If I had to put a finger on the theme of LOTRO’s early zones, it would be that nature is lovely, to be cherished and quite beautiful — and it must be destroyed. It seems odd that this recreation of Tolkein’s world is so violently anti-nature, considering that one of the main themes of his books was protesting encroaching industrialization that was destroying the pristine beauty of the natural world. And yet, from level one, I am at odds with wolves, boars, giant mosquitoes, birds, bears, the occasional chicken, the harmless swamp slug, tree roots (!), spiders, puppy dogs, kittens, lemurs and the Boss Llama (one camelid to rule them all).
Is this because they destroyed my home, violated my childhood, or perhaps greenlit reality TV shows? Nay! I’d like to think that the folks over at Turbine hiss when they see any shrubbery or warm-blooded mammal, retreating to the comfort of indoor air conditioning whilst they perfect their nature murder simulator(tm), but the truth is far more mundane, another case of IP restricting them like a pair of too-tight underpants.
I guess you couldn’t have huge roving mobs of giants plundering the shire, or centaurs in the mountain halls of the dwarfs, or Vulcans beaming down to fight the overly cocky elves, since there’s little room in the books for that. So, by default, nature becomes the enemy until we get into higher level zones, where nature shares stage time with more signature bad guys.
It’s not just “kill 10 rats”, it’s “kill 10 of every freakin’ last thing that ever walked, crawled, slithered or flew over the earth, just because”. Noah is over there collecting his critters for the ark, and I’m making his life a lot harder. “What, you need a unicorn for your collection?” I say, eyeing the last male of the species. “Too bad I need this guy for my Discipline virtue!” And then I bathe myself in the silvery gore of the beast, secure in the knowledge that my character is marginally better at some stat.
It just amuses me to try to put this into the perspective of a character from one of the novels, this semi-psychotic behavior that is encouraged by the game’s design — especially with the deeds that require you to slaughter dozens and dozens of the same animal. For instance, you never see Frodo wring the necks of 90 sparrows before he left the Shire, just to be called more Loyal or whatnot. Perhaps Gandalf passed the time by going on a cat hunt, notching his staff for every ten he zapped, perhaps not. All I know is that if the films were made based on my character’s adventures, then small children in the audience would be crying to their mothers, “Mommy, make the bad man stop killing piggies! Make it stooooooooooooop!” and Sauron would relinquish his throne, due to being impressed at my ruthless lack of compassion for all that lives.
This bothered my wife a lot in LotRO even though she has a level-capped character in WoW. For her it seemed totally out of place in Middle-earth to be slaughtering everything that moved. I hadn’t even thought about it since that is what you do in almost any MMO most of the time. But after she said it I started to get annoyed as well. Why must we exterminate all of the animals?!?!
No different than any other MMO. If I made a tree-hugging hippie Night Elf in WoW, by the time I dinged level 3 I will have already killed more spiders and those goblin-demon things and whatever else is in Teldrassil than any mass murderer in history.
MMO’s build the entire game around combat. The solution to every problem in an MMO is violence and murder. To date, the few attempts at creative or alternative play has met with resistance from players. Killing is fun. What does that say about us?
lol… best post ever
When I first played LOTRO, this was one of the things that drove me away. The overall grind-y nature of deeds still rubs me the wrong way, and I’ve learned to laugh off the ridiculous “kill all the animals raaaaaagh!” quest lines.
Still feels way, way wrong in the context of Middle Earth, though.
@Scott
killed more spiders
Like in real life? Yet, in LOTRO, I remember the wanton slaughter of so many Bears and Wolves my eyes bled.
But, hey, I kill more spiders in my home than I did in a month in WoW…
So, spider death is cool…wolf death…not so cool.
I would rather do it in LOTRO than in WoW simply because you can flesh out and advance your character.
At least for the most part it leads to something. And besides that is pretty early on, later it is orcs and annoying human bandits.
Anything is better than WoW stupid faction grind for a purple cloak that will be replaced by 10 man raids you can do in a PUG.
At least in LOTRO I can flesh my character out and maybe get a bear to stuff and mount in my yard
Fantastic
The fact that i was killing animals all the way into my teens over and over again drove me up a wall. Lotro has more kill ten rats” type quests than just about any other mmo I’ve played. And your right i don’t think its in the spirit of Tolkien to have players destroy nature over and over.
@Hudson well, but does killing everything that moves and stripmining the hills for ore really fit into the lore? AND, if they’d thought about it some, could they have added alternate advancement methods that fit in with Tolkein’s reverence for nature?
I’ve pointed out before — bears were singled out for protection by Beorn, the shape-shifter. And yet we kill as many of them as we can, even on Beorn’s doorstep.
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