Happy 2 year anniversary LOTRO! How time flies, it has been two years since this game has launched. The game has had many changes, updates and one expansion. In order to celebrate this anniversary Turbine is giving all former subscribers a free welcome back period starting April 24 till April 30th. Not only do you get to play about a week for free but you also get a 25% XP bonus for the entire time! This is a great reason to check out some of the new changes to the game as well as taking advantage of the XP bonus.
I was in the beta test for LOTRO, and loved the game at the time. I stuck with it for about one and half years. One of my big problems with the game at the time was that I could not find any quest objectives. The quests where written too obscure and would not clearly give you directions.
The funny thing is, I would ask for help and the community in the game was very helpful. Unfortunately the directions I would receive made no sense. These people were very friendly and helpful, as well as very knowledgeable in regards to Tolkien lore.
They would give me directions based on the names in books, for example; I would ask for a particular quest location, they would respond something like this, “follow the Brandywine river south to erun liund then go north at Farmer Gareth’s field, there you will find your goal” (sorry if I massacred or just made up the names it has been a long time since I played). At the time my map was not explored or I could not possibly locate the names they gave me on the maps. Bless their lore rich hearts but they were of no help.
Recently LOTRO has added a quest tracker into the game. This is a big improvement to their obscure quest writing. I had the chance try this out during their last free time event. I was very impressed with the feature. Questing was once again possible, objectives are easy to track and find.
I am looking forward to setting some time aside, dusting off the old crossbow and cloak then heading out into the wilds of Middle Earth to lay waste to evil. The world is still stunningly beautiful, the player housing is very well implemented, and the community is still pretty damn awesome. If you are a former subscriber go visit Middle Earth once again, you might like what they have done with the place.
Update: We also received a special Gollum screenshot from Turbine to commemorate the 2nd anniversary.
That was probably my favorite thing about LoTRO that you had to actually find the quests yourself. I know a lot of ppl hated it, but I feel it added to the game and fits perfectly for a LoTR MMO.