Welcome to the third part of a short review of Lord of the Rings Online that I hope I can keep to four parts. Parts one and two have come before this one (I like a traditional numbering scheme) and part four is on the way.
3. Technology
With any luck, this part will be short! The content and system behind an on-line roleplaying game combine to make up much of the overall experience. Certainly for many players those two things are enough to decide the fate of a game. However, how the game is actually presented on the screen and how the different technology elements work can also make or break a game for quite a large section of the player base. That’s what this part is going to talk about.
3.1 Interface
The interface is the window through which we look at the game and the system through which we control it. Bad interface design has killed games in the past and will sadly kill games in the future. I freely admit I struggled with the LoTRO interface at the outset. I was very used to EverQuest after 7 years, and I wasn’t at all sure about changing. Over time though I have gotten used to it and while there are features which annoy me there aren’t any show stoppers. Discussing the interface in full detail would take hours and thousands of words, I’m not going to do that so I’ll just give you a general feel for it.
The interface is actually several elements,
- how do you control the game
- how does the game display information to you
- how does the game handle chat
- how can you configure those three things to suit you
3.1.1 Control
I’ll handle control first. Basic movement in LoTRO is pretty standard, cursor keys or WASD for moving around, combinations of keys to look around rather than turn. You can use left mouse button + mouse to turn and right mouse button + mouse to look. Holding down both mouse buttons makes you move in the direction your character is facing. You can mix and match all those combinations. Anyone who’s played a FPS or a recent MMORPG will find using that control system easy, it’s pretty standard these days. You can position the camera either floating behind the character (3rd person) or inside the character (so the game is 1st person). I played EQ in 1st person but for some reason LoTRO works a lot better for me in 3rd person and I’m pretty used to it now.