Turbine The Lord of the Rings Online

This is a review of the massive multiplayer online game. I was excited to hear about this game years ago, but never got a chance to play it until now. Its is free to play, but with all free to play games it also means you have to pay to win. Luckily you can actually be able to play the game without paying a cent, but it is very time consuming.

The game takes up about 9-10GB of space, it loads up pretty fast and has many servers to choose from. The story of the game is basically you helping to fight evil to help the main characters. You do meet them and sometime fight alongside with them. This game is mostly a solo game, but there are instances which you have to be in a group. However you can skip/ignore them if you do not want to go through the trouble of finding people.

Available races to create characters from are Human, Elf, Hobbit, and Dwarf. Each race has its own different beginning but the human and hobbit has a shared starting area. While the dwarves and elves have their own starting area. After reaching about level 6 you should be done with the main story you are transported to your respected race home area. The dwarves and elves start in Ered Luin, the hobbits start in the Shire, and humans start in Archet which is near Bree. All these areas are next to each other and you can do the quests in all three of these areas. You also have the typical classes of any mmorpg games. There are seven to choose from. There is also the option of playing as a monster for Sauron too, but I haven’t tried so I can’t say anything about it.

The free account allows you to play area levels 1-30 of Ered Luin, Shire, Bree, and Lone Lands. You wil have to have enough Turbine points to buy quests of other areas. You can go to these areas and kills monsters, but you can do quests there. The only quest you can do are ones related to the Epic story quests which have level gaps so you will need to somehow level up. Quests give you the most experience points. Throughout the game you can trigger Deeds, which asks you to complete a certain number of kills or skill usage to gain a trait, title, and/ or Turbine points. The points are what you should be after. There are also exploration Deeds which you just go find certain landmarks which is easy, but sometimes these areas have alot of monsters so you may struggle with that. The beginning ones are easy, but as you get higher in the levels these Deeds become harder in just the numbers. For example, in The Shire you can get 5 Turbine points for killing 30 monsters, but when you hit in level 30s you have to kill 120 monsters to get 5 TP. So its much better to just do Deeds in the beginning areas over and over with new characters than to keep a couple characters and do deeds as you levels.

There are 3 types of accounts which you can learn on their website. For Free accounts you will eventually have to use you hard earned points for things like getting rid of the Gold cap so you have hold more than 3 Gold, and a Horse skill so you can ride a horse the main use of transportation. You can only have 2 characters in one server but you can fill those up in many servers they have. There is also guilds which they call Kinship and groups are called Fellowships. You also equip certain traits to you character through a Bard to your characters to help boost stats but you have to purchase slots if you want to have more than 2. The game also have areas for housing which you will learn about in the game. You buy a house and can decorate it inside and on the lawn. They give you certain slots to put in stuff so you can’t freely put things anywhere you want. You will have to pay a small amount for maintenance too which you can pay ahead of time. You can have a profession and learn crafting which is not necessarily important. You can simply buy stuff people made through the Auction which is what I do. The game also has a Notary, and Barter system. And the ability to build reputation for your character. Having a high reputation gives you access to certain buildings that have npcs that sell items.

Overall, I’ve been playing this game for a few months and have fairly enjoyed it. Its fun, not overly difficult and can play fine alone. I think its worth trying if you’re a fan of LOTR. Sure it may not look exactly like the movie but it doesn’t stray far from it.