The Lord of the Rings Online
A bittersweet return to Middle-earth.
I deeply miss those brief few years when The Lord of the Rings had taken over the world. It wasn’t just the movies but all the spin-off games too – those incredibly fun action-RPGs based on the movies, real-time strategy games like Battle for Middle-earth, and even the surprisingly great Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War. But of the dozens of games set in Tolkien’s fantasy universe, only one has successfully wormed its way into my brain and never left: The Lord of the Rings Online.
I’ve easily spent more time since its 2007 launch thinking about playing TLOTRO than actually playing it. I’m enchanted by the idea of a fully explorable Middle-earth, but MMOs are big, time-consuming games. Despite a few attempts, I just never got into TLOTRO
as much as I want to. But with news that Amazon Games’ attempt at making a Lord of the Rings MMO was now dead, it got me thinking about this 14-year-old game and the tiny community that’s kept it quietly going for so long. It was time to try again.
Hobbit forming
After suffering through the age-old MMO problem of being forced to choose a class based on nothing but a paragraph of general description, I am ready to embark on my own journey through Middle-earth. Feeling nostalgic, I decided to play a hobbit Guardian, which means I specialise in wielding big shields and full plate armour. It doesn’t sound very hobbit-like, but the in-game description tells me this class was inspired directly by Samwise Gamgee’s stalwart devotion to Frodo. I guess the 200 pounds of plate mail I’m sporting is a metaphor for how ol’ Sam had to carry Frodo’s lazy ass halfway up a volcano. Share the load and all that.
Despite being such an old MMO, The Lord of the Rings Online surprises me with how involved its storytelling is. Instead of dropping me into the Shire and setting me loose, there’s an hours-long prologue complete with cutscenes that immediately suck me into the fantasy of this world.
It’s night time and I’m walking on one of the main roads through the Shire when I bump into a hobbit cop called a Bounder. He questions me about being out so late, but before long we’re interrupted by some familiar faces: Frodo, Samwise, and Pippin. I realise immediately the significance of what is happening and can’t help but smile. Frodo and company are just beginning their grand adventure, fleeing from the Shire while chased by Ringwraiths who have finally pinned down the location of Sauron’s One Ring.
It’s a classic scene from the books but with the twist of being able to spectate it as a bystander. Sensing danger, Frodo and crew have the good idea to ditch the main road and hoof it through the wilderness just as a Ringwraith comes galloping up. It interrogates me and the hobbit cop before taking off after its prey.
Paying the toll
If there’s a clear strength to TLOTRO, it’s that it colours in the missing pieces of the Fellowship’s journey to destroy the One Ring. Before Aragorn sets off to join Frodo and Sam in Bree, we help him unravel a bandit conspiracy to destroy a village. I reunite a sheriff with his son and then fight in a dramatic showdown with the bandits. There’s some real momentum to the story here, and then all of that grinds to a halt.
After finishing the prologue, I’m not immediately whisked off on my own epic adventure. Instead I’m dropped into Hobbiton and run face-first into that tedious MMO
grind. At this point, TLOTRO’s MMO roots trip me up as I come to realise the long road that awaits me. There’s more cinematic story quests to experience, but they’re now spread out and gated behind levels that I can only earn by doing much more menial chores. I putter around a bit, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by how my quest log has ballooned in size with mindless busywork and wondering if I’m really up to investing countless hours muscling through sidequests at the promise of being slowly drip-fed a 3D interpretation of Middle-earth.
Despite 14 year old graphics, Aragorn is surprisingly hunky.
the investment required hits me.
It’s not at all helped by TLOTRO’s
messy approach to free-to-play either. Instead of keeping everything tied to its eight main expansions, Middle-earth is diced up into dozens of quest packs that are specific to certain zones. Features like certain races, classes, mounts, abilities, passive perks, and cosmetics litter the cash shop, making me feel overwhelmed.
Like a city built on the ruins of an old one, The Lord of the Rings Online
feels haphazard and incongruous. And it adds so much unnecessary friction for newcomers like me who just want to get lost in this world. I desperately wish it had followed in the footsteps of other MMOs like Star Wars: The Old Republic, which long ago simplified everything by overhauling its quests so that players could focus entirely on the main story and forget the tedious grind.
To Bree
Feeling dejected, I’m about ready to give up. But that promise of Middle-earth and all its splendours is still too enticing for me to let go completely. I alt-tab out of the game and watch some videos to get a
taste of some of the different zones available in the games.
Wanting to see some of these places for myself, I decide to set out and go as far as the game will let me. Eventually some paywall will stop me, I figure, or monsters will become such a high level that survival becomes a statistical impossibility. So I do the most un-hobbit-like thing possible and leave the Shire behind me. I decide that Bree might be a fun village to stop at on my way out of dodge – if only just to see the Inn at the Prancy Pony, one of the more iconic locations from the first film.
I arrive in Bree just as the sun has set. I wander the streets, looking for this famous inn and find it tucked into the northeastern corner of the walled town, but before I can even set foot inside my attention is stolen by something altogether remarkable. In the square right next to the inn, dozens of players of all levels have gathered and are dancing, shouting, and cheering. Surrounding the dance floor are different troupes of bards. It hits me: this is a music festival.
Music to my ears
I knew TLOTRO had a system where players could play instruments, but I’d never seen it in action. These small bands are each taking turns playing tunes, and between each song the crowd erupts into applause as players light off fireworks that explode high above us. Until now, I had seen a few players as I wandered around the Shire, but now I am surrounded by several dozen.
Seeing another hobbit in the crowd named Tiddley, I send her a private message on a whim. She tells me she’s been playing for a decade. “I love the lore of the game,” she says. “And there’s always something to do. Be it raiding, dancing, playing music, fishing, or decorating the house.”
We chat for a bit and she talks about how great TLOTRO’s community is. “Most of the people that play are very helpful if you have a question or need help with a quest or something crafted,” Tiddley says.
Our conversation leaves me feeling even more conflicted than I was before. I was ready to give up on TLOTRO for good, thinking that whatever potential was there is now buried under microtransactions and grinding. But seeing how tightly knit its community still is tells me I’m missing something, and it eats at me.
I watch the bards take turns playing for a while longer, wishing I saw in this MMO what others do. I’m envious of these players and the connection they must have with this world, but I just can’t imagine spending hundreds of hours of my life in an MMO so deeply in its twilight years. The Lord of the Rings Online must’ve been a special game to have kept people like Tiddley playing for so many years, but it’s hard to see that magic today.
“Small bands are each taking turns playing tunes, and between each song the crowd erupts into applause as players light off fireworks that explode high above us.”