The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar

Rather than a long-winded discourse on personal history with the world of Middle-earth, let is suffice to say that long before there were movies (including the Ralph Bakshi animated film), the books were read, both at a young age and many times through the years.

Though there have been bumps and even ruts in the road, Turbine also is fondly remembered for bringing in the one MMO that turned this casual MMOer into a diehard fan of the genre – Asheron’s Call 2 (not what it became, but what it was when it started).

As for Lord of the Rings as an online game, it had been in other hands before landing in the laps of the dev team at Turbine. The vision that Sierra had for the online game is long gone. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. Turbine has taken the license, and the video-game franchise and tweaked it to allow players to hop onboard and explore Middle-earth during one of the more perilous times outside of a hobbit’s journey to Mt. Doom with the One Ring.

So before delving into the nuances of the title, let’s cut to the heart of the topic: In regards to the license, Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar does a very nice job of opening up the world of Middle-earth and allowing players to venture forth to seek fame, fortune and perhaps aid the pending war against the forces of Sauron. As an MMO, LOTRO is fun, entertaining, with a few original concepts, and – at this juncture – it is one of those MMOs that you can't wait to jump into and explore.

The timeline of the game runs concurrent with the Fellowship of the Ring, and it is said that, at times, you might even cross paths with them. Still, if you are a fan of the Tolkien books, you can’t help but get a small thrill each time you encounter one of the characters from his stories.

The game begins as almost every MMO begins, picking a character and entering a tutorial phase to learn about the game’s controls. There are four races to choose from, all are considered good and players will only fight the evil races, not have the opportunity to be part of them. The four playable races are humans, dwarves, elves and hobbits.

There are seven professions – burglar, captain (pets and a buffing class), champion (damage-dealing melee class), guardian (the tank class), hunter (ranged class), minstrel (healing class), and lore-master (mage class with pets) – each with their own ability trees, which include both triggered (by hot key) skills and passive skills. As you level, you can buy new skills from trainers located in most of the major city/towns within the world.

Armor can hold permanent buffs as can weapons – but both deteriorate through use and you will need to see an NPC in town (mostly those involved with sales like armorsmiths or general merchandise merchants) to get them repaired. Let it go too long and you may find the piece of armor or weapon going beyond the ability to repair.

In addition to profession abilities, players can also earn skills and abilities through deeds, traits and virtues. Deeds are achieved through exploration, slaying a number of certain mobs, using a skill repeatedly to reach a higher degree of proficiency, or completing all quests in a region. Easier deeds will earn a player a new title while the harder ones will gain skills.

You can earn deed status without even being aware of it. For example, one night’s hunting of Dourhand dwarves, looking for spell drops, resulted in achieving a ranking for killing dwarves. It was an unexpected reward for an evening’s work.

Traits are gained through completing deeds, or leveling. The resulting reward, which has to be applied by a bard (and for a small fee, of course), can be bonuses to skills or attributes, or – at the higher end – unlocking heroic skills. There are, in addition, 20 different virtues that can be applied to improve attributes.

Quests are indicated by rings over the heads of NPCs. The rings can indicate what the quest is. A gold ring, for example, indicates a quest within your grasp, while a flaming ring would indicate a quest that is part of an epic series. You can also pick up fellowship quests, which are quests that will be given to parties and are harder than the regular quests that single players can accomplish (though it is much more fun to fellow up for the quests).

LOTRO also has a solid crafting system. There are 10 vocations that players can pursue – cook, farmer, forester, scholar, jeweler, metalsmith, prospector, tailor, weaponsmith and woodworker. Some of these go hand-in-hand, such as the forester and woodworker, but players cannot specialize in two, like woodworker and metalsmith. Some quests will require that you get items that a crafter can make. You can either buy them from another player or look for them on the auction boards, which are located in some of the major towns.

Each vocation does have tools of the trade, and they can also wear out and thus need to be repaired. As you work at a skill, you acquire a level of skill within that which will allow you to attempt harder crafted items. You can find or buy recipes for a crafted item and each item may require that you build parts before you can build the whole item. Unlike some other MMOs, there does not seem to be a failure rate with this game. If you have the ingredients, you simply click the ‘make’ tab in the crafting window and you create the item – simultaneously earning experience crafting points for making it.

Yes, there is some grinding involved here, but as the gathering is tied to adventuring, and there is a physical reward, it does not seem to be too monotonous.

Skills used in combat are timed and are also tied to a ‘mana’-type meter. Each skill has a power cost and as you use them, they need time to recharge. Some skills are tiered with other skills, requiring that you fire off other skills before they become available for use. You can drag and drop your skills from the abilities menu into the hotbar for easy access, and there are a lot of hotbar slots available for players. And yes, there are zones for player-versus-player - the Ettenmoors - where you can build up renown.

Resting your character will allow you to build up bonus experience availability. This is indicated by a blue bar attached to your experience bar. A nice little feature this allows players who have not been online for a bit of time to acquire XP faster and get caught up to friends who may be more frequent players. Dying is not a hardship either. While you do lose morale (which can give bonuses to attack damage), there does not seem to be a loss of experience points or experience debt. You won’t get a title that reflects your tact at avoiding death, but you also will not run away when the going gets tough to protect that dubious distinction.

It was good to know that hanging in, sacrificing a life, in an effort to defend a fellow was not penalized by the game.

LOTRO seems to be very intuitive in the interface and general game design. If you have played an MMO before, you may find some of the ideas of LOTRO new and worth cracking open the manual to read up on them, but generally you can hop right in and play.

The sound of the game is fairly decent. The music has some nice variations, and the sound effects are well suited to the action.

Graphically this game is very nice. It is a step up from Dungeons & Dragons Online, and the environments are inviting full of eye candy. There are a few animation glitches (as in when running and changing directions, the characters do some odd quick stepping), and while the game does employ line-of-sight targeting, at times you will fire through a tree or hill if the target is moving away.

The AI is also solid. Mobs, taking a lot of damage, may try to run away rather than to be killed. A goblin that first talks about killing you in a nasty way, may yell “leave me alone” as it tries to run away from the beating you are administering.

The community seems very strong as well. Finding a fellowship was not that hard and something about the game seems to lend itself to role-playing. Either there are an awful lot of Tolkien fanatics that want to embrace this world fully, or the game lends itself easily to that feature – which is purely a bonus.

LOTRO is a solid entertaining MMO that captures fun and translates it into the realm of the MMO genre in an enticing manner. There is a sense of joy, being a Tolkien fan, that permeates the game when you realize that Turbine has done a very good job it realizing the world and allowing players to be a part of it.

Shadows of Angmar may have been a pivotal game for Turbine, as a development studio, not to mention Midway’s first foray into the online massively multiplayer space. This game is a success, on both fronts.

Gameplay: 9.0
The game has some intuitive elements and some that will have you reaching for the manual to find out what reward you just garnered. There is grinding here, but it is well disguised and the adventure just gets better the more you play.

Graphics: 8.8
The game can’t approach some of the top-end MMOs (like EQII) in terms of graphics, but Turbine did a remarkable job. More character creation/customization in the set-up would have been nice, and there are odd animations at rare times, but generally the environments and combat provides a nice bit of eye candy.

Sound: 8.0
Good theme music and the sounds you would expect to hear. Nothing is particularly amazing, but it is all a solid adjunct to the gameplay and graphics.

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 9.0
This was a game that bounced around, has different concepts introduced by different developers and finally ended up in Turbine’s lap. Taking some of the best elements of AC2 and creating some new elements has translated into a game that is well realized and fits the license.

Multiplayer: 8.8
The community experience has been a very good one with little mob camping and some easy cooperation between players.

Overall: 9.0
A good-looking game that pays homage to a beloved fantasy realm. LOTRO is not perfect, by any means, but it is very good. The eye candy combines with the sound to create an immersive environment, and the quest series – while still have the kill X amount of this creature – are evolving to give the player a sense of being part of the world. And the adventure just gets bigger and grander as you move along.