Opinion: First Day Out of the Stables

Forth, Eorlingas!

As I hope our readers are aware: yesterday was the official launch of Lord of the Rings Online: Riders of Rohan. In my estimation it was probably the single most anticipated release this game will ever see. LOTRO’s first expansion Mines of Moria was huge, and brought some game-changing systems with it – most notably legendary items. The next two expansions, Siege of Mirkwood and Rise of Isengard; brought further level cap increases but not a whole lot of game changing or enhancing systems.

Many people who I’ve spoken with or players who have made posts on the forums have suggested Rohan was the expansion they wanted most. Even for myself – it was late May of 2007 when LOTRO was just a month old – I was running around in Angmar and thought “This game needs mounted combat!” I’ve been waiting for it ever since.

The realm of Rohan is very iconic in Tolkien’s universe. It is the first land we see or read about when the War of the Ring is really kicking off. For some reason, be it love for their culture, love of horses, or whatever else it may be; people love Rohan. Turbine themselves have stated that this was the one zone they had to get right. They split the map up into two halves and only just released the eastern bit so that they can spend the time the zone deserves on making it right.

I played around in the beta, but for the first time last night I actually observed and saw some of the parts of Rohan that Turbine has finally given us. Overall my general first impressions and feeling for the expansion are good. I feel it delivers most everything I’ve wanted, and there is no mistaking that the good folks at Turbine gave the expansion everything they had to make Rohan the biggest and best expansion we’ve seen so far in the Lord of the Rings Online.

Out of the stables

After the rush home (where I may have been issued a speeding ticket from a camera cop…)  Mossie and I sat down for dinner, ate quickly and then ran upstairs to fire up Riders of Rohan. This is the first time I’ve paid any attention to the quest dialog in the zone, as I purposefully ignored it during beta. This is also the first time I’ve done any real exploring and admiring of the landscape, and Mossie’s first time seeing any of it. We took our time working towards Langhold and beyond to Harwick and eventually received our new warsteeds.

Immediately upon earning my steed I opened up the Mounted Combat Panel to do some customization. My Hunter Sigrum would have the cosmetics from the Legendary pre-order, as well as the Steed of the Hunter stuff. As you can see in the shot above, there was a slight bit of mix and match done, putting the Steed of the Eastemnet leggings on, with the rest belonging to the Steed of the Hunter.

It was at this point that I came across my first and biggest disappointment with the game. The cost of the color packs in the LOTRO Store. Each pack of four colors costs 595 Turbine points and are on a per-character basis. One month of the VIP awarded Turbine Points do not even cover a single color pack. I call this highway robbery. It is my understanding that the hide, tail and gear color packs can not even be earned during questing or in warband boxes. I knew these would be available on the store, but I have to say those prices are cost prohibitive and basically insane. They do throw you a bit of a bone for cosmetic gear colors. If you have some horse-clothes that are able to be colored, you get a handful of colors to choose from at no cost.

What business does an elf, a man, and a dwarf have in the Riddermark?

In this case it happened to be a Hobbit and a Dwarf having business in the Riddermark. After the tutorial, Mossie and I set out from Harwick on various quests that took us to another small Rohirrim camp and past some Warbands. These Warbands introduced my only other gripe with the expansion so far.

Mossie is a Warden and as such was performing tanking duty while I was burning mobs down with my bow. With neither of us fully knowing what to expect we did things the way we normally would, not issuing attention to making sure we’ve each tapped any given mob to make sure we each receive credit.

You see, the Open Tapping system affects fellowed players as well. If I kill something and the other members of my group don’t tap it, they don’t get quest credit. Mossie had essentially tanked all the adds while I kited and melt down the Warband leader. She didn’t tap him, and therefore did not get credit towards quest completion.

I would guess she likely did more work towards eliminating the Warband than I did, but didn’t get to turn in the quest because of how the system affects fellowships. This is something I think really needs to be addressed.

Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden!

Overall, I am happy with the expansion so far. One personal gripe and one glaring issue aside, Rohan has so far delivered what I was expecting. Sure, we are only a day in, but it is enough for first impressions. Mounted Combat is every bit of fun that I was hoping for and after a few small kinks are worked out, I think it will be a great system.

The Eastemnet itself is beautiful. The attention to detail that can be found in each zone, every building and each individual mead hall is outstanding. Looking at the NPCs, you can tell a lot of time and care was put into their appearances – compare them to an NPC you might find in Bree and see the difference!

There were a number of small little things that made the update great too. It seems people are getting a free expansion to wardrobe slots, from a base of 20 to 50 slots. Small things like the Legendary Bridle being equipped to the Mounted Combat panel and out of the inventory bag, saving precious space is a plus. Then you have the redesigned new item animation to make new inventory items more visible in the bags – great stuff, that.

We’ll see you folks on the plains of the Riddermark!

 

***UPDATE***

From Sapience on the Known Issues thread:

VIPs were incorrectly awarded an additional 20 shared wardrobe slots with Update 8. Due to this error several store offers for shared storage are not working correctly for VIPs and have been disabled. This issue will be resolved in Update 8.1. The additional slots will be removed from VIPs and the correct store offers returned to the LOTRO Store. We strongly encourage all VIPS to not use the additional slots as items stored in those slots may become unavailable when 8.1 goes live.

It seems the bonus of the wardrobe expansion was a bug, and they’ll be taking the extra slots away. The sour taste in my mouth regarding the cost of warsteed color packs has just gotten worse.