Category: Lord of the Rings Online

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The Ettenmoors

I can’t really go back. To a great extent, Warhammer’s open world RvR is everything the Ettenmoors wanted to be and is not. It is not greatly difficult to mentally transpose Order and freeps, Destruction and creeps, and see how (shock shock) PvP works out better in a game built for it. Compare the creep Defiler with the Greenskin Shaman: even the names are similar, but the Shaman is a much more fun, viable class. Would you rather play a Reaver or a Marauder? I had more examples here, but I am already losing the people who have not played both games.

One way that The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume One: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ wins is if you think of creeps as “playing the monsters,” rather than being their own thing. If you just want players being a more realistic AI, where the real market is the freep classes, monsters work brilliantly. They even replicate the PvE mechanics: they have high hit points (and can trait for “ridiculously high”), few abilities, few appearance differences, large numbers, and little resistance to crowd control. They respawn quickly and tend to trickle in at a constant rate, although occasionally you get a huge train. You can easy pull a few, because people will rush out and be easy kills, although you risk pulling the entire zerg if you do that a few times. Healing still draws aggro, although the de-taunt abilities do not work in PvP. Players can capture and defend keeps, but if people wander off, the monsters quickly return things to the “all red” default state. And just like the tutorial, beginning creeps are easy fodder, weaker than all the real players.

You can debate whether that is the intended “monster play” implementation. The NDA for The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume Two: Mines of Moriaâ„¢ fell this week, so maybe the PvP changes there are significant. It will take a while for the effects to shake out what with new levels, new gear, across-the-board defenses nerf, etc. How dead with the Moors be for that first month after the expansion releases? (Note to Turbine: the 5-10 page Dev Diaries are really annoying. I don’t want to load a new page every two paragraphs. You don’t have ad revenue, so why are you doing that? I never finished the Runekeeper diary.)

: Zubon

Moria Release Date Set

Lord of the Rings fans were greeted earlier this week by a splash screen decreeing that the long-guessed date of November 18th would indeed be the launch date for the expansion. Along with launching this, they have also deployed possibly the most confusing pre-order system ever designed. The amount of contradictory information, including *two* official threads, which are being commented on by different people with different information. It’s a bit crazy.

So, in the interest of our LOTRO fans, I have the info after the cut as to what gets you what and where that I’ve compiled after about an hour of work and at great possible risk to me. After all, the wife said no gaming last night…

Continue reading Moria Release Date Set

Grind, Baked Right In

Farm status is a horror of gamerdom.

What is the point of grinding anything? Does Naxx get more fun the fifteenth time or something? It only makes sense as a business model that makes people play a long time to get to the end, so you keep them looped in for monthly fees, but then you are also selecting for an audience that has lots of time, and therefore will be logged in more. Maybe the cost of 40 hour/week players is not much worse than 10 hour/week players; there must be money in it.

I do not want to do anything more than three times. Once is an introduction, twice is learning, three times is demonstrating mastery. Past that, I am just repeating it because someone thought it would be funny to put the prize at the end of a treadmill. I am done with that.

Continue reading Grind, Baked Right In

Define “New”

800, really? 800 new monsters, you say? How many of those are the same guy with a slightly different name and color pallete, plus or minus a few hit points or abilities? Heck, how many of those are new models, rather than declaring this green-ish orc the “orc mauler”? Would 40 be a fair guess? It feels optimistic; the 158 types of undead must have at least 10 models amongst them, but I don’t know that the 321 types of orcs have 20.

This from the game that advertised how many characters had been made.

: Zubon

Of Death Penalties

Playing The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume 1: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ this weekend, I was reminded that it has a soft death penalty but one that still encourages you to stop playing the game. When you die, you take item damage and get dread. Dread reduces your hit points (“morale”), reduces the effectiveness of healing on you, and increases damage to you; if you have too much dread, you may cower and be unable to act. For reasons we can discuss another time, Turbine seems big on giving any significant boss a dread aura, and the biggest ones dispel hope (the counter to dread). Which, for the record, is not fun.

The dread lasts for ten minutes and is worse in later zones. It does not stack. If you get a rez, you do not get dread. Minstrels can clear one person’s dread every ten minutes.

Dread basically encourages you to stop doing whatever you were doing for ten minutes. If you failed the first time, your odds are worse with fewer hit points and more incoming damage. If you had a lag spike or got an odd add while fighting, ha ha, better luck next time, take the debuff anyway. There is no healer to cure your dread. That long-timer, single-target Minstrel ability is the only dread cure in the game. You just wait. When you have a team wipe, the rezer typically takes the dread hit and runs back to rez folks, but then you wait anyway because you do not want to fight whatever just wiped you while someone has dread. This increases downtime, solo or in groups. Which, for the record, is not fun.

But at least it is 10 real minutes. You can log off and go play something else.

: Zubon

Of Foot Soldiers and Heroes

Copra has a great point on Warhammer:

the characters are soldiers fighting for their faction. And this is where it becomes a different bowl of porridge. The players assume their role as warriors for a cause, and are not in fact expecting to be the heroes or the protagonists of the great storyline.

I criticized The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume 1: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ for this. I stand by that, but I like what Warhammer is doing. Warhammer does not create the expectation that you are The Hero of The Realm. You are one of many. You do not solve problems; you beat back the enemy for a while. There is not an epic story going on, one that logically has a beginning, middle, and end. There is endless war, and you are taking part in it. It does not declare itself the most epic fantasy ever and then force you to watch instead of being the protagonist.

Would you rather come over for soda and board games, or be told that I am having the greatest party ever so could you please come over afterwards and help clean up?

Of course, the eternal, meaningless war with no victory leads to its own problems of “this does not matter.” But I notice that I keep saving the city and the problem never goes away.

: Zubon

Harvest Festival

a little dark in here It is back. Do not forget to harvest your mushrooms (although the reward is not that stellar). Because this is Turbine, there are masks. Those are actually the character’s eyes peeking through the holes, not just something painted on the texture, one of those details that shows off the graphics but is almost invisible in practice. The pub crawl is back too, if you want to work on your Inn League reputation.

: Zubon

The Captain

Captains are the most under-rated class in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢. They are the most hybridized class I have seen in any game, and they still work. We are used to seeing broken hybrids, either brokenly powerful (and therefore overshadowing the classes they are hybridizing) or too weak (so just wait until you get the first-best for whatever your gap is). Captains, while rarely required for a successful group, contribute meaningfully in any role they can fill, without over-shadowing the original class.

Captains are melee buffers, a rare decision to make. Beyond being The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢: Shadows of Angmarâ„¢’s primary buff class, a Captain is also an off-tank, secondary healer, secondary DPS, pet class, and teleporter. They also have a little ranged DPS. They are the go-to class for in-combat rezes and curing fear effects.

Beyond the usual damage and tanking that you expect from meleers, Captains bring to the table some bonuses not found on other classes. Whenever an enemy hits the ground, good things happen (like healing). They can mark targets for more damage or for life leech. Banners and buffs add massively to your morale. With the critical hit buff, my Hunter clears 25%. Their late-game buff is the mighty In Defense of Middle Earth, which adds +50 to everything for everyone. That is huge when stats cap at 500. They also have the ultimate in survivability: when Last Stand is active, the Captain cannot die.

Hybrids and buffers are hard to sell in most games, difficult to make or play well. Props to Turbine for a viable hybrid melee buffer.

: Zubon

In the spirit of Shiny Happy Week, we encourage only happy comments about good things on this post. Saying nice things about other games under the heading, “You know who else does that well?” is allowed.