LOTRO: Archet After The Fall
Anyone who has played a human in Lord of the Rings Online will be intimately familiar with what I recount here. Be that as it may, I must start somewhere, so I now begin to tell the tale of my human hunter named Wolfbow.
Once you complete the starter instance, which takes place in a small town named Archet, you are placed in the “real” game world. Archet is not the same town you started in. It was terribly burned during the invasion, and as you would expect, the world has greatly changed around you.
 Archet after the burn |
The first few quests I picked up were: Burying the Dead, A Threat from Spiders, Disease Among the Boars, and a quest started after I had previously killed the Marsh-Fly Queen. The quests are pretty straight forward. I had to find the bodies of three men and bury them, kill 10 diseased boars, and kill some spiders over at Quigley’s farm.
The spider quest led me to finding the famous dwarf Bali just before he died. It ended with me killing a big spider named Iornaith in the spider infested tunnels beneath Quigley’s farm. These quests netted me around 90 copper per quest, better shoulderpads, and a better helm to wear.
 Burying the Dead |
Finishing these quests earned me level 10 and some nice new skills to go along with it:
 Spider Caves |
 Bali the Dwarf is dead |
The next couple of quests sent me to the town of Combe, one of which was to find a ranger named Toradan, who wants me to help find the missing ranger Amdir. With these quests, my stay at the little town of Archet it at an end.
Read MoreArchet After The Burn
The newbie introductory instance in Lord of the Rings Online ended with me defending the town of Archet while it was under attack. The bad guys were driven off, but not before the town went up in flames. This is a good example of instancing done right. When you exit the instance and enter the game proper, Archet is a burned out town from that point on.
The first few quests are of your standard newbie type. I was sent out to kill diseased boars and a few spiders outside the Archet gates. I was whacking spiders around the Sprigley farm when I discovered their cellar. This is where my memory fails me because I can’t remember if this was in the game during the initial launch. I can only assume that it was.
When I entered the cellar I discovered underground caves full of spiders. I roamed around a bit and eventually came across an elite spider named Iornaith. The room this big spider called home was full of baby spiders but they did not attack me. I engaged Iornaith in battle and was easily victorious.
As it turns out, all of that was wasted time. I made it back to town only to be given a quest that would take me back to the caverns. I was tasked with finding a missing dwarf named Bali, and I found him near a cave entrance that turned out to be the rear entrance to the Sprigley cellar. Bali barely escaped the spiders with his life. His companions were not so lucky. He sent me into the cavern to find his dead companions and retrieve some journal entries from them. The bodies were wrapped in cocoons and were found in various sections of the cave. Once that was done, another quest sent me to kill Iornath, so I went back and slayed the big spider again.
Things have been easy so far. My character has not come close to dying, which is either good or bad, depending on how you look at it. The Guardian class has been fun so far.
LOTRO New Player Experience
I started up a new character in Lord of the Rings Online just days before the new Leaves of Lorien content was added. Since part of the expansion includes a “new player experience,” I thought I would go back and see what the differences are. So, I rolled up another Guardian with the same race and starting area and logged in. I didn’t see much of a difference.
The introductory instance is exactly the same as before. I did not notice any changes to it whatsoever. It is still a good way to get started with the game, but where are the changes?
Once out of the starter instance, I arrived in the town of Arhet again. The first few quests are exactly the same as before. The first difference I noted was when I went to train at the Guardian trainer. I was given a new combat skill and I was told to go over to a training dummy nearby and try it out. This short quest wanted me to take a swipe at the training dummy and then return to my trainer with news of my success. It was easy enough to accomplish. The training dummies are lined up against a nearby wall, so I ran over, targeted one, and used my new skill on it.
Something else I noticed that I did not remember being there are the marsh flies located around the small lake near the hunter’s cabin. I also found a quest NPC behind the cabin that hired me to go out and slay a few of them. The reward was some colored dye. I also found an elite Marsh Fly Queen, and I was surprised that no quests had me run over and take her out. I took her down anyway but it dropped useless loot.
The experience points I gained were maybe a little higher than before, but not by a huge margin. Everything else seemed to be unchanged. We’ll see how it goes once I leave the starter instance.
Read MoreGaming Again
My 17″ Macbook Pro finally arrived and I now have it setup the way I like it. It has been a long wait, but I can now get back to gaming. I decided to start with Lord of the Rings Online. Since LOTRO requires the Windows operating system, I had to setup a dual boot configuration on the Macbook Pro. I decided to install Windows XP, even though it won’t use all 4GB of RAM that is available to the machine. The game runs great on high settings at 1920×1200, even though the 9600GT 512MB video card isn’t all that great of a card these days.
I have a level 37 Champion on the Windfola server, but I decided to start fresh, so I rolled up a human Guardian that I named Strongg. I wanted to try out a class in the game that I had not played yet and Guardian was one of them. Humans start in the Archet area, so my game introduction had me escaping from a cell and then helping a Ranger named Amdir to rescue some kidnapped hobbits.
Once the introduction is complete, I found myself in the town of Archet, eager to find some quests and get to work. I didn’t have far to go. Amdir was wounded in the battle, so I had to help him with defense of the town. The first few are you typical newbie quests that have you go out and kill wolves and boars so that the town’s sheep are kept safe. Once those are done, I was sent to a hunter’s lodge where some things needed to be done. Seeing this lodge brought pangs of nostalgia to my heart because the lodge reminded me of my beloved Everquest’s Surefall Glade and the lodge that can be found there.
One of the farmers outside of Archet had a boar problem that he wanted me to help him with. A boar named Old Bloodtusk needed to be killed. I remembered this boar from the time that LOTRO first went live. There was a line of people waiting to kill this boar and each time he appeared it was a general free-for-all contest. This time, however, there was not another player in sight and he was waiting for me when I arrived.
After running several other quests, none of which were very challenging, I came to the last quest in the “game introduction” line. Brigands were attacking Archet and I had to help Amdir defend it. The town was in flames when I arrived and it was filled with battle. I worked my way through the town, finally arriving at the final showdown, which culminated in a fight with Eogan, a servant of Angmar who was responsible for all the problems in the area. I dispatched him with ease and ended the quest line.
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Instancing Sucks (And So Does Static Content)
Look on any online gaming message board and you will always find at least one thread about how good or bad instancing is. Some players prefer lots of instancing while others would rather play in a world full of static content. Each style of game has its merits, but I am here to say that both styles suck.
I started my online gaming career in Ultima Online, but Everquest was the game that really hooked me. EQ had no instancing at all when it launched. In fact, I don’t think instancing had been invented yet in any form. In my opinion, this is what made EQ so great. If you wanted to go adventure in Lower Guk, you had to go to the same zone as every other player. You didn’t have the entire zone to yourself. You had no choice but to interact with other players. This allowed for the making of friendships (and enemies) that lasted for years. The social and guild drama brought on by no instancing made the community unique and more aware of itself.
The downside of static content is that zones can get overcrowded. You may be relegated to camping one small area for hours at a time because the zone is full. Sometimes people would start lists and you had to wait your turn before getting a group. Doing that, however, caused even more socialization and communication between players. It also pissed off a great many players.
The addition of instancing greatly changed the social dynamic of online gaming. If you want to go crawl a popular dungeon you simply went to the zone and entered your very own instance, where the only people in it are your group or guild. You have run of the place to do exactly as you wish for as long as you wish with no interference from anyone. This naturally speeds up progression and ease of advancement. It also prevents the waiting in line for a spot in the zone.
The downside of instancing is that it removes much of the player socialization that you see in non-instanced games. Players, for the most part, stay within their guilds and rarely to speak to non-guild members. I found this to be especially true in World of Warcraft. Unless I was in a group or a guild, I would have sworn that every player was deaf and mute. It was also much more difficult to find long lasting friendships in games like these. Most everyone stayed to him or herself because they could. Reliance on others is at a minimum. I think this greatly diminishes the social possibilities in a game.
So both have good and bad points to them. Everquest is the greatest example of a game with static content (although later updates added instancing), while World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and others go the instancing route. As much as I prefer static content, I know that we will never see a full static content game again. Humans, as a whole, are incredibly lazy, and games that utilize instancing will always draw more customers. The games are easier, you don’t have to interact with others as often, and let’s face it, most players think everyone else sucks.
For good or ill, instancing is here to stay. Any game that uses only static content will fail miserably. There will not be any going back to the good ol’ days where we walked uphill, both ways, with 1000ms lag, to the zone of our choice.
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