lotro guide

It's time to leave the sunny plains of Azeroth for the bloody fields in Warhammer Online
Playing an MMO isn't a hobby. It isn't a pastime. It's an obsession that grabs you by the nuts and doesn't let go until you become a sleep-deprived zombie with an insatiable lust for more loot. MMOs aren't just games. They're an all consuming way of life that replaces your family with guildmates, sacrifices sleep for more raiding, and leaves you hung over with blurry visions of gear upgrades. If you've experienced any of these problems, you know you've been playing a damn good MMO.

For the past few years, World of Warcraft has been our favorite flavor of this online crack. Since its release, we've sampled lots of MMOs that claimed to be the next big thing. But every time we rolled a character in a different game, WoW eventually tightened the reins and tugged us back to Azeroth with its steady stream of excellent improvements and updates.

All this changed when Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning finally launched. Now there's a different title that's demanding ownership over every free moment we have. This new lover isn't whispering sweet nothings in our ear like "dabu" or "zug zug." It's grabbing us by the throat and screaming at the top of its lungs, "Get over 'ere you git! Da Warboss wants more humie headz! WaaAAaagh!"

We're not saying that WoW isn't great. We're saying that we're scared. We're scared because WAR took everything we loved about WoW and improved it tenfold. Yes, WAR is that good. And we fully expect that it'll be ruining our personal lives for the next few years at least. Whether you're solo questing or prefer massive PvP raids, WAR feels better than every MMO we've played this year. Is it time to switch? We don't know about you, but it is for us.

In WAR, Orcs don't dance like MC Hammer outside the auction house. Why would they? They're too busy beating down Dwarves, stealing their delicious beer, and swearing in cockney English accents. WAR doesn't have time to waste time on silly animated emotes. There's a war going on and everything you do helps your faction's efforts in the epic battle between the forces of Order and Chaos.

You'll still receive lots of the expected kill-a-bunch-of-enemies quests. After all, it's a staple for all MMOs. But even when it comes to these ho-hum tasks, WAR manages to inject its own unique attitude into what would otherwise be another generic and forgettable quest. In one early quest we played, we were ordered to investigate some mysterious Dwarven barrels located at the frontlines of the battle outside your camp. It looked like an everyday collection quest, and we were told that "Stunties only put two fings in barrels: boom and beer." So we were expecting to find boxes of ammunition or some tasty ale to lug back to the quest giver for a miserly reward.

Instead, an ornery Dwarf - dressed in nothing but his boxers - burst from the barrel and started punching us in the face. This is high fantasy questing at its finest, and WAR is filled with memorable moments like these.

In most MMOs, you don't really start seriously grouping with other players until you've been playing for quite some time. It takes a while to build up your friends list, find the right guild, and learn the ropes before you start taking on more challenging quests with a group.

But WAR streamlines the grouping process so that joining parties, finding a large war band of players for PvP, and joining a guild isn't reserved for those who are close to reaching their level cap. Whenever you enter a new zone, you can pull up a list of Open Groups and join other players working with the click of a button. The window lets you see how many minutes it'll take you to reach the group by foot, whether they're working on a Public Quest, regular PvE, or hunting enemy players for PvP kills.

Since all groups are Open Groups by default, this means that you'll almost always find some friendly group to grind or PvP with. This simple system gives you all the fun stuff that comes with grouping from the very start and cuts out all the hassles associated with it.

We're used to seeing towns littered with useless NPCs. They're not there to give you quests, sell items, or repair your equipment. In a lot of cases, they don't even have a line of canned dialogue to spout. Instead, they're just standing around to help create the illusion that there are more than five people living there.

In WAR this is the exception, not the rule. When you enter a new town or hub, you'll be sure to find a few NPCs staring blankly into the distance. But you'll also notice large forces of friendly NPCs just outside the town, holding off hordes of enemies. Expect to see other players in the thick of battle, helping to hold the line against incoming forces. These are Public Quests. Think of them as bite-sized mini-raids that you're free to join or leave at any time.

Public Quests don't just add a sense of urgency to WAR's brutal atmosphere. They fix it so that players naturally gravitate towards each other. Most Public Quests are placed near hubs, which ensures that there'll be lots of passersby to join the fray and help out.

Also, because the objectives for Public Quests are fairly simple and often require that you kill large numbers of progressively stronger foes, everyone knows what they're doing and in-depth strategizing isn't really necessary (WAR seems to save most of that stuff for its Group Quests). This means more killing, faster rewards, and none of the hassle of waiting for replies to your looking-for-group requests in public chat.

Each zone in WAR contains a Keep that's up for grabs in special zones reserved for PvP combat. Members from the Order and Chaos factions are constantly fighting over control of these keeps. Killing other players and capturing keeps yields all kinds of benefits to your side from extra cash when selling items to merchants to special vendors with powerful items.

Because of the Open Group system, joining a large group of players for non-instanced PvP raids isn't exclusively for organized guilds. Like Public Quests, the PvP combat in WAR is easy to get into and will turn the most stalwart PvE care bears into bloodthirsty PvP fanatics.

But the best part about these zones so far are the siege weapons. Are you trying to defend your keep from the enemy? Climb up to the ramparts and poor some molten iron over their heads. Is your group having trouble breaking past the enemies' defensive line? Man a cannon and clear a path so your war band can advance.

Most WoW players have thottbot.com open in a browser while they're playing. Online databases like thottbott.com and allakhazam.com are great because you can quickly find key locations and details on quests if you're ever stuck in the game. The only problem is that every second you spend alt-tabbing to your browser is a waste of precious time that could've spent playing the actual game and killing stuff.

WAR's Tome of Knowledge eliminates much of the need for sites like these. It holds detailed information about all the quests you're working on so you'll never have to turn to an online database if you forgot where you should be heading to complete it.

But the Tome is so much more than an improved quest log. Just about everything you do unlocks a new page in the book. Kill an enemy for the first time and it'll add an entry to the Tome's Bestiary with an illustration and a description of the mob. Complete enough quests and you'll unlock new entries in your Achievements section with fresh titles to add below your name for all to see. Talking to important NPCs will open up entries in the Noteworthy Persons section with additional background lore. Filled with pictures, maps, details on items, and all sorts of other goodies, the Tome of Knowledge is like a personal scribe that takes note of every accomplishment you've achieved while playing. It even gains XP and levels up as you add additional pages!

Your Tome of Knowledge isn't the only unusual thing that levels up in WAR. Your guild levels up too! As your members grow more powerful so does your guild. Some of the rewards are superficial. For example, the highest ranking guilds will get to see groups of NPC guards bearing their guild’s banner at your capital city.

You’ll also unlock useful features as your rank swells like a calendar to plan group events and access to special merchants with powerful gear for sale.

Grinding. Grinding. Grinding. Everyone complains about how killing enemies ad nauseam in MMOs sucks. WAR has its fair share of grinding, but it never feels like a grind. Part of it has to do with the way the game cuts out all the unnecessary time sinks.

You'll never find yourself sitting in a field of corpses, waiting for more enemies so you can try to get that fifth hunk of wolf meat to drop. Instead, WAR keeps things fast-paced with a quick respawn rate so you can get your killing done and move on without any unnecessary thumb twiddling.

Death penalties are minor and can be cured by NPC healers in hubs for a low cost. Your health and mana also regenerate quickly after battle, so there's no need for a cooking profession to alleviate downtime between battles.

But the main reason why grinding never feels like a grind in WAR is because everything you do (and we do mean everything), level ups some aspect of your character or contributes to your faction's war efforts. Even when you're just questing on your own, you're still playing an important part in your server's group effort to conquer the other side's capital city. Once that city has been looted, pillaged, and burned to the ground, the server will reset and the epic war will rage on again.

Make no mistake. WoW is awesome it’s not going anywhere. Lord of the Rings: Online is great. And there are elements of Age of Conan that are excellent. But WAR is the best MMO out there right now, and as servers continue to swell with more players it keeps getting better. That's why we've switched to WAR. Anyone who likes fantasy, leveling up, and PvP should consider doing the same. Even if you don't normally like PvP, you will after playing WAR. We simply can't recommend it enough.