Essences are a different thing, for upgrading (none Legendary) weapons that have 'Empty Slots'. Apparently they're a level 100+ thing, so you won't really need the low-level essences.
One other thing (that you may already know): you can reforge at every level ending in -1 and -6. So 56, 61, 66 etc. No idea why, seems arbritrary. There are forgemasters all through Moria, no need to travel to a hub. So you can keep checking whether it's time to reforge, if you like. Reforging at 56 is no different to reforging at 58, so just do it as soon as you can.
Although to be totally honest, the actual world quests are fairly easy, so there's no need to min-max your weapon. It feels like more of an end-game raid thing.
LOTRO is pretty easy, it adds to the whole comfort gaming feel of the thing although I think the game used to be a lot harder in the early days. Certainly there was a lot more forced group content whereas nowadays you can do all the story instances solo (I would never have made to the end of the first volume if I had to do all those instances as part of a group). There are a lot of multiplayer instances and raids in the game still but I think they're now all optional and joined through the instance finder.
They did patch in the Landscape Difficulty feature though, there's someone in most of the starting areas that will allow you to increase the difficulty of the entire game and there are a whole bunch of titles you can get if you set that early enough and play through the whole thing like that.
Blizzard are giving away 7 days of free WoW game time this week, so I hopped back on. (It's been about five years.) A few differences I noticed between WoW and LotRO, in 2023:
The technical side of WoW is years ahead. It's got all the latest bells and whistles, the engine has been tweaked constantly and it still looks like a brand-new game. The art helps too, which has to be some of the best in the business.
The amount of general guff in Warcraft is a little overwhelming these days. I logged back into my old character and I honestly had no idea where to start; I spent half an hour reading tutorial menus about the new features then gave up. I imagine for new players this is all introduced gradually, and is much more intuitive, but holy crap it bombards returning players.
WoW is SO much more modern and flexible with its quests and general gameplay – and I'm not convinced that's any better than LotRO's approach. When I first loaded in the game said to me "oh hey, you've been away for a while, which expansion would you like to play? We'll make sure the levels and rewards match, don't worry". I selected an expansion and was transported straight there, into the intro quest. It's the sort of player convenience LotRO wouldn't dream of, but then, that's probably because…
WoW's story is a load of old bobbins. It doesn't really matter whether you play Shadowlands before Lich King, because who actually understands and appreciates what's happening in either of those games? LotRO has tied itself completely to an existing, well-loved narrative, so it's sort of stuck being exactly what it is, forever. And there's something to be said for that level of narrative integrity, especially when your story is genuinely enjoyable.
They both do entirely different things, and I love both. I'm going to stick with LotRO hopefully until the level cap (I have a verrrrry quiet client at work right now, can you tell?) but I'll definitely revisit WoW again.
LOTRO's difficulty setting has recently gone live (it was test servers only for a while), and it makes such a difference.
I'm not one for difficult games, but LOTRO's single-player questing is a little too easy. The difficulty system has ten levels of toughness, and 3/10 is my sweet spot. With the click of a button, combat becomes interesting. Entire systems that I never had to think about suddenly become relevant, and there's a genuine sense of progression. New gear matters, new skills are exciting again.
If you're still playing, Gar, I'd recommend experimeting with it!
If anyone else has played WoW in the past (feltmonkey?) I'd recommend checking out the new expansion, which is the most fun I think I've ever had in a WoW expansion.
It focuses on the dragons, and most importantly lets you ride your own dragon which is about a million times more fun than a normal flying mount. They have dragon races, which are more exciting than a game about right-clicking on wolves has any right to be. Plus, they just introduced dragon-riding on to the old continents too, so you can fly around Kalimdor etc at breakneck speeds (in specific races).
