The Lord of the Rings Online
Reviewed on PC
WHERE TO PLAY
An MMORPG that throws you into the major conflicts of Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings Online faithfully recreates J.R.R. Tolkien’s famed fantasy world in a series of stories that happen adjacent to the main tale.
My first run with free-to-play MMORPGLord of the Rings Online(herein referred to lovingly as LOTRO) lasted for a few years back in the day—I can’t remember exactly how long ago, but it’s been more than a decade—after my old friend Rikki asked me to join the fledgling fellowship she’d started.
From my first steps into Middle Earth, the game already had a familiar feel, and the ease of finding my feet was made even easier by the familiar setting, with hobbits and elves and dwarves straight out of the Peter Jackson-led movie trilogy, and cozy locations like the central town of Bree its Prancing Pony inn. I ran three characters—one heavily armed, one swift of foot and bow, and one who dabbled in nature magic and animal handling. All three felt distinct but easy and fun to pick up and play, whether I was going it alone or partying it up.
But people get caught up in their lives and drift apart, and as my chats with my friend became less and less frequent, so did my sessions logged into LOTRO. And as I don’t even remember my old login info, nor the email I’d used to log into it, I had to start fresh when I decided to walk the path to Mordor once more.
Now, on the surface, LOTRO is the epitome of everything that encapsulated the MMORPG craze of the mid-2000s. You find a quest giver, accept their quest, go out and do the quest—often by killing X number of boars or bears or finding however many macguffins—and then return to the start point for, hopefully, a slightly better piece of equipment, or at leastsome nifty consumables. But if you’re actually willing to pay attention to what’s going on around you, there’s so much to experience, and it’s all deeply rooted in the world of the most famous of high fantasy adventure writers, J.R.R. Tolkein.
For the record, before I go any further, I’m not exactly a Tolkien fan. I enjoyedthe movie trilogy, but his writing style left me confused, with intricate, pages-long descriptions of the dirt path walked by The Fellowship and the types of trees alongside it, juxtaposed against bloody, earth-shattering castle sieges described with all the fiery passion of Ben Stein reading the Yellow Pages out loud. I’m not saying this as a knock against Tolkien—quite the opposite in fact—because while his style wasn’t my cup of tea, his world building is nearly unparalleled in literature, and LOTRO really allows that to shine through in a lot of different ways.
So let’s start there and talk about the quests themselves. While there are certain “Book” quests that will have you meeting up with Aragorn at The Prancing Pony to help him track down those hobbits or joining Galadriel at Lorien, most of the time, you’ll be playing a background character in Middle Earth. But that’s not to say your story isn’t an important one. While Frodo and Sam are sneaking their way into Mordor to destroy the One Ring and Aragorn is rallying all of humanity in a last stand against overwhelming orcish powers, there are plenty of other forces at play, each taking advantage of the continental catastrophe in a bid to get themselves a piece of the pie.
This divide among the goodly races is evident from the start of the game, as each of the four playable races (and their variant spinoffs) has a distinct societal climate. Starting over from scratch after more than a decade away, I found this variety so endearing that I willingly spent days going back and completing gray-difficulty quests from the starter regions of Middle Earth.
Even though the quests were so low-level compared to my character that I couldn’t gain an ounce of XP, it was such a refreshing change to take a break from the cutthroat human-led parts of the world and head over to The Shire and its surrounding hobbit villages, where lazy-but-friendly folks needed help carrying buckets of water, delivering the mail without having nosy neighbors snoop into each other’s business, and scoping out the local farmer’s market to help them decide what to have for lunch.
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Aside from those two, there are the stolid dwarves and stoic elves, always distrustful of each other, yet oddly, the only two races that seemed to be on high alert for the coming war.
Adding to the Tolkien immersion, there are plenty of character classes to choose from as well, and most will be pretty evident to even a casual Lord of the Rings fan, with spear-throwing wardens, arrow-flinging hunters, heavily armed guardians, and influential minstrels all having obvious parallels among the source material’s heroes. There are no playable wizards, because lore tells you exactly how many there are in Middle Earth, but if you’re inclined towards magic, lore-masters and rune-keepers may be for you (and the former can even have an animal companion for protection).
My main is a human captain, a particularly fun all-rounder that can draw enemies from range with shouts, tank hits with heavy armor, and lay down decent melee damage with a wide variety of one or two-handed weapons, in addition to having a smattering of heals and buffs for other party members. What’s more, she even gives me a bonus character in the form of an archer or one of a variety of standard-bearers, giving plenty of options for more party buffs or a little extra ranged DPS—perfect for me, as I like to spend a lot of time adventuring solo, and that’s something a lot of MMOs seem to attempt to wean you out of early on.
And the character customization doesn’t stop there. Each class offers three different sets of perks you’re able to choose from as you level up your characters. For example, my captain could choose perks that increase her healing abilities, her party buffs, or her ability to deal out and withstand damage, and there’s no reason you can’t mix and match either.
Oh, and of course you can choose from a bunch of different professions, giving you the skills and tools to craft heavy or light armor, clothing, jewelry, wood or metal weapons, or food. Armor can even be made in different cosmetic styles that compliment humans, dwarves, or elves, so it’s clear that Standing Stone Games put a lot of effort into letting the players decide just who they want to be in this world.
Between its standard old-school MMO combat and quest formula, its variety of races and classes, and its crafting system, coupled with the timeframe of LOTRO’s original release in 2007, it’s almost impossible not to draw some parallels to World of Warcraft. And I have to admit, even modern LOTRO has a lot in common with classic WoW (get ready to hunt down a lot of spiders, wolves, bears, boars, and birds, because those enemies and their ‘go kill this many of them’ quests persist right up to the level cap). But while WoW has interspersed its lore with pop culture and what’s trending (dragon riding,kung-fu pandas, and that dance from Napoleon Dynamite), it’s nice to see LOTRO remaining true to its source, even if it is taking some slight liberties in writing you, the player character, into the background.
As far as the graphics are concerned, yes, this game was released 16 years ago, and yes, it sometimes looks even older than that, even with the optional hi-res graphical enhancements. But while faces may lack certain detail and limbs may look a little too blocky or linear, the world is still impressive in its simplicity.
Aesthetically, this is a game that does a lot with a little.
In one late-game quest, a vision allowed me to take control of Gollum as he led Frodo and Sam along the mountainous path to Mordor and right into the waiting jaws of a giant spider. But before that, just as we reached a plateau, there in the distance was the Tower of Sauron, its darkness standing stark against an ominous red skyline, and even with the physical limitations of LOTRO’s graphics, I got a little chill as it came into view. Aesthetically, this is a game that does a lot with a little.
Way back when I first started playing LOTRO, I remember having to stay up into the wee hours if I wanted to get any crafting done, because while you may use the minimap to track whichever resources your profession requires, I always used to be one step behind some other miner or forester, and I’d be lucky to get a handful of barrow iron ore or rowan branches during peak hours. That’s not a problem anymore, since the player count seems to be nowhere near what it once was.
But that’s not to say the world is empty. We’re talking quality players over quantity of players. From my experience on the Brandywine server since restarting LOTRO a few months ago, I haven’t met a single troll or griefer, but there were plenty of die-hard gamers who were willing to offer help and advice.
A few days in, I was wandering around using my hunter alt who was in the low teens, level-wise, and I was immediately accepted into an all-levels fellowship (LOTRO’s word for guild) made mostly of players well over level 100 who were more than willing to share their wisdom with a fledgling elf who was still carrying around his starting bow. I know the friendliness of the community isn’t really something the developer controls, but it’s a real boon here, and not something I’m used to from an MMO.
Not only is the world not empty, it’shuge, and if there’s a location from the books or movies you’re able to think of, LOTRO will let you set foot in it. Wanna hang with Goldberry outside Tom Bombadil’s house? It’s a bit of a winding maze through spider-infested woods, but you can definitely get there.
All that begs the question: what’s changed over the years? From my initial impression, it’s not an excessive amount. I’ve been spending a couple of months plodding through LOTRO again, and the first event to pop up? Ah, same old summer festival in The Shire, same old horse races dominating my playtime with exclusive horse skin rewards. I’m not complaining; it’s comfortable to know some things never change.
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That said, there are a few things that were new to me and popped out right away, like the shape-shifting beorning and bare-handed brawler classes. And just two days before I wrote this up, Standing Stone plonked out Update 37, complete with a new crafting event, a new housing neighborhood, and a new racial variant in the form of the River Hobbit. As someone just coming back to LOTRO after a long absence, there’s a familiar and nostalgic sense of homecoming, but it’s also nice to see that the developers are still working on new content, even after all these years, to keep things fresh for the lifers.
I do remember there being more bag slots, though. In fact, I’m certain there were more, because you can see the little circles where the icons would be in the lower-right portion of the HUD. You can still always pay for more inventory slots using LOTRO Points, the game’s premium currency, but it’s one of those dreaded microtransactions. In fact, pretty much everything new, from races to classes, is going to have to be bought piecemeal if you want to be one of the first to try it out.
While I have a lot of respect for a free-to-play game as detailed and sprawling as LOTRO, don’t expect it to stay free for you forever. It’s hardly an issue at the beginning of the game, when the LOTRO store icon is ever-present on your screen, but everything behind it is a luxury. Keep leveling up, and you’ll need to explore new areas, fight new (often reskinned) baddies, and complete more quests just to keep gaining XP and progressing through the game. A lot of the mid-to-high-level areas are locked behind a paywall. Sure, you can go there, look around, even kill stuff, but try to talk to a quest-giver? Nuh-uh, not unless you’re prancing-ponying up those sweet LOTRO points. It almost feels wrong to criticize, because this great big world ismostlyfree—and you can earn free LOTRO points for completing certain milestones—but just charging for the late-game levels feels like inviting people to a free screening of The Two Towers and then shutting off the projector with 45 minutes to go unless everybody forks over some cash.
My advice? Skip the microtransactions, and if you’re enjoying the game, just pay the monthly membership fee instead. It unlocks basically all the essentials, and the shop still has plenty of cosmetics and other extras if you feel like cashing in those LOTRO points.
Final verdict: Lord of the Rings Online is a product of its time. That time was 16 years ago, but it’s still got enough support to keep it running and warrant some cool new updates. If you’re a Tolkien fan who wans to experience Middle Earth from just off to the side of The Fellowship of the Ring, or if you just miss the way mouse-and-keyboard MMORPGs used to feel, LOTRO is probably worth a shot. And, who knows, you might even make some really cool friends on your journey.
