LOTRO: Life as a Warg Part 1

In Lord of the Rings Online Monster Play, I spend most of my time as a warg. A warg is a wolf like creature who's most important trait is stealth. I also have the ability to sprint for a short time every 5-10 minutes. Other than that, theres some attack skills and a slow, nothing very impressive though. My defensive stats are pretty dismal, even though I have equipped traits that improved them a bit.

Running around that map would be very tedious, so one of the first things I did was work on getting maps to various locations. You get these by doing quests (10 for the first grade of map, Crude). The Crude map will take you near your destination and is on a 30 minute timer. All of the crude maps are linked to the same timer. As a warg I can travel relatively safely, so walking to a location isn't a big deal. Other creep classes do not have that luxury and often get jumped by freeps trying to get places. I am currently working on the oor level of maps, which will get me closer to my destination, shorter cooldown and be on their own timer.

Our opponents, freeps, are allowed to bring their horses into the zone, so they can just ride quickly from place to place. This is a pretty big advantage considering the effort we have to through to get our maps. They can be knocked off their horse, but it doesn't stun them as I think it should. But oh well, maybe some day.

Due to our speed and stealth, we wargs are a hit and run class. Generally we approach in stealth and get behind the enemy. Directional damage is enabled, so attacking from the rear is better. Pounce is usually the first attack used, as it will stun the enemy for 5 seconds. If you enemy is a burglar, pounce may do more harm than good. Burglars have an skill that when stunned, they gain health and a big evade bonus. While stunned it is a good idea to claw and apply Crippling Bite (which will slow them).

LOTRO: PVP Intro

Lord of the Rings Online is primarily a Pve game, but they do provide a mechanism for player vs player combat. There is a region/map called the Ettermoons where PvP takes place. Lotro calls it Monster vs Player. When your character reaches level 40, they are able to enter the Ettermoons. Also, when your character reaches level 10, they have the option of creating a Monster to play in the Ettermoons. This Monster (called creeps) starts out at Level 50, so you can somewhat compete with the players (called freeps). There are 5 different Monster classes:

Warg: Wolf, able to stealth and have bursts of speed
Warleader: Able to Heal and Rez people, but also a fighter
Blackarrow: Ranged bow and arrow attacker
Weaver: Spider, ranged poison attacks and able to web (root)
Reaver: Your pure fighter class, gets in close

The Ettermoons is a persistent region with several castles and areas for either side to capture. It is also filled with NPC animals and soldiers from each side for you to fight. So if you leave with your side owning the map, you may come back and find you lost it.

Once you create a monster, you need to advance him in rank in order to unlock new skills and improvements. Rank is increased by getting Infamy and Infamy is gained by killing a freep. Character skills and improvements are purchased with Destiny Points (DP). You earn DP by completing various quests and killing NPC's in the Ettermoons.

Destiny Points can also be used on your player character to buy temporary buff (i.e. rested XP). This and loot are two reasons why player characters choose to enter the Ettermoons.

I find the PvP pretty interesting and play it a lot now, so more articles will follow.

Lord of the Rings Online - Intro Part I

I have been playing Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) for a little over a month. So far I think it is a pretty decent game. However it does suffer from the same drawbacks of games like World of Warcraft (WoW). There are some areas that it has improved on though.

LOTRO has a great story/lore to work from. There is a huge amount of source material to draw from, which should allow them to keep adding content for a long time. In a MMORPG, content is one of the most important aspects of the game, so they do have that going for it. Since the game is pretty new still, there is not a huge amount yet. Turbine, the people who made the game, recently released Book 9 (Books are their updates) which added a new area and quests. I was pretty impressed who soon after release the new content came, hopefully they keep it up.

Since they have all of this content to draw from, they introduced an epic quest line. It is important to note that you do not play a hero like Frodo and the rest of the fellowship. You are a mostly normal character just trying to help out. The epic quests will have you involved in their adventures. I like these, since it gives you a felling of being apart of something larger and your not just grinding. Besides the epic quests, there are numerous side quests.

Some of the side quests are not your normal 'kill 10 wolves' types. For example, in the Shire you are tasked to deliver mail without being seen by 'nosey' hobbits. There are other like that too, which make for a nice change of pace. Most of the quests seem to be kill/gather types though.

Part 2 will cover traits, deeds and more...