LOTRO: The MMO vacation

I was also thinking about LOTRO maybe as a snack. Or an amuse bouche.


I have a love-hate thing for LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online)The things I like about it, I really like, and the things I dislike break the game a bit for me. I don't know how I feel about the art direction. Jillian loves the look of the game, because it looks less cartoony than WoW. I dunno if I like that. Then again, my laptop cannot handle LOTRO at a proper pace, so...yeah. I prefer the lore to the WoW lore, by far, and the surroundings. The music though makes me want to simply click it off. Your characters have a wider array of emoticons, which oddly enough allowed me to bond with Sigridus, a gruff dwarven guardian at a greater level than most of my toons on WoW (Jillian's argument that Sigrid is a girl's name, notwithstanding)

For one thing, LOTRO doesn't have factions in the strict sense, and the races are a mere four, with variations on locations where men, dwarves, hobbits or elves could come from. Not a fan of that, because I'm not knowledgeable of the lore inasmuch as to know what Breeland is, where it is, or if it's made of Brie cheese. The human models look better than the WoW models, but then they gave them douchebag faces. The hobbits look like dwarves who developed under-age alcoholism at the onset of adolescence (and you can give them a beer belly, to boot). Elves look like anemic, effete humans. Dwarves are super cool in this game though.

Then the classes to me are a handful of what Turbine thought would be a good way to confuse people with choices that should be narrowed down to magic user, fighter, and creeper who can't cast magic OR fight, but is nimble. You have some magic using classes which never really appealed to me, a bard (yes...a musician... for the love of...) a champion, a captain (who supercedes here, a champion or a captain?) a guardian, a hunter, and a burglar. Ohh, and a warden. Warden is what turbine likes to call ' 2nd rate guardian using lances'. I, loving shields and getting hit in the face, made a guardian. I actually made a champion first, but found out that I wouldn't be able to tank as that, so I quit. At level 20. In a game where leveling is like paying off a car in installments.


To me LOTRO has a certain allure...as I said, there are a lot of emoticons you can use...you can smoke, for example. That's....so cool. I ...don't LOVE smoking. But smoking is cool, despite what any campaign says. it is cool as heck. You look wayyyy cooler when smoking. It's a scientific fact. Hans Landa looked incredibly cool smoking that Alpine Apfelfluegelthing. It just is. If smoking wasn't bad for me, and super expensive, I would do it. But it doesn't HOLD me tight, as WoW did, for whatever reason. I blame the music. It's like middle of the day children's show music. BUT....MMos...are a way of life....and...LOTRO is cheaper than WoW, by a lot... something has to tide me over until SWTOR.