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The Lord of the Rings Online Nailed Moria's Sense Of Scale - MMORPG.com
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The Lord of the Rings Online Nailed Moria's Sense Of Scale - MMORPG.com
On our recent Elder Scrolls Online livestream, myself and some buddies did a dungeon which took place in a massive underground building, almost cathedral-esque. Shank audibly said he could not get over the scale Zenimax Online Studios was able to create within the Vaults of Madness. I quickly responded saying nothing in gaming has compared to the first time I walked through the Doors of Durin and stepped foot inside Moria.
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The dungeons were excellent, and the loot from them was great. They had radiance, which ended up being bad, but it was pretty good for that expansion. The legendary item system was good for that expansion, but ended up as one of the most hated things about the game once you got to level 100.
The game went down hill after Moria. Mirkwood looked great but really wasn't. That was the start of the F2P experience which meant from now on you got quest hubs. The game hit it's low point with the Isengard expansion, then got better with the Rohan expansion and it's great music. Then it took an even bigger nose dive with Helm's Deep.
Mordor was great though...but the game has been getting worse with each update.
Nowadays, people who play the game are just hoping the game goes away ASAP so another company can have a go at middle earth.
To that end, there is no guarantee that another game developer would not only pick it up but make the game that people want in their individual heads.
I realize there is a new Lord of the Rings "mmorpg" in the making but we really don't know what that will look like. I highly suspect it will have a heavy cash shop, probably be tied into whatever Amazon services that Amazon deems important and might not have a full "open world." And will most likely be set in a different age. Some might like that some not so much.
Then there are the people, playing it now, who will want it to be tab target combat. But will it? If the game goes away we could very well have an action oriented combat (fine with me) and they would hate it.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
And I'm sure there's those that still wish Middle Earth Online had been made instead. Sorry, but I'm sure the 'people' you talk about are you and a couple of your friends, definitely not the majority of the player base.
While most of us have complaints how the game has evolved I think we're a pretty happy bunch. A good example would be how quickly the Anor VIP only server filled up when it first came one line, within just a couple of hours I believe and held up things until a second VIP only server could be brought online.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
Just a giant dungeon, no save areas. But that's my taste.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The only other dungeon I can think of that was even better than Moria was Darkness Falls in DAoC.
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In fairness, per Tolkien, Moria is supposed to be a tortuous, endless, labyrinthine (but beautiful) slog so I suppose it's quite apt.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I had only experienced Moria through the movies at this point, and didn't actually read the books until later, so the buildup to entering the 21st hall was incredible. I was fully prepared to be let down, but it blew me away, and yes, it was the scale that did it. The graphics were decent back in the day, even though they are very dated today, and that added to it for me.
There are other zones or areas that really amazed me, like the Shire, Orthanc, the Old Forest, and Minas Tirith, but nothing nailed the scale as well as Moria. It was simply an amazingly well designed area. Great article.
I can appreciate a lot of the world building, it was an amazing underground dungeon and looked awesome in places. But, it didn't feel right to me. To me, it felt a lot like a load of big caverns, connected by short passages, with some dwarven structures tacked on here and there.
I never got a sense of the dwarven city. Some places began to feel like it, like the 21st hall, but I found that they were mostly just dwarven background decoration without actually making it into something believable. It was the lack of buildings that got me I think. You'd have these massive walls, or caverns, or stairs, but virtually nowhere for a dwarf to actually live, conduct their business etc.
Favourite places were probably Water-works (just so weird, plus I loved the interesting plumbing structures) and the Redhorn Lodes (though, this felt like they'd just dumped mining equipment in a cavern, rather than trying to create an actual mine).
Gameplay wise, Turbine signalled its intent with Moria and it wasn't an intent I agreed with. The layout of Moria was all about creating quest hubs, rather than the more free-form way they'd been designed at release. There was virtually no group content from 50-60, Turbine had already decided that group content only belonged at endgame. The introduction of radiance (i.e. mandatory vertical progression) killed off all semblance of casual raiding, which at the time was about 50% of the raiding community (on my server anyway). Legendary weapons seemed great to start with, until you realised it was a dumb system until you hit the level cap, where it became exciting to max out a weapon, but a RNG and grindy nightmare to get to that point.
Also, the introduction of trait lines pissed me off. In SoA, I could pick whatever traits I wanted to make a lovely class to play, exactly suiting my style. Traitlines with their bonuses essentially made them mandatory for endgame, forcing you towards just a few builds. My captain in particularly went from jack-of-all-trades to a straightup backup healer, just because the healing traitline bonuses were so good.
I did enjoy the runekeeper and warden, whilst I didn't max out either I did enjoy playing with them, their different approaches to tanking and healing meant even more potential tactics for bosses, more depth in the system. I also really liked it later on when then added the proper raid DN and opened up Lothlorien, which was just beautiful.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I was there back in the late 90's learning a lot from pro mappers,zone creation,lighting,sound effects,props,particle effects,secrets,animations,colors there is just soooo much that goes into a great map,this article is not going to prove a single thing without a video walk through.
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