Lord of the Rings Online: A Return to Arms

I’m writing an article for MMORPG.com and to do so I had the distinct pleasure of being run through some of the new features coming to Lord of the Rings Online when the Siege of Mirkwood launches on December 1st.  I saw new dungeons, new features, new zones, and at the end of my one hour trip I was left drooling.  I just graduated (again), I’ve no longer got a second job hogging a lot of my time, and I think it’s about time I logged back into Begud Firestone the dwarven Champion to see what I’ve been missing these past two years since I left LotRO. 

I’ve tried to get back into the game in the past, but starting new characters always left me kind of feeling “meh”, as I missed my 38 Champion.  I was playing on my ex-father in law’s lifetime account and just couldn’t get into it.  But there are some base changes coming to the game’s combat system, namely that the auto-attack now runs in the background to the skills/spells much like WoW so that when you trigger a skill on your hotbar said skill goes off immediatel instead of delayed and waiting for the next auto-attack.  It makes combat much more tactile and gives it much more feedback, giving it that smooth feeling that few games really capture in the traditional combat model.  This alone is enough to make me eager for the new expansion… but I’m missing something crucial first. 

I never did get into The Mines of Moria expansion, and now seems the perfect time to buy it.  Not only is it just $10 to through Turbine, but I believe it comes with the $9.99 a month subscription plan too.  After seeing LotRO last night, $9.99 is easily the biggest steal in terms of subscription pricing on the market.  This might be the very best MMOG in terms of value and features, and I’ve been letting it slip by my view for some time now.  I feel sheepish.

I remember getting a little bored with LotRO around the time of the Evendim content patch, because content was a little thin for a solo-oriented player.  But Aaron Campbell, the live producer of the game, assures me that Mirkwood not only adds a bunch of new content to the end-game, but the staff as walked through the majority of the game’s early content and added new quests, streamlined the experience, and really plugged up any holes there might have been in the leveling process.  It’s his job to say things like that I know, but from what I can tell on various forums across the web, this much is true even without the Mirkwood expansion.  I was miffed that I never got my Champion to level 50, and that alone is a big part of the reason I skipped Moria. That’s going to change tonight I think. 

With the Siege of Mirkwood you have a real change in tone of the game.  Where Shadows of Angmar was about the early stages of the fellowship’s quest and the real thematic ties to the books kept the developers from exploring too much in the ways of the strife and battles between armies (and also kept the game focused primarily on boars and bears out in the wilds), Mines of Moria delved closer to the more dangerous things in Middle-earth, and the Siege of Mirkwood goes even further east and marks the first time players will really start to see the struggle between the free peoples and the forces of Sauron.  In short… things are about to get real hairy in Middle-earth and it’s no longer all about delivering pies in the Shire.  If my short session with Aaron last night is any indication, Mirkwood will be just the beginning of a new and darker LotRO as the story really starts to heat up. 

And one final note if anyone reading this is now intrigued about Turbine’s undersung beauty of a game?  If you’re a current subscriber and buy either a multi-month subscription or the Adventurer’s Pack (a sort of upgrade to your account that gives you more character slots, a shared stash for loot, a special cloak and a special mount) you’ll get the Mirkwood expansion for no additional cost.  Additionally, if you’re a lifetime subscriber and you order the Adventurer’s Pack, you’ll also get the Mirkwood expansion for free… basically saving you $10 and getting you some killer bonuses on top of it. 

Consider me convinced.  I’ll be upgrading my account tonight, and posting more thoughts from a returning player as I go along.  Look for my full walkthrough/preview article on MMORPG.com in the next week or so as well, in which I’ll cover all the new hotness that the expansion is bringing to LotRO.