A Question of Interest

Last night, I reached level 30 in Lord of the Rings Online.  I wanted to wait until I got to a respectable level before I actually made a commentary on the gameplay, as I felt that was the only way to be rather fair about it.  Level 30 seems like a good time.

Right.  First, the good.  Middle-Earth has never looked better.  The world looks utterly fantastic.  Each zone makes you feel like this is exactly what Tolkien had in mind when he thought up his world, and at the same time provides something new to look at that doesn't look quite like the place from which you'd just come.  I'm guessing that was pretty damn tricky to pull off, but they did it brilliantly.  The actions of the NPCs are right on the money.  Hobbits act like you would expect -- homely, excitable, and a bit naive.  The same goes for all the other races, and the voice acting is spot on.  The epic quest line is engaging, dripping with lore, tied directly and intricately into the main story-line of the books, and a whole lot of fun.  The combat is pretty standard, with a traits system taking the place of a normal talent tree. 

Now for the bad.  Unfortunately, this will be a bit longer. 

First of all, the quests are boring.  Aside from the epic quest line, they are generic, bland, and put you to sleep.  You'll be sent out to kill X number of wolves, boars, bears, cats, snakes, monsters, ghosts, whatever.  Or you'll be sent out to collect X number of plants, animal parts, treasures, whatever.  There are a few escort quests, some tracking quests, a lot of go-talk-to-this-person quests.  All of which we've seen before and none of which are inherently interesting. 

The character animations are stiff.  There are some aspects that aren't too bad, such as the fluidity of the cloak on your back when you're running.  But for the most part, your character moves like he's got a stick up his ass. 

The design of the gear is horrendous.  I seriously have not found a helmet yet that I want to display.  For about 10 levels, I avoided upgrading my cloak because it had a hood that covered my head.  That looked really cool in and of itself, but was even better because it covered up every God-awful-looking helmet that I've gotten.  (Read:  EVERY helmet I've gotten.) 

Some quests are horribly unbalanced.  Most quests that are one level above me I can complete with relative ease, as it should be.  But every once in a while, there will be mobs that just appear to be WAY more difficult than they should be.  For example, in the Lone-Lands I had to kill these level 29-30 gaunts.  The quest was marked "Level 28 SOLO".  At level 28 I tried to kill these gaunts.  I couldn't.  I tried again at level 29.  Still couldn't.  I tried again at level 30.  I *barely* was able to kill one.  So I was forced to farm the same mob 5 times to get my required number of kills.  The fact that I can't solo a level 28 mob at level 30 is a problem.

So for the bottom line, there are better MMO choices out there.  I feel that the only people who will get a lot of enjoyment out of this game are those who are huge fans of Tolkien's lore, or those who simply need a reason to hate WoW.