In another version of WoW, you sit at your computer after a long evening of dungeons. The fights were tough, but your group was skilled. Thanks to good coordination beforehand, your team worked smoothly! Successful maneuvers drained a chunk of life from the boss and removed your status effects, possible only with a well-coordinated team. After defeating your target, you relax in the tavern. Here, players create music with their instruments, playing popular tunes or their own compositions. You enjoy a pipe of smoke herb grown by your guildmates while listening to the music.
To fit in with the diverse crowd, you quickly choose an outfit from your wardrobe, which contains about two dozen outfits, all yours without spending money.
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Back at your home, you light the fireplace and proudly display the trophy dropped by the dungeon’s final boss above it. Guests will see you’re a brave fighter for good. You adjust your dining table to make it look even better, thankful you didn’t buy a house to avoid a cluttered look. The next morning, you venture into the open world, setting the difficulty high for a raid-like challenge and grabbing the appropriate loot. It’s heroic challenges for heroic players!
You nod to your neighbor at the door, another player with his own house, then pay your private stable master to take you to your destination. Maybe today you’ll ride your warhorse and battle a world boss from horseback? Or lead your companions into an epic battle? Whatever you choose, you can customize the content to suit your preferences.
Back in reality, you survey the Dragon Islands and ponder. Dragonflight remains a WoW highlight, but you miss the alternate reality features. Here, you must visit the dealer for every piece of transmog and pay a high price, tackle dungeons in the old style without advanced tactical functions, and there’s no housing. While you appreciate Azeroth’s iconic tavern music, it’s special to know fellow players create the tunes. However, there’s no need to despair. There are other MMORPGs to enjoy. It’s not a slight; after all, it’s Blizzard. Playing other games shows professional respect.
A Game to Enslave Them, to Find Them All…
We’ve already explored Guild Wars 2 and RIFT, and now it’s time for an MMORPG that’s about to mark its 17th birthday: The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). Not only is it one of the most expansive and faithful adaptations of Tolkien’s work, but it’s also based on the original books rather than Peter Jackson’s films. With a devoted fan base, LOTRO lets players journey from Bree to Mordor and beyond, offering adventures even after the War of the Ring.
However, LOTRO, or simply LOTRO, shares some clever mechanics with World of Warcraft (WoW). For instance, its transmog system, known as “outfitting,” predates WoW’s own system and still offers convenient features. Want to fight as a monster in huge battles or adjust the difficulty of the open world? LOTRO has you covered. Today, we’ll dive into LOTRO’s features and see what we can borrow for WoW.
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…To Be Driven onto the Servers and Tied Up Forever
Before we delve into LOTRO’s features, let’s be clear: We love WoW. This article isn’t about luring players away from WoW; it’s about appreciating and adopting great features from other games. We won’t compare the MMORPGs themselves or discuss animations or raid sizes. Instead, we’ll focus on game mechanics and concepts.
Now, let’s talk about LOTRO’s outfitting system, a feature we could adapt for WoW. In LOTRO, players can create outfits without visiting an NPC or spending money, and these outfits are accessible to all classes. This flexibility is something WoW could benefit from, allowing players to customize their appearance more freely.
Decoration: A Tailcoat for Every Occasion
In LOTRO, the outfitting system allows players to create outfits without restrictions, usable by all classes. This feature could greatly enhance WoW’s transmog system, providing more flexibility and convenience. Additionally, WoW could implement mobile transmog outfits and class-agnostic transmog items, improving player customization and enjoyment.
Fabric Carrier in Plate
Another feature we could borrow from LOTRO is the ability to wear any transmog item on any class. This would require adjustments to PvP gameplay, but it would greatly enhance player customization and enjoyment. Additionally, LOTRO’s option to hide cloaks and helmets in transmog slots with a simple click is a quality-of-life feature that WoW could adopt.
The Paths of Valor: Your Personal Hero’s Journey
LOTRO’s “Paths of Bravery” feature increases game difficulty and offers unique rewards, including titles and emotes. This feature could be adapted for WoW, providing players with challenging gameplay experiences and exclusive rewards. Additionally, the “Eye of Sauron” mechanic adds an extra layer of challenge, testing players’ skills and courage.
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Landscape Difficulty in WoW? Now, Please!
We’re bringing the entire feature with all the trimmings to WoW, but with a twist. Anything that makes the open world more appealing and perilous is invaluable in WoW! We want to draw players back to Azeroth, away from instances and raids, fostering a true role-playing experience rather than a waiting lobby for Mythic+. Therefore, we’re adding tangible rewards such as mounts, unique transmogs, and powerful gear to titles, emotes, and bonus experience. For example, tackling the open world at maximum difficulty with a dozen friends should yield items equivalent to those in raid finder or regular raids.
To be precise, the challenges should be appropriately daunting. However, the additional effects of the “Eye of Sauron” should be optional, offering extra rewards instead of being automatically tied to difficulty levels. In WoW, many classes rely heavily on casting times compared to LOTRO, and this system could disadvantage them. Nevertheless, this feature is a fantastic idea overall, providing many players with a much-needed open-world challenge and introducing an additional source of items. Let’s add it to our shopping cart!
Monster Play: PvP with a Difference
Let’s explore the concept of “Monster Play” or “PvMP,” a feature with an interesting history. When The Lord of the Rings Online launched in 2007, offering some form of PvP in an MMORPG was fashionable. However, there was a dilemma with LOTRO: all players belonged to the “Free Peoples of Middle-earth.” To address this, a separate game mode was introduced where players could play as servants of Sauron, engaging in open-world PvP, leveling up, and participating in large-scale battles against the free peoples. Thus, the war of the “Creeps” against the “Freeps” began, giving rise to Monster Play.
This feature could be a great fit for WoW. Players would embody elite followers of the current top villain, mirroring LOTRO’s setup. The undead could include liches, monstrosities, and necromancers, while Azeroth’s forces could summon powerful allies. Facing competent undead foes would add atmosphere to battles and inject a much-needed sense of war back into “Warcraft.” By incorporating extensive talent trees and transmogs for PvMP monsters, we can create epic large-scale conflicts.
The Housing Thing
Let’s discuss the housing variant in LOTRO, which was cleverly implemented. Players reside in settlements offering various building sites, each with its unique location. Settlements can be located anywhere from the Shire to Rohan and are instanced but persistent. This means that while you and your friend can build in the same place in different settlements, the space is only available once within the same settlement. There’s a wide selection of houses to furnish, with designated furniture spaces. While free placement like in New World isn’t possible, players can customize their front gardens. This housing variant could easily be implemented in WoW, building upon the garrison system but offering more customization and immersion.
Skirmishes and Epic Battles: Give Us Pathos!
Lastly, let’s delve into LOTRO’s “Skirmishes” and “Epic Battles,” designed to capture dramatic moments from the books. Skirmishes serve as smaller instances lasting from five minutes to a quarter of an hour, customizable in terms of level, size, and difficulty. These encounters bring the landscape difficulty into skirmishes, adding depth to gameplay. Epic Battles, on the other hand, create the sensation of fighting against overwhelming odds, with players commanding various features to turn the tide of battle. This blend of tactical calculation and strategic planning offers a unique gameplay experience unmatched in MMORPGs to date.
War Fronts – Just That They’re Fun
While some may argue that WoW already experimented with war fronts in BfA, they were more akin to light tube dungeons with a few extra features compared to the quick skirmishes and complex epic battles of high levels. Our goal, inspired by stolen LOTRO features, is to deliver a genuine sense of large-scale battles. We envision battles against the Burning Legion where players manage three squads of thirty soldiers, erect barriers, and command catapults and cannons. We crave chaos, real choices, and the thrill of dealing with unexpected setbacks. Let us strategize, equip our soldiers, and face surging masses of enemies with determination.
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We’re incorporating skirmish soldiers that can be utilized anywhere, avoiding the pitfalls of half-baked implementations like the “bodyguard argument” from WoD and Legion. Remember Delvar Eisenfaust, the memorable death knight from the garrison? Imagine if he hadn’t been forgotten but continued to accompany players through each expansion, complete with his own inventory and talent tree. Either fully embrace these ideas or leave them behind! Excuse us while we make space in our shopping cart, securely fasten this feature, and move forward.
Mounted Battle: On to Wrath, On to Ruin, and Bloody Tomorrow!
In a world where flying mounts don’t exist, Lord of the Rings Online presents a unique approach: mounted combat. In Azeroth, everything has four legs, a head, and a penchant for neighing. Unlike the high fantasy of Azeroth, Arda offers a low fantasy experience. Riding a warhorse in the plains of Rohan unlocks a new mechanic: mounted combat.
Carefully selecting your steed becomes essential as each horse possesses different traits in terms of resilience, speed, and agility. Similar to the Red Dead Redemption series, players guide their companions through different gaits, considering factors like turning radius. With three alignments – tank, all-rounder, and speed fanatic – each boasting three talent trees, players can customize their mounts’ appearance, armor, and even name. A leveled-up warhorse remains the safest and fastest means of transport, even in areas without activated warhorses. Though combat mechanics are straightforward, the thrill lies in fast-paced rides and dramatic clashes with enemies. Charging into battle with 24 friends against war hordes feels exhilarating, as if the ground itself trembles beneath the onslaught.
Companion Maneuvers: Real Coordination Required
A smaller yet ingenious feature from LOTRO is the “companion maneuver.” One group member initiates a stun or knockdown, allowing others to unleash a “super attack.” The system is easy to grasp but challenging to master. Each group member selects an attack – red for damage, blue for mana regeneration, green for healing, and yellow for damage over time. By stacking these attacks strategically, players can unleash devastating combos, creating new effects with complex combinations.
In WoW, this feature could seamlessly integrate into dungeons and Mythic+. Coupled with the ability to disable or weaken affixes temporarily, it would reward well-established core groups while offering practical maneuvers for random groups.
Turn Your Nose at Paladins: Divine Steed for All!
Let’s cut to the chase: we want mounted combat for Azeroth. Without stun effects, but with plenty of momentum and force. Picture mounted combat from LOTRO, enhanced with Blizzard’s trademark improvements to interface, controls, and animations. Since WoW has already flirted with mounted combat via Dragonflight, which introduced aerial tumbles in PvP, we propose extending this to ground combat for all mounts. This would revitalize conventional ground mounts and make expansive zones like the plains of Ohn’ahra appealing, even without flying mounts. Give us “The Fast and the Furious: Azeroth Drift” on the back of our warhorse, and we’ll be content!
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The Lord of (Stolen) Features
Our shopping cart is brimming with stolen features, and we’ve only scratched the surface. Lord of the Rings Online offers numerous opportunities for Blizzard to skillfully emulate. As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, especially in the video game sector.