Posted: Apr 8th 2011 10:14PM Infamous Nefarious said

• 
• 

I, as well, am in love with Moria. Sure, the rolling and verdant, green fields, and lush forests are all nice and stuff? But they get BORING
to look at! I enjoy zones like the Lone Lands, and Angmar, and especially Forochel because they make you really begin to rue the
conflict. The War of the Ring is precisely that, a war. War isn't just the fight itself, it's where it happens that makes you begin to feel it,
and what happens in those places that makes it deep.

Sure, one day your character decides to set off to do his part, and for those first 15-25 levels there's still the kick and the high of 'I'm a
hero. I'm on an adventure! I'm AWESOME!' and that's all fine well and good. The hero doesn't take it completely seriously and acts
carefree..... and careless. And you spend those levels roaming your home turf, then likely Bree-land, where it's all pretty and nice and
green and most of us stray into the Lone-lands or the southern North-downs around the Trestlebridge area and it's still not too bad,
but getting a little gloomy.

And then? Then comes the bad places. Where you're not only fighting the enemy but where the terrain itself begins working against
you. Evendim has that big freakin lake, and those of us who played before the recent content update remember that dreadful swim,
(I'm pretty sure I lost premature years to it myself) And while it wasn't the worst, you began feeling the weight of the journey. The
Misty Mountains is cold, untamed, completely infested with overgrown and very hungry wild beasts along paths that wind both down
into rocky valleys and and up among acrophobic ridges and cliffs (often times in the middle of blinding snow). Trust me, there's plenty
of places out there to accidently fall off a cliff to an untimely death if the wildlife doesn't get you. And you won't have even gotten to
the worms, giants, and Gauradain (spelling?) yet.... and STILL ahead of you will be Goblin Town itself!

To those of you so inclined and beyond Evendim and the North Downs you have your options of the toxic and desolate wasteland that
is Angmar, OR the far northeren and deep frozen snowy tundra of Forochel.

Angmar? Angmar is ugly. Angmar is probably the ugliest place I've ever played anything in. The environment itself is uninviting and
mean. It's Mordirith's front yard and his kids are mean little bastards. There's a literal city of undead right smack in the middle of it
where even some of the Angmarim don't wanna go, and that's waiting for you after you're done questing around the sulfuric cesspools
of the swamp of Malenhad. The water is yellow, and I dunno about you? But I learned yellow water is generally a bad thing to stomp
around in roughly no matter where you are. The clouds above crackle and seeth with the evil power of that place as tho the sky itself
wants to come down and take a crack at you. The odds of seeing something green that isn't scaley or eight-legged are slim to none and
I don't think I've seen even so much as a single squirrel out there. Fights out there can get surprisingly hairy, there's a million orcs, and
you have to be constantly on guard from attack by stealthed mobs. It's no wonder to me that so many players either skip it or ride it
out til 49 so they can pop down to Eregion for their LI's. Angmar is rough and I thoroughly enjoy it.

But if Angmar isn't your bag then perhaps Forochel is for you! Surrounding a frozen bay, this tundric landscape is perpetually frozen.
Rolling white plains of powder, stretch on for miles and miles on the other side of a canyon riddled glacier. That's right, that's a glacier.
It's freakin cold! But it's scenic ivory, and solitary calm are probably what make it most unbearable. Unless you're in a group, the odds
of you seeing another person any time soon are slim to crud. There are once again plenty of animals out there that won't be terribly
happy to see you, especially the sabre-tooth cats. The grims (evil, elemental manifestations, like Slimer only meaner) are neat and
interesting to fight if you actually watch them fight back, but deeding them is a pain because they only pop up in groups of 4 or 5 and
not terribly close together. But I digress..... It's lonely. It's cold and wide open.... WIDE OPEN. It's LONELY and cold. You are mostly
isolated from everything and everyone.

I keep saying it's lonely because that's the most prominant factor working against you, and you can't get away from yourself. You will do so much running or riding back and forth and back and forth and back and forth..... Do you get the idea yet? But at least the scenery is nice. In fact it's picturesque setting makes it my favorite zone in the game for just looking at. And you'll have plenty of time to admire it while you're.... well you get it. The capitol is on the far nothern side of the ice bay
and it's easy to get to if you have the patience for the swim.... Ahhhh, I'm just messing with ya. You just spent who knows how many
hours swimming across Evendim to come up to Middle Earths equivalent of the north pole. You're gonna want to avoid the instinct to
go for a dip once you get up to the bay area. The frigid water will kill you dead faster than a pack of those sabre-tooths I mentioned
earlier.

And you're gonna be fighting for a group of people that don't even LIKE YOU when you first get there. What's that you say?
You're the hero? Everyone loves the hero? Tough taco, outsider! The Angmarim rolled on up there and started hassling a civilization of
people that already weren't too terribly fond of strangers to begin with. You are no exception. Your battles to win the admiration and
acceptance of the Lossoth of Forochel will be the hardest fought yet because (surprise surprise!), there's a level below 'neutral'. Suck it
up or go home. It's just another part of war.

But if you can tough it out to complete everything (yes, even the deeds) Forochel has to throw at you? Then by the time you're done, Eregion and the content beyond it will seem like a cake-walk. Forochel will make you stronger as a player and your character stronger as a hero. And if you're tenacious enough it has plenty of juicey treasures and rewards to give up that can sweeten the deal just a bit more. I won't kid you, I was stupid rich after I left Forochel and laughed my way right up
to the Black Pool.

Then there's Eregion blah-blah-blah, school, blah-blah-blah, Legendary Items, blah-Water-blah.... I don't care. I went through Forochel.

This was nothing to me. Not that I have anything against Eregion, but the rest of the 'green zones' you've been through are pretty well
what you can expect here. Except with goats and lizards. It's a pretty zone, but it didn't slow me down in the slightest.

Moria is where the playing field changes. Good-bye sunshine! Hello darkness my old friend..... Moria is dark, dank, and teeming and
seething with countless legions of hungry orcs and goblins and other nameless boogity-boos who are all too happy to assist you in
never seeing the light of day again. It's winding, twisting, CLAUSTROPHOBIC in spots, maze-like, huge, and did I mention dark? It's freaky, and it's evidently the ideal dwarf environment. The Iron Garrison haven't just always been there, they're there trying to take it
BACK. That's not their turf anymore. Sauron's forces own it, mostly lock, stock, and barrel and they are all over almost every last
square inch of that place. The territory it most definitely hostile, and the environments aren't much less-so. Massive caverns and
caves and chasms full of twisting and turns, paths, and run down, dilapidated, dwarf architecture make up the guts of this geological
beast of a realm. Really, a lot of the halls twist back and forth almost like an intestinal track. You'll go down into the deepest and
darkest parts of it, from abandonned mines, to a volcanic cavern. And canyons! Slip and you'll have a long time to wave good-bye.
One wrong step prancing around a ledge and you'll die of old age before you hit the bottom. The planet eats you.

There's enormous and beautiful places to see that have been overtaken by the the forces of the enemy for countless years and you
can't avoid them. At one point you'll even be asked to go down into the chasms where the enemy throw their waste. Yup, waste! And
everything that that implies. Lemme tell ya..... It's horrible and the things 'living' down there have adapted to suit it. Did I mention it's
claustrophobic? And dark? Every corner has a new enemy waiting around it? Little escape? Yeah? Well this is where the fighting begins
to really weigh on a body. This is a campaign and a seige, and the dwarves are trying hard, but losing visibly. Sure, you'll do a lot of good
and gain a lot of respect and kill a LOT of orcs and get cheered for and go into all sorts of awful places to do an awful lot MORE good.

But the dark itself takes a toll on you. The trek is long and arduous. The enemy is numerous and vicious and relentless. And you feel it.
And you hate it. And you can't WAIT to get out. You look for signs of escape or exit, desperately seeking next outpost or camp or safe
haven just for the sake of having a decent source of light. And those outposts are TINY. The enemy has the dwarves as shored up and
penned up as they can with very very little room to maneuver or spread out as they struggle for the next toe hold of territory to snatch
back from them. If it seems endless? It's because it almost is. And again, you feel it and you hate it. You are feeling what I can only
imagine your character must be feeling. Moria does more to make me feel dropped into the conflict than any other area that the fine
people at Turbine have thrown at me yet. I DESPISE going into Moria because of the way that place makes me feel as a person and the
empathy I have for my characters place in it.

And I love it.

Moria is the closest your character is going to get to whatever Middle Earth calls their hell. And it is a long, hard road out of Moria. But
if you can step back out of the serious part of your brain and see it for what it is? It's one helluva trip.