Observations from your character’s perspective (non-dialogue).

Occasionally archaic language (older use of English words and spelling variants).

The writers don’t give us a watered-down version that’s more suitable for console audiences ( Shadow of Mordor this is not). So we’re drinking from the lore hose at a fairly heavy rate with some of these quests. We’re learning, a bit at a time - or a massive chunk at a time, considering the length of the quest text. But save for the rare uber-lore nerd among us, we don’t know all. I suspect that a lot of us are further along on the spectrum of a serious fan than not. On the spectrum of Tolkien fandom, I’d be somewhere deeper than “casual Peter Jackson movie-watcher” but not quite as in it as “sit down and let me tell you the lineage of Bilbo’s family on both sides lecturer.” The game has certainly helped me understand the world of the books through immediate context, and I have attested that going back to read the Lord of the Rings after playing the MMO is a pretty enriching experience now that I have visual landmarks to go with it.Īs one of the main appeals of the game, the lore is a big pull for many players. It’s a feature that works both for and against the game, in that it provides a “realness” to Middle-earth that other MMOs simply don’t have, but that it also requires the mother of all flow charts and timelines to keep track of who’s who, what’s what, and when what happened. Why am I bringing this up? Because as a game that attempts to be faithful to the books and IP, LOTRO is saturated in lore that is even greater than a pretty expansive MMORPG.

The stories of the books piggy-backed on the enormous world that he made and are almost - but not quite! - incidental to that monumental achievement. His attention to detail was such that it extended into his favorite realm of linguistics (which included song). Tolkien was a master world-builder, and whether or not you actually like his worlds, you can’t deny that the man put a ton of effort into creating full-fledged histories of fictitious peoples, places, and countries. For me, I have to admit that while I’m a reader and have a fairly good (but not perfect) memory for names and details, these quests can lose me. In short, Lord of the Rings Online’s quests can be either a burden or a blessing, depending on the type of player you are. Yet these quests offer excellent writing and a deep connection to lore, which is not something you always get in such games. If you’re not a reader, you will find yourself crit for a couple thousand words, some of which are clearly made up on the spot. While there are some quests that kick off with only a brief paragraph or two, more often than not, you’re going to encounter walls of text that are higher and mightier than those guarding Helm’s Deep. Not that this is a bad thing *at all*, but it's certainly why they decided to put it in at this time.Play LOTRO for freeIt can actually be a shock for the average MMO player who was raised on bite-sized quest instructions to encounter the infamous blue box of LOTRO’s bequeathals.

It certainly wasn't a random choice, so in essence, they were inspired by it and took it. The one with the relic in the center is identical to the new BG they are planning-they saw it worked very well for Rift and decided to put it in their game. Up to where I played in rift before my computer started to reject it for some reason (could play 2 weeks then started to lag out like hell as soon as I logged in) the only BGs I remember were CTF and relic, which also goes for WAR, so imo it's not even a matter of being inspired by, it's just a general mechanic, pretty much every team vs team based game, be it a shooter an rpg or even some rts have atleast CTF, KotH/base domination and relic of some sorts. You see a good idea and you think you can do it better? By all means, try. I don't mean copy in a harsh way, to clarify I mean they were inspired by.

Creating text blocks in lotro