I have to say that I like Forochel. It’s very different from other areas in the game, not just in appearance (which is surprising, given that the Misty Mountains are snow-covered as well), but just in general approach. The Lossoth that reside there speak, look and act so differently from the rest of the cultures in the game that it’s simply just refreshing.
That said, I’m not quite as fond of some of the quests in the area. While many are just fine, there are several that stick out to me like sore thumbs. The most obvious issue is the amount of kill quests that are almost identical to one another that are really difficult to combine.
I get that someone wants some sabretooth pelts or someone else wants moose meat. Fine enough. The problem is that so many people want different parts from these animals and they request them at totally different points. While you can queue up some similar ones and get them done in one fell swoop (let’s say, moose antlers and meat, which are desired by two separate people), it’s impossible to do it with all of them. This is expected to some degree, but I feel like it’s overly obvious in Forochel. You inevitably wind up having to kill three times as many of “Enemy X” as you should have to because of situations like this.
As a theoretical example, let’s say Bob wants 10 Sabretooth killed and Mark wants 10 Moose killed. You do this and turn them in, only to find out that Bob also wants 10 Moose killed and Mark wants 10 Sabretooth killed. This is an exaggeration, but it does happen from time to time. While it’s more common in some other MMORPGs, but it does occur here too.
What I like about LotRO is that situations like this are rare. Most of the time if three people want you to kill things in one area, you can handle all three quests at once and give them what it is they’re looking for. Mark and Bob will want drops from the same enemies at the same time, for example. Additionally, quest loot drops are plentiful. In most situations they’re probably 85% to 100%, which is extremely high for MMORPGs.
Proportionately speaking, LotRO doesn’t contain many of these obnoxious, rare drop quests. I don’t really need to explain the fun time I had in World of Warcraft killing 40 lynx to get 10 lynx pelts. That sort of thing is almost unheard of in this game. Chances are if something is taking too long, you’re not in the right area. In other situations, the quest might outright tell you that you’ll have to defeat a good number of Enemy X before you get a single, rarer drop (let’s say some random thief is carrying a map, you might have to kill 8 of them before you see it). I think that’s fair too.
The problem this causes is that the rare quests that don’t follow this standard or offer up real reasoning for it become extremely obvious. You’re not used to this nonsense, so when it comes along it’s very jarring; far more than it would be in a MMORPG where this sort of stuff is par for the course. It pulls me out of the game because it’s just plain frustrating.
To put it simply, I hate things that artificially extend the length of games. If you need the blood of some enemy, you should get some every single time. Developers have argued that perhaps you’ve destroyed the pelt or claws or insides of that beast, so it’s not worth gathering. That’s fine (although really just a cop out), but no amount of cutting is going to drain anything of all of its blood. It’s just a mechanic to make things take longer. No other cliché in MMORPGs drives me crazier.
I like Warhammer Online’s approach to this. In addition to obvious quests, major towns have a Kill Collector. He awards extra XP for specific enemies you kill. You don’t have to be told to kill 50 wolves, you simply kill as many as you come across and he’ll reward you proportionately for it. I think this is smart and it’s something I’d like to see more of. Why does it matter if I kill 50 wolves before or after I talk to someone? They’re already dead.
Luckily Mines of Moria seems to be on the good end of the spectrum here. I had to dispose of a good amount of goblins in one area, for example … But I was able to do three quests at once while I was doing so and turned them all in easily. I’m sure there’s exceptions to this simply because there always are exceptions. Either way, I do appreciate that it seems to be relatively rare.
Sadly, the Warhammer kill collector thing is somewhat of a case of the grass being greener in that other game you’re not playing. There is, at best, a single mob type that a kill collector wants in a given subzone. You occasionally do discover that you’ve inadvertantly killed a handful of the right mob and get some bonus exp for your trouble, but it isn’t the revolutionary mechanic that Mythic’s PR department has made it out to be.
(They do, however, always seem to give you the requisite ear/pelt/etc from every mob you kill, and these items go into a quest item bag rather than cluttering your real inventory.)
In general, I don’t know that quests that are out of synch happen because the devs are deliberately trying to make you re-grind the same mob, so much as because they just aren’t thinking about how the prereqs for quests are set up. Still, it’s definitely irritating, especially in cases where you’re in the area and perhaps even already killed the boss mob by accident because he aggroed, only to be sent back to re-kill the respawn because you weren’t on that quest yet.
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Yeah, I can see how Warhammer’s setup is far from perfect. I wasn’t really aware that Mythic was hyping that component, I guess I’m just speaking from my brief 1 month launch experience with the title. It did seem like a step in the right direction
. I do like that you can wander into an area and someone somewhere is at least vaguely aware of what you’ve been doing before you got there.
My job deals a lot with Web usability and accessibility (although it’s not really reflected on this site because I really don’t feel like dealing with that with my hobbies AND my career). It makes me wonder about a lot of usability issues within MMORPGs and how many things could be improved rather simply. It might be something interesting to think about, although I believe there is one guy out there with a site about that very topic.
But I think this creates situations where I am not one to differentiate between things that are done purposely (as you’ve noted) and things that are done just because. I think an effort should be made to avoid those situations … but like I mentioned, it’s not a typical thing in this game at least. It does seem to imply that Turbine does typically make an effort to avoid these things, which I do appreciate. I would like to see the genre, as a whole, move away from some of these things, either way.
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