T w e n t y S i d e d

Remember the last time I said I was done with Lord of the Ring Online for good? I think it was in January. Just a few months ago. I had even mentioned THEN that I had previously become so disillusioned with the game I had tried to delete my Standing Stone (the publisher) account. Well, funny thing. As has happened multiple times before, I started missing certain things. On top of that, the problem with performance should surely be addressable. While I have no doubt playing on Linux introduces certain problems, I keep seeing people mention (and I remember from troubleshooting last time) the poor performance is *not* limited to Linux players; Windows players have the exact same problems. On top of that, most of those problems seem to have only presented themselves in the last year or so. One problem I have I know is because of Linux: I have the game installed on a separate SATA mechanical hard drive. Uh, formatted in ext4 if I remember correctly. Program access in that situation is known to be relatively slow, and how Linux caches disk writes and reads means you can tie this process in knots if you’re not careful. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The bottom line is that a few days ago I re-installed LOTRO *again* and started playing with a set of of criteria…that *seems* to be working this time. And one particular change to the graphics that has helped immensely.

The prerequisites start with the character. I’m building a Hunter and wanted the best race for that build. As the Hunter uses the primary stat Agility, and Elves have a bonus to Agility, I chose an Elf. A Wood Elf from Mirkwood, IIRC. I am currently relying solely on Bow skills instead of using a pet, which I may change in the future. The name “Nadhrariel” is auto-generated and is one of those names that makes perfect sense without the random letter in the middle; in this case the “h.”

I mentioned in January I was going to play the original starting area and ignore side-quests unless they were needed for leveling. Doing this I found before long that I was Level 5 in an area designed for Level 10 quests. This *could* be a failure to update older areas to match the modern leveling curve; I haven’t verified this. I did try the new starting area with the same idea and found myself in a similar situation, to be fair. Similar, one should note; not identical. This time I will start in the new starting area again, as I have read repeatedly that the new area is more streamlined and fits the level curve better. The graphics tweak I mentioned earlier can be found in several places online, mostly dating to current posts, early 2025, and late 2024: turn off the 3D portraits:

The portrait is the part in the upper left that is just stylized tree icon. Normally this is a head portrait of your character that, as far as I can remember, is animated and looks around. Turning this feature off is supposed to be good for a ten to thirty frames-per-second increase, which seems like it might be a problem. I haven’t bothered to check FPS, as mine is *fine* unless it isn’t; if you following my meaning. That is to say, I get way more than I can possibly need half the time and there is no notable direct or consistent cause of frame-rate decrease. It doesn’t noticeably go down in towns, for instance. Pop-in of 3D objects seems to happen no matter what setting I use. I have noticed I use a much more detailed setting for ground vegetation. Or whatever it’s called. I tend to like it because it’s “different” from other MMO’s I play. BUT I’ve noticed when I need to find some information and the source is a YouTube video that shows other people’s in-game experience, they don’t have all that vegetation. So it’s part of the “additional” or “hi-res” features I have turned on. Maybe I should find that. To be honest Hobbits are hard to find in tall grass. They don’t even need an Elven Cloak.

Plus, it seems to be night time most the time. How is that possible? But somehow almost every time I log in it’s dark out. You think finding a Hobbit in tall grass is a problem in the day, try it at midnight. But that’s actually a change to bring up as well. I had mentioned I was going to stay away from side quests as much as possible. That’s not really an option. I found that out last time as I just documented. So this attempt I’m doing side-quests as I go. The only guideline I follow is to never take a quest from a higher level. The text dialogue for each quest displays the “quest level” in the upper-left of the window:

This has kept me on-level with the Epic Quest-line so far, so I guess I owe the game an apology; at least for the new area.

The new starting area is centered around an Uruk-hai invasion of Swanfleet, an area South of the Lonelands between Bree and Rivendell. Swanfleet is only briefly mentioned in The Lord of the Rings and has no real part of that story. The implementation of the area in Lord of the Rings Online is lore-friendly, with a small presence of “Men” in the starting town of Mossward and a large population of “River” Hobbits, the Stoors. Swanfleet was most recently (that being a few thousand years ago) a part of the Northern Kingdom of Numenorians (a seperate, favored race of Men) in Middle Earth: Arnor (as opposed to the Southern Kingdom of Gondor, which people are more familiar with.) The Lord of the Rings generally gives the impression that any area not explicitly mentioned as being populated is just ruins and evil things, although if you read any of the voluminous notes or now-published additional content that made up Tolkien’s Legendarium you will know that is mostly *not* true. It just didn’t have anything to do with the story he was telling so he had his characters kind-of navigate around many known areas. At least, that’s the way it seems to have worked in Tolkien’s head.

You start in Mossward; you can see this town in the middle of the Southwestern edge of the map. The storyline will then send you to the Stoor-vales towns of Clegur, Glyn Helyg, and Lintrev; river towns populated by Hobbits. You can see the entire area is dominated by an inland delta where one large river system joins another. You can actually see this on old book-maps; this is where the Glanduin, or Swanfleet River, joins the Hoarwell (or Loudwater.) The maps show this is a swampy river delta, and that is indeed what Standing Stone has rendered in-game. You will also get sent to Lhan Garen in the middle of the delta, but other than making the trip to get the Stable-master marker (for quick travel) I only noted that the area offered quests around 14 or 15, so I’ve been focusing on the Stoor-vales area.

The general line of quests is just now moving us into the center of the map. I suspect from a brief glance that one of the “too high” quests I have ignored in Lintrev is to attack an area where I’m sure to draw group responses. HOWEVER, I had a much-lower level quest to essentially walk into the middle of that area and retrieve a package already, so it may not be a problem after all. Of course I might not have read accurately, or there may be more to the quest than what I was able to read. And I have no idea where the Epic Quest line will take me, either. I’m only level 11 now, with the current quests likely to move me to 12. Epic Quest advancement seems to reward more XP and better armor, for the record. Quest after quest is sending us to “along the Old South Road” which so far has been the bright grey line that runs between Tharbad (the ruins of) to the West and the “to Enedwaith” in the East.

One thing that does lurk obviously under the surface of The Lord of the Rings is there are ruins *everywhere.* The world of Middle Earth is built on but mostly around and near the remains of the last Northern human kingdom, which itself only occasionally touches on the remains of ancient Elven kingdoms. That last bit mostly because most of the Elven kingdoms of Eriador were built before the cataclysm that largely destroyed Beleriand, and thus were destroyed along with it. What remains is *so* ancient at this point that only vague pieces are left. Whereas the last human kingdom is comparable to bronze-age remains on Earth (time-wise). They’re actually all over the place if you know where to look. The Lord of the Rings Online transforms these ruins mostly to late-medieval in style which matches the books in some ways and not in the others. Although to be fair most of the ways they *don’t* match is because Tolkien either didn’t describe something fully or used only vague words and concepts.

I was hoping I could grab the next part of the story for today, but the day-night cycle has foiled me again. I really need to go attack a large group, but the sun is setting. That’s it for now, see you next week!

Paige Francis He/him