Epic Quest line- Were Tolkiens dwarves this stupid?

Palantir

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Purest rant time:

Ok, I've said forever that the "Epic Story Line" was the heart & soul of LotRO and the best quests the game had to offer, however...

That doesn't include the moronic and time wasters of Vol. 2 Bk 8 Ch 3 & 4 which I "went back" and continued. (Skip 1 Epic Quest in this line & you "miss" all of these in Moria.) I shudder thinking of how many alts I still have to do these with.

My beef with these 2 stupid puzzle like designs is that they were created for no other reasons than to waste your time and prove that Durin's dwarves were idiots.

The basic design of both of these are multiple, open center levels that you have find your way up & down repeatedly correctly flipping switches to open or move doors on other levels, for no purpose other than having to flip more switches for more doors on other levels to open doors on levels you have already been on.

There's no "realistic" purpose for any of these puzzle areas to ever have been built by dwarves (4 levels of 20+ massive water-wheels & canals that do nothing that the first water-wheel couldn't have done in the first room...) It's just poor game design, that while it might look cool, shows that some non-Tolkien puzzle designer was given the task. My main thought going thru them was, "the dwarves were not this stupid, but the designer's an idiot".

These 2 stand out because they come out of nowhere for being so non-Tolkien, silly & pointless in the Epic Line. The only bright spot is that they can now be done solo and no longer require a small or large Fellowship to complete.

In contrast check out these screen shots from other Epic Quests:
The first is the amount of detail of this axe- the second is this encounter in Enedwaith; some top flight game / quest design.
View attachment 34517

The other Epic Quests around these 2 pointless-puzzle ones are excellent; some have pleasantly surprised me in the story conections & how they ended. The Grey Company Quests we’re encountering now are also well done.

That’s it; these 2 were just so out of place & frustrating that I had to give you a heads up. Find the walk-thru and follow them, you’ll save yourself a lot of pointless time & “this is just stupid” comments.

Edit- btw, I FINALY bought my first item from the Turbine Store (not counting the Expansion), it was more storage space for my Cook-alt. Having just 1 cook to keep all my alts from lvl 10- 66 "fed" takes so many resource items & so much room that that she had no open bag space to quest.
 
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BlitzCanuck

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You've been playing this game how long?
and you're just doing these quests for the first time?

yeah, they do have a certain puzzle quality to them but as you noted, they were intended for a small fellowship and as such are way more fun (i've done them both ways).
I did have to resort to googling them when doing them solo......the hall of mirrors at least.....the water wheels is fairly intuitive i found.
 

Palantir

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Hey glad to see you're still around. :)
You've been playing this game how long?
and you're just doing these quests for the first time?
Yes, having 10 alts does tend to slip me off track from time to time. Back when these were 3 person quests you had to get the right balance of 3 classes to do them, I didn't, so I skipped that one & continued on with the rest of the Epic line. I didn’t get right back to them & they fell off the to-do list. (Besides these 2 quests read as being just pointless fillers in the Epic story line didn't encourage me to complete them)

My main point though was how completely silly they are in their design, just as time wasting puzzles to be "cool" and serving no practical purpose in Tolkien "reality." Going through some tunnels to destroy the objects then fight would have been good enough. You can't say those big buckets that clomp down aren't absolutely senseless. They can have all these goofy things they want in WoW but it screws up Tolkien’s Middle Earth Lore. A lot of stuff is of course "out of place" having to be a fantasy game but there’s too much printed background to just keep tossing in stupid stuff just because.

Moria is so over blown with grandiose looking & impractical graphics as to make Durin turn over in his tomb. At least Jackson got Moria right in the movies.

They do seem to be getting better at it post-Moria.
 

BlitzCanuck

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yeah i'm not disagreeing with you. I find a lot of quests, epic or not, quite senseless.
For me they are just a means to an end; levelling up. Well, that, and also the quest rewards.
I was just a bit surprised that you hadn't done them up until now. But you are right....if you aren't in a larger active kin, it can be difficult finding a group for those two dungeons.

After having done every (non-instance) quest in Moria on 4 different alts, i find it loathsome. I dread the thought of having to do it again on my other 3 alts. Between levels 50-58 there isn't another option.
Plus the fact that the first 6 books of Vol. 2 need to be completed to get a legendary skill.
 

BlitzCanuck

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I noticed part of the recent patch was a fix for the amount of quest reward xp given at quests above level 53.
Apparently the amount given was less than intended.
So that should mean levelling up in Moria will go slightly faster now. Yay!
 

BlitzCanuck

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Hey glad to see you're still around. :)
Thanks! :)
I did go AWOL for a while because, quite honestly, i did not enjoy the tenor of the threads here.
But now that you guys are actually playing the game and at least somewhat enjoying it, i'm pleased to participate in these discussions.
 
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