A few days ago I finally finished the epic quest line in The Lord of the Rings Online in its entirety. Having also read some developer comments about where the epic story will be going I gave the subject a bit of retrospective introspection, or if you prefer, I thought back on where we had begun and where we had (for the moment) finished off and gave the whole subject a bit of thought.
I'm sure every player remembers their first little foray into the epic story: playing through a short, class specific game tutorial which introduces storyline elements which are picked up in the game introductions and played out through the various books of epic quests, most of which are tied up in Volume I.
Once we played through the introduction and landed in the game world proper we started playing through the epic quest, which took us throughout the "zone" in which we started the game, Ered Luin for elves and dwarves, The Shire for Hobbits and East Bree-Land for men. All paths led us to Bree and our first encounter with Strider at the Prancing Pony. In those days the epic quests were fun, relatively simple and simply added to the story. A bit of running around, we may have thought, especially if it was your first toon and you didn't have a horse yet. Ah...those were the days...
Eventually we moved our way through the storyline, we saw the extent of the spreading darkness in the Western lands of Middle-earth, the growing influence of Angmar, and...well, right about there the epic story started to drag on. Not that the story wasn't still great or well crafted, it was, it's just that travelling all over Tolkien's green earth got a little bit tedious after a while; especially for those who aren't rolling a hunter!
Overall, Vol. I had a great story but was done in by the repetitious travelling. Some of the later epic content has dealt with the same problem by providing instant travel to the next point in the quest, which is a great idea and wastes much less time while holding the story together.
Volume II started, rather infamously now, with us performing such epic feats as delivering sandwiches to dwarven workmen, but moved on to have us fighting the watcher in the water, multitudes of orcs and various agents of Angmar. Towards the end we started spending more time travelling from Lothlorien to Moria and back again, but to a less degree than that experienced in Vol I. Again, we had great story, saw the world around us, and fought the Shadow with our allies among the free peoples.
Volume III took us a long time. Let me rephrase that...Volume III took us a loooong time!
Yes Vol. I was longer, but it also shifted in it's focus a lot more. It really wasn't so much a single coherent story as it was a string of stories that flowed into each other. Vol. II was much more coherent and focused and Vol. III seemed to be a bit more so again. Vol. I took us from Ered Luin to Eregion and covered roughly 50 levels. Vol. III took us from Enedwaith to Western Rohan and involved the most interaction with the Lord of the Rings story.
It also provided continuity through our three travelling companions, who mysteriously always managed to get ahead of us to wait at the next objective. It also managed to avoid pointless travel, instead allowing us to quest through a region as we followed the epic quest chain. Even more impressive was the ability to play through without relying on fellowships and group play. Overall, one would have to concede that it was a very well done epic quest story arc.
As we wait to see where things will go from here, aided by hints given to us by Turbine staff executives and developers, I am hopeful that not only will the story be worthy of the epithet "epic" but also that the progress made towards making the game more enjoyable to play will continue to progress. This year we are expecting to see the Paths of the Dead, Dol Amroth and more and certainly players are excited to see those places.
I guess what I want to close off with is this: You've come a long way Turbine, keep up the good work.
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