For all my enjoyment since getting Moria, something begin to bother me while I created a trail of dead bandits, bears, spiders, bats, wolves and tree roots. My time with
Warhammer Online has taught me this: The easier I can find quests and complete them, the better my overall experience. After some discussion with Shawn Schuster -- our resident
LotRO player -- there were a few new bookmarks nestled in Firefox. These websites have definitely greased the gears of our progression into the game, although they're sometimes a bit imprecise. If Turbine were to give on-map directions for quests and show nearby quest-givers, the whole experience would be better for it. I'm not asking for a big arrow to point me directly to the next step at all times, just a generalized circle of some type on my map showing me the general area I need to be within.
What I really need is to find a guild that fits me well, but that's the sort of thing that typically takes time -- if it ever happens at all. The community in
LotRO is easily one of the top three for any MMO out there. I've met plenty of nice folk running around Turbine's digital embodiment of Middle-earth. So finding a good Kinship shouldn't prove too challenging in the long-run. And to be fair, I've only been playing for about a week and a half. Usually most of the better guilds prefer someone to be a bit higher in level as well. My resume just isn't up to snuff yet, sadly. Although I'm still waiting for an MMO to do something about in-game guild recruitment tools. Something more than a chat room and at best a bulletin board. I'd even take
a glorified bulletin board at this point, which is likely what the
LotRO Facebook-ish website will become -- but in a good way.
And that's what really keeps people around in any MMO: communities, guilds. When this game launched, I really wanted to want to stick with it for a bevy of reasons. Unfortunately, there were a few key aspects missing at that time. The biggest was that no single class resonated with me on a personal level. The Warden and Rune-keeper have soundly fixed that. Secondly, I felt like combat needed some more work. It wasn't terrible or even mediocre, but the snappiness that
World of Warcraft combat possessed had most definitely spoiled me. It's
much better now, the combat, and I'm not really comparing it directly to
Blizzard's game anymore -- which is certainly something that was getting in the way of my enjoyment before. Now my goal is to take my Warden all the way to level 60, so that I'm ready for the next expansion. Not that I want to muscle my way through Moria, or even Angmar content. I'd say that the first
LotRO expansion is a resounding success.
The funny part is that early Friday morning, Amazon's offer of 26 dollars for
Wrath of the Lich King proved too tempting for me to ignore. I'm not really sure if I'll install it until I've at least gotten halfway to level 60 with my Warden, but I can't deny that Northrend and Death Knights are something I certainly want to experience at some point. I'm not worried though, because two months of
LotRO have been paid for in full. Why waste a good thing?
So in the end, it turns out the answer to my question is, "Moria, then a little later Wrath." which isn't really unexpected for someone like myself anyhow.
