The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria Review (PC)

Mines of Moria

Based on the work of its kind founder, Lord of the Rings Online is an MMORPG which, far from claiming to compete with the insatiable predator World of Warcraft, has nevertheless managed to find its audience. Turbine is trying to move up a gear with the first paying extension of the game: Mines of Moria. An ambitious undertaking, since it seems difficult to breathe a new life in an MMO the epic of this cult episode in the novel by Tolkien.
The Lord of the Rings Online is always so beautiful in its outdoors: landscapes are a visual beauty and an enchanting poetry. In the mines, it is a bit more mixed: without vegetation and without blur effects, decors reveal polygons that are too visible and too projecting. But these imperfections are erased in the front of the craftsmanship work done on the design of the dwarf architecture. The characters, however, are still too bland.
The Lord of the Rings Online is a MMORPG as accessible and easy to handle as can be World of Warcraft. It’s too bad that its gameplay does not have the same dynamism. To compensate for that, the two new classes of characters add a technical and strategic dimension that was lacking in the fighting.
Moria is not as large as they wanted us to believe, but the different areas are the promise of many hours of extra gaming, supported by new skills and new features that will lead you gently to level 60. Also note the addition of new instances, a legendary weapon system and two additional classes of characters. This should fully satisfy the most demanding players.

Mines Of Moria

A successful soundtrack can often boost a game that suffers from a lack of rhythm and a fairly soft action. This is unfortunately not the case here: if they invite contemplation and underline the disproportionate and grandiose aspects of the decorations, musical compositions don’t bring an epic dimension to the events taking place there. The sound effects are about as rare as tactful: where is the echo which reinforces the oppression sensation, where are the drums sounds in the distance?
This is probably the biggest disappointment of this extension: if it was hard to adapt the passage from the cult novel by Tolkien that is Moria, the lack of inspiration that shown the writers is sad to see. The narration is slow, the staging is peaky, the loading is too long and quests lack of interest. The world of Tolkien is well reproduced, but we would have preferred it to be something interesting.
With Mines of Moria, The Lord of the Rings Online gets a solid expansion in terms of content and new features but disappointing in terms of gaming enjoyment and immersion. The immensity of Moria is only matched to his tendency to empty, his quests very agreed and his lack of epic. It is not all to propose any grandiose and respectful surroundings of the Tolkien’s work: it must also be something interesting and catchy enough to attract the player. Beside, Turbine introduces a legendary weapon system rather convincing and two classes of characters devilishly attractive. Overall, this extension deserves attention, but no more than those offered for free since the release of the game.