Central Gondor is a dark a dreary place thanks to that crazy Sauron guy making some dawnless day. The darkness is a clear representation of the situation of the zone of Gondor from a story point of view and amplifies the feeling of desperation in the zone. That being said, it does deprive the zone of visual diversity, making the landscape seem even more similar and dull to previous areas due to a lack of changing sky and lighting.
While the landscape does feel very similar to Western Gondor, it is much more coastal which makes sense considering the the enemies of this zone are mostly sea faring people. This change in landscape gives the enemies in this zone a huge advantage and creates a very original story which more than makes up for the similar feeling landscape.
The story is quite strong in the new area and is possibly the best second book we have seen up to this point in any volume. Turbine said we would be heroes in Volume IV and it is clear from the start to the end of this new book that they achieved their goal.
Overall I think Central Gondor is a great addition to the game. While they could have made the landscape a little more diverse, the story was more than interesting enough to make up for the lack of visual diversity.
If you want to see my impressions of the rest of the zone, you can watch my commentary series as I make my way through Central Gondor.
You can also visit my channel on YouTube for even more LOTRO content.
This series is made possible by supporters on Patreon.
What do you think of Central Gondor so far? Let us know in the comments below!
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I hoped that Turbune will keep Saurons darkness only for Minas Tirith and Osgiliath. It ruines for me Central Gondors landscape. And unfortunately we will stay with that darkness for many patches…
I thought the landscape itself was well done but I have a major issue with how the repeatables were done. You lose some and gain some repeatables as you gain rep (I don’t understand why you would lose any at all!!!!) and the repeatable quests are always the easiest to find AND they are in areas (for the most part) that aren’t even connected by stables. Because of those factors I was EXTREMELY disappointed in the repeatable quest aspect of the area.
Yes I will run all my alts through the area but I am in absolutely no hurry at the moment and I am only concerned about the (minor rep—–the ones without turbine points) on my main. When I think about how this area could had been with just minor tweaking it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
I quite enjoyed the repeatables in this area, if I’m honest. Yeah, I would have preferred to have seen a fully fledged instance cluster, but my hopes weren’t high for that…
In terms of difficulty, because most mobs are level 100 or higher, this region is noticeably more tricky than West Gondor, and that’s a good thing, considering the ease with which one could run through zones like West Rohan. The repeatables continued this trend, as the ‘roaming threats’ (the official name for those nemesis/elite master mobs) can prove a challenge if you’ve not got a competent group, or forgot to bring along a healer, especially with a smaller group (yes, you can steamroll them with a 24 man raid, but that doesn’t exactly occur regularly).
I enjoyed the way that this allowed some re-engagement with the community of each server (being able to chat to people I’d not met before who came along for the ride, because they wanted to give the new content a go, especially when I led a PUG run of the roaming threats and warbands), but it was also entirely possible to solo your way to kindred, if you used boosters and were prepared to go into either the orc camp/oathbreaker cave in Ethring, the Haradrim camps in Dor-en-ernil, or the Corsair camp in Lebennin in order to grind the rep items, where the blue items dropped pretty regularly. I admit it would have been more of a grind if I hadn’t had the foresight to use rep accelerators for all the quests, but the fact that these were given as quest rewards in the very first quest of the epic in Ethring itself was a not so subtle hint that they would be extremely useful.
Admittedly I’ve not yet run my other capped alt through this at the moment, though that’s more down to being busy than due to disliking the way the content was provided. And this content once again highlighted how important kins are, as even in PUG runs, things are made much easier if you have a core group of friends that you can call upon to help you out with this sort of thing, and it harks back to the glory days of raiding in LOTRO.
(Although, the fact that there is no stable at Ost Anglebed is REALLY irritating 😛 )
* it should had read….the repeatable quests are NOT the easiest to find…
sorry for my mistake.
I finally leveled a toon to 100 and currently questing in Central Gondor! I really dislike the darkness, although I know from a story point-of-view it makes sense. However, my eyes tend to strain quickly when playing games, and the overrall darkness makes it a pain for me to quest in this area. It reminds me of Mirkwood and how I had to quit halfway through those quests due to eye strain! I’ve turned up ambient lighting and brightness in the options panel, but it’s helped only marginally.
And soon Aragorn is going to tell me to run the Pelargir Epic Battle which I’m NOT looking forward to. I hope Turbine does not make any more Big Battles! I found them to be tedious, overly long, and nowhere near as fun as old school instances or skirmishes. After enjoying the Western Gondor zone immensely, I’m slightly disappointed in this area.