The Road to Mordor: Heroes for Shire
Every Friday, The Road to Mordor brings you the latest in Lord of the Rings Online news, guides and analysis.
This past week in LotRO I made a server move to Landroval, rerolling as a Hobbit Burglar. I've heard nothing but good things about Landroval, which has been backed up by my short stay thus far -- the community is super-nice and the RP events are quite engaging. I enjoyed sitting outside the Bird and Baby Inn in Michel Delving and listening to a band perform just as much as I enjoyed returning to the Shire overall.
Man, I missed the Shire. I mean, don't get me wrong -- it's terrific to progress through the zones, experience the epic storyline and grow in power and abilities. But after a while, the harsh landscape wears on the soul, and I yearned to return to the zone that made me fall in love with LotRO in the first place.
In "best of" lists, the Shire is often stated as one of players' most favorite zones in the game (of course, this is highly subjective and your mileage may vary). Most people, when asked why, usually resort to the tried-and-true "It's pretty!" as an explanation, and then head off to run some pies to Holly Hornblower in Hobbiton. But I think that this is too simple to be the whole truth, sort of how guys playing girl characters usually toss off a "I want to stare at an attractive butt when I play" as an explanation why they do it.
So as I spent the past week reacquainting myself with the Ranger-protected lands of the Shire, I puzzled out just what makes this zone so unique, so beloved and so attractive for many players.
1. Easy on Eyes and Ears
Let's start with the obvious: the Shire is a beautiful place, both visually and audiably. Turbine obviously spent some extra time giving this area a special layer of polish, from the rainbows in the sky to the burbling brooks to the insanely cozy Hobbit holes that pepper the landscape.
The Shire was based on the area around J.R.R. Tolkein's home where he grew up, and as such he had a soft spot for its beauty, as well as concern over its over-industrialization. In a way, the Shire is an idealized form of England where heavy industry never arrived.
The best way to describe the Shire is "pastoral" -- farms and fields dominate the area, and it's constantly warm and inviting in colors and features. Whether or not you're a nature buff, there's something about the outdoors of the Shire that is spot-on perfect. Because players are often influenced emotionally by their virtual environments, it's easy to establish a correlation between the Shire's beauty and people's fondness for it.
"Amonceleb" on the official forums testifies to this: "[The Shire is] arguably the best visually conceived area in the game. The mood that Tolkien conveys in his books was superbly translated, in terms of the topography of rolling drumlins and bubbling streams, the relatively care-free nature of the Hobbits, and the architecture of the landscape. It's a great "de-stresser" area... so much so, that all three of my homes are in the Shire."
2. Non-Combat Focus
Let's be honest -- war and hardcore conflict are almost unknown entities to the Shire, to the point that some players have issues with Turbine putting in what few enemy mobs and creatures there are. The Shire stands unique in LotRO and other games in that its zone features a great amount non-combat quests -- like hide and go seek! -- as a matter of course.
The two most notorious of these, of course, are the postal delivery and the pie recovery quest chains. Players love to grouse about how annoying and time-consuming these are, and how it doesn't make them feel like a hero. I think that's kind of the point -- you aren't a huge hero at this point, you're most likely a Hobbit who is making a name for him or herself by doing a very Hobbity task. Personally, I kind of like them and find the challenge of avoiding nosey or hungry Hobbits a fun change of pace.
3. Major Hobbit Focus
More or less, the rest of the game belongs to Men, Dwarves and Elves, as their encampments and towns and ruins run everywhere. But only in the Shire (and a couple outlying towns north and east) is there a huge focus on Hobbit society, architecture and culture. This makes it a special zone set apart from the rest, a reservation devoted to Hobbits where they are the dominant race in that area.
Now, Hobbits don't appeal to all players to be sure, but to those who like the little folk, the Shire is a wall-to-wall feast of Hobbit focus. They have such a naive and charming society that's often more focused on food and petty issues than anything huge and world-devastating. They're kind of goofy and funny, which makes me feel all protective, big brother-like around them. These are the people that I'm going on this huge journey to protect, and as such, I need to get to know them better.
