Cast your memory back to last fall when Lord of the Rings Online’s current expansion, Legacy of Morgoth, was announced. While there was excitement over further adventures in the game, a portion of the fanbase protested that the expansion lacked both a level cap increase and a tentpole feature.
And while the former was true, the latter wasn’t entirely the case. Sure, there wasn’t a massive new feature such as epic battles, a new class, or a new race, but SSG did slip in one idea that could have long-reaching effects in the game, especially for those of us who want to have fun outside of combat. Today I want to talk about baubles, and how this system is a very welcome addition to the game.
If you haven’t noticed, over the past year the studio’s been expanding the collection panel UI to include new tabs. First came birding, a still half-baked hobby system that involves “collecting” different sightings of avian friends across the world. Then with the expansion came baubles, which are a different type of collection.
The idea here was to take inventory objects that could be activated for repeated fun activities and transform them into skills. Not only would that remove a lot of inventory clutter, but baubles centralized all of these trinkets into a single panel. Once an object is collected as a bauble, players can go into this UI and activate the ability or drag the icon down to a hotbar for repeated use.
Its clear analogue would be World of Warcraft’s toy chest, which pretty much does the same thing.
(As a side note, I would love to see this same system for all of these various map and milestone abilities so that we don’t have to scroll through the unwieldy skills panel to find them!)
I can understand why SSG was hesitant to hold up baubles as a major feature of Legacy of Morgoth. That’s because it isn’t major at all. It’s a for-fun system that isn’t fully implemented yet. As with birding, SSG pushed out the door the first iteration of this feature with the intent to build upon it in the future.
That means that most of the 45 baubles currently available to collect are from the latest expansion. So if you’re not in Umbar, you probably won’t be getting much use out of the bauble system… yet. Hopefully the developers commit to fleshing this out and adding all of those legacy items like the firefly jar from the Mathom house or Ronald Dwale’s Pipe from Evendim.
Baubles were so low-key, in fact, that I didn’t pay much attention to them at all until very recently. And that’s only because I was going through a reputation quartermaster to see what rewards I could purchase and spotted several baubles listed among them.
Three in particular caught my attention: a tent, a campfire, and a camping chair. I grabbed these with growing excitement, collected them into the baubles panel, and then activated them to create my own little campsite in the game world.
It’s silly, I know, but I was absolutely thrilled to finally have the ability to set up a camp in LOTRO. I’ve long said that this is a feature that I wish all fantasy MMOs would have, especially one where you go on long adventures throughout Middle-earth. Now… now it’s here.
I should note that a chunk of these baubles are “guises,” i.e., transforming abilities that make you look like a particular noteworthy character from the books for a time. I don’t know why you’d want to hobble around as Gandalf or flit between flowers as Goldberry, but hey, now you have that option.
I recognize that baubles have a ways to go before they become a prominent part of the game, but I wanted to write this column to praise the framework and potential for this system. It’s a cracking good idea from both an inventory and roleplay standpoint, and SSG can’t expand the collectables fast enough for my liking. I envision a day when this panel encompasses all of the toys in the game, giving everyone a lot of tools for interaction, community gathering, and personal immersion.
For those of you who have used this system so far, what do you think about it and its potential? What should SSG do to make baubles better?
Every two weeks, the LOTRO Legendarium goes on an adventure (horrid things, those) through the wondrous, terrifying, inspiring, and, well, legendary online world of Middle-earth. Justin has been playing LOTRO since its launch in 2007! If you have a topic for the column, send it to him at justin@massivelyop.com.
