I’ve been intrigued by the reports of lowbie zone retooling, so last night I started up an elf warden and ran him as far as Gondamon/11th level before hitting the hay.

Overall, I think the trend of changes was good, especially for new players. However, upon reflection, I think it may have been made a little too easy, or at least, easy for too long. In an effort to prevent people from having to “run around too much” (a worthy enough goal), you’ve ended up funnelling them from Point A to Point B to Point C in a very railroadey fashion that rushes them through and seems to discourage exploration.

A few more specific points:

• Starting in Edhelion post-instance: Good. Having the meat of the story begin right there helped you feel like you didn’t have to go hunting for it, although keeping both the Edhelion area and the area at the top of the ridge as activity hubs seemed a little odd, and I notice that the Silver Deeps got dropped all together. There was no real reason to spend any time at either one once you finished the 5-10 quests they gave you, tho, and so there was no real sense of connection to either place.
• Quest-giver being different from award-giver: Mixed. Like I say, I felt like I was being rushed along from one place to another — “Hurry up, get out of here, get to the good stuff up the road.” But all of the game is “the good stuff!” A bit more of leisurely approach would be appreciated. Certainly running all the way from Frerin’s Court to Edhelion more than two or three times could get tiresome, but not coming back at all? Made me feel like I was being kicked out when I just got there.
• Caves and “deadly bloom” plants being moved: Meh. I liked having to fight my way through the goblins. Makes you learn to watch your step.
• Lost Lore quest edited out: Not so good. One of the treats for me when going back to replay some other class is seeing how different bits of story tie together — encountering the troll turned to stone in the cave as an elf, and then going back and SEEING the troll get turned to stone as a dwarf was one of those moments, now gone.
• Super-fast combat: Not so good. Creatures died so fast that my little lowbie warden barely got any gambits off, much less learned which ones where good for what. I started deliberately aggroing groups of monsters just so the combat would go long enough for me to check for myself that the fist gambit bug had actually been fixed. I’m worried that this will lead newbie players to develop poor playing skills, or at least lead to frustration later on as the difficulty of combat rapidly cranks up. (”Whoa! I turned 20th and suddenly combat takes FOREVAR.”) It’s fine in the starter instance — people expect a tutorial there anyway — but once you actually get out into Ered Luin, the challenge needs to go up a notch or two with every level of creature so that players will learn to use their skills.
• Brothers Heading West subplot: Wow, this was really gutted. I didn’t like this change at all, especially having the quest to find the leaf of the red tree edited out completely. Yes, going back and forth from Duillond to Celondim was a little tiresome, but it wasn’t that bad. The two towns are barely three minutes’ run away from each other! I always thought this quest really captured the feel of Middle-Earth beautifully, and I hate to see it being slashed just to hurry players on to the next hub a little faster. Please consider undoing this particular change.
• Stable at Thrasi’s Lodge: Good. Adding a vendor there would not be amiss, either.
• Shuffling NPC positions in Gondamon: Buh? What was the purpose of this?

I guess what it boils down to is that I see what you were aiming for, and I think generally it’s a good idea, but it went a little overboard. Spoon-feeding is good at the very start, but it needs to be ended as quickly as possible so that the process of actually learning how your character works can start — and it definitely shouldn’t come at the price of losing the exploratory and storytelling aspects that make LotRO so distinctive. The starter areas aren’t just where players level up in order to get out, they’re also where you need to hook them and make them interested in the world and the plot. Right now both of those aspects are suffering as the newbie character is herded rapidly from place to place with no reason to do anything but chase the next ring.

-The Gneech

PS: Love the new warden backpack, which has nothing to do with newbie zones, I just wanted to mention it.

PPS: I also love that the songbird now actually sings.

Big thanks to my kin-mates who made a point of being available at the designated time, and to everyone who came along or offered to. I’m so glad to have this off my to-do list — Evendim is DONE until Book 11 for me now.

Great googily-moogily but that fight is insane, and the entire quest seems to have been written by somebody who hates the players. It’s most visible in the dialog of Blue Elf-Chick, who demands you “respect” her while she treats you like dirt, then berates you for waking Narnagol when the quest WON’T LET YOU GET THE STONE ANY OTHER WAY.

Gah. Annoying quest, that is. Being present at the forging of Anduril afterwards made up for it and was very cool, tho, so I won’t complain too much. And at least now I can say that I’ve done it … and look forward to helping out other folks who were just as stuck on it as me in the future.

-The Gneech

o/`
In the middle of the Earth
in the land of the Shire
was born a scrappy little hobbit
who had a heart of fire
With a long pointy stick
and an aggro-grabbin’ yell
he gives The Boot to his enemies
and sends ‘em straight to hell, Oh!

Maedhroc!
Maedhroc Thornhollow!
Only three feet tall!
Maedhroc!
Maedhroc Thornhollow!
The most butt-kickin’ hobbit of them all!

Now hobbits are peace-lovin’
folk ya know
but sometimes there are monsters
and they’ve got to go
So Maedhroc hunkers down
and he chucks his spear
then he teaches all those goblins
’bout the Wages of Fear, Oh!

Maedhroc!
Maedhroc Thornhollow!
Only three feet tall!
Maedhroc!
Maedhroc Thornhollow!
The most butt-kickin’ hobbit of them all!

Well he battled with bandits!
He ambushed some trolls!
He riddled with Bilbo!
Some giants’ Lucky Stone he stole!
He chased down a Nazgul
beat up trees in Old Forest
Fought a giant turtle in a dead king’s tomb, Oh!

Maedhroc!
Maedhroc Thornhollow!
Only three feet tall!
Maedhroc!
Maedhroc Thornhollow!
The most butt-kickin’ hobbit of them all!
o/`

-The Gneech, with apologies to Leonard Nimoy

My first ever raid and it was to support a group 12-manning the Rift balrog with a bunch of level 60s.

Not running the rift generally, mind you, but jumping straight to the balrog and going to town.

After I’ve spent the past five months playing my Warden almost exclusively, one of the Valar Guild leaders asked me to dust off my Champion and jump straight to the balrog.

Yikes. 0.o

FWIW, we won. Galadhalion now has the Rift set shoulders.

-The Gneech

And the most current one, posted just today.

“Hullo, free peoples! Maedhroc reporting in. I hope this letter finds you safe and well; for alas I have been up to my ankles in danger.

I suppose I should begin in the Trollshaws. As you may recall, I was asked by Lord Elrond’s sons to help them find an unaccounted-for Black Rider who was swept down the Bruinen as they chased Mr. Frodo to Rivendell. Standing here at the Bruinen Ford at dawn, I can only imagine what the scene must have been like, with Frodo on Asfaloth’s back calling upon Elbereth to give him strength, while Lord Elrond and Glorfindel raced to the rescue. I am beginning to get the distinct impression that there’s much more to this world than I could have ever imagined when I was running mail in Michel Delving. Am I even the same hobbit any more?

The real danger when searching for a Nazgul is that you may just find him. I ended up joining a party of stalwart men and elves, led by Legolas Greenleaf, to confront the Black Rider as he twisted former ents into wood-trolls. It was quite heart-breaking to hew down these once-noble creatures, but they gave us little choice in the matter. The Black Rider fled, presumably to join his master in Mordor, but at least his power over the wood trolls was broken.

After reporting back to Lord Elrond, he asked me to deliver a message to a dwarf lord by the name of Gloin at a camp in the Misty Mountains. I believe he’s a relative of one of the dwarves I met in Rivendell, but I’m not sure which one. Dwarven genealogy is so byzantine that I find it confusing more than anything else. You may notice that I learned my lesson from the trip to Forochel and am now wearing a nice, warm pair of waterproof boots. I’ve already received grief from other hobbits, but I bet if they were tromping around mountaintops, they’d be doing the same!

I do have one rather surprising bit of news. That scruffy ranger “Strider” I keep running into everywhere? Apparently he’s Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and the person who would be king of Arnor, if Arnor still existed. He’s the last heir of the famous ‘Elindil’ that I keep finding all those statues of in Evendim, if you can believe it! I’m glad now that I was polite to him, for all his scruffiness. A king in exile is still a king, if you catch my drift. Anyway, he gave me a mission to respond to a distress call from some long-thought-lost Rangers in Angmar. (Angmar! Ack!) That took me far to the northeast, to a village on the very edge of the frontier. The enormous wall you see there? That’s the southern border of Angmar itself. What is the deal with that sky???

After all that, it was almost a relief to return to Evendim — tomb-robbers, wargs, killer elk and all — where at least it was occasionally warm and sunny. Unfortunately, my association with Lord Aragorn made relaxing for a while not really an option.

To re-establish the kingdom of Arnor, Lord Aragorn needs to reforge some form of ceremonial sword; I’m not real clear on the details. But to do so, he needs a particular stone that rests in the “Tomb of Elindil” (which is kind of a misnomer, because apparently Elindil died far away from Annunimas and his body was never recovered). So guess who was sent to recover the stone? Your friendly hobbit postman, of course. But there’s a little problem — the Tomb of Elindil was flooded by the “Blue Lady of Evendim” some centuries ago, so to get into it and recover the stone, I’ve got to go find her. Which means yet another swim across the lake. I wish I could just buy myself a boat!

Aww! Now that’s just cute.

Rushingdale, home of the Blue Lady. I have a bad feeling about this.

Yup, she’s blue all right! And more than a little rude, if I may say so, for all her demanding of respect. Perhaps people would be more courteous to you, Miss Uppity Water Spirit, if you didn’t sneer and snipe at guests in your own home. However, with a bit of groveling at her Oh-So-Spiritual feet, I managed to get her to raise the tomb so the stone could be recovered.

Fortunately, the rangers didn’t send me in there all alone. Of course, as soon as word got out that the tomb had raised, every grave robber in Evendim came running with a whoop and a holler.

What is THAT???

If the tomb raiders had a queen, this would be her. She was quite contemptuous of our claims to be working for the King of Arnor (which isn’t really surprising, I suppose), taking us for a rival gang of tomb-robbers I guess. A hard woman, but admirable in her own way. I regret to say that she forced us to defend ourselves, and was slain in the ensuing battle.

We finally made our way to the stone Lord Aragorn needs … only to find it a bauble in the nest of … whatever that is. 0.o It looks roughly like a turtle the size of a house, and bites like one, too. We were not able to overcome it and were eventually forced to flee empty-handed. I suppose the good news is that the stone is well-defended from tomb robbers until we can make another attempt … the bad news is that it’s just as well defended against us.

That’s all for now, my friends, and enough too! The stone still lies there in the Tomb of Elindil and we must make another attempt; but until we can muster our strength and possibly find a new tactic, I shall perform what other missions I may. I hope to write again soon.

Your friend in the Shire,
Honourary Shirriff Maedhroc Thornhollow”

-The Gneech

Last Thursday! Very close now.

January 26, 2009
“Hullo, everyone! Maedhroc here, taking a break from helping the Rangers in Annunimas to catch up on my correspondence. I should warn you now, this letter will follow a theme of the strange creatures of Middle-earth.

I was attacked by a wolf in Evendim — a common occurrence in that overrun land — when one of the peculiar elk of this region just wandered through the fight, apparently completely oblivious to our presence. This led me to two questions: first, what kind of insane elk wanders through fights? And second, what kind of insane wolf fights hobbits to the death when there’s a nice, juicy, and apparently clueless elk right there to eat?

One of my recent bounty-hunting trips out of Ost Forod took me so far to the north that I decided to take a detour and see some of the sights around the bay of Forochel. It was certainly beautiful, but I admit it: my toes were cold.

I’d heard tales of the northern lights, but that doesn’t prepare you for the reality of it. I never thought I’d see anything as breathtaking as a rainbow in the Shire, but I may just have been wrong about that.

It’s an oliphaunt! A real, live oliphaunt! That alone made it worth the trip.

Oh! I finally saved up enough gold to afford a faster pony than the rather sad (if pretty) creature I had before, but I had to go back to Bree to get it. I took a boat from Forochel down to Ered Luin rather than make the rather long overland trip back through Evendim, and stopped at a mountain stream to do some fishing. And yes, my toes were still cold.

Here’s my pony! I named him Paladin, after Thain Paladin Took of the Shire, old Pippin’s father. Splendid chap. And a splendid pony.

Recently I met a party of dwarves, including two who were in the Valar Guild, who asked me to accompany them on a mission for Elrohir, son of Lord Elrond, to search for a Black Rider in the Trollshaws. This mission took us to meet Glorfindel, an elf lord of amazing age and power, and eventually we wound up looking for an Ent in a valley near Rivendell called “Giant Valley,” which was infested with all sorts of fell creatures, such as these trolls we are just about to attack.

Here’s another of the fell creatures in Giant Valley, a horrible, winged, fire-breathing lizard! In my book that spells “dragon,” but my dwarven companions insisted that this was not a “true” dragon, but rather a “drake.” I don’t know what makes the difference, but it was certainly horrible whatever it was. I was very surprised when I knocked it senseless by giving it The Boot!

So … I guess this is why it’s called “Giant Valley,” eh?

Eventually, it was time to return to Evendim, which I did via the North Downs. While tramping through the wilds, I came upon an old and all-but-forgotten beacon, probably dating all the way back to the glory days of Arnor, and decided to climb up it just for fun. Eat your heart out, Pippin Took!

That’s all for now. I hope to write again soon!

Your friend in the Shire,
Honorary Shirriff Maedhroc Thornhollow”

-The Gneech