A year long ballad? Man those minstrels must be tired.
The Ballad of Bingo Boffin stands apart from other content in LOTRO. From its storytelling style to the actual weekly release structure, the Bingo Boffin questline has been an adventure of its own.
The most comparable content is the Epic Story for a few reasons; the stories are written by the same developer, include many of the same zones, require large level increases, and require a lot of travel. Since it is similar to the Epic Story, it has many of the same pros and cons as the Epic. Except the weaknesses seem to be even stronger with Bingo Boffin. The level hike is very large for new characters and travel is even greater than the majority of the Epic. That being said, the story is good. I suppose with free content, that is all that matters.
Players looking for something lighter in tone may really love the Bingo Boffin questline. The story shares many parallels with The Hobbit. Bingo is a similar hobbit to Bilbo and goes on a similar journey. Bingo is still a character of his own though, with his own struggles and goals.
While I really enjoy the story, I feel like the Bingo storyline is lacking in some areas. At some point I just lost my connection with Bingo. I think the story could have been much stronger if everything after Moria until the return journey did not exist. That means for about 15 weeks I was without a real connection to the main character. Bingo just didn’t react to things enough and his perspective was almost lost. It felt like the quests were being stretched out in this section just to fit the 52 week criteria. Luckily the return journey pulled me back into the story and made it all worthwhile.
A big thanks to MadeOfLions and everyone else involved in making this story at Turbine. I really appreciate the work that went into this free content.
You can watch my entire Bingo Boffin series here and can subscribe to me on YouTube for more LOTRO videos and video series.
This series was made possible by supporters on Patreon.
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I absolutely loved this storyline. So much of the game content has lost its connection to the lore so evident in the early years of Lotro. I was with Bingo for every step of his adventure, and really hope this continues in some way. Such a refreshing change to all the grind for raid gear which the game seems to focus on now.