- It ain’t WoW
That might seem flippant, but I think it’s really key to enjoying LOTRO. This isn’t Warcraft. If you go into LOTRO with a WoW mentality - skipping reading the quests, leveling as fast as possible to get to the endgame, soloing all the time - you probably won’t like LOTRO. It’s just not that kind of game. I’ve quit LOTRO on 3 separate occasions because I tried to make it like WoW. Only now, on my 4th try, do I really feel hooked and that’s probably because I haven’t played Warcraft in 6 months or more. LOTRO is really meant to be played at a sloooower pace.
As a former WoW player, I still have to force myself to slow down and read the quest text. It’s imperative as the quest stories build on top of one another. Some are dumb, but many others are quite interesting. It’s imperative to take time to explore, enjoy the graphics and watch the beautiful sunrises. In addition, I’ve found that the player-base is far more mature than in WoW, so it’s also great to try to get into groups for instances (group instances start with GB - Great Barrow - around level 20). It’s a game that you can solo in, but that may not always be preferable.
Wow is much more of an instant-gratification game. Here’s an example - and this is a very minor spoiler, so it’s not that big of a deal - to get past the gates of Moria, you’re going to need a legendary weapon. Which they’ll give to you after you run a number of quests leading up to a pretty neat conclusion. But even once you get that legendary weapon, you have to go level it up for 15 levels to get the gates of Moria open. That takes a few hours, especially with a non-DPS class. In WoW, you’d do 3 quests and have that door open. In LOTRO, you’re going to have to earn it a bit.
The areas are more muted in color as they’re more realistic. You won’t find a bunch of level high level orcs assaulting the shire like you would at the Crossroads. For the longest time I wished for “prettier” questing areas, but I’ve learned to love the Middle Earth for the scale and grandeur that Turbine created. And Moria is downright jaw-dropping.
- Class is critical
At least for me, I’ve found that the class selection in LOTRO is more of an important personal choice than in other games. It’s always a personal choice in any game, but I really struggled with classes in LOTRO. I don’t get the same visceral reaction from spells and skills that I do in WoW, so not every class interests me. I almost always play a healer in every MMO, but the Minstrel bored me to tears even as I tried to force myself to keep leveling it. I’ve found the Rune-Keeper and the Champion to be much more of my taste in this game. You just don’t get the shiny-shiny spell/combat animations like you do in WoW, so having a class that you really like to play is very important.
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Ask for help. Even though LOTRO borrows some mechanics from WoW, the games are quite different. Things like crafting may seem familiar, but there are differences that you want to be aware of early on (like the amount of mats you need or how you get good recipes). Things like deeds/traits may be entirely alien and you could easily put yourself in a situation where you have to go back and kill low-level mobs for a while just to complete one whereas if you knew about it up-front you’d do it as you go. Plus, the player-base is generally pretty awesome.
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Pick a populated server. I used to play on Windfola. There’s nobody there, even if Turbine says the population is Medium. I rarely saw other characters, never grouped (because there wasn’t a group going) and the world was pretty static. It felt more like a single-player game.
I’ve since moved to Brandywine - probably the busiest US server - and it’s a far more lively area. Groups are far easier to come by. You’ll see other adventurers all the time (which is an annoyance when you’re both going for the same mining node!). But it adds a lot to the world. Just walking by the Prancing Pony and seeing a band of players playing music is enough to make me smile.
