LOTRO's Neighbour System Is Charming but Half-Baked
Lord of the Rings Online is about to get a lot more neighbourly. The trouble is that nobody seems quite sure how to be a good neighbour yet.
Massively OP's LOTRO Legendarium columnist has spent time with the new neighbour system that arrives with the Wolves of Mordor expansion. The verdict is mixed. The characters are charming, the missions are fun, and the system is ambitious. It is also confusing, poorly explained and, in the columnist's words, a "half-baked first pass."
An early arrival
The timing is the first surprise. Standing Stone Games (SSG) is shipping Wolves of Mordor later this month, even though developer previews are still rolling out and zone testing has only run for a few weeks. The columnist had expected an early December launch and calls the schedule "very premature." They suggest two possible reasons: dodging November's crowded release calendar, and the multi-month subscription price increase that is happening right now.
Who moves in next door
How many neighbours you get depends on what you buy. The standard edition includes two, the collector's edition three, and the ultimate fan bundle all four. Buyers of the smaller packages can choose which ones they want. SSG has also said the remaining neighbours will be sold individually for LOTRO Points, the game's premium currency, next year.
The four are:
- Brutha, a Dwarf who would rather work with wood than stone
- Emmathron, an Elf artist looking for inspiration
- Haldo, a Hobbit leaving the Shire for the first time
- Golwen, a Gondorian sailor who may be stranded
The columnist found each one distinct from the start. If they could keep only two, they would pick Haldo and Brutha.
Setting up is simple. You place a neighbour's banner at your house, click it, and a short story instance begins. One odd moment: afterwards, the game drops you somewhere else in the world with no follow-up prompt, so you have to find your own way home with a map skill.
Back at the house, you can summon your neighbour to chat, ask for a gift, give one, or open a new neighbour panel. That panel tracks your standing with each character, lets you swap their outfits once you have more, and lists their likes, dislikes and a few randomised details. Every player has access to the same four characters, but each comes with a different set of traits. Those traits shape both their personality and the gifts they hand out.
Dailies, journals and guesswork
Once the introductions are over, the system settles into a familiar MMO routine: daily quests. You pick a few up from the community board and travel across the world to finish them. Four of them, including travel and some mission instances, took the columnist about 25 minutes. The missions themselves get a thumbs-up. The travel time between them does not.
Each quest rewards a journal you can give to a neighbour. Pick the right journal for the right neighbour and your standing goes up. Pick the wrong one and it drops. Early on, when you know almost nothing about anyone's tastes, this is pure guesswork. The columnist feels they wasted journals on Haldo, who hated two of them.
Then come the questions. What are gift vouchers for? What are moods? How much do the bulletin board quests matter? Do mobs really drop gifts out in the world? Should you focus on one neighbour? Will they ever visit without being summoned?
The answers had to come from a wiki. Gift makers turn out to be NPCs in the four main starter towns, selling neighbour outfits and gifts in exchange for gift vouchers. The columnist bought pipe weed and plenty of food for Haldo. He seemed to like it, but his friendship bar stopped at the "acquaintance" mark and wouldn't move. Every extra gift after that appeared to be wasted.
A familiar SSG problem
The columnist argues this is a pattern for SSG: a feature that is slightly too complex, not intuitive, and lacking clear instructions. It makes sense to the developers who built it and leaves everyone else confused. The official forum thread backs that up, with a steady stream of player questions. When developers have to post multiple explanations, the column argues, the system needs better documentation and probably simplification inside the game itself.
None of that means the feature is bad. It adds activities, an unfolding storyline for each character, reasons to revisit older zones, and decent rewards, including extra loot drops from world creatures. Life sim fans may love it once it is tuned properly. But being made to guess what a moody virtual friend wants is, as the column puts it, simply annoying.
Our Take
The neighbour system shows LOTRO reaching for an audience that MMOs increasingly try to court: players who log in for routine, relationships and cosy progression rather than raids. That is a reasonable bet for a game this old, and the character writing appears to be its strongest asset.
The concerns are about execution. A feature that pushes players to wikis on day one is a warning sign, and the expansion's accelerated schedule suggests there may be little time to fix that before launch. It is also worth noting that the system is split across editions, with extra neighbours sold separately next year. Coming during a subscription price increase, that could test players' goodwill.
What to watch: whether SSG adds clearer in-game explanations or adjusts the friendship progression in early patches, and how other expansion systems like the new Survival Instincts mechanic hold up under the same rushed timeline. If the studio listens to its forums, this could become one of LOTRO's more distinctive features. If not, it may end up as another daily chore.