North Downs (4)
The Shire (3)
Moria (3)

There is jitter elsewhere with other picks, of course, because every player is different, but you guys strongly come to an agreement on those. What’s special about those?

Those are Tolkien-heavy areas. That is, areas or locations which Tolkien himself gave a great deal of importance in the texts and (perhaps with the exception of the North Downs) spent a great deal of time either describing them or having important actions taking place there. Those are heavy locations.

Seems to me that when Turbine follows Tolkien by putting content into those Tolkien-heavy location under that heavy Tolkien framework already in place things are fine, but when they’re left more or less to their own devices, so to speak, when they have to improvise on their own based on what little Tolkien wrote about the less important places, it’s been more hit and miss. By the way, this isn’t a slight on Turbine at all, since we’re talking about following on J.R.R.F’n. Tolkien.

Do you guys think there’s something like this going on?

There are several zones I like a lot, but all the specific fun memories are from the instances.