It’s been an thrilling week for Lord of the Rings On-line as full particulars and testing for this fall’s growth, Legacy of Morgoth, arrived in earnest. Whereas I’m not a lot one for desert zones, I’m intrigued with this storyline and excited to proceed my high-level characters’ adventures additional into Harad.
Nonetheless, the official growth announcement and pre-order packages got here with some extent of controversy. One of many sore factors — as addressed by Government Producer Rob Ciccolini — was that Legacy of Morgoth gained’t embrace a “particular system” or tentpole function. Personally, whereas it didn’t faze me (I’m right here for the content material, primarily!), it was a priority for a lot of. So at this time I need to deal with this query: Ought to all LOTRO expansions embrace particular techniques? Does missing one imply that it isn’t an growth?
What’s an MMO growth?
To handle this, we have now to take a step again and attempt to get our definitions in hand. What’s an MMO growth? There’s no business commonplace regulated by some kind of worldwide company, so what an “growth” is tends to be outlined by the studio that slaps this label onto it. It’s definitely a label that’s been tortured and abused when utilized to what are clearly mere content material updates.
Whereas acknowledging that there’s no inflexible definition on the market, I’d say that typically, an growth is seen as a important quantity of latest content material for an MMO, normally within the type of extra zones and tales. In ye olden days, it was one thing large enough to be packaged and shipped as a separate retail field.
There’s no promise or necessary regulation for an growth to include, properly, something specifically, particularly new techniques or options. But there are expectations that they need to as a result of over time, that is how the business developed. Most MMO expansions included some kind of tentpole function as a method to get seen and fire up pleasure. This holds true at this time, as these options change into the massive speaking factors and a method to attract extra folks to the sport.
So new options: Necessary, no; anticipated, sure. Usually. Often.
What particular techniques did every LOTRO growth add?
I discover it useful for this dialog to return over the previous 9 LOTRO expansions and take a look at the particular techniques that got here with every:
- Mines of Moria: Rune-keeper and Warden lessons, goat mounts, legendary gadgets
- Siege of Mirkwood: Skirmishes
- Rise of Isengard: Nothing
- Riders of Rohan: Mounted fight
- Helm’s Deep: Epic battles, trait timber
- Mordor: Allegiances
- Minas Morgul: Stout-Axe Dwarf race
- Destiny of Gundabad: Brawler class, legendary merchandise revamp
- Corsairs of Umbar: Mariner class
Wanting over all of this, we see that there’s actually no commonplace in anyway for this MMO. Mines of Moria clearly had the largest quantity of cool options, though what number of of these had been baking earlier than the sport’s launch, I do not know. Rise of Isengard didn’t do a lot in the way in which of any kind of particular system. Siege of Mirkwood all the time received criticized for being too small to be an growth. A few of these have techniques that didn’t actually matter over the long term (mounted fight, epic battles, allegiances).
Nonetheless, there’s a pattern over the previous three expansions to incorporate both a brand new race or class. So if we’re simply limiting our view to the previous 5 or 6 years, sure, SSG has established an expectation that an growth features a common choice to benefit from the sport in a brand new method.
Is Legacy of Morgoth shorting gamers?
That brings us again to some upset gamers and Rob Ciccolini apologizing for/defending the shortage of particular techniques for this growth. Once more, I’m not fearful about it. New techniques are enjoyable and do ramp up that hype issue, however on the finish of the day, I need extra adventures in Center-earth, interval.
Plus, it’s not precisely true that this growth lacks something new. There’s the bauble system, which can take inventory-clogging toys (and fireworks) and put them into a set to make use of as abilities. Ciccolini additionally pointed to the Elf avatar overhaul, which seems to be coming with Replace 42 as properly. And there are smaller design parts of the growth, similar to together with sandstorms as a climate system, that push this MMO into new territory.
Aside from the Elf visuals, it’s true that there isn’t going to be something right here to excite or curiosity lowbie gamers. My suspicion right here is that 2023 was such an amazing 12 months of latest additions to the sport whereas 2024 has been reasonably… lackluster to this point. Thus, it is sensible that there could be heavier expectations put upon this growth to make up for that disappointment. This is able to’ve been the proper time to, say, roll out an enormous kinship revamp — one thing that will affect vastly extra gamers.
But 4 new zones isn’t nothing. I’m actually happy with the recent design and strategy that the story and artwork group is taking with Umbar, and I belief that I’m not going to be let down by the journeys to come back.
In the long run, it’s your name whether or not an absence of a terrific tentpole function is an growth deal-breaker or not. It’s not stopped us from having fun with a number of previous expansions, and as soon as the mud on this announcement settles, I don’t suppose we’ll thoughts as a lot both.