Lord of the Binge

A Darkness grows in the east, as Sauron, chief lieutenant of the dark lord Morgoth, grows in power. It is up to you, stalwart traveler, to join the fray, form a fellowship and save middle earth! For the last binge, we chose to binge Lord of the Rings Online (or LOTRO). We had a fairly large group consisting of Will, John, Rebecca, Collin, Katie, and Jonah. As a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (or MMORPG,) LOTRO allows it’s players to choose from a variety of races (Human, Hobbit, Dwarf, Elf, and Beorning) and classes (Burglar, Captain, Champion, Guardian, Hunter, lore-Master, minstrel, rune-keeper, and warden). The different mixtures of these end up changing the stats and abilities of your character, allowing for a number of different playing styles. The character creation alone can take quite some time, which is why we decided before going into the game that we wanted to choose our classes and races. This also served to optimize our team. We found that we enjoyed playing the game together, when we could ask each other questions, play together in game, or just point out funny/ interesting things that we would notice in the game.

To a more experienced MMORPG player this game will feel slightly cookie cutter, and a lot like World of Warcraft. Some of us noticed that, though Tolkien had inspired a lot of what is now standard for the fantasy genre, at times it felt just like playing any other fantasy MMORPG. This was not helped by the execution of the game’s narrative. One thing that is fairly unique to LOTRO is the amount of customization of player avatar.

The narrative in the game relies heavily on the preexisting narrative of the books and movies. When doing a main quest there would occasionally be a cut-scene to give context, but other than that the only way to get the most out of the narrative is to read the text in the quest’s description. The majority of the quests were not for the main plotline.  This meant that we had some trouble getting attached to the main plotline, as it was difficult to know which quests were side quests.

One of the most enticing components of the game is the freedom of the open world. The player is given a map of the world, which can zoom in as close as cities and zoom out far enough to see all of middle earth. The amazing thing is that no areas are technically off limits; if a player wanted to jump in and go straight to Rivendell (a famous location from the Lord of the Rings books and movies), they would be free to try, but their journey there would be treacherous and most likely impossible. This restricted us to a select few locations in the game, which we were the proper level to play. This, though slightly frustrating, was ultimately not terrible, because these areas themselves were fairly large and ranged widely from dwarven strongholds to elven cities. One beginning level area is the shire. This is where the protagonists Frodo and Bilbo Baggins are from. A quaint location, inspired by the villages of the English countrysides, we would get to know the intricacies of the simple lifestyle of the hobbits. A lot of us found that these quests, though at times comedic, felt trivial in their context of a combat heavy game.

The sheer number of things that the player can do in the game can be slightly intimidating. There are skill trees for each character, in addition there are abilities unique to certain classes and races, as well as a complex crafting system, hobbies, player vs. player, and that is only naming a few. This results in a user design of the game that can be difficult to understand or remember. One thing that a few of us noticed was the redundancies of certain game mechanics. For example, if you and your friends wanted to play online together, you can add them as your friend’s list, or you could join a fellowship with them, or a kinship, very similar. In addition the store had some overly complicated aspects. There were LOTRO points, which you could get by both playing the game, or buy, and there was also mithril coins which were also bought outside of the game to purchase items in the game. Some quests would give you coins or points, but then some quests had to be bought with coins or points. Because this is such an old game (originally released about a decade ago) it has had many updates and re-releases. We think that this may be the cause for some of these redundancies.

Overall, we enjoyed playing; it was nice to escape into a fantasy world for a spell. MMORPG’s are notorious for binging, so it was not hard for us to play in terms of stickiness; the first group session we actually played for an extra hour without realizing! That in mind, by the end of the third day of binging it was not hard for us to find some of the mechanics in the game that could use improvement. But for a free game that’s almost ten years old it holds up remarkably well.