f13.net

From what I understand, LotrO's  endgame seems to be dungeon dives as well as PvMP.  But I also read that the gear grind isn't the ass pounding, soul sucking, fun killing experience that WoW's can become.  What about it makes it different?  The gear just not as important?

The journey. 

And the expectation of new zones.  Book 7 is coming with more PvMP.  And people fully expect mounts to be important the next paid release (Rohan).

The world is content rich IMO as much as WoW, but more so because it all belongs in a coherent narrative.  A narrative you can either read about or watch from the films.  And yeah, 2x new Hobbit films also coming soon.

Gear isn't as important for two reasons, I think.  Firstly the story is far more interesting, more cohesive, less stupid, and the world is richer, so I have many, many other things to do than try to get bigger shoulderpads than my mates.  Secondly, gear simply isn't as important.  Good gear is good but I had been doing great duoing with my wife and we both had lv21 gear at lv28-29.  Skills are more important, and so is knowing how to play, and you don't have to grind for skills.  Also the best equipment I have is all crafted.  Once we hit lv27, we started using a couple of lv27 bows I had made and banked.

Well, technically you can, if you include the skills that are altered or gained from class deeds, or the drops for legendary traits.  But that'll happen naturally in most cases and isn't something a normal person will go out of their way to poopsock.

What's in Moria? A giant endgame dungeon? A series of them?

Pure sex.  Its a new area with oodles of content, epic gear you can level, quests, etc. 

And yes, lots of dungeons.

Shit, what's not in Moria?

A huge 3D underground area that seems to be the size of Bree-land (including all its sub-areas, like the Old Forest, Midgewater, and Nen Harn). Let me be frank; I fucking hate dungeons. Dark, enclosed spaces do nothing for me - I prefer to look to the horizons. But this place routinely stuns me with its vistas. Dark, yes, but there are forests, lakes, and cities down here, as well as the guts of a volcano and a bizarre fungal blight-scape.

Too goddamned many quests. I literally can't do them all - I'm outleveling the content.

Large numbers of hand-tooled instance missions. These aren't just tucked away in the epics. Some "ordinary" quests take you to places like the Cooling Chamber, and there are repeatable missions to get parts for Legendary items. Best (for me) is that a good number of them are designed for soloers and 3-man groups.

Legendary items that can be extensively customized and leveled. In my ideal world, ordinary crafting would allow this level of customization. I have a staff that increases the damage of all my fire-based attacks and has a trait dealing bonus melee damage to goblins (as a "they thought of everything" aside, all bonus damage traits cause your weapon to glow a Sting-like blue when appropriate enemies are nearby). I have a book that decreases my target's resistance to fire and lowers the aggro I generate when I heal others.

Tons of new monsters. Familiar species (goblins, orcs) have new tricks like riding wargs. New species include creepy underground shit like huge blind salamanders (a different model from those on the surface) glow-worms and gredbyg insects. Gredbyg creep the shit out of me - they're car-sized centipedes with earwig-like tails that spit mucus and acid at you.

The story of Durin's Bane - from its release (in an instance session) by dwarves to finding its Gandalf-burned corpse on the heights of Zirakzigil. At least I found that cool.

True story:

I was in Gamil Filik (Silvertine) knocking off a couple of quests. I'd killed everything near me and had stopped to rearrange my inventory when I noticed my staff glowing. I spun around, but the closest goblin was at least fifty feet away.

I had just enough time to think "Well what--?" before the Moria Sneak dropped out of stealth and stuck a knife in my side.

Sadly for the goblin, my lynx was stealthed behind him. Between her ambush and my dropping Light of the Rising Dawn, he didn't last long.

Awesome.

No, not green.

Unfortunately my experience with Moria has been meh so far.  I came back to find they have nerfed my Minstrel and soloing now is soul-crushing.  He's stuck at 52 in Moria while I level my Captain.  I want to group with my Min, but I hear it's a pain in the ass as a healing Minstrel in Moria.  I have yet to do a group instance in Moria; believe it or not no one answers my LFG.  No I'm not a jackass either. :)

The bottom line for me is that my Minstrel is now unfun.  So I'm at 36 with my Cappie and enjoying myself.

I'm going to log on again and try to get a group for my Minstrel.  Why won't you let me love you Moria?  :heartbreak:

Yep, its great, i have had one that i just keep around because its cool, its not just legendary items ether.

I've been hearing this a lot - and your post was the one that made me register into here instead of just lurking. For me the transform into Moria mode was for some reason less painful after I was handed my arse some times in Region. The 80%+ healing reduction in warspeech did hurt the most, added with the free instant heal of whole party starting to cost power. After the bad experience in the start I did a full virtue trait revamp, and went into mostly warrior skald with some healing traits thrown in for grouping. And since that, I've been again happy with minstreling - with adds killtimes can be longer as before, but otherwise for me the good old gameplay is back.

Another thing I noticed is that group/small group stuff Moria can be hard, and it's not single player who makes or breaks it but it's how the group acts together. My first treasury run was a blast and funnily in an roleplayer group without fancy builds or whatnot - and that time I had only once use Rally and never had problem staying on top of damage. Then the next run was pure disaster pugging with people from raiding guilds and fancy builds... Several wipes, my heals pretty often too late etc. And that with better healing legendary gear I had on the previous run. Was a good reminder to me why I tend to team with friends or friends of friends, rather than random people.

No idea if my rant helped any with ministering problems but I'd say do not give up just yet.

Thanks for the comments.  Yes, I re-tooled my traits and went Warrior-Skald.  Now that I've gotten some quest gear and my legendary weapon is 14th level or so I have noticed I have a little more staying power.  I can now reliably beat two whites at once where before not so much.

Some captain grouped with me yesterday and we knocked out about 5 quests before he logged.  It reminded me how fun the game is and we worked well together.  Made me feel much better about Moria.