What was once great has been lost

User Rating: 4.5 | The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria PC
By oin | Review Date:
The Lord of The Rings Online: Mines of Moria is the first expansion to Turbines hit MMORPG Lord of The Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, it is for all intents and purposes a letdown. I gave it time and really hoped it would live up to its predecessor but it didn't. First of all LOTRO was was originally advertised as a causal MMO and it succeeded in this for its first year, there was a PvsP area separate from the PvsE to prevent the ganking that often drives away causal players from MMO's, Gear Gating despised by many and liked by few was absent which also catered to the causal crowd, there were raids but those while difficult were fun and accessible for any player, the absents of a huge gap between raid, PvsP, quest, and crafted gear was refreshing and kept things civil when it came to participating in any of the previously mention areas. Now having established all these things that made the game a success, the folks at Turbine decided to release "The Mines of Moria" expansion. The hype behind this expansion included; two classes, the infamous Mines of Moria from Tolkien's books, a new 12-man raid, a weapons system that boasted a weapon that grow with the player, a crafters guild reputation system, and a expansion of the epic story line. What we got was two classes, one of which was very interesting the other extremely underpowered then buffed to being extremely overpowered, The Mines area of the game caused pathway issues that made killing of made tough if not imposable, a real 12-man raid did not appear till after 6 months of the expansions release and the inclusion of two boss arenas only aggravated the issue, The new weapons did grow but after a character level or two became obsolete, the before said growth system made weapon makers near useless not to mention the introduction of gated content made armour crafter rare and far between, the epic storyline well ok they did do this right.
Now one of the expansions saving graces is that it's graphically beautiful, the world builders have outdone themselves, so have the story tellers and quest designers. And the major thing that absolutely killed this game was the way Turbine implemented, a number of 6-man Instances which have a prerequisite hard mode that must be completed before you can acquire a single piece of "Radiance Gear" which was required for one of the Boss instances and the late 12-man raid. These instances took one hour plus to complete and a estimated 42 total runs at minimum to acquire a single piece of gear times that by seven and you are ready to raid, there are no crafted, quested for, or PvsP equivalent. Then there's the boasted "Legendary Item System" Items that grow with you, nope you will have one for about one level then you will replace it then when you hit level 60 you will be grinding out the boss instances for the really good Legendary Items, this grind is made even more aggravating by the lottery that the LI system is, meaning that even if you get one of these items, the traits that the item gets could be garbage and you end up back at the beginning.
I gave this expansion 7 months in which there was 2 major updates with very few patches for bugs and the grievances of those that where here when this game started have be ignored, the whole gear gating thing has brought the elitist from other MMO's which have driven away the causal crowd that the game was originally advertised to. So I guess what I'm saying is what made this game unique has been lost and LOTRO is now just another MMO in a sea of MMO's, there's nothing left that would set this game apart from WOW, AoC, or EQ.

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