The Lord of the Rings Online London Launch Event

Written by Tiffany Craig

Tolkien’s world influenced everything from Dungeons and Dragons to Rogue to World of Warcraft. And without the Lord of the Rings’ wistful inspiration, you can bet gaming would lack a certain charm. You may not have funny little pie-obsessed Halflings or surreptitious Dark Elves lurking in shadows… and wouldn’t gaming be worse without them? Who knows if anyone had reason to create a MUD without D&D, or tabletop without Lord of the Rings.

Now with the visual and communications technology ready, it’s only right the legendary source material would take its place amongst and possibly, above the genre it birthed.

Yet, it faces many challenges, not in the least creating a satisfying experience for players while not sacrificing its literary integrity. After fighting their own battles, Turbine rose to that challenge and are heavily aware of what they need to deliver. On March 12th, I got to see exactly how aware and how they planned to move forward. And so, how do you equal or beat derivatives with more experience? Turbine and Codemasters set out to show us, but have they created the MMO to rule them all?

Lord of the Rings Online: The Shadows of Angmar is set in Eriador during the pre-war period of the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The Fellowship has merrily skipped off to do business with Gollums and magical jewelry, leaving their homes to prepare for the coming battles. And your home is something you want to protect. Eriador lives and breathes Tolkien’s descriptions. From the glistening river of Brandywine to the rolling hills of the Shire, the world is alive with possibilities and adventure. The first map alone has over 2000 NPCs, 100 unique areas, cinematic cut scenes and a rapidly growing number of quests and items lead you to the battle with the Witch-king and Sauron’s forces.

To start you choose one of four character races: human, hobbit, elf or dwarf. Each race then chooses a class that partially defines their particular story. The Champion is a warrior that deals massive damage, the Guardian is defensive, and the Burglar, Hunter, Lore-master and Captain do exactly what they say on the tin.

The lack of magic class in Lord of the Rings online may disappoint some players used to traditional fantasy RPGs. This is due to the measly five wizards in the original Tolkien books. Fear not if you do want Technicolor effects, a combination of lores replaces things a magician may do in other games.

The example Turbine uses is that of a fireball, instead of casting a spell your hobbit learns a rag seeped in oil coupled with fire becomes a Molotov cocktail. And though you may have expected wizards, what you didn’t were the additional Minstrel class. The Minstrel is a high amusement as well as useful, and players are already sweeping Eriador with customized little tunes. YouTube is populated with lute playing enthusiasts covering, amongst other things “Knights in White Satin” and “Highway to Hell.” It can only get better.

Playing lute covers of popular classics isn’t the only way to expand your character’s breadth. You can create groupings with friends or other players called Fellowships. These allow strategic play or group combat maneuvers called Conjunctions. You can also extend the significance of your relationships within the Fellowship using the family tree system. This allows players to create character histories with others and as a result, your character will display ‘Son of’ or ‘Daughter of’ whomever you choose as your ancestor. Choosing specific tasks or stumbling upon quests without signposts also gives you the opportunity to gain legendary titles like ‘slayer of.’

And if you’re productive, you can farm your land to increase your resources and eventually even go fishing. For a bit of ale quaffing and fish tales, The Prancing Pony in Bree and Green Dragon Inn in the Shire are open for a visit.

Lord of the Rings starts you off gently, almost to the point of being dominating. For the first few levels you’re hand held through much of the story without much incentive to explore or learn your environment. The controversial decision to limit PvP to a different arena with different characters is divisive. For some, the reason they play online games is the fun of challenging unpredictable PCs on the battlefield. Others are put off by the South Park caricature of the maxed character lurking in low-level grounds. The latter would rather player interaction is more about socializing and cooperation and less about combat. This more cooperative approach is what Turbine wants. If players want PvP, they can find it, but it wouldn’t be very Tolkienesque to have hobbits bludgeoning each other in the Shire (possibly with pies).

If you do feel like a fight, or are possibly a little bored with all that fellowship, after level 10 you can start participating in PvP, or stick with PvE play. You enter Endmoor via Scrying pools in various towns. From there you go into a new character creation process and choose a race from the spider, warg, the orc, and Uruk-hai. Like your PC in the main story, this character develops according to quests, skills and deeds. The quests are PvE; all of Endmoor is tucked neatly away from the rest of the game. Any hobbit village you ransack is full of NPCs. For PvP battle you can participate in straight arena combat or base capture for rival territories.

Endmoor and Eriador are two incredibly different worlds. As Eriador is dotted with white fluffy clouds and periwinkle blue skies, Endmoor is bleak and ominous. The environment has to resonate to give a convincing feeling of a Tolkienesque world. And it does. From craggy mountains to shimmering streams shining in the valley, they sculpted almost cinema quality perfection. Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer from Turbine, beamed with pride whilst describing the utter scale of their map with promises of expansion packs to extend it even further. He’s not joking either, the depths of what small portion of Eriador they’ve finished seem almost abyssal in their scope. Within 15 minutes of playing on the demo machines, I managed to get lost.

Steefel speaks about Lord of the Rings online with great enthusiasm, though perhaps tempered with some exhaustion. As well he should. Turbine and their partner publishers are anticipating the largest game launch yet and are pushing out a publicity offensive to assure it happens. In addition to the open beta that started with pre-orders on March 23rd, they recently announced April 6th as World Tour Day, where up to 1 million players from the US, Canada and Australia who download the beta client from Gamespot can join. What’s even better is when said same players roll over, they can still play on whatever servers they like. IP restrictions based on geography are completely off, making it a truly global game.

Lord of the Rings online: The Shadows of Angmar may prove as the most cost effective MMO on the market as well. For early adopters $199 USD or 99 GBP gives you a lifetime subscription. Within two years at 10 dollars a month, the subscription is paid for.

Turbine, by staying true to their source material, avoided creating a WoW clone but kept it familiar by using various elements common to other MMORPGs. The Lord of the Rings books are simultaneously the Holy Grail and pariah of many developers. Many tried and many failed to adequately capture the elegance and sheer volume of Tolkien’s works. As a result we have a lot of derivatives but not many looking back to the original for inspiration. Turbine’s reward comes from staying true to the Lord of the Rings and its potential for a fantastic game. Though it remains to be seen how a player’s interest will last while involved in a finite story. It could be the minutia of other MMOs is their addictive quality.

But what Shadows of Angmar possibly lacks in the microcosm, it makes up in pride and passion. And if it fails on shelf life, who’s to say that a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs aren’t exactly what this MMO needs? After all, a novice overcoming uncertain odds to triumph is a far more heroic quest than the gnome who hit level 70 in a day.

Special thanks to Erica Hutton and Codemasters for inviting Tiffany to the press launch and providing access to the beta.