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The Lord Of The Rings Online: Shadows Of Angmar (PC)
By: Adam Waddilove Can this truly be the one MMO to rule them all? Let’s take a trip through Middle-earth to find out! The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar is the world's first and only MMORPG based on the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Players can experience the most famous fantasy world of all time, exploring and adventuring their heroes through the vast reaches of Middle-earth in the fight against the forces of the Dark Lord Sauron. Before we begin our analysis, here’s a list of the many things you can do in LOTRO: FEATURES Experience Classic Tolkien: Meet famous characters like Gandalf and the Fellowship. Explore legendary locations like the Prancing Pony and Rivendell! Battle deadly enemies, including Nazgûl, Trolls, and Uruk-Hai ! Defeat the Shadows of Angmar: Join with the Fellowship and fight against the forces of Sauron. Confront the forces of the Nazgûl Witch-king in the North. Protect the Shire and root out evil on Weathertop. Explore Ancient Lands: Journey through Middle-earth to collect valuable Tolkien lore, knowledge, and artifacts that bring your hero greater powers. Complete ambitious quests of courage and exploration that bestow compelling character traits. Create a unique character: Adventure as a Man, Elf, Dwarf or Hobbit. After choosing where your character hails from, select region-appropriate color palettes for skin, hair, eye color, and more. Equip yourself with items like sturdy Dwarven armor, intricate Elven mail, or weapons created with the knowledge of past Ages. Choose one of seven classes: deal massive damage as a Champion, protect your fellowship as a Guardian, beguile your enemies as a Burglar, or try a Captain, Hunter, Minstrel, or Lore-master. As your character advances and grows, customize it using Traits - interchangeable abilities which modify your character's skills to give you greater control over its specializations. Gain new Trait slots by leveling, and unlock new Traits by completing Accomplishments. Fight alone or with other players: With hundreds of hours of gameplay, there's plenty to do in LOTRO as a solo player or in a fellowship. Follow the storyline on your own or form a fellowship with other players for epic battles against creatures like Orcs, Wights, and even Balrogs. Coordinated fellowships can use group combo moves do incredible damage, heal their fellowship, or restore their energy - how they harness the power of a combo is entirely up to them to decide! LOTRO will also include a consensual Player vs. Player combat system (details forthcoming), allowing players to fight against each other for glory and honor! Create items both legendary and mundane: Farm in the Shire or forge weapons and armor in Thorin's Halls. Players can craft arms for the fight against the Dark Lord Sauron, or enjoy more peaceful activities like cooking and farming. Those who dedicate themselves to becoming master crafters can create legendary items of surpassed quality. Dramatic sequences: LOTRO offers an expansive, open world, and incorporates cinematic technology to present the player with movie-like sequences which further the storyline. Experience epic challenges like the depths of the Great Barrow, the siege of Fornost and the battle to retake Weathertop. Interact with others: Meet and socialize with thousands of other players and fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's works. Relax at the Prancing Pony in Bree, the Green Dragon Inn in the Shire, or any of the many other social centers throughout the land. Express yourself through emotes and chat - wave hello, bow, or dance with a friend!    Journey through Middle-earth: Experience an epic storyline through hundreds of quests created as a companion to The Lord of the Rings. Adventure in familiar areas as well as new ones, created for the game, which were only briefly touched on by J.R.R. Tolkien in his master works. Experience Middle-earth as never before as you swim the Brandywine River or make your way through the mists of the Old Forest. Turbine, working closely with Tolkien Enterprises, has created what Gamedaily calls "...a must have title for fans of Tolkien lore. Well that’s one mighty impressive list of features! Now to go through them in more depth.. The Game Once in a while, a groundbreaking game comes along. Be it Zelda, Oblivion or the ever-popular World of Warcraft, but LOTR is essentially where most of the ideas for these 3 great games came from, so it makes sense to mix it altogether to make an MMO. Yes there have been other LOTR games before, but none have really touched the franchise like it should have. To go through huge areas of Middle-earth and truly get lost is what we as Tolkien fans have been waiting a lifetime for. While not all of Middle-Earth is fully available at launch, I have been assured that there’s more than a possibility that we will get all the way to Mount Doom eventually, so that means we will get to explore Mordor in due time, when will that be? It’s hard to say, could be months or years but the truth is that the game has so much content to begin with, it’s going to take that long to go through it all. LOTRO is all about customization of your character, so you can be an Elf, Hobbit, Dwarf or a Man and pretty much create him/her to your specifications, through both dress sense and abilities, also there’s the great idea that you can earn abilities or “traits” that allow you to do things that your class would not be able to do, like a Champion who can only duel-wield weapons could attach a shield with the addition of a trait. It opens up the possibilities a lot more than any other MMO before it and truly is a great experience. As you go from town to town, you’ll hear a few people rejoicing with music playing their lutes and it just brings a lot of life into the world and makes the places feel quite humble and relaxing. Despite the fact that there is a lot to do in each town in terms of quests, you can just choose to chill out there or go on an adventure. Also you can hook up with upto 6 players in a fellowship to do a quest you all need to do, some can be done solo but the game recommends that a group of players is needed to be fully successful. So I bet your wondering how combat works? Well you basically just right-click on your enemy to attack, then you can click the abilities you have on your hotbar to launch stronger moves, I’m still quite a low level so I still get my butt handed to me on a regular occasion, so how does death work? In WoW you’d have to start off somewhere and have to locate your body, in this you simply get warped to a safe location. One thing that did annoy me about the combat is that if you lose a fight, the enemy’s health fully regenerates, that was a bit irritating during a tough fight that came down to 1 hit, but I overcame him in the end. In terms of performance, LOTRO stands alone. It’s visually the best MMO out there, the music is solid, and although no actors from the movies supplied voices, the people who play their voices are superb. The whole world is just so colorful, full of life and you can go essentially anywhere you can see. Despite being only a section of Middle-Earth to begin with, it’s still incredibly easy to get lost in the woods or the hills. If there was no map then I think I’d still be stuck! So now the $24 Million question. Is it better than WoW? This is one of those debated questions that differ from person to person, but for me personally this is without a doubt better than Warcraft. Everything from the world itself to the customization is just outstanding. There is so much to do and so little time to fill your life with it, the true MMO is here. WoW expanded the market but now LOTRO has taken things from every other MMORPG and improved upon them all. Sure the game suffers from a bit of lag in towns but what MMO doesn’t? Now I believe it is time for the verdict! The Verdict Since WoW came out, other MMO’s have fallen to their knees. It was always questionable if a game could take its crown and now that game has arrived. Yes the game does have a few problems when run on Vista but runs perfectly on XP. No matter what OS you are running on, you must simply get this game and prepare to lose more years of your life to a realm called Middle-earth.. I would add an extra point to the review score if I could, maybe when we get to Mordor I’ll add a special award to this review. 
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