Thoughts on the Minas Morgul Expansion

I was afforded some free time this weekend, so I logged in to The Lord of the Rings Online and blitzed through about half of the Minas Morgul expansion and managed to reach the new level cap of 130 ( I was level 128 when I started). I finished the first two new chapters of The Black Book of Mordor and completed Mordor Besieged; the section of the new expansion that is set in the Second Age on the plateau of Gorgoroth. It’s a curious and initially engaging part of the game. In the past LOTRO aficionados have only been able to briefly access iconic events of the past through session play where they get to be someone else, via a short story driven instance. Mordor Besieged offers a revised area of the existing Mordor map; namely Dor Armath. All though a desolate place in the Second Age, this region is not the wasteland we see in the Third Age. The landscape has several active fortresses held by both sides and The Nazgul roam freely. But there is little of real substance to do here (a point I shall return to) and after a while it gets somewhat repetitive.

But as ever with LOTRO, the “gold” is in the story that Standing Stone Games have crafted. On this occasion there are several interesting interpretations of the lore. Firstly, there is the battle on the slopes of Mount Doom in which Sauron is defeated. Tolkien says in his text “at the last the siege was so strait that Sauron himself came forth; and he wrestled with Gil-galad and Elendil, and they both were slain, and the sword of Elendil broke under him as he fell. But Sauron also was thrown down, and with the hilt-shard of Narsil Isildur cut the Ruling Ring from the hand of Sauron and took it for his own”. This is directly reflected in a cutscene which shows both Gil-galad and Elendil injuring Sauron and then getting burned by the power of the One Ring. However, Sauron himself collapses after expending such power and being wounded twice. Isildur then cuts the ring from a greatly weakened Sauron’s hand. This differs from from Peter Jackson’s adaptation that shows Isildur being the far more proactive in the Dark Lord’s demise.

Secondly, in the Lost Lore of the Last Alliance, if you collect all the pages and read the text in order, it states that Gil-galad uses two of the Elven Rings to destroy the Black Gate by summoning a firestorm. However, wielding two rings nearly kills him and he swears he will not do such a thing again. As dramatic as this may be it contradicts the source text. Tolkien states the following. "But the Elves fled from him; and three of their rings they saved, and bore them away, and hid them. Now these were the Three that had last been made. But Sauron could not discover them, for they were given into the hands of the Wise, who concealed them and never again used them openly while Sauron kept the Ruling Ring". Using two Elven rings to force your way into Mordor doesn’t sound much like “concealing” to me. But LOTRO is an adaptation of Tolkien’s work, designed to accommodate the needs of the MMORPG genre. It’s best not to be too picky about lore or as you’ll find that a lot of the game doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny.

Usually in LOTRO, the Epic Story moves events forward and regional quests support or embellish the wider ongoing narrative. In Mordor Besieged, it doesn’t quite feel that way. There’s a lot of “treading water”. Some parts of the Epic are just superfluous exposition and only about half is of any importance. Most of the zone quests are of the “fetch” or “slayer” variety despite some fun lore references (such as the inclusion of Hobbits from the Gladden Fields in The Last Alliance). Overall, the entire first half of this expansion seems to be somewhat drawn out and could have been a free update in its own right. Which begs the question is Minas Morgul really a true expansion. Or is it two updates? Or a hybrid made of material left over from the Mordor expansion from two years ago, that has been retooled and padded out so as to be called an “expansion”? I hope the next half offers more. I have enjoyed my experience so far but on a critical level Minas Morgul has been lacking in depth of content.