Hunt for the Ring

Visions of the Ring, an excellent map-centric site, has a new interactive map up: The Hunt for the Ring. It's an excellent overview of Frodo's journey and the peripheral characters from Bag End to Rivendell. I highly recommend checking it out as it does an excellent job of geographically grounding that part of the journey. It can sometimes be difficult to place all the characters, where they traveled, etc.

What I'd really love to see is an overview of the game's sequence of events within this timeline. Unfortunately, I think there might be a problem considering the distances involved - i.e. the player travels a lot more than is physically possible within the timeline available. There is a bit of that for a portion of the timeline and it's an excellent way to relate it to what's going on in LOTRO's storyline.

Also, can't wait until that site's Expansion Map is updated as well. It's sorely out of date at this point. Regardless, well done over there at Visions of the Ring!

What Zones?

Again it's back to the future world speculation post, this time inspired from a post at Kill Ten Rats. In this post Suzina speculates that we'll see 12 new zones by Christmas 2009 based off of what we see on the Rhovanion map. Before I get into what I think of the prediction I have to bring up something that has disturbed me from the first time I saw this map: It's oriented too far south. Take a look at this map of Middle-Earth. Rhovanion, based on the position and orientation of the name, implies that area extends all the way to the Lonely Mountain but not as far south as Mordor. Rohan might or might not be included. It's on the border.

Now, I understand why they chose to picture this farther south - in preparation for moving further with the fellowship, who doesn't go north. However, I'm bothered by the fact we're missing some of the far north areas of this region, which is mentioned in the Lord of the Rings in reference to Bilbo's previous journey. As such, I've always felt this map would be redone at some point to better reflect the region - to be more in line with the books. It certainly wouldn't be the first map that has been redone. Interestingly enough, the Shire map was re-done with the release of Moria and nearly all the other maps save Evendim and Forochel were reprocessed as well.

I don't agree with the argument that new zones can be inferred based on a map not being redone. However, based on the good chance that the new expansion will be Rohan, we can infer from that what we'll see - and it does line up fairly well with what we see on the map. Here's my take on the new zones to be seen in Rohan:

• Fangorn
• The Wold
• West Emnet (West Rohan)
• East Emnet (East Rohan)
• Emyn Muil
• Isengard

You'll notice I differ fairly strongly on a couple - notably the loss of Wilderland and the inclusion of Isengard. Why? Well, I discounted Wilderland because it's too far east. There's no reason to go way out there in the initial expansion. We might see an excursion similar to the one north into Evendim and Forochel back in Eriador but even then I'm wary. I also include Isengard because I'm not buying the argument about map redos. Evendim and Forochel weren't listed on Eriador's map before they became zones. Isengard can just as easily be listed and it would be a major oversight excluding the primary antagonist zone from a Rohan expansion. The only reason they might not include it is they didn't have enough time - like what happened to Lothlorien, and it'll be added to the following book update.

Dagorlad is missing because it figures more importantly in Return of the King material and Frodo and Sam head south after the Emyn Muil, not east. I also combine some of the zones mentioned in the Kill Ten Rats post because I think that my divisions are more in-line with the previous overland zone sizes. Moria zones are actually almost mini-zones within the overlarge zone of Moria. Basically, they're smaller than a normal overland zone and as such the 12 count doesn't need to be replicated in a Rohan expansion. The only advantage is one of marketing - keeping up the zone count is in a sense inflating the numbers to make them look good. I don't think it's necessary though. Not with the great publicity from Moria and Turbine's content record with this game so far.

So, Fangorn will include all the forest - at least the important parts. The Wold will be the link between Lothlorien and the rest of the expansion - like Eregion was for Moria. (I would like Fangorn to be accessible from Lothlorien, but I doubt it because the developers like to have greater control on content progression than I feel is necessary.) East and West Rohan is pretty self explanatory. The east will include the transition to Isengard as well as Helm's Deep and Edoras will be on the border between east and west. West will be the transition back to the Anduin, which is a nice eastern border. Emyn Muil will be a zone to shadow Frodo and Sam's journey. Back to Isengard - this could even be a smaller zone within East Rohan but I think it deserves its own treatment seperate from Rohan.

Even with 6 zones, this is probably more space than the Mines of Moria expansion gave us. I'm a little wary of speculating this much into the expansion but it makes sense from a world continuity and thematic perspective: all the zones are needed to inclued all the material Rohan would concern. And the beauty of all this is that either one of us may be right, or either one of us may be wrong. Time will tell.

Mountains, Mountains... Not a Rock to Climb

A frequent criticism visited on LOTRO, particularly by old school MMO players, is that LOTRO has a lot of mountains that aren't climbable. Furthermore, these mountains create a "fishbowl" type atmosphere where we're always stuck in valleys and we cannot get out of our little "aquarium".

Is this a valid criticism? Partly, but let's look at it. There is no denying that the zones use mountains/impassible terrain as a means of bounding the zones. And often times it does feel like we're in valleys all the time. On the surface, these arguments are perfectly valid because they're true. However, we should look at why there are mountains, mountains everywhere and not one is climbable.

First we have to understand from which direction this game came from. LOTRO is not starting out with an MMO and building a world around it. Rather, it's the opposite. Turbine started with a world - Tolkien's Middle-Earth, and built an MMO around it. The nature of MMO world building is different from that of a normal world - which is how Tolkien tried to build Middle-Earth.

Let's look at a few maps to illustrate my point:

• World of WarCraft
• Everquest
• Asheron's Call
• Middle-Earth

What are some of the commonalities between all these maps? Well, the most obvious one is that the three game maps are pretty much comprised of large islands versus the continent seen in Middle-Earth. The nature of the island-like game worlds is that they don't require as much time create - that is, the can be created all at once and the ocean offers a very normal, natural, and non-confining boundary. Middle-Earth, however, is much larger. It is a world, rather than an island. Each game has zones, but the zones in middle-earth are bounded by land, rather than water and all that land isn't built yet. So, there has to be some way to keep the players within the playable space without breaking immersion with an invisible wall and nondescript landscape beyond. Mountains offer the greatest ability to do so, particularly non-climbable mountains. Climbing the mountains would defeat their purpose.

Basically, we have a necessary evil in our non-scalable mountains. Because the world isn't bounded by oceans - because it was built from an already existing world not designed around MMO principles, we have to compromise.

Another item of note is the linear nature to the zone progression. Not in leveling (although that exists to a degree), but rather in physical placement. Lord of the Rings is a story about a journey across the continent - in one direction. Taking that as the main focus of the MMO story forced a straight-line approach for the most part in the zone creation. As such, there is only one place in the game where we see zones adjacent to each other in more than one direction: Evendim, The Shire, Breeland, Northdowns square. Largely these zones are seamless (less so with Evendim) and that would be the standard should additional adjacent zones be built.

Between these two issues, we have a more closed-in feeling in LOTRO. And for me, understanding this doesn't alleviate my desire to see a more expansive world than our linear travel pattern we have now. But I've got to accept what is now with the hope of more in the future. It's not like the current development is not quality work.

Lastly, I think the Google Maps type map over at Arda-Online offers the best example of what we see in the game.

EDIT: This post was inspired by a topic on the forums which was just today commented on by Scenario.

Horse Routes Interactive Map

From Hayoo, who brought you Visions of the Ring and the interactive expansion speculation fan map, is a new interactive horse routes map. I've only found a couple errors, and it's up-to-date to Moria aside from these and Moria itself. I highly recommend checking it out if you need to know how to get from one place to another in the ever-expanding world of Middle-Earth.