Re-reviewing the biggest MMOs out there…

Just because the oldest in our second chapter of ReSpawn Point has been around for a little over two years, it doesn’t mean that we’re premature in re-reviewing them. These are high-profile subscription MMOs with massive investment behind them, and all three have been forced to adapt to a young and evolving market. It’s ridiculous to set the population expectations of a fledging MMO at anywhere near that of World Of Warcraft’s burgeoning world, so to achieve a stable population at a profitable level is an achievement in itself.

Lord Of The Rings Online, Warhammer Online and Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures have each matured from their early incarnations, by way of content and community; they’ve built on the original releases with multiple patches that have addressed major problems, by adding both retail and free download expansions and striving to improve on features that create a more communal game (which is the point of an MMO, after all). Notably, each has major licensing in common, and though the publishers will strive to point out the differences, they derive much from the refinements that Blizzard’s mega-MMORPG made to the old model. These have undoubtedly been major contributing factors to their survival through the teething period and subsequent success.

ReSpawn Point isn’t about reviewing these games in the conventional way and revising the original scores. Rather, it’s to take a second look at some of the biggest games in the most dynamic sector of the industry; those that have changed significantly since their release.

LOTR Online: Shadows Of Angmar
Two years on and battle against Sauron is far from done
Details:
GENRE Fantasy MMORPG
DEVELOPER Turbine
PUBLISHER Codemasters Online
WEB www.lotro.com

In a time when toppling Warcraft’s premier position in the MMORPG charts was still viable (albeit by some stretch of the imagination), Lord Of The Rings Online: The Shadow Of Angmar was released into a market whose appetite for Tolkien’s classic had been fuelled by the recent Peter Jackson film trilogy. Immediate reactions from the fans were mostly positive and everyone loved the authentic high fantasy. Some accused it of aping Warcraft, but many more people liked this fact – it made the world of Middle-Earth more accessible. Notably, the initial release worked straight out of the box, and the world was well-balanced and relatively bug-free, which is almost a feature as far as modern MMOs are concerned. Turbine had created a very polished MMORPG with a magnetic license, so was duly rewarded with not an astronomic population, but players that stuck around beyond the free month that came with the retail box.

Aside from the theme, LOTRO’s strengths lie in its community; a relatively mature and diverse bunch of people with a surprising number of players that will go out of their way to help others. Partly because of the way LOTRO is constructed, Ninjas, trolls and spammers are very sparse, with most griefers realising that the best place to profit from/get a rise out of other players is to go back to Warcraft, where the hit rate is much higher and the less mature population is more likely to give into jibes in the OOC channel. Access to a wealth of Tolkien lore has seen Turbine create a series of Epic quests that loosely follow the trail of the fellowship, chapter by chapter, from a third-person perspective. Their execution and pacing has been near flawless, with the trail leading from the rainbows and candyfloss suburbs of Bree-Town and the Shire, into the dark heart of Angmar and Moria.

… continued