Adventures in Arda
Submitted Sunday, July 1, 2007 - 2:54:40 PM by Klaitu

Last friday a group of friends and myself made a trip, a bit of a virtual journey if you will in Lord of the Rings Online.

Sounds pretty nerdy, right?

The advanture is pretty compelling in LOTRO, we had just assisted Aragorn in ridding Middle earth of a dangerous Barrow-Wight, an undead creature in a crypt. Our next adventure would take us to the Lone Lands.

Together, our tiny fellowship trekked over hill and dale, avoiding all sorts of creatures dangerous enough to kill us all. We met with Radagast the Brown, who more or less told us we were too weak to start out on the adventure he had for us. Looking at the map, we discovered that we were now the closest to rivendell that any of us had ever been. We decided to set out on the journey.

It was a long trek, It didn't look like it would take that long on the map. We trekked across the entire Lone Lands and entered the Trollshaws.

A place like Trollshaws might make you think of some cave-infested warren of slime, but it was actually quite a peautiful mountain valley. It was in thie area that Arwen washed away the nazgul in the first movie. We even forded the very same river.

Perhaps it is a testament to the LOTRO art department that all of us recognized the river without actually having ever seen it before. We pressed on.

We then came across a wandering minstrel, another player who was a dwarf equipped with a harp. He flagrantly asked us what we noobs were doing in such a dangerous area. He was right to ask, as even the badgers in this area were capable of rending the flesh from our bones in a single blow.

We replied that we were the noob patrol. And indeed we were. The highest of us was level 17, but the creatures in the areas were in the 40's.

We continued the journey up, up over the mountains and down again finally into the valley of Rivendell.

You may recall Rivendell from the movie. It's an elf habitat full of elegantly carfed wooden structures, waterfalls, and trees in perpetual autumn. The sight in the movie was very impressive.

As we turned the corner into a rock precipice, we could see Rivendell in its entirety.. and it was an incredible sight. The lighting, the design, the artstyle... Never before have I felt so impressed in a video game.

I wouldnt say that LOTRO's graphics are better than say, oblivion.. but there is just something about the way they designed Rivendell that makes it absolutely spectacular.

But our adventure didn't end there, we next sought out the stablemaster, the one NPC who could allow us to travel between Bree-Land and Rivendell again.. and this time safely. We did find him, on the far side of Rivendell. Along the way we bumped into some famous people.

The first was Boromir.. in several minutes, we had located the entire fellowship as well as Elrond. The characters in the game are not meant to look like the actors in the movies, but to some extent they do.

It was truly an impressive time. Kudos to the LOTRO developers, it's been a long time since I've had a truly exciting adventure like that.