LotRO: Mines of Moria: WarCry's Official Review

WarCry contributor Jim Moreno delves into Turbine's Mines of Moria and lives to tell the tale and share his experiences.

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Can't wait! Got my collector's edition in via UPS today. Patch installed. Just waiting for the gates to Moria to open.

Without a doubt, LotRO is my most favorite, the one MMORPG that rules them all, in my opinion

So you would say your review is biased?

I can say Mines of Moria continues and strengthens the vaulted impression I have for LotRO, to the point where I have no fear about calling it the best fantasy MMORPG yet created

Yep.... totally biased.

Reviewers aren't supposed to be without their biases. In fact, if the game were simply mediocre or, worse, bad, biased reviewers would be harder on developers due to their disappointment. The fact that it's good enough to warrant such high praise from a fan, whose expectations are arguably MUCH higher than someone who's never played the game, is a good thing, not the opposite as you seem to imply.

Why not spend some time and do some effort to make better screenshots for the review? The LotRO looks much better...

A good and accurate review ,I also am totally enamored so far by MOM and look forward to future hours of gaming

I do not think that this review gives a good indication of the radical changes that Mines of
Moria introduces compared to Shadows of Angmar.

Parts of Moria are good; parts such as Durins Way and Zelem-Melek look and play atrociously.

The real problem with Mines of Moria is that it is extremely linear and a grind compared to
Shadows of Angmar. In Shadows of Angmar you could get by with quested or crafted gear; now to take part in raid content you must have gear that you can only get by repeatedly grinding dungeons. While this may be acceptable in most MMORPGs, it is just not right for a game that
purports to call itself "Lord of the Rings". The books are primarily about epic journeys and epic battles: this means that in a truly representative game a character should be able to build up a reasonable set of virtues and gear solely by exploring and questing. High-end gear (from dungeon-grinding) should not be mandatory, but of course an increasing amount of the "solo" content in the game is being adjusted to challenge players with the high-end gear to the detriment of those players who remain true to the spirit of the books.

As it has developed, this game has no right to call itself "Lord of the Rings Online".

openedge1:
Without a doubt, LotRO is my most favorite, the one MMORPG that rules them all, in my opinion

So you would say your review is biased?

I can say Mines of Moria continues and strengthens the vaulted impression I have for LotRO, to the point where I have no fear about calling it the best fantasy MMORPG yet created

Yep.... totally biased.

What exactly is a review if not a personal account of the reviewer's experiences and enjoyment of the product in question?