Locations in M.E. to see?

[Palantir]

LotRO has been out awhile and covered half the trip (now at LothLorien) so:

A. Of the areas covered so far what was the #1 landscape/nature & #1 "built/civilized" site you wanted to see most in game from the books?

B. Of the areas not yet developed what sites do you want to see most?

c. And why? (if you can toss in a screen-shot please do)


A. Landscape- had to be the Shire to see if it had that laid back and cheerful ambiance. (it did & does!)
Civilized- was Amon Sul, "Weathertop" wanted to look down from the top. (might have said Moria but it always had that dark can't see a thing feeling to me)

B. Landscape- Lonely Mountain - although like Mt Doom it's so big 8+ miles across you might not know you're even at it.

Civilized- have to go with Minas Tirith! I hope they have the stores, shops, stables and inns open & not just endless lanes & doors shut like Bree- this is a breathing city.

It's not from the top of Amon Sul but here's a shot I have of it.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

I was going to post something a few days ago on a related topic; I may as well do it in this thread. Let me collect my thoughts on this and I'll get back to you.

 

[Redwolf]

Dale and Lake Town.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

A. Landscape- had to be the Shire to see if it had that laid back and cheerful ambiance. (it did & does!)

The music helps, though, doesn't it?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Okay, I was on a military exercise the other weekend - just a trip to the ranges, and so I figured there would be downtime and so I took my copy of Fellowship of the Ring with me. It took me forever to get through the trilogy the first time. I read the Hobbit in junior high school, and enjoyed it, but never did get through LotR for years after. I reread the Hobbit in the interim. A favourite junior high school teacher had said LotR was a good "camping book" and we were staying out of doors at the ranges, so I thought perhaps it was a good time to try it. (I did finally work through it in university, but honestly didn't enjoy it much.)

I wanted to see what references there would be to the ME of LOTRO especially. I guess I am more visually oriented than I would like to believe. The poems and songs really are stultifying to me. But now that I can "see" ME via LOTRO I find I can relate to the book a bit better, and of course I can see the characters also thanks to the films. So the whole thing has become a bit richer.

I actually seem a bit surprised, now that I read through the opening chapters of the book, just how successful it was. I'm also impressed how vivid his imagination he was, being able to plan out this entire world in nothing but words - it all makes sense now that it is laid out in 3D for us, but for him to have achieved it on his own with the techonology of the day - quite a feat.

I was a bit disappointed in the lack of references to the territory we have in LOTRO so far, honestly. It is worse in The Hobbit. In fact, Bilbo makes his trip through all of our LOTRO territory in a couple of sentences!

At first they had passed through hobbit-lands, a wide respectable country inhabited by decent folk, with good roads, an inn or two, and now and then a dwarf or a farmer ambling by on business. Then they came to lands where people spoke strangely, and sang songs Bilbo had never heard before. Now they had gone on far into the Lone-lands where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse. Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees. On some of them were old castles with an evil look, a if they had been built by wicked people. Everything seemed gloomy, for the weather that day had taken a nasty turn. Mostly it had been as good as May can be, even in merry tales, but now it was cold and wet. In the Lone-lands they had been obliged to camp when they could, but at least it had been dry.

So they transited the Shire, Bree-Land, and the Lone-lands and came to the Trollshaws in a paragraph!

Of the areas covered so far what was the #1 landscape/nature & #1 "built/civilized" site you wanted to see most in game from the books?

I think the game is going to end up richer than the books, if only because the books concentrated on character - like a good book should. Like you, I think Minas Tirith will be awesome to see. The fortress at Helm's Deep shall be interesting to see also, and with all of these, it is interesting to see if they go with movie interpretations, their own, etc.

But they always have some surprises that we haven't seen before - that large statue in Evendim for example was really cool to see the first time I slogged out of the river sand and spied it. My favourite vista in the movie was the two giant statues on the river, I wonder if we shall see anything like that also. The Dead Marshes and the gates at Mordor will be cool, but I am hoping we get large, rich lands in Rohan and Gondor as expansive as Eriador has been, with lots of little villages to explore, and not just the stuff from the books.

 

[Redwolf]

I think the game is going to end up richer than the books, if only because the books concentrated on character - like a good book should. Like you, I think Minas Tirith will be awesome to see. The fortress at Helm's Deep shall be interesting to see also, and with all of these, it is interesting to see if they go with movie interpretations, their own, etc.

Exactly. That is why I am trying to (unsuccessfully) play this sucker now.

You can't really do landscape development in a book.

They, the game, can.

Unfortunately they put a really fragile installer and launcher around what is hopefully a solid game...

 

[Michael Dorosh]

How time flies.

A. Landscape- had to be the Shire to see if it had that laid back and cheerful ambiance. (it did & does!)
Civilized- was Amon Sul, "Weathertop" wanted to look down from the top. (might have said Moria but it always had that dark can't see a thing feeling to me)

B. Landscape- Lonely Mountain - although like Mt Doom it's so big 8+ miles across you might not know you're even at it.

Civilized- have to go with Minas Tirith! I hope they have the stores, shops, stables and inns open & not just endless lanes & doors shut like Bree- this is a breathing city.

Hope you made it to all these. Minas Tirith was worth the price of admission for me, though I admit, I had more fun in Osgiliath dodging monsters than I did doing fetch quests in MT.

The Lonely Mountain is a bit underwhelming, but the surrounding landscape areas - Iron Hills, Ered Mithrin and Vales of Anduin are all extremely nice.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

And Minas Tirith gets that much better with the new Midsummer Festival designed around Aragorn's wedding, though the devs kind of botched the map and strangely haven't bothered to fix it. But they've decorated MT and filled it with happy NPCs.