Lord of the Rings: The late bloomer

So I bought Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar this past week. I don’t really know why I didn’t buy it at release, other than that I was busy playing Wii and finishing up with the semester right as it came out.

My first impressions of the game are very positive; I’m not really noticing anything particularly new or groundbreaking at this point, but the things they’ve decided to do, they’ve done well. The graphics and gameplay feel comfortable; I like the combat system as well as the variety of mobs to fight as a newbie. The quests seem to be very coherent, leading the player from one area to another seamlessly. I started as human, so I’ve gotten to know Archet pretty well (mostly since I rerolled at 10 to join a friend on another server).

One thing I’m really liking about the game so far is the Deeds system. It’s really a good way to keep mundane grinds as fresh as possible, rewarding the player for killing 30 of a certain kind of mob, then 60 more of the same mob. The ability to earn titles is one of my favorite aspects of RPGs and one of the things that I absolutely hated about World of Warcraft. What better way to immediately differentiate yourself from your fellow players than by having a little something extra in your name? I find it works especially well at higher levels when the titles are excessively hard to earn.

The graphics of this game are a huge selling point to me. Not necessarily because they’re the best or the most realistic, but because the theme of the game fits with the graphics so well. One peeve I have regarding EverQuest II is that the character model graphics are good, the world graphics are good, but they’re both good in different ways. It’s totally incoherent to play under those conditions, so it’s a big breath of fresh air to be in an online world where everything meshes so well. The close-up graphics are very good as well, giving it the edge over World of Warcraft and Guild Wars.

One interesting thing that took me by surprise during the character creation process was the lack of caster classes - it makes sense, because there is not much lore in Tolkien’s work to make a basis for spellcasting, at least at the beginning of the game.

These are just my first impressions of the game. I’m still waiting to see how I like the development of my character, the progress of the quests, and the difficulty and stickiness of the game in general. I’m still in the first area finishing up all of the deeds I can, but after that, things are looking pretty bright from here!

I’m on Nimrodel, playing as a Champion named Maegoth if you want to look me up!