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MMO's eh? The genre has become somewhat devalued of late. World of Warcraft is highly accomplished but tragically a victim of its own success and crack-addict mechanic, populated by brats who cry out 'noob!' and play the same instance again and again with fanatical devotion to harvest pointless trinkets. Age of Conan proved itself to be a buggy mess with a world where only the beginning stages were properly fleshed out. Tabula Rasa severely lacked in content and has only months to live. Star Wars: Galaxies managed to destroy itself with every new bugged and conceptually terrible expansion. Eve Online, the one unique MMO, is a cold, glittering but awesome creation that terrifies all who are not already locked in its chill but compelling embrace.
Of future MMO's, only Warhammer Online looks promising, but seems doomed to tragically inherit WoW's griping, childish playerbase.
So what of Lord of the Rings Online, the only relatively unhyped MMO? The one magazines tend to gloss over in side-column soundbites? The one that consistently fails to get comments flowing in Eurogamer talkbacks? The supposed remora fish in the teeth of the giant shark that is World of Warcraft?
The fact is that it's pretty damn good.
You see, if you spend more than a few hours every week on an MMO, say at most an hour a night on average, then you are utterly wasting your life. But the majority of MMO's are designed to cunningly hoodwink you into thinking that you are achieving things. That time invested equals some sort of tangible reward in lieu of fun that makes it all worthwhile. It's why MMO players get so bitter and hateful in teams, as if you rob them of a chance of a shiny-coloured bauble, you're robbing them of the single item that says, "this is worth your time."
Lord of the Rings Online basically says, 'here's a nicely crafted story, a beautiful world, a polished interface and some things to beat up. Go explore.' It then adds, 'if you're here to do raiding for items, you're a fucking idiot.' And then, just to be sure, it further goes on to say, 'and if you measure your dick by how quickly you're able to kill off other players, or how shiny your armour is, or how quickly you can get to the top level, then get to fucking fuck.'
The most frequent criticism of LotR:O by idiots is that it doesn't have a proper endgame. An 'endgame' apparently is a bundle of big pointless caverns where you hit things repeatedly in the hope you'll get lucky on a tiny percentage chance that the big bad thing you're whaling on for hours at a time will deign to drop a new shiny thing. This is akin to wishing that a Star Trek movie or (ironically!) super-long Lord of the Rings had another half hour bit at the end which you sit through pressing a random combination of buttons on the remote control which might or might not unlock an easter egg involving an image of Captain Picard or Ian McKellen wearing one of a variety of unusual hats. Curiously, MMO players seem to enjoy this, and will happily wait ages for an interesting new storyline or expansion pack if they can have ten or so caverns of hitting things and snarling at each other.
LotR:O is an attempt to get away from that. Though it shares practically the same interface and play mechanics as Warcraft (press numbered buttons in right order to kill big things, stab numbered buttons randomly while reading newspaper to kill little things) it differs markedly on execution. Lordy Lordy Online is about the journey.
In most MMO's, bragging rights are over how many level 50's you have. Lordy Lordy begs you not to burn through the world but to savour the journey. Of all MMO's it's the only one with quest descriptions that I actually enjoy reading. True, the quests nearly all revolve around the 'kill x number of beasties, escort idiot child, pull lever, deliver message' quartet, but the game wraps these up in little stories, an epic scope and breezy manner. And for once the lore works in the game's favour. Scary ghosts turn out to be haunted oathbreaker spirits that aid you against fleshy enemies. A nightmarish rumour of a creature snatching babies from cradles and devouring them, after a bit of spying, turns out to be Gollum. ("Back from Thailand I hear," - the Express) Hobbits are fat and stupid and have you delivering pies against the clock, forcing you to try short-cuts and sneak past corpulent pie-thiefs.
And the world looks beautiful. On first assessment, Bree and the Shire feel vast. On second glance, it seems a little too small. With Buckleberry Ferry a stroll-for-a-piss away from the bridge, Frodo and company should have been by rights trampelled to death on the other bank or singing falsetto in Barad-Balls. But pretty quickly you realise the world is just the right size, conveying a sense of the Shire and Bree being far away from the war and a thriving community, whilst having quickly managable distances and an undercurrent of dark rumours and stealthy evil. If you're a fan of the books, seeing locations such as Bag-End and the Barrowdowns is a real pleasure. If not, then the art design is enough to win you over. The first glimpse of Weathertop, a vast hill with a ruined fort atop it, is genuinely impressive. Likewise is the massive Thorin's Hall with the faces of short bearded people carved out of rock on a massive scale. Old towers loom over you. Bodies impaled on spikes and rotting leather tents form feculent goblin encampments. There's a room entirely full of cats, for some reason.
Probably the best moment was walking past some trees in the old forest in all innocence, only to leap out of my chair when they suddenly stand up and chase after me.
"We get it," you say. "They've put a lot of time into the world, but its still about collecting loot and dealing with idiots."
Well, not really. Because there's no endgame or (gngh) 'uber-loot' there's no swathe of twats that you get in WoW. Everyone is pretty nice to each other and newcomers, and there's an equal footing. Better still, instead of end-game content, the developers regularily at the rate of every few months release big new zones to explore with new quests, new monsters and new stories. These new zones are well thought out, introduce new elements both graphical and gameplay wise and extend the epic story.
Ah yes, epic story. As well as normal quests you get big quests. This is the big plot that contains all the best scripted adventures. Through these you get to team up with characters from the books, do a more gripping and varied diet of killing and running away and link your efforts in closely with those of the fellowship. The Epic Story is a thread that will see you progress naturally from the Shire to Rivendell, defeat the evil Witch King's army, and eventually move on to Moria. It's a satisfying experience. And though you can buy things such as houses, have a kinship, craft (another thing I've never understood the attraction of, but hey, you can ignore it to no loss whatsoever), go fishing and learn to play any tune you want on an instrument through a rather toppo in game music-mode, its the story and exploration and nice people you meet that you'll play through for. Not for any nebulous sense of 'achievement'.
Y'see, the pretence of achievement in MMO's fails because just by grinding anyone can get there. The closest Lordy Lordy comes is through the - agh - 'Achievements' system. Basically find a string of themed places and unlock a slightly better stat with a shiny name. Kill so many creatures or complete so many quests and do the same. The names are quite nice to have hovering over you, if actually as pointless as the minor stat increases. What makes it acceptable is that it stays in the background. You're out slaying in the pursuit of a quest and suddenly the game informs you that you are the North Down's 'Raper of Wargs' or something and you feel cheery for a spell. Of course, you can track your progress and grind for them, but then you'd be a hateful idiot. It's all gravy to the feeling of advancing through a world and living a story. And because this emphasis is on experiencing rather than achieving, the game works. Because frankly, a game that has to rely on repeated endless number key pressing is pretty terrible.
So essentially what I'm saying is that Lordy Lordy masks the flaws of the medium so well that it is the best MMO. Played as it should be, in spurts of an hour or two throughout the week, it becomes a real pleasure to amble through the world. If you rush through it, or grind it, or spend ages at the end faffing about obsessing about uber-loot you're spitting at the spirit of the game.
So if you must play an MMO, Lordy Lordy is the one to play. Because it has far fewer cretins. And isn't about hateful collecting. And keeps giving you new huge and mysterious places to explore. And is rather pretty and immersive and the story, dialogue, settings and atmospherics fool you into forgetting that you're pressing buttons in a set order again and again to win.
Verdict: Eve Online remains the only MMO to reward cunning, intelligence and offer a true sense of achievemnt. However, Eve Online will also destroy your life. So try Lordy Lordy if you want a life, but still want online vast-o-world fun.
9/10 (for an MMO)
8/10 (in the grander scheme of things)
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I mean, fucking spaceships man. With lasers that go PEW PEW PEW.
