If you ever look at the sales page for a LOTRO expansion or a loading screen advertisement for a zone or expansion, inevitably the very first thing that will be mentioned on the feature point list is the sheer number of quests that this pack unlocks. Two, five, six hundred new quests — this sort of thing is not uncommon to see.
Born in the World of Warcraft era, Lord of the Rings Online grabbed on to the former’s questing system and used it — as most MMOs have since — as the backbone of its narrative and gameplay operations. Quests drove nearly everything: progress, loot acquisition, story, movement.
And out of all of those quest-happy games, those WoW clones, LOTRO seems to have gorged more than most on quests. Apart from its lauded and generally more involving epic story questlines, regular quests have served as filler rather than flavor. I think they were more flavor back in the early years of the expansion — just go play through the Shire’s quests if you want to see a wide variety of tales told and activities performed via quests. These days, quests seem there to give us something to do. To pad out the time. To make that feature list tally seem all that more impressive.
So has LOTRO overdosed on quests? I can’t even fathom how many total quests there are in the game to date, but it has to be over 10,000. Your enjoyment of the game is relative to how much you like — or can tolerate — a barrage of quests. Conversely, the number of alts that one makes seems to go down the more quests you do on your main character (and subsequently realize that you will have to do with the next one).
The developers have created an interesting pattern in the last several zones and expansions. Really, this goes way way back, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, especially going through Minas Morgul. The pattern goes somewhat like this:
- You’ll arrive at a new zone or quest hub and hoover up four to eight quests waiting for you there.
- Sometimes, one of those quests will be “complete 6 quests for Sir Questsalot,” which then triggers a whole bunch more rings (quest icons) over NPCs.
- You’ll start working on the quests, most of which overlap in territory, while accepting a handful of new quests out on the landscape.
- Turning in these quests, you’ll get even more quests that will, more often than not, have you go back to the *same* area you were just in. A third batch of quests will repeat this, often culminating with a mini-boss fight.
- You’ll rinse-and-repeat at a quest hub until you finally exhaust all of the missions and are led — via a quest or two — to the next hub.
LOTRO’s developers obviously love the areas and cities they’ve created, and you know this because of how long they’ll keep you puttering about in a particular area. I’ve been slowly working my way up the terraces of Minas Morgul over several nights now, and I can tell you that it’s almost a joke how many quests keep sending me back to the same spots, just for different objectives.
It’s how the game is. It’s not a horrible thing, understand. Filler can be satisfying, in a way. Sometimes those quests prove individually interesting or tell a cool story. There’s a sense of advancement and progression. You can do a lot of things when you’re getting rewarded for it. And it is a great feeling to come back to a hub and unload a half dozen or more quest turn-ins in one go.
But sometimes… sometimes I get weary of the sheer volume of quests, which is why I wrote that post on streamlining the game for alts a few weeks ago. MMOs like The Secret World have instilled in me a much deeper appreciation for multi-stage quests that are fewer in number but boast more narrative and greater involvement. They feel like the name that these are given — quests.
After all, in Lord of the Rings, the Quest was given a capital letter to signify its magnitude, its journey, and its effort. Grabbing a handful of flowers in three minutes to shove into the hand of a bored elf doesn’t seem to merit the same name.
