Why the Ettermoors are Fun... and Illum is Not

Two basically similar open world PVP instances. One insanely fun, and comes a long way to addressing the complete lack of any other form of PVP in Lord of the Rings Online and made for hours of fun, the other is so terrible I've almost entirely stopped bothering with it unless I am really desperate for PVP bags.

Why do I love the Ettenmoors, but think Illum is one of the worst attempts at Open World PVP in the history of online gaming? Well let me cover the basic differences and similarities, and well see what you come up with.

The Basics of Both Illum and The Ettenmoors:

Both Illum and the Ettenmoors are open world PVP instances which take place on a map covered with a series of control points. Both are fought between two factions, with no neutral parties involved, and in both, the objective is to make kills for a major reward (Renown/Infamy or Valor) with minor benefits for holding more control points. That is where the similarities end.

Ettenmoor Keeps vs. Illum Control Points:

In the Ettenmoors there are a series of keeps. Some heavily defended (Tirith Rhaw, Tol Ascarnen, Lugazag) and some lightly defended (Isendeep Mines, Lumber Camp). You take control of a point by fighting your way past the enemy guards up until you reach the Captain General or Tyrant who controls the point. The guard can be considerable in the case of the larger keeps you fight your way through a lower and then upper floor filled with elites, and the CG/Tyrant is a full out boss that takes a full party or a very elite small party, and a considerable amount of time to kill. During this whole process enemy players can show up to defend their fort so it tends to make the transition of the map from one faction to the other a very slow process.

On Illum the points fall very easily. The NPCs don't even fight back. I've ninjaed the center map by myself in around 1 minute before. You basically blow up undefended targets, that take no time to destroy.

Ettenmoor Side Content vs. Illum Side Content:

In the Ettenmoors the area outside the keeps are filled with NPC's and resources. Your starting area and the keeps under your control all give repeatable quests revolving around these NPCs and resources, so you can run around doing them when the action is not good. As the quests are only reapeatable every hour or so and hinge on resources and NPCs it also tends to spread players out quite a bit and keep them moving around the map. This means that if one side is too heavy of a zerg players tend to disperse around the map to do quests instead. While out doing those quests there is a high chance of player encounters given the whole map is a concentrated PVP hotspot. It gives a point to showing up even if your side is highly out-numbered.

In Illum there is only one form of side content. In the center of the map are armaments. These are in relativly low numbers and ONLY in the center map. They count as kills toward your daily or weekly quest. As such whichever side has the zerg tends to cluster around the center map, while a few members might go out and ninja back any points that are stolen.

Why This Means So Much: The Ettenmoors are a paradise of open world PVP. Players can spend all day there fighting for renown/infamy when the action is good, and running quests for great rewards when the action is bad. Even as a solo player or in small teams there is plenty of action to be had just running around gathering quest resources and having random fights with those doing the same. The fights over the keeps tend to be epic. During periods of high activity the forces arrayed against eacho ther are so massive that the NPCs guarding keeps don't mean much and there is a lot of keep swapping going on. During periods of low activity. It tends to be small bands trying to ninja keeps from each other, and can lead to some really interesting fights where even one well played character can make the difference between victory and defeat.

On Illum, PVP is entirely one sided 95% of the time. It's either so many enemies you are just feeding them valor, or so many allies your presence is entirely unnecessary. The entire time in Illum is spent utterly dominating your enemy, getting utterly dominated, or sitting around the center map fighting over the extremely limited supply of armaments with team-mates.

What Needs To Be Done: I think my opinion should be pretty clear by now for anyone who read the whole topic. Add strong guards to control points and in general just make taking them over a lengthier more challenging and involved process. Add quests to the Illum PVP area that can be repeated every hour or so in quantities that you can quest in Illum all day if you want to. Give them a worthwhile reward like credits, merc commendations, or daily commendations. Add NPCs, resources, and perhaps widen the Illum PVP area and spread out existing control points, or add more.

TL-DR: Make control points harder to take, give PVE sidecontent to spread out forces and promote random encounters when one side has a massive zerg.

You can fight over objectives that don't involve NPC's. NPC's and PvE objectives such as launching rockets at a "walker" do not create good open world PvP.

I played LOTRO for 2 years.( I lived in the moors.) I am valor rank 72. I now live in Ilum. This game is awesome. Do not change anything ! Just keep adding to it BioWare.



Signed,
Someone who has played more than you.

The Moors works 1,000x better than Illum because there's an actual point to its existence. The reknown/infamy system actually rewards you. Capturing keeps and holding them actually rewards you. Capturing and holding the relics actually rewards you. PvP gear (at least recently) have UNIQUE bonuses that enhance PvP, not arbitrary PvP stats that are REQUIRED to even put a scratch on someone in PvP. Quest objectives are spread throughout the map so not everyone in the entire zone is snowballed into one giant clusterfudge where people get so bored they just resort to trading those objectives.

I love the Moors, despite Turbine continuing to not support it. What's sad is that with a 9 figure budget and hundreds of employees, BW can't even accomplish a fraction of what the Moors does with shoestring financing and what...like two dedicated devs at the most?

Did BW Austin completely forget everything they learned developing WAR? Or did they learn nothing at all from that experience?

Ettermoors were insanely boring and a pain in the *** to find a fight

I should also add, I primarily solo'd and duo'd with my other half in Lotro. Everyone in TOR just zergs. There seems to be no love of a good, close fight - or even the hunt to find one.

People just zerg for valor and gear in this game. It take zero strategy to "PvP" here.

All your concerns are premature. The game has been out a month, Ilum will improve. And Soon.