My last experience with an MMORPG beta (Vanguard) was less enjoyable than I expected. The game wasn’t very fun and did not seem ready for release. Now I’m playing in the Lord of the Rings Online beta. Since the NDA (non disclosure agreement) has been lifted, I’m free to discuss my experiences. So here are a few of my first impressions.
I didn’t read up on the game much before playing, I just jumped right in. I’m familiar with Lord of the Rings, but I think the game would also be enjoyable to someone who only had some basic knowledge. I’m also an experienced MMORPGer, but as is common, there are plenty of hints at the beginning for those who are new to MMORPGs.
Character Creation
Character creation is pretty straightforward. You can play an Elf, a Human, a Hobbit, or a Dwarf (no evil races in this game), and there are different varieties of each. The look of your character is somewhat customizable. There aren’t sliders for things like facial features… instead there are predefined options for each (like hair style and color, eyes, and mouth). There is a slider for the body type, which adjusts the shape of the character’s body. Many of these characteristics are somewhat limited by the race you choose, in order to keep appearances consistent with the LotR world. For example, all Hobbits are short and squat while Elves are tall and thin. I didn’t spend much time here, just adjusted the features until I found an appearance I could live with. You choose your class at character creation, so I created a Hobbit hunter.
Initial Character Experience
Since my character was a Hobbit, when I entered the world I started in a Hobbit area. Looking back, I think that it was actually my own personal instance of the area for the new player quest. After speaking with an NPC in the first room, your task is to leave the room and find another NPC. Simple. As you play, game tips pop up to guide you. I ignored most of these and with my MMORPG experience it was very easy to follow along.
I was actually very impressed with the short quest line you’re presented with when you first log in. For my character, it involved helping a fellow Hobbit escape from a Black Rider. It plays as though it is happening in real time… the NPC talks to you and you have to follow him and help him out, and the gameplay moves along at a good pace. In the process of helping out the Hobbit, you gain a new weapon (or two) and get a little combat experience. At the end of the little story, you actually get to eavesdrop on a Black Rider conversation. This gets you and your new friend into trouble, but help soon arrives! The short intro was very easy to follow and was very engaging and interesting. Two thumbs way up for this quest! I definitely want to try out the other races to experience their starting storylines.
Once I got out into something more like the “real world” (outside of the starter instance), I arrived at a town called Archet. NPCs wander around talking, and players (of all races) were running around here too. There is some followup to the starter quest, which leads you to further quests. Unfortunately, most of the quests I encountered from levels 1-5 were of the kill/collect or errand variety. You either kill a certain number of a certain type of monster, collect a number of items (plants in this case), or are sent to talk to someone. When I started, I read all of the quest text, but after a bit I stopped reading all the backstory. I’m sure it was interesting, but I just wanted to get to playing. Despite the somewhat mundane nature of the low level quests, it is a good way to get into the game, and there was very little confusion on my part.
This low level area included a town, some outposts, and roads and countryside in between. The server I started on was a new server, and there seemed to be no issues with overcrowding. There are plenty of monsters to fight if you spread out a bit, and they respawn reasonably quickly. I experienced almost no lag, and had only one crash by the time I hit level 5.
Skills
To start, you are given a couple of class specific skills. As a hunter I received two bow skills and a melee skill. As you level up, you have the opportunity to purchase further skills every two levels (starting with level 2). My weapon skills definitely increased my damage output over auto attack, but the starter area is really pretty easy. It is a good place to get used to your skills and character without much danger. The first few skills I obtained were useful, but not especially interesting. I hope that there will be more variety at higher levels.
Combat
I found combat to be fairly fast paced. My character is a hunter, which means I start combat from range using a bow and usually finish up in close combat with a melee weapon. One interesting thing I noticed is that I can continue to fire my bow special shots in close combat. Getting hit will increase the time remaining until the ability completes, but does not interrupt it completely. My guess is that spellcasting would act similarly in close combat. I did not need to buy arrows for my bow, they appeared to be unlimited.
Items
At the low levels that I experienced, I didn’t find much good loot. I obtained armor and weapons through quests and only found one or two pieces off of mobs (and they were of lower quality than my quest items). The animals I fought usually dropped trophy pieces (such as meat or hide). The animal meat seemed to be vendor trash, but the info for the hides noted that they could be used in crafting. I do look forward to see what kind of loot can be found at higher levels… hopefully it will be more interesting. Turbine had a great loot system in Asheron’s Call (AC). Armor and weapons had random bonuses assigned to them, and you could get some awesome pieces from regular loot, they were simply very rare. Thus the name “lotto” for loot. The possibility of getting great stuff from regular mobs made regular hunting more interesting since you never know when you’re going to hit the jackpot.
Graphics
Overall the graphics are pretty decent. I did not mess around with the settings other than setting it to windowed mode. The default graphics settings ran great on my computer, which has pretty good specs, but isn’t top of the line. I experienced very little or no video lag. The characters are polygonal, so if your camera ends up inside your head (for example, when backed up against a door), it looks funny, but otherwise they look fine. Something cool I saw was foliage waving in the wind.
Zones
There are loading times between zones (at least into and out of the newbie zones). A long time ago in my game playing career I was against loading times. They were slow and annoying. However, things have improved in recent years. The loading times between zones didn’t take long at all for me. There are also short loading times every time you go into a building. This can ruin a little bit of emersion, but the loading times for this transfer were nearly instantaneous, so I really didn’t mind it much.
Misc
There were a couple of cool touches in the game. For example, when someone has a quest for you or can update a quest, a floating golden One Ring can be seen above his or her head. Also, there are Tolkien runes around the edges of targetting circles. I think there were a couple of jokes in the quests, but can’t really remember. I hit ‘n’ by accident once, and it turned off “Floaty Names”. There is a hunting lodge in the starting area, and inside there was (among other things) an animal statue and a room with a bunch of dead animals lying around. All of these little touches can go a long way toward making a game polished. It shows that the developers pay attention to the details.
I didn’t see many bugs in the game at all, which is an impressive thing for beta. I had one crash, and one beta dialog that didn’t display correctly (a survey about a quest), but other than that I can’t remember anything going wrong. Oh, a mob swam a couple of feet above the water once instead of just on the surface. Really though, the starter area seemed very polished, and I can only hope that much of the same attention was paid to higher level areas of the game.
Conclusion
Yes, there are many similarities to World of Warcraft in the interface and much of the gameplay. However, I didn’t expect otherwise. WoW is now the standard to which other games must conform in many ways. I didn’t feel like this was a copy of WoW. The interface, while similar, had differences and didn’t look like exactly the same game. Although the setting is fantasy based, it has a rich backstory all its own (Lord of the Rings). It remains to be seen how many similarities in gameplay and mechanics there are at higher levels.
I only played to level 5 last night, but it was more fun than I expected. I love the LotR world, so I can see myself very interested in the quest storylines and environment. I am cautiously optimistic that this could be a fun game worth playing. The beta is certainly entertaining so far, which is more than can be said for many games. I will post another update after I have explored more of the world or tried out other races!
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