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The Daily Grind: What's the most poorly designed zone?
We've all been there: trekking through the levels, traversing the world, and eventually arriving at... that place. The zone that seems to have been designed to irritate you, personally. Either it's laid out too confusingly, or the quest objectives are too hard to reach, or you get turned around every two feet. It's a poorly designed area, plain and simple. I was pondering this during a recent expedition to the Foundations of Stone in Lord of the Rings Online's Moria. It's not a horrible zone; the creatures are terrifying, the atmosphere is spot-on, and it contains a few of the signature landmarks of the game world. And yet I have to contend that it is a poorly designed place. It's difficult to navigate, the walls are tough on the eyes, and the key quest hub is incredibly hard to find on your first (or second) try. With a few tweaks and a moderate redesign, it could be much more accommodating to the odd traveler. What other zones fall into this category for you? What zones aren't necessarily bad so much as they're just poorly laid-out and structured? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Road to Mordor: A haunted tour of Middle-earth
Despite what the brochures may tell you, Lord of the Rings Online's Middle-earth isn't all puppy dogs, sparkly rainbows and ice cream wagons. In fact, when you take a moment to stop screenshotting the living daylights out of the Shire, you'll quickly realize just how dark, cold and brutal this world is. Middle-earth is a realm where good is under siege by evil, and in many places, the evil is winning. You can see this in many places that formerly held beauty, but now are covered with the decor of death: bones, blood, cages, pikes and filth. Evil isn't just Freddy Krueger-style splatter, either -- there are plenty of spots that are haunted by the spectral spirits of the beyond, and if you dare venture into their domain, you should probably have your will made up in advance. So in honor of one of my favorite holidays -- Halloween -- I want to take you on a haunted tour of Middle-earth, covering some of the most notorious spooky, scary and outright creepy places I've found. Grab your torch and let us push back the darkness together!
Turbine releases three new Mines of Moria videos
Turbine has just released three new videos promoting their upcoming expansion for Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria. These videos show the two new classes: the Warden and Rune-keeper. Plus, they delve a bit into the new Foundations of Stone area within the Mines.If you weren't pumped up enough already about Moria, following our extensive coverage and our upcoming coverage, these short videos might help with that excitement a bit. Although we've seen plenty of pics for both of the new classes, this is the first official video showing the Warden and the Rune-keeper. Be sure to check out all three videos embedded just after the cut.
LotRO: Mines of Moria screens released for Foundations of Stone
LotRO fans can rejoice in yet another collection of screenshots from the upcoming Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria expansion. These five new screenshots -- linked in a gallery below -- show creatures and environments from the Foundations of Stone area of the expansion. As depicted in a previous map of Moria we saw at PAX 2008, the Foundations of Stone area is in the southeastern-most corner of the mines themselves.Be sure to keep your eyes on Massively as we expect to release much more information on Mines of Moria as the expected release time quickly approaches.%Gallery-18340%
