General Discussion

MMORPG.com Lord of the Rings Online Correspondent Daniel Hubbell writes this look at the endgame content in Lord of the Rings Online from the perspective of a casual gamer without too much time to dedicate to raiding.

I am not what you would call a 'hardcore' gamer in Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO). My claim to fame is that I've not seen a Balrog, at least not a Balrog in person. This may seem like a personal problem, but it is simply a symptom of what I like to call 'casualitis'. I'm infected, and I'd like to think many others are too, with an unpleasant lack of time. Oh, I can conjure up marathon escapades, but this leaves me dreary eyed and ostracized by the respectable parts of my family. So, for the time-challenged folk, what kind of end-game material is available for LotRO prior to Mines of Moria coming out?

If you can, at some point along the way, join a kinship. Try to find one without requirements on raiding and grouping. Endgame is as much about meeting new friends as doing actual content. Getting to level 50 also opens up the opportunity to finish the epic quest line that LotRO offers players. If you like reading a book, then you might appreciate the story that Turbine has inferred from Tolkien's original narrative. There is a great bit about Middle Earth that is only briefly mentioned in the books that gets some more attention from Turbine.

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Nice article but you missed a couple of lvl 50 instances!

Barad Gularan is located in east Angmar and is a small 6-man dungeon with some really fun fights and good drops. Very casual friendly but still challenging!

Then we have the 3 battlefield instances all started in Gath fortnir. Theese are timed instances (30 or 45 minutes) that lets you defend or attack certain positoins on the map. Theese are perfect for casuals since you can just jump in for 30 minutes and then be done with it and get some nice rewards.

As an officer and raid leader in a semi-casual kinship, I can tell you that its very much possible to be casual and still raid in LotrO.. In our kin we arrange raids so even thoose with little time can join. All you need is 3 hours, 2 evenings / week to be a sucesfull raider and enjoy all content in LotrO!

and don't forget Monster Play, maggot!

Thanks great info, as a serious casual gamer that has to work and raise my family mostly. I still enjoy the odd spin into the lands of the Lord of the Rings though and I appreciate any casual/solo info (It still have a bunch of low level chars - my best sofar is 31). It is also good to know that Turbine doesn't forget us.

Yes, very casual friendly if you ask me.  If you want to get beyond the solo play to the end game sort of content that requires grouping, then the advice about joining a Kin (aka guild) is important.  Turbine transported the excellent matching system they developed for Dungeons and Dragons Online to LOTRO, but my observation is that few use it (in DDO you HAD to use it, but the better solo play in LOTRO doesn't seem to motivate people to do so).  The other way that I work it is that I have a static group of people I play with each Sat. night.  For casual play to be successful, you DO need to do a little work planning, whether by posting on a Kin website or scheduling with a set group like I do on Sat. nights.  Like most MMOs, just logging in and hoping to get lucky and find your way into a group doing some of the more epic content isn't a good strategy in general.

While I love LotRO, and agree with all the facts you presented, I disagree with your conclusions. We appear to define "casual play" differently. Your opening paragraph suggests you define casual as time invested. To me, casual means playing for enjoyment -- not doing the frustrating work required to get through quests designed for the hardcore. I play games to have fun with friends, not to herd cats, bang my head against the wall, grind for rare loot, or accrue e-peen.

I have a level 50, and I'm part of a small social kinship (~15 RL friends) that's uninterested in raiding. I made it to 50 mostly solo, with the remainder being fellowship quests with one or two kin. I don't do PUGs because I think People Are Broken - although I will say that the players of LotRO seem friendlier than the PUGs I encountered in CoX. Still, I agree with the Gaming Demotivational poster about raiding -- "When You Want Your Fun To Depend on Random Strangers."

In my situation, on paper at least, there's virtually nothing to do. Every instance you mentioned in the article is effectively closed to me and my small circle of gaming buddies. Heck, my 50 has only completed Books I and VI of the epic quests. But I still have plenty of areas I haven't seen, quests I haven't done, traits I haven't completed, and -- most importantly -- I can always hang out with my friends.

/me raises hand ..

I've not seen a belrog either, so your nioot alone

Great article ! I think veteran mmo players understand what they want in a game and the beauty of communities, hopefully more of the new mmo players will see this and learn to make their game of chioce a better experience for everyone, instead of a selfish endulgence.

Woot, this calls for a ...

You know, its absolutely pathetic how out of the loop casuals are on the raiding system and end game, even the 'correspondent' of this article is outright uneducated about probably the most casual friendly raiding system in any MMO I've ever seen.  Unfortunately BECAUSE casuals are the backwater hicks of the MMO world and uneducated, they see "raid" and instantly assume they can't do them, so they don't, and then Turbine doesn't make more end game raids (there is only 1 12 man lair style (1 room, 1 boss) raid being released with Mines of Moria), and longer epic 6 man instances (like Carn Dum, which appropriately geared, can take several hours to do as an epic dungeon crawl (overgeared groups can clear it in 2-3 hours)...  thankfully to something I'm going to discuss, it's still casual friendly!  You have a few days to clear it.).. in lieu of more casual content (mostly open world leveling and solo quests) and short, non epic feeling 6 man instances.

So how is LotRO true End Game content casual friendly without the drastic measures (no long instances in MoM) taken in MoM?  How can we have epic dungeon crawls and raids and casuals can still very much participate in them?

1.  Raid Lock system.

The LotRO Raid Lock system is amazing, bottom line.  How it works is that as you beat bosses, you gain a lock to that boss, so that when you come back on another day, you can pick up where you left off, and ideally, the trash mobs won't respawn so it'll be a quick trip back to where you were.  Not only that, but anyone who is not locked to that raid, can join you and assume your raid locks, even people who are locked to that raid but are locked to an earlier boss than the ones you're locked to can join and assume your lock.

Example:  I went on a PuG to the Rift and we cleared barz and zurm and fruz.  That gives me locks 1, 2, and 3.  The PuG breaks up and the next night I decide I want to finish the raid.  I can't find the people that went with me last night.  That's okay!  I start up a new PuG, letting people know I am saved to lock 3.  Anyone who has no locks to the Rift can join me, and anyone who has locks 1 or 2 or 3 can join me as well.  If another guy says, well, I'm saved to lock 4 but would like to finish, does your group mind starting there?  As long as everyone in the group is okay, you make that lock 4 guy the group leader, and he enters the raid first, and now everyone in the raid is saved to lock 4.

In the case of a 6 man like Carn Dum, the locks reset every 2 days, but in the case of raids, they reset every week, giving you an entire week to hack and slash your way through the raid.  You can do 1-2 bosses a night in a casual kin and still complete the raid.  That's an hour or 2 a night.  Most people will at least have that amount of time.  If a member can't make it you can substitute in a PuG member and that member can maybe later join at a higher lock.  The lock system is not only Casual friendly it's PuG friendly.  It's why you regularly (on a nightly basis) see PuGs forming for the Rift at various locks.

It is a dramatic improvement to say WoW's Raid ID system, where your progress is saved per boss kill, but the Raid ID is individual and you can't bring in another person who is saved to another Raid ID even if they only killed one boss and you're on boss 4.

Unfortunately because of Casual complaining about content being too hard/long, MoM doesn't feature any raid lock content because well, everything is short.  Short and to the point can be good, but there's something to be said for a nice long sprawling dungeon you can't do all in 1 sitting.  It's like reading a good book.  Who reads a good novel in 1 sitting?  There's short and to the point books too, but lets face it, the story is usually not as good in those Reader's Digest versions is it?

2.  Barter Loot System

Remember in WoW when you went on an instance run or a raid over and over and over just waiting for your class set piece to drop and you can get it?  Well that doesn't really happen in LotRO.  Sure, there are some 'rare' drops that will keep you coming back, but the fundamental basics of your class armor set are not dropped individually, but bartered for.  The barter tokens are drops that any class (or a subset of 2-3 classes) can use to purchase an armor piece.  It is quite possible to get fully geared in the Rift in a reasonable amount of time.  In the Rift especially there are 8 MINIMUM tokens for armor pieces dropped (and there can be more as bosses can drop multiple tokens), for a 12 person raid, this is a very good loot to raider ratio and if you go with a consistant group you can be geared out in as little as a month of weekly rift Runs.

This barter system has also been applied to 6 man instances recently and continues in Moria.  Your set that you use to raid the Vile Maw with comes from bartered pieces that come from 6 man instances.  You can be geared and ready to go through Vile Maw in a matter of hours because you can reset the 6 man instances, do the hard mode (really not that hard once you know how to unlock each one), get a token, rinse and repeat for all 6 instances.  Or you can redo the same instance and get all 6 people their token.

This is not to mention the writ system introduced in book 14.  From the writ system you can gain pieces raid and instance armor by assisting people through epic book questline instances or instanced class quests.  It has been hinted at that casuals will be able to get their raid armor via another route other than doing hard mode instances.. I expect the writ system to be the way.

3.  All classes have a secondary role

Sometimes finding the "perfect" group makeup might be a hinderance for casuals in other MMOs, but it is less so in LotRO.  Can't find a Guardian for an instance run?  You might be able to find a Champion, Warden, or Captain to tank instead (all 4 classes are capable of tanking pretty much everything in MoM).  Need a dps?  Hunter, Runekeeper, Champion, and Burglar can all fill this role, with even a Minstrel or Guardian or Captain being able to do some dps in a pinch.  Need CC?  Loremaster, Hunter, Burglar all have excellent CC now, with Wardens, Minstrels, and Runekeepers having some minor cc.  Healer?  Minstrel isn't alone anymore, provided you keep your pulls controlled or minimize time spent out of combat a Runekeeper is a great healer, Captain healing was also boosted up and can be sufficient for small fellowship content, Loremasters have some healing, and even Burglars can pull some healing off utilizing green conjunctions.  Between a Loremaster and a Captain, or a Captain and a Burglar, or Loremaster/Burglar you can make up for not having a healer with most content  (healers that can Crowd Control in some cases).

About the only thing that does still bully you around with needing certain classes is debuff clearing.  Classes that can cure debuffs as a primary role can cleanse 3 at a time, where secondaries can clear 1 at a time, potions clear only 1 and have a 30s timer and tend to clear the least harmful debuffs first....

Personally I think Turbine can work on that (should clear the Eye debuff that'll instantly kill you in 10s rather than the -100 fate debuff..).. but otherwise, it's easier to make a balanced group than in most MMO's.

So basically I think what you casuals should do is actually take a look at endgame rather than just make demands that it be made easier (or cry for more solo content).  It's more casual friendly than you think.