Ethelros’ First Impressions of Helm’s Deep

NOTE: This article comes with a spoiler warning for the Helm’s Deep content. While I attempt to be as vague as possible, certain things may slip through your consciousness. Especially if you’re telepathic.

 

So it’s been a few days since Helm’s Deep launched. As I type this my main character, Ethelros(Surprise!) is at level 92 and just starting the Stonedeans area of West Rohan. While it is far too early to make a firm judgement call on the expansion as a whole, I can at least give my initial thoughts and feelings on what I’ve experienced thus far. I’ve taken the liberty of separating this into various categories.

 

Epic Story

Without going into spoilery details, this addition to the Epic Story is superb. Our own character get to bear witness to many famous events of the books, and yet at the same time manages to weave its own tale within Tolkien’s writings. Again I won’t talk too much about it, suffice to say a few lines in the books about Grima Wormtongue’s doings have been turned into a sprawling storyline flowing through the entire region. The voice-acting is… passable, for the most part, but I was never overly concerned with it. Having to pay for it still bites at me a bit, more so the way they communicated this fact, but since I was able to get the entire expansion basically for free I suppose I can’t complain too much.

 

West Rohan Quests

As with the Epic in East Rohan and Wildermore, the regional questlines often intermingle with that of the Epic. In Kingstead the story focuses mostly on Eowyn’s efforts to lead the refugees of the surrounding land to the hold in Dunharrow. Naturally this is complicated by the efforts of Orcs, Dunlendings and even traitors within the city of Edoras. There are a few neat gems in this area, including one involving foxes, but I will leave that to you to discover.

Moving on to the Eastfold, the story here relates to the appearance of a very different tribe of Orcs to those we have faced and defeated in previous lands. There is also a great effort made to expand on the story of King Folca of Rohan and his famous battle with the Great Boar of Everholt. Personally I would say that Kingstead had a slightly better flowing story, but that is by no means a slight against this area.

The Broadacres is the third and currently last area I have visited in my travels, and sadly it is here that the tale of West Rohan grows steadily darker. The debatedly cheery feel of the Eastfold has vanished in favour of encroaching armies, raiding parties of goblins and half-orcs, with deceit and treachery abound.

 

West Rohan Landscape

As we mentioned in the walkthrough of West Rohan that Andang and I did, this new addition to the world of LOTRO is perfectly gorgeous, or depressing, as the case may be. Kingstead is probably my favourite of the zones I’ve wandered in so far, with the lush green grasses around the Entwade and Middlemead, and the ever present city of Edoras and the shining hall of Meduseld standing proudly visible from almost any location in the region. Edoras itself is suitably huge, but also very open and spaced out, a very different feel to the densely packed settlement Bree-town. It doesn’t fit to call the Paths of The Dead pretty, but nevertheless the infamous road and the Dark Door itself is impressively ominous, as befits its reputation. Overall this is an excellent area to lead into the new expansion, staying true to the books while adding its own flair.

The Eastfold is very dense in comparison to Kingstead, with a lot more trees. It’s evident here that Turbine has really nailed creating forests in LOTRO.  The main hub of Aldburg is nice looking, although somewhat run-down for story related reasons. Of particular note here are the superb stained-glass windows in the Mead Hall.

Broadacres is the least visually appealing of the zones I’ve visited thus far, although even this area is far and above many of those in the older zones. The most distinctive parts of this area are the burning fields west of Stoke(the hub), a small portion of Fangorn and the old Gondorian ruin-turned Rohan town of Torsbury.

 

Epic Battles

On the subject of Epic Battles, I have to say that after running through so many of them in Beta with Andang, Pineleaf and others, doing them on your own makes them feel a lot less fun. Make no mistake, I still think the way the battles are set up are cool, and I absolutely love the Engineer role, but for this moment in time I think I’d much rather run them with other people, which is something that has never happened with Skirmishes. Make of that what you will. On top of that the number of bugs and unconfirmed issues with them(like the drastically differing difficulty for the side objectives) have impacted my enjoyment. I’m sure once I get into grouping more and the battles get progressively fine-tuned, I will start to get back into them again.

 

Class Changes

Now I can only really speak from the perspective of a Lore-Master here, and even then as one who predominantly solos. With that said, overall I find the class changes mostly satisfactory. The trait trees have proven themselves more open to modification than I first thought, and the changes to my favoured line(Blue for pets) have been excellent. The DPS line is generally bigger and slower in comparison to Pre-HD, and it is the slower part that bothers me. It is the only line of the three without induction reducing traits, although reading the official forums there appear to be plans to change that.

Yellow is the most unfinished line for the LM at the moment. While I can see where the Devs intend to go with it, and the new debuffing mechanics I quite like, there are a number of major issues that need to be sorted out before this line can be considered the ‘proper’ support line.

 

Conclusion

As a whole I can say that, yes, I am enjoying the Helm’s Deep expansion. Indeed, there are some very big problems I have with it, the PvMP situation as a whole, various class issues and a number of bugs in Epic Battles among them, but even so I think that after some polishing over the next few months, this may prove to be a good solid expansion.