Comments on: LotRO’s Moria in Review

By: Jimahdafish

Jimahdafish — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:59:46 +0000

Just an update to your review. The developers have recently added bounty quests which start in Esteldin and are repeatable daily. These give a large amount of item/weapon experience for legendary items. This means that you can fully level a 2nd age item in several days merely by repeating the bounty quests (takes approx 1/2 hour) as opposed to spending ages grinding for the experience.

So this is a nice touch from Turbine that has removed a large element of the painful grinding.

Otherwise kudos on a well balanced and presented review.

By: West Karana » Daily Blogroll 9/10 –

West Karana » Daily Blogroll 9/10 – — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:01:06 +0000

[...] of Epic Slant looks back on his adventures in Lord of the Rings Online’s Moria expansion and asks, did the awesomeness of the ruins of Khazad-Dum do enough to outweigh the grind? On the [...]

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:25:52 +0000

A very fair review, echoing a lot of my experiences, too. The one thing I will say about LotRO is that the 3D nature of the caverns takes a while to get used to. After having a lot of adventures in the wide-open spaces of Middle Earth, having caverns with twisty paths all over the place was quite a different experience. Sometimes my GF and I would head to an indicated area then realize we actually needed to be above or below our current location.

The grind potential is pretty huge, agreed. Having to grind just to see Lothlórien is a bit obnoxious, especially given that at character creation my main, an Elven Champion, took Lorien as her area of origin. This will probably be especially stupid feeling come the next expansion when having to grind to get the rep is going to seem like a colossal waste (like Lossoth of Forochel rep is anymore).

The one major complaint I have is with crafting. I spent a lot of time working up crafting and have been more or less disappointed. The higher levels require a stupid amount of materials to be consumed, and for some professions the legendary items make most of your items useless. No level 50+ 2-handed weapon is ever going to sell. There’s no reason not to get a legendary weapon and level it up. I really wish they had done something to incorporate more crafting into the legendary item system more. I think I’ll write something up about that soon….