First Look at Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO)

I’ve been seeing a lot of in-game chat about Lord of the Rings Online, all the usual questions and rumors, is it better than WoW, is everybody going to migrate to LOTRO and so on.

With the open beta phase (read: free) of Lord of the Rings Online nearing its end, I finally gave in, downloaded LOTRO, and spend a couple of hours taking a quick look.

And it’s about what I expected. Lord of the Rings in pretty much a clone of World of Warcraft, and about 70% as good. The basic interface is nearly identical, the quest structure is an imitation, the gear, inventory and crafting systems are strangely familiar. You can pretty much use the same commands and key strokes you use in WoW, and never skip a beat.

The “70% as good” has to do with details and refinement. The graphics are pretty good, and extremely similar to WoW, but the landscapes, towns and dungeons are less detailed and interesting. The areas and maps are just like Warcraft, but pathing and interaction with the terrain is relatively clunky… a lot of unproductive running around to get to some point on the map, without any obvious reason why you can’t get from here to there. Grouping works just like WoW, down to the loot rolling and on-screen layout. But group chat is very weak. And so it goes.

There are differences too, and some nifty features that WoW players will enjoy. The available races give you basically the Alliance side of WoW: humans, dwarves, elves and hobbits (replacing gnomes).

But the classes are completely different, and this will certainly make for a fundamental difference in play. LOTRO has Captains, Guardians, Champions, Burglars, Lore Masters, Hunters and Minstrels. There are (strangely enough, given the Lord of the Rings lore) no Mages or Wizards. No priests. It seems like Minstrels are the primary healing class. Lore Masters seem closer to Druids than to Mages. Guardians and Champions are equivalent to tanking and DPS style Warriors, respectively. And Captains are more or less Paladins. The big DPS class is the Hunter.

On the whole, the distinctive class structure is a really positive feature, at least from the perspective of creating an alternative to World of Warcraft. It should make for a different dynamic in groups (Fellowship in LOTRO, as opposed to Party in WoW).

And that is about it for the pluses, I’m afraid. Admittedly, this is based on a very brief first look, and entirely on the most basic aspects of play – after all, my LOTRO character is at level 7 (the initial max level is 50), and hasn’t had a taste of any of the game’s more advanced features. But what are the odds that the higher levels will somehow rise up to meet the standard of WoW? Not very good, I’d say.

I am curious to see what the higher levels of the game will look like. There are some promising features described in the PR for the game, such as Realm vs Realm play, regular world events, and formal tracking of first kills. So I’ll probably take time, now and then, to advance a character and try out more of this new, high-quality addition to the MMORPG genre.

But with nearly 3 years invested in WoW, three level 70 characters, and another five coming along past 60, I can’t see shifting much of my focus to LOTRO. Because the bottom line is: Lord of the Rings Online is a clone of World of Warcraft, and nowhere near its equal in design and play quality.

Who will want to play LOTRO? Some WoW old-timers who are truly burnt on Warcraft, and just need a change. Newbies who’ve never tried WoW, and won’t know what they’re missing.