Absolutely; take it as read that although I am poking and prodding at LotRO, it’s only because it is the game that I am currently playing and has thus inspired my thoughts.

I am not saying that this is a fault only in LotRO, it is clearly endemic to MMOs as a general rule, I’m merely using LotRO to illustrate my point because I can do so without having to resort to memory or re-subscribe to other MMOs to confirm my points.

“There it is!”
“What, behind the elk?”
“It *is* the elk!”
“You silly sod! You got us all worked up. Go on, Bors, chop its head off.”

Another problem with the titles is that you can only use one (by design and by any measure of sanity). What good is having five different goblin slayer titles if only one really matters? I do like some of the titles, though. My current main is “Lady of Fangs” from slaying higher level super-wargs.

But, yeah, levels on monsters are a bit silly. It’s funny to contemplate how the elk in Forochel could possibly win a fight against a stone troll from the Trollshaws because of level disparity. Or how I can wrestle a bear easily in Bree-land, but in other areas they’d eat me alive as I might expect given my offline knowledge. But, as unwize says, other games are just as guilty. There’s super-powered lynxes in the higher level zones that are much more potent than the lynxes found nearer to starting zones. :)

I think the midges are a direct reference to the Hobbits being ‘eaten alive’ in Midgewater Marsh. They are one of the most lore worthy mob types in the game, in that respect :)

There’s certainly a lot of wolf/warg/boar slaughtering quests in LotRO, but its certainly no worse than in vanilla WoW or TBC, or indeed any other similar game I’ve played.

If the issue is one of mob variation, then you can blame the tighter constraints of the LotRO license. They couldn’t really have stepped out of the bounds of brigands, orcs, beasts, birds and insects in the lower level zones. Heck, it was a huge lore-stretch to introduce evil dwarves.

Things improve greatly when you get into the post-launch zones. Evendim, Forochel, Eregion, Moria and Lorien all have greater mob variation and fewer mass-slaughter quests.

I figure it this way. If you are levelling via quests then when you see a wolf, you see the subject of your current kill ten X quest. The wolfness of the mob is important if your quest says kill ten wolves.

If you are levelling by grinding, then you see it as xp on the hoof/paw. So the person who levels by grinding will naturally tend to drift towards higher level wolf packs and won’t have to stop to think ‘hm, that’s the wrong kind of wolf’ (although they may think ‘why do wolves come in so many levels?’) So they’re much more likely to wander round an area of appropriate level and kill whatever.

I don’t think I’m putting this well but it makes a difference in how players see a zone and how they see its mobs. The difference may just be between thinking ‘I wonder what quest that mob is connected with?’ and ‘how much xp is it worth?’ but I think it changes how we connect with the world.

As for the titles, I agree, and I imagine walking into an NPC encampment at a higher level, with five Orc slayer titles under my belt, and the NPC looking at me and saying “That’s all well and good my boy, but can you kill orcs? That’s what we all want to know.”

I remember so many times having a quest to go kill wolves, and spending ages searching around for the absolute correct specific type of wolf for that quest, wandering past many other very similar but not quite right wolfpacks on the way.