I have an MMO weakness. Anyone who reads my blog regularly can see that. Lately my guilty pleasure has been The Lord of the Rings Online, an older, but still entertaining game! So what makes this older game still so much fun to play? Well, there are several aspects this now free-to-play game takes advantage of that some of the more popular names should probably consider.
First, the game sticks close to the lore of Tolkien’s books. It takes some creative liberties where there are holes, but the story stays loyal to the source material. And even those creative liberties are not overly annoying. No more surprising than say, the Hobbit movies.
The gameplay itself feels slow these days, but given the game was released in the early 2000’s on the heels of the well loved movies, it makes sense that some aspects of it would not hold up to the expectations of people who are used to more fast passed MMOS of the 2020s.
If you’re heavily concerned with how your character looks, the character creation is pretty limited, again this is a game made in the early 2000s. However, there is a lot you can do with armor and dyes. The game has a detailed clothing appearance aspect and you can choose when to display your shoulders and helmet, as well as collect various dye colors.
Now I said the game was free-to-play now. As such, there are a few pay walls that you can take down with a subscription, like most MMOs these days. However LOTRO has one aspect many games do now, you can earn currency in the game to unlock everything you need to pay for. Sure, it may take you a bit longer to grind out deeds to buy what you need and progress through the game, but it is entirely possible to play the entire game free with this method.
All in all if you enjoy story more then graphics this is a game for you.
I used to dig this game glad to hear it still holds up well!
I’ve had times in my life where I put WAY too much time into MMORPGs (Everquest and WoW), so I approach them with great caution now! =)