Moria D1 – UI Changes

Weeks ago I pre-ordered the digital upgrade from Turbine and registered both the pre-order and expansion keys.  Once it became available, I torrented the Moria update patch, and then on Monday installed it.  So, when I got home from work on Tuesday around 6 pm I was able to launch the client right away with the intent of getting some time in on the new content.

Unfortunately, Turbine was in the middle of an emergency patch and the servers weren’t scheduled to be back up until 7:30.  Oh well, that gave me time to do some stuff around the house and take over baby duties from my wife for a bit.

After checking back around 7:30, I found the servers were up and I logged in.  First thing I found out was I was overdue for my housing upkeep, so I pushed enough silver into escrow to carry me through the end of the year.  Then I was ready to play with my level 50 Hunter, who was currently in Forochel.

There were some small UI changes to accommodate the new trait and legendary item buttons.  The icons on the left-side of the bottom-bar were staggered up and down instead of in a straight left to right line.  I liked how Turbine reorganized the bottom-bar without making it any bigger.  I’m always trying to minimize the UI as much as possible so I can see more of the world.

The Legendary Items window is going to remain a mystery for a while since I haven’t yet completed the Volume 2, Book 1.

I like the new Traits window.  It’s a much clearer presentation of the information and it makes traits easier to manage.  At a glance I can see all of the virtues I have slotted and with a quick mouse-over to see what each one does.  I especially like the ring icon displayed on any virtue which has an available deed linked to it.  So I can click on a virtue I’m interested in advancing and jump straight to the deed I need to work on.  Awesome.

There are also quite a few new deeds.  It seems like every time I used one of my abilities I was getting a new deed popup.  Most of these new deeds unlock new class traits.  Also all of thetraits have been reorganized into three sets along with set bonuses.  So, now if I slot two or more traits from a set, I get an additional bonus.

A UI change I wasn’t expecting was moving a lot of the quest item junk from my bags to a quest bag.  There’s really no bag space to look at, but the items show up in the quest log for which ever quest they belong too.  Unfortunately some items didn’t move, since anything that needs to be used or traded needs to be accessible.  Overall a definite improvement and one of the features from Warhammer that I was hoping other MMO’s would copy.

Another minor change was upping the number of active quests from 40 to 43.  Not a big increase, but still appreciated.  I constantly have to cancel quests to make room for new ones.  If only there was no limit.

That’s it for the initial UI impressions; I’m going to break my initial play experience out into another post.

Moria T-7 Days

Only seven more days until Mines of Moria goes live!

Unfortunately, I have had no time to play games recently.  My son, Lukas, was born on October 31st (yup Halloween baby), so my evenings have been dominated by diaper changes, feeding schedules, and anything else I can do to support my wife.

This means that any games I play cannot require more than one hand and must be pausable, so no MMO’s.  We’ve also had a lot of company staying with us, so no Xbox for me since the living room is always in use.

I did get to play World of Goo (which I got through Steam) for about 45 minutes on night.  I was trying to get the baby to sleep and needed something to keep me awake.  But that’s been it for the last 12 days.

My son will only be 18 days old when Moria releases, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can get a full hour of play-time during the first week.  I may not be able to do much with my Hunter, but hopefully I can get some time with the new classes.

Moria, Moria, Moria

I’m really looking forward to the new expansion, especially the new areas.  I’m primarily an Explorer, so any new area is going to interest me.  But, I’m looking forward to the day when I can explore Long Lake and the Lonely Mountain, and this it the first major step closer to that day.

The current game does a good job of giviing the impression of distance.  The world feels big.  If I see a mountain peak or a ruined castle, more often than not I can get to it.  Once there I can look out and see out to the horizon.

Also the new classes look pretty cool.  I’m excited to try both the Warden and Rune-keeper.  The new play mechanics introduced for each of them are interesting.

Max Level

I’ve play a lot of MMO’s.  I started with EverQuest way back with the original release and played about six months, but I never got past the teen levels.  Next was Dark Age of Camelot.  I played that game for longer, but never reached the max level.  World of Warcraft?  Level 45 on a PVP server.  I rerolled on an RP server to play with a friend, but never got past the twenties.

My goal this past year, ever since the Moria expansion was announced, was to hit max level in LoTRO.  Finally accomplished it yesterday.

Warhammer Impressions 2

In case you missed it, in Warhammer Impressions 1 I talked about the launch and the high-level zone/quest design for the first two tiers

My initial class was an Elven Shadow Hunter.  My primary in LoTRO is a Man Hunter, and in WoW was a Night Elf Hunter.  I have a thing for archery classes.  So I tried out the Shadow Hunter first.  Unfortunately, I absolutely hate the shooting animation.   No bowstring.  No arrow.  The character aims for the sky like he’s firing an English longbow, which would be okay except the 90% of the time he’s shooting at something much closer.   Sometimes you see an arrow fly out and hit the target and sometimes you don’t.  I may be spoiled by LoTRO’s animation, but after about five kills the Shadow Hunter got deleted.  I didn’t even complete the first quest to kill sprites.

My second class was a Dwarf Engineer.  The animations were much more enjoyable, and I really liked the feels of the Dwarf areas better than the Elf starting zone.

Combat overall is good.  A little slow, but not too bad.  I always feel like I have something to do.  PvP has been great fun in the couple of scenarios I’ve tried.

Crafting.  Mmmmm, no.  Crafting seems really last minute to me.  I tried a little bit of both alchemy and talismans and didn’t like either.  Also, there’s no quest introduction.  So far I think both LoTRO and WoW handled crafting better.

Warhammer Impressions

I’ve been playing Warhammer for a few days now.  I have about 19 hours put in on a Dwarf Engineer.

The launch has been pretty smooth.  Some queues, but nothing horrible.  Some crashes, but better than the first week of WoW (I played at launch), although I do feel like LoTRO had a smoother launch.

I really enjoy the lore and the atmosphere of the game.  Mythic did an excellent job of making each zone feel like an actual war is going on.  Going from one encampment to another, I can watch NPC skirmishes happening with orcs and goblins charging dwarven lines.  Really makes the environment feel more dynamic than I was expecting.

The quest progression in the first tier is well designed and did a good job of moving me from the starting area out to my first public quest and then on to the next area with multiple PQ’s and more varied quests.

The quest design broke down a little when I got to the second tier, the Marshes. Yuck.  So far I’m not liking the Marshes.  After I finished all of the tier 1 quests, I moved to the Marshes to complete my last two quests.  This seems a bit early.  In tier one I only died a few times and that was almost always my own fault.  In tier two I died a lot more.  A lot.  As in it got annoying.

The difficulty levels of the quests in the Marshes seem uneven.   Some are solo-able and some are not.  There’s no indication of which are which.   Some of the quests I got at the first dwarf encampment were okay for my rank (which was 11-ish) and some I needed to be higher, but there’s no indicator on the quest of what the target level is.  It’s pretty annoying to trek out into the swamps toward a quest area only to find that the mobs I need to hunt are too high for my current rank.

As I moved out from the first to the second dwarf camp in the Marshes this became more of an issue.   Several times I had to skirt areas and hunt around a little bit for the one quest I could actually complete.   A couple of times, I was only able to complete a quest because a higher level had just come through and cleared out the mobs and I was able to run in and pickup whatever glowing item I was supposed to click on.

I may be spoiled by LoTRO, but I think adding a rank indicator to quests would go a long way.  Especially for some of the quests that send you to a new area or zone which you may or may not be level appropriate for.

I’ve got some more to say, see part two in a couple of days.