The LOTRO Beta Journal of the Lore-Master

It would normally be a boring life to be a librarian (unless you’re the librarian from the movie “Tomcats”, but that’s another story). But if the books you read are all about raining red-hot embers, kicking up gale-force winds, and talking to ravens, well, perhaps in an online fantasy world your travails will be rewarded.

A 24 (almost 25)-year-old beta tester of Turbine’s The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar recently told his tale of how fun it was to be the Lore-Master, the raven-talking, wind-kicking, ember-raining elder of Knowledge character class in the game. The class itself seems built to be part-time buffer (with its morale-boosting “Beacon of Hope”) and part-time offensive mage, calling on the elements and creatures alike to kick tail for him.

Apparently not just ravens, too, for this Lore-Master was able to acquire a pet bear. And with his pet bear, and growing repertoire of skills, it got to the point that he could “solo higher levels of beasts, Orcs, Half-Orcs, and Brigands, and the Barrow-down’s Undead minions, among others”. So he’s not only a team player, it seems. But, and pardon our referencing Blizzard on this one, why do the pet bear and ravens remind us of Diablo II? Or DotA?

Of course, the essence of the Lore-Master is knowledge of ancient lore, so aside from questing and exploring, this beta tester also had to do a bit of gathering ingredients for his boiling cauldron, so to speak. But the fun part about is that he “really didn’t have time to worry about leveling, in and of itself — it just happened along the way of having fun”.

See? It’s fun being, in essence, a librarian. Knowledge, after all, is power.

It would normally be a boring life to be a librarian (unless you’re the librarian from the movie “Tomcats”, but that’s another story). But if the books you read are all about raining red-hot embers, kicking up gale-force winds, and talking to ravens, well, perhaps in an online fantasy world your travails will be rewarded.

A 24 (almost 25)-year-old beta tester of Turbine’s The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar recently told his tale of how fun it was to be the Lore-Master, the raven-talking, wind-kicking, ember-raining elder of Knowledge character class in the game. The class itself seems built to be part-time buffer (with its morale-boosting “Beacon of Hope”) and part-time offensive mage, calling on the elements and creatures alike to kick tail for him.

Apparently not just ravens, too, for this Lore-Master was able to acquire a pet bear. And with his pet bear, and growing repertoire of skills, it got to the point that he could “solo higher levels of beasts, Orcs, Half-Orcs, and Brigands, and the Barrow-down’s Undead minions, among others”. So he’s not only a team player, it seems. But, and pardon our referencing Blizzard on this one, why do the pet bear and ravens remind us of Diablo II? Or DotA?

Of course, the essence of the Lore-Master is knowledge of ancient lore, so aside from questing and exploring, this beta tester also had to do a bit of gathering ingredients for his boiling cauldron, so to speak. But the fun part about is that he “really didn’t have time to worry about leveling, in and of itself — it just happened along the way of having fun”.

See? It’s fun being, in essence, a librarian. Knowledge, after all, is power.