LOTRO Legendarium: Is LOTRO’s early game too big and unwieldy?

As I was making some personal plans for my future adventures on Lord of the Rings Online’s new legendary servers, I was really struck by just how large and expansive the early game is. When Mordor and Angmar release, players will most likely be limited to Eriador for the first several months for journeys and leveling.

Yet I don’t think most people understand how huge this area’s become, especially after the past few years when SSG decided that it was very important — for some reason — to greatly expand this portion of the game. More choices are welcome, yes, but is it possible that it’s made the early LOTRO experience a little too unwieldy for the average player?

To get a sense of how big this is, let’s step back to 2020. For about a decade, Eriador had been pretty solidly locked into around 11 zones for the level 1 through 50 experience, excluding the tutorial regions and Sarnur. It was more than enough to get you to 50, as there were always at least two (if not three) zones available for any given level range.

However, in early 2021, SSG decided that this wasn’t enough for choice and leveling options, so it embarked upon an expansion campaign for the early game. Over the next two years, we got five new zones and sub-zones: Wildwood (March 2021), The Angle of Mitheithel (February 2022), Yondershire (April 2022), Swanfleet (November 2022), and Cardolan (November 2022).

That brought us up to 16 zones, or 17 if you break Bree-land up into three distinct leveling regions (east, west, and Wildwood). In many ways, this was a great set of additions to the world. The map was filled in, Yondershire helped to connect the Shire to Ered Luin in a natural way, and veteran players had fresh leveling paths to explore.

Probably the most obvious of these paths is the new tutorial followed by the Swanfleet/Cardolan combo with its own epic storyline that you can follow all the way up through level 32 without heading anywhere else.

Yet more options aren’t always better. We’re all familiar with decision paralysis, where you can have so many choices that you kind of lock up and feel anxious not knowing which is the best pick. Everything from Moria onward is more or less linear, with the epic story providing the guide and a few optional cul-de-sacs here or there. So as of right now, this over-abundance of zone choices only really exists in Eriador.

I suppose how much of a problem (or not) this is depends on your playstyle. For completionists like yours truly, this creates a situation where it’s all too easy to get bogged down trying to do All The Stuff in the early game and becoming burned out before you go through the doors of Moria. Others might become frustrated at overleveling zones that they’d love go to through on level (cheap plug for Stone of the Tortoise). And yet others may be content to simply go where their heart leads, treating the early game as a sort of “choose your own adventure” experience where all paths lead to the same place.

I suspect that the biggest issue, the one that SSG really should examine, is how confusing and overwhelming this may become to anyone approaching the game for the first time. How do you even suggest a leveling path to a newbie these days? The studio took a partial stab at streamlining one with Swanfleet/Cardolan but left the job half-done.

I’m certainly not going to suggest a “zone squish” or anything ridiculous like that. I love all of these zones and appreciate what they contribute to the larger game map. But there are two suggestions that could address some of the issues that come with 16 zones (more or less) vying for our attention within a 50-level range.

First is that SSG really should give consideration to providing more leveling guidance to players beyond the scanty “Introduction to ZONE NAME HERE” breadcrumb quests that we get. Maybe this could be something as simple as a button that’s active only pre-50, one that when clicked will evaluate your level and give you the appropriate zone options along with a description. I’m thinking specifically of how Elder Scrolls Online handles its Zone Guide feature with kickoff quests for the region of your choice.

Second, I think it’s high time that Volume 1 of the epic story gets a full overhaul. It was already a really scattered tale back in the day, and it’s aged poorly since 2007 in comparison to the newer tales being told. The studio could take all of the early zones into account and draft up an improved epic that would take us through the totality of Eriador.

I’m sure there are other ways to repurpose and/or connect zones together to craft new content as well, but I think I’ll let this topic rest for now. What do you think of the size of the early game in LOTRO, and what — if anything — should SSG do about it?