven guardian like Gimli, a human champion like Boromir, or a loremaster wanna-be-Gandalf-but-isn't, the choice is up to you. You can even choose to be an evil Nazgul or a reformed evil-turned-good Nazgul!
Well, no, not really - but you can get killed by them as a consolation prize.
Also like any other MMO, LOTRO also bundles in crafting professions to choose from. If you choose to invest the time, you can develop lucrative crafting skills that will allow you to rip off everyone else that's playing on your server. Yee-ha!
In many respects, LOTRO is not really all that different from WOW. That's to be expected because why would anyone want to change a formula that works? Graphically, LOTRO is vastly superior - but that's to be expected since Warcraft has been around for a pretty long time so it's bound to show some age. Since everyone likes some eye candy:
But perhaps the best thing about LOTRO is the music system. It's pretty innovative and once you get the hang of how it works you can play some pretty crazy things in-game.
This is also something else you can do. Unfortunately, Youtube disabled the embedding for this clip so click here. Only 27 days to go!
LOTRO does have quirks though - namely the Hope/Dread system. Basically the mere presence of the heroes of Tolkien world (Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli, etc.) gives you hope - this materializes in a boost to your morale (what passes for health in LOTRO). On the flipside of things, you'll suffer from Dread when you're in the presence of evil. The negative impacts of Dread are much greater than the benefits of Hope. In addition to a decrease in morale, if you build up enough dread you'll find yourself literally crippled with fear, paralyzed and unable to perform any actions as the screen dims and turns gray. Oh, and if you die, you get slapped with Dread. While it's a somewhat original concept, it's kind of annoying and lame.
If you can get over this, LOTRO is a pretty good game - solid enough that I played the game for 2 or 3 months. That may not seem like much, but if you consider that I was hooked on WOW for a measily 4 or 5 months, that puts LOTRO in pretty good company.
1 comment:
I'm playing LOTRO too.. On Landroval. but you've got it all wrong.. it wasn't WOW that started it all.. EQ was the juggernaut. WOW was the pretender!
-Sarah M.
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