World of Final Warcraft Scrolls of the Rings

I'm just about too young for Dizzy, Lemmings was more my era. I still have my level codes somewhere.

God I love Lord of the Rings Online.

In a world where games are getting faster, gratification more instant, and explosions more ray-traced, LOTRO is unashamedly slow. Quest descriptions are long, well written and relevant; combat is a slow, civilised game of assessing cooldowns and hasn't changed in 16 years; crafting a pair of boots takes about ten minutes, and you don't mind because you have a cosy fire for company as the progress bar trickles upwards. There are 140 levels and the largest game world ever made to discover, and it couldn't care less about speeding you through it.

It has completely ignored all of the modernisation efforts that World of Warcraft has gone through, and is both ten times more unwieldy and ten times more appealing as a result.

Yep, completely agree. They haven't sped the game up at all really which is great because the magic of it is just in pottering around. I've been playing, on and off, for over a decade now and I still haven't even made it to Moria yet - I'm level 49 so I could have headed there a while ago but I've got myself caught up in the final quests of the first volume of the Epic Book and I'm in the middle of a huge sequence of Angmar quests. I don't feel any urge to rush through the game at all and I know the rest of Middle-Earth will be there waiting for me when I'm ready for it.

I think it's still a pretty nice-looking game too, given it came out in 2007 - they've tweaked it a bit as time has gone on but it's got its own style and I like it. The main problem is the UI goes a bit berserk at anything over 1080p, but that can be worked around.

Every time you talk about LotRO, I almost install the thing, but I don't know if I have it in me to play an MMO again.

It's the least multiplayer MMO ever made, if that helps. 99% of the game is played solo, there are multiplayer instances for those who want them and while they are good, they are not in any way compulsory. Most of the time it's just a big solo RPG that happens to have other people running around in it.

It's already installing. I do occasionally just want a big world to wander about in and chip away at.

I do occasionally just want a big world to wander about in and chip away at.

/looks out of window

wait what

Yeah, try looking out the windows in the UK and mustering any kind of enthusiasm for going out there.

But Brexit Island is the real adventure. The beacons are lit, Islington calls for aid!

But Brexit Island is the real adventure. The beacons are lit, Islington calls for aid!

What LotRO server are y'all on? Just in case…

I’m on Evernight, I think it’s the busiest of the EU servers these days.

Yeah I'm on Evernight too.

Any recommendation as far as class goes?

I've only played Hunter and Champion. Hunter gets more fast-travel options, which is important as the game world is enormous and F2P players don't get some of the benefits VIPs get. I found hunters to be quite squishy though, and struggled soloing lots of mobs at once.

Champion hits things hard, can take a beating, and can solo five mobs at once.

There are Spellcasters and other, more interesting classes, but I'm boring like that.

I'd also recommend starting as a hobbit, because the shire is the best start zone for F2P players.

Agreed on the hobbit thing for your first character, the Shire in LOTRO is a wonderful creation and a great introduction to the game. Plus you feel like you are following the books’ story from the start, which helps.

My current character is a Beorning which is a bit of an outlier, so don’t go for that one. You spend a lot of your time looking at a bear’s hairy arse.

If you like the game, you get a LOT of benefits from subbing for a single month. The fast travel options it unlocks will persist after your sub expires. But see how you get on.

I've gone Hobbit Minstrel, which is probably a bit weird, but I like the vibe.

Is there a fix for the UI in this thing? The scale is awful, and half the stuff is sitting on top of the other half.

Don’t try and run the game at anything over 1080p. Just don’t.

Other than that, there’s a keyboard command (I think it’s CTRL+#) that lets you move things around to your liking.

I've gone higher than 1080p and settled on a halfway house between UI scaling, and squinting. It is really, really bad. Crazy it hasn't been fixed after all these years.

If you do get invested, check out JRR Skin Collection. It sounds like some sort of serial killer mod, but it's just a collection of UI skins. It doesn't help the resolution, but there are skins included that remove all the background ornamentation of your skill bar, which makes things prettier when you scale up the UI.

don’t go for that one. You spend a lot of your time looking at a bear’s hairy arse.

Don't tell me how to live my life, Gar.

Have you ever had trouble logging in Gar? For the last hour or so I've had "searching for logon server" followed by 20 failed attempts, then the game quitting.

It's not maintenance, that was earlier today.

check out JRR Skin Collection

Will do, thanks!

(I think it’s CTRL+#)

Turns out it is, yes - the UI itself falsely claims it's Ctrl+\, and I was close to flinging my keyboard at it not working…

Jesus Manwë, this really is old-school, isn't it?

Sure. But that’s part of its charm, I think. It’s stuck with its original design for 15 years now.

Oh, and the quest descriptions have a button that lets you increase text size. It's on the window itself, which you can also drag to expand.

But that's limited to the quest descriptions, for god knows why.

Yeah, I found that one!

Made it through the initial quest/intro and into Archet., but not much farther.

Archet is also a training zone, you’ll be there for a few levels before you get let loose on the open world.

While we're throwing out very specific tips, Gar have you bought the experience disabler? It's 80 lotro points in the store and does what it says.

It's great for keeping all your quests at an appropriate level, and makes experiencing the story much more enjoyable.

Let's not get into the ethics of charging for something like that, but it's only 80 points so easy to earn free.

The Stone of the Tortoise, right? Yes, it's a useful thing to have. I don't use it as much as I thought I would - XP gains slow down a lot after about level 30, and you quickly give up on trying to see everything in the game - but I do flip it on from time to time if I'm hoovering up deeds in a particular zone and don't want to keep levelling while I do so.

That's the one irritation about the "sub for one month" approach - the extra fast travel options that unlocks are incredibly helpful, but you get an XP bonus for the entire month and that's the last thing I want (especially early in the game, when you level up fast anyway). So the Stone is very useful in that specific circumstance.

Aww, thanks, now I want to play again. If the install wasn't 2.71828 ultramegagigahyperbytes, I would. I'm on a tinyish non-fancy SSD these days. Where's the cloud gaming paradise we were promised? :D

I mentioned this in the RAM thread, but I've found a solution to the tiny UI. I'm using Radeon Super Resolution (I think the NVIDIA alternative is called DLSS). It basically allows you to run any game at a low resolution, then upscales it (very effectively) to your monitor's native res. And because you're actually running low res behind the scenes, you get a performance boost, plus in LOTRO specifically you get the full-sized UI.

It's pretty much flawless. Click the images to see the quality of the text upscaling.

My PC is going to be FAR too old for that…

Popped into Rivendell (the last few volumes of the first Epic Book have a LOT of back-and-forth to Rivendell) and Elrond's had the decorators in! It's weird to walk into a place in an MMO and find it's had a glow-up. It looks a lot nicer, he's put some proper stairs in and everyone's milling around in confusion because they can't find the library any more. Great stuff.

Just stood in the middle of Bree and watched a gig by a band called The Flowers. All totally incongruous 80/90s tunes, and it was a blast. Seeing an elf and a dwarf dancing to What Is Love was a highlight.

This is the stuff MMOs do so well. A good community can transform a game.

I noticed when I logged on earlier that you were closing in on level 45, MPH. (You get through this game a lot quicker than me!)

Trust me on this: when you get to level 45, drop everything and hotfoot it to Eregion. In the south-east corner of that map you can pick up the start of Volume 2 of the Epic storyline which is the lead-in to Moria. Play through that and you will get your Legendary Weapon - you will want to start earning XP for that as soon as you possibly can.

Once you've played through the first section of that volume and opened up Moria itself, you can go back to what you were doing before until you hit 50. But you want to get that weapon.

I need to play more of this, but I finished the intro quest and now I'm just delivering mail and playing hide and seek in Michel Delving? When does adventure happen?

I also need to figure out exactly how my character works; everything I fight dies so quickly I can't get my head around what any of my abilities actually do.

I need to play more of this, but I finished the intro quest and now I'm just delivering mail and playing hide and seek in Michel Delving? When does adventure happen?

There is a "main quest" - the epic book - which you should have in your quest log from the start. Quest-givers connected with that have a flaming ring over their head (rather than the usual plain ring). That quest broadly follows the Fellowship so takes you from the Shire, to the Old Forest, to Bree, and onward from there. You will be doing a lot of side quests in between though - and the Shire is especially twee - so maybe follow the main quest and use the side quests and/or deeds to boost your level as you go.

There's a second "main quest" which is given to you by an especially irritating Hobbit in Michel Delving called Bingo Boffin, he also trundles along in broadly the same direction as the Fellowship and occasionally needs rescuing from scrapes so you might want to pick that up and do his quests as and when you reach each area.

Thanks for the heads up!

I did spend a good 40 minutes trying to get into Eregion, then once I was there realised I had already tagged a stable master from an early quest that warped me there. I'm at the walls of Moria now though, ready to pwn some orc noobs.

Yeah, getting through the southern Trollshaws is a pain in the arse, so many cliffs and rivers there. Warping in is the best approach by far.

I'm probably just going to skip straight to Moria now, I've been trying to finish off the first volume of the epic at level 50 but it goes on forever and is just repeatedly sending me around the world on fetch quests. I literally had to go backwards and forwards between Elrond and the Rivendell Guest House six times just now. Feels like I'm just playing stuff that they put in as padding before the first expansion came out. Which is a shame, because the story is quite good, but meh. I want to get back to actual gameplay now.

Yeah I got to book 6, assumed I was nearing the end, then realised I had another ten books to go before Moria. Definitely skipping, especially because Angmar is crap and lots of the quests seem to take place there.

As you say it's clear these quests were originally trickled out over the space of a year or so, to give the players something to do. Definitely not intemded to complete in one big lump. It's a shame they haven't condensed them down now that everything post-50 exists, but the story is easily googleable.

I've paid for a month of VIP so have been able to level up through some of the newer zones, which has been fun. The Angle, Yondershire, Wildwood… they make for a nice change from the old zones I levelled through all those years ago.

I've paid for a month of VIP so have been able to level up through some of the newer zones, which has been fun. The Angle, Yondershire, Wildwood… they make for a nice change from the old zones I levelled through all those years ago.

LOTRO has a habit of occasionally giving away huge chunks of the game for free or very cheap, so I've actually got permanent access to all those areas. They did it during the pandemic and then again last year for the 15th anniversary. Last time everything up to Mordor (including all these new areas) was free and then the expansion packs past that, apart from the newest, were 99LP each. I got the whole lot and felt like I'd cheated them somehow, it was so generous. Literally the only bits of the game I don't own now are the Fate of Gundabad expansion and the new Before the Shadow starting areas, Cardolan and Swanfleet.

Of those areas, I've only played through The Angle but it was a really nice little zone. The anniversary is coming up next week I think so keep an eye out for any special offers they might do around that.

Also - while you have VIP, you might want to consider creating a few new characters of various races and classes you might want to play one day. You might never use them, but if you create them while you have VIP, they will retain access to the extra fast travel skills once your membership lapses. Otherwise you'll need to pay for another month one day.

I'm currently out of the country, any news on anniversary giveaways?

A lot of the later expansions are 75% off and the most recent ones are 25% off, but no actual giveaways this time. Assuming you’re nowhere near needing them yet, I’d hold on and see if they do anything later in the year.

Thanks!

I've got my legendary weapon and opened Moria, but I have absolutely no idea how to level it up, even after reading all of the tooltips during the tutorial.

For all of those initial 'opening up Moria' quests I was getting LI XP. But every time I did, it said 'you have no reward track for this XP'… which seems a bit crazy, because of course I didn't. Why put XP like that on a quest before you've received your LI?

But now that I have my LI, I don't see any XP progress bars or anything. What's the benefit of getting this weapon at level 45, how do I level it up as I play?

(Sorry that's an info dump, but I've googled a long time and can't actually find a decent answer!)

Yeah, they completely changed the system about a year ago, every tutorial is completely out of date and it makes no sense at all. I only have a vague idea of how it works but this is what I have found:

The old "Legacy Items" panel in the menus appears obsolete, or at least has a function so obscure I have found no use for it.

The Reward Track can be accessed by pressing Shift + I. If there is a more intuitive way to get to this then I haven't found it yet! You can claim your rewards here as you level up and the track resets every 3 months or so. I think this is where your LI XP goes, so make sure you claim your rewards.

To actually enhance your LI, you need to drag it to the little flame icon in your character panel just to the right of your character's feet. (This is possibly the most unintuitive function I've ever seen in any game). You can slot various Traceries (Words of Power, Words of Mastery, Words of Craft) into the slots on your weapon to get various buffs. Also you can apply Enhancement Runes to level them up. (I think they level up the slots, rather than the Runes themselves).

Replacing stuff you've slotted has something to do with the Flame of A-thingummy you may have noticed in your inventory, I haven't got that far yet.

Every five levels or so you can apparently reforge your LI to level the whole thing up, again I haven't worked it out yet.

I've basically slotted everything I can and am now ignoring it for a few levels until I need to do something else with it, at which point I will start Googling in confusion again.

Guides DO exist, they're not especially clear but make sure you are looking at the "New" system introduced in 2022 / update 30. Believe it or not, the old one was more complex…

Okay, that is both super helpful and absolutely ridiculous.

Thanks! I would have never in a million years found the flame icon thingy.

Made it into Moria, which is absolutely sublime. I'm not sure how a 16-year-old game with a janky engine has made a hole in the ground this beautiful, but it has.

Still very little idea how LIs work, despite owning one for the last 10 levels, but hopefully that'll click before level 140…

I resigned myself to finishing off the first volume of the Epic before proceeding into Moria, and in all honesty it's been a tedious slog, hence I've not been playing it much lately. I knew it would continue to niggle at me until I'd done it though so I figured I'd just get it done. I'm on Book 15 Chapter 10 now so I reckon one more session will get me over the line.

Elrond is a fucking twat. He's one of the most powerful people in Middle-Earth yet he requires constant updates on my progress and refuses to use any kind of solution that might make that easier in any way (eagles, ravens, iPhones, I'm not fussy). I've spent dozens of hours slogging backwards and forwards to Rivendell for this pointy-eared dickhead to nod sagely then send me somewhere else. I should have just strapped him to my horse weeks ago and carried him around with me.

The good news is that Moria is going to be absolutely awesome once I've done all this. I've eaten all my broccoli, now bring on the dessert.

Aaaaand I'm done. Completing all 15 books of the first volume of the Epic has netted me a new title (which I won't use), a painting for my house (which I don't have), a horse (which is no better than the one I already have), some armour (that I will use for half a level before it gets superseded by something better), and an abiding sense of deep satisfaction and relief.

I've dumped all my spare crap into my vault, have cleared down my quest log, I've just got one Bingo Ballsack quest to clear out in Eregion and then it's Moria time baby!!

I admire your self-flagellating approach to this game. Are you massively overlevelled now, or did you turtle it all?

I've just reforged my Legendaries at level 56 and think I finally understand that system, which is a relief. There's been one crap area of Moria (the waterworks, get ready…) but it's generally been a joy so far.

I admire your self-flagellating approach to this game. Are you massively overlevelled now, or did you turtle it all?

I've just reforged my Legendaries at level 56 and think I finally understand that system, which is a relief. There's been one crap area of Moria (the waterworks, get ready…) but it's generally been a joy so far.

I used the stone of the tortoise for most of it so I'm about halfway through level 50. Didn't want to spoil my Moria experience with all my pointless busywork.

I was playing around with runes and traceries and I seem to have a whole bunch of Minor Essences of Something or Other that don't seem to fit any of the sockets. Are these old items that no longer apply to the new system? The whole thing still baffles me, if I'm being honest.