Weaving the Threads Together

So far, I have played through almost all of the Prologue, but I have not yet traveled to the Shire to begin the part of the journey that follows in Frodo’s footsteps. As an Elf, I began my experiences in LOTRO hundreds of years before the events of the Fellowship, fighting not against Orcs and Sauron, but against Dwarves. They had attacked Edhelion, the city where my character, Elyon, lived, and I was able to take part in the battle and witness the destruction of her home. Then, the story moved forward to the ‘present’ day–the time period where LotR takes place. A group of elves, including Elyon, had returned to the ruins of Edhelion, hoping to bring back to the place some of its former glory, but after finding some dwarven weapons among the goblins scurrying about the place, she was dispatched to the court of the dwarf Frerir, a friend of the Elves (but not of the Dourhands, another dwarven faction that ruled the area).  After helping the dwarves with various preparations for winter (such as cutting lumber and skinning auroch hides) and weeding out some problematic inhabitants that the Dourhands were not taking care of (mainly poisonous Skorgrim’s Bloom flowers and goblins), Elyon was able to meet up with Elrohir, a son of Elrond, who had discovered that the Dourhands were attempting to bring Skorgrim, their dead leader, back to life in exchange for allying themselves with the forces of Angmar. Elyon joined forces with Frerir’s dwarves to stop this from happening. Tolkien only knows what comes next…

Overall, I felt that the experiences my elf went through were very relatable to the world of LotR, with a few exceptions. First of all, the fact that Elyon was present at the destruction of Edhelion really made her feel like a real elf, who would have memories from hundreds of years back (as Elrond does of the first defeat of Sauron). The NPCs (non-player characters) were all concerned about the land, as elves are, and though they gave me tasks to do, the tasks (like clearing out the slugs from the pool) made sense until I ‘discovered’ the dead goblins with the dwarven axes. After the journey to Frerir’s court, however, the side quests made very little sense. If there was such urgency in finding out what the Dourhand dwarves were up to, why would I chop firewood and make auroch jerky? The dwarves would be perfectly capable of such tasks themselves, and if Elyon’s mission were really so urgent, she would not be asked to do such mundane jobs. So, that sort of broke the nice storyline I was playing out, though I did see the need for her to get experience fighting monsters and for her to level up a bit before leaving the Prologue for the ‘real world.’ The rules of the game interfered with the suspension of disbelief I was experiencing at the time. Or, not exactly the rules, but the necessary mechanics of playing a game interfered with the flow of the story and thus with my suspension of disbelief.

At first, there was almost no connection to the events of LotR, but as Elyon progressed in the storyline I began to see more and more threads connecting her journey to the one depicted in the book. At first, the only similarities were the fact that elves and dwarves had ancient grudges, and that the elves were struggling with living in Middle Earth (as evidenced by the sad attempt to rebuild Edhelion). Basically, she was living in the same world as Frodo and the Fellowship, and that was it. Then, there was Elrohir, seen only a couple of times in the book, but still a part of it, and the alliance of the Dourhand dwarves with Angmar–a province of evil, allied with Mordor and home of the Witch-King in LotR. So, as the journey went on, Elyon’s seemingly separate path began to merge with that of the Fellowship–a common desire to see the Free Peoples survive and to defeat the forces of darkness. The quest to stop the Dourhands shows the largest leap yet towards the merging of the storylines of Elyon and the Fellowship, as confronting any sort of force from Angmar would directly relate to confronting the forces of Mordor. Now, I just have to keep playing and find out what’s next on Elyon’s journey through the Third Age of Middle Earth.

Dacia

Creative License Done Well

The quests in the Prologue and Epic Book 1 were a pretty novel idea.  I’ve never played an MMO that followed any sort of storyline.  Oh, well I guess there was Guild Wars.  Not my favorite MMO by far.  That game forced you to follow the story line throughout its progression and all the areas where you would kill monsters et. al. were completely instanced.  The only place you actually got to play with everyone were in the cities.  And there’s never anything going on there.  All that, and the fact that your character seemed rooted to the ground (there wasn’t any jump function at all!) and the paths throughout the game were very set in stone, made for a relatively unenjoyable MMO experience.

But LOTRO does very well to remedy that.  In LOTRO, there is much less of the feeling that you are constantly following a set storyline.  Ultimately, if you want to get anywhere, you do have to follow the storyline, but it’s added into the game as an element that feels somewhat like a choice.  This, combined with the fact that you do get to jump and go almost anywhere you like, makes for a good experience.

The Prologue and Epic Book 1 quests are an interesting and creative addition to Tolkien’s original story.  The major problem that the game developers faced when creating this game was the application of an MMO gamespace onto a “single-player” storyline.  They had to mesh the choices and customization of an MMO and the storyline of Tolkien’s works.  They had to realize that no one could be Frodo, Gandalf, Strider, etc. because everyone creates their own personal character, their own personal identity.  So they decided to add the player’s character as someone who works in the background of the Fellowship and main story, so, at least for the first time playing, it doesn’t feel as though the player is following a set story that everyone already knows.  This also gives the developers some creative license, as well as protection from the hard-core fans that would rip the developers for the smallest lack of similarity if they were to follow the main story.  And while the developers do pretty well recreating the story from the original work, their strength lies in the creation of the world in which the alternate story takes place.  It may be somewhat simplified from the novel to facilitate player comprehension, but almost anywhere that you can think of from the LOTR series, or any of Tolkien’s other works for that matter, you can go to in the game.  Which in my opinion is pretty darn cool.

Tyler Gilcrest