Thread: What's everbodys problem with Moria?

Recently I abandoned my lvl 36 burglar bc I ordered the retail set of Mines of Moria and loved the RK class. I was also really excited about Moria bc of the Legendary Items, the lore, and the quests seemed really cool from what I had researched. Yet every post I see is asking the quickest ways through moria, or dreading going back. It seems really cool to me. Is there something I am missing. Bear in mind I have yet to visit Moria. Not there yet.

It's dark and dangerous.

I love it.

The biggest complaint is the "distance" needed to get to quests... You may be 200m from the quest objective, but take 10 minutes to get there.

I love Moria... start to finish...

It's dark, it's dank, there's mobs every 5 feet and the risk of falling is ridiculous. It's a maze and just generally difficult to get around. On the positive, some people love the architecture. As far as looks go, the dev team did an awesome job with it. I just hate having to constantly fight through a maze.

Moria?
Certainty of death, *small* chance of success...
What are we waiting for?

I guess it's mainly the fact that there's very few "safe routes" to travel between quest hubs and the areas. In Eregion, if you follow the roads, you won't pull any mobs and will be riding peacefully. In Moria, there can be a mob around just about any corner. That's one reason why people are annoyed by Moria. As well as due to fact that it's dark and gloomy place.

(Same people are often annoyed by Lothlorien because they'll be scolding some drunk revellers or singing to trees in there. Go figure... I have never been able to understand why some people are never happy about anything. Must be a dull life if they're the same in real life too.)

I'd just say, don't worry. For a first-timer trying to find his way around there it should be an exciting experience.

Originally Posted by ClydeTheGreat

Recently I abandoned my lvl 36 burglar bc I ordered the retail set of Mines of Moria and loved the RK class. I was also really excited about Moria bc of the Legendary Items, the lore, and the quests seemed really cool from what I had researched. Yet every post I see is asking the quickest ways through moria, or dreading going back. It seems really cool to me. Is there something I am missing. Bear in mind I have yet to visit Moria. Not there yet.

Please go watch the movie "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" and then you'll know why people don't like Moria.

Personally, I *love* Moria. First time around, with my main at 65 cap, I left that place only after reaching 64. Sure, I had to brighten up the image to see where I was going in those really gloomy parts, but it is, in my opinion, one of the best, densest and exciting areas of the game.

I love Moria, you get lost, you fall from great heights, there are mobs but such is life in game. There is no rain in Moria which is a huge plus for me.

Moria is very much like the books. A lot like the movies. It is a difficult region to navigate. You will really enjoy the trip from Chamber of Crossroads to 21st Hall. Inside of a straight path, it is a snake route that requires you to cover four the linear distance because of all the switchbacks. Easy to follow and safe route. It is very long though.

I hated Moria. Simply because I do not like this kind of terrain. In order for me to have enjoyed Moria, Turbine would had to "ruin" it by going against the lore. I am glad Turbine did a good job.l

Any zone in game is going to have something about it that some players don't care for. Boiling down what I have read and run into with Moria to very basic/generic issues:

-It is very large and does not have enough public transit stables for people to move around in it as easily as many would like.

-There are levels up and down to travel within each zone and it can be time consuming and frustrating to figure out which level you are on, which you need to be on, and how to get there. There are maps for each zone, but showing vertical pathways clearly on a map is a challenge in any game.

-For the first character on an account to enter Moria, at least before the recent reputation drop changes and the addition of goats to the store, travel outside of public transit takes even longer since many characters only get enough reputation to buy a goat about the same time they are high enough level to consider leaving Moria for Lothlorien.

-Several of the quests send you back and forth, and back, and forth, and back across zones in ways that public transit isn't always useful for. So you are navigating levels of zones, trying to figure out where to go, dodging enemies, and often doing so on foot to get to a quest area that sends you back where you were.

-Often in order to get what or where you need for a quest you have to fight through groups of enemies. For classes that aren't as strong against groups, characters whose gears is hit and miss, or players who didn't practice fighting many group pulls getting up to Moria you can end up defeated and running back across the levels of the zones many times in order to complete one quest.

That said - I love Moria. I like the dark and dank. I like being massively out numbered by hordes of enemies. I love the detail of the stonework, the music, the lighting, the Dwarves that are so densely focused on what they want from Moria that they are hilariously clueless about the true dangers and events happening around them. I even like turning a corner wrong and falling to my doom off of a stairway that has crumbled to ruin partway down. Nothing ever seems to completely match my expectations of something based in a book I love, but Moria came closer to doing so that I had expected. It's wonderful and horrible and right and wrong, just as it should be. But a few more public goat stables wouldn't hurt. ;P

I didn't mind moria, the first or even the second time around. I'm generally pretty good at navigating so I never had a horribly hard time finding my way. That said, by the time I got to my 3rd and 4th characters I have found myself wishing for an alternative path. Moria is supposed to be a dreaded place, your not supposed to like it there and to that end the dev's did a wonderful job. It just gets old running back and forth between the quest hubs, with no swift travel between most of them. Having to get a goat weather you do it with thorin's hall rep or the moria rep just so you don't have to spend the whole time on foot because horses aren't allowed in moria. Also in some places it's pretty much impossible to avoid mobs.

the main problem, for most, is that turbine NAILED the atmopshere.

youre supposed to want to get out of there as quick as possible!

victim of thier own success!


ps- i loved it once i discovered the Ambient Light setting in the options.

Originally Posted by ClydeTheGreat

Recently I abandoned my lvl 36 burglar bc I ordered the retail set of Mines of Moria and loved the RK class. I was also really excited about Moria bc of the Legendary Items, the lore, and the quests seemed really cool from what I had researched. Yet every post I see is asking the quickest ways through moria, or dreading going back. It seems really cool to me. Is there something I am missing. Bear in mind I have yet to visit Moria. Not there yet.

1)

LOTRO was changed, after f2p, to have smaller aggro radius and faster respawn. This wrecked a lot of things, in particular every quest designer that once had placed a quest item in aggro range of a mob now had the quest broken (trivial) and every landscape designer that placed mobs guarding an entrance or mountain pass now had cases where the original guard placement let people slip in.

Problem is, in Moria this doesn't work since the corridors are so narrow that they aggro even with the lower radius. But in Moria you still have the faster respawn. As a result you not only have to hack your way through lots of mobs in unrealistic placements, you have to do it all over again on the way back.

The result is uneven customer experience. Depending on how friendly your class and specific character build is for hacking through mobs you have a more or less fun time. The game should always be fun, for all classes.

2)

In LOTRO, quest design and the information given with quests generally assumes that you have that compass with the quest guide and the arrow pointing you to the question location. The presence of this tool has made quest designers omit this information from the quest text. The whole game relies on you following the little arrow or using the map.

Problem is, nobody updated the strictly 2D map and guide mechanism when the world became 3D.

The result is uneven customer experience. Those with naturally good memory and sense of orientation are much better off. The game should provide a nice game challenge for a wider range of users. The new region should have come with a navigation tool update.

I hate it at lvl50 just going in and experiencing the horribly dim and incomprehensible maze of a first region, the Great Delving, with deadly mobs and drops around every corner and with no stables yet open. I kinda like it at lvl58, with all stables open and with early-region mobs (relatively) weakened and starting to turn grey.

The worst parts are getting lost (sometimes for hours) in an effort to open up stables at the Orc Watch and Shadowed Refuge. Getting lost time and again trying to work through quests in the Great Delving. Any questing in the Foundations of the Stone. The almost worthless map (both 'M' map and mini map).

Fun parts are the 'well' disguised shortcut to the Water Works from the Chamber of the Crossroads, the nicely disigned hub at the 21st Hall, the amazing views around every corner, and the vast amount of content and instances.

One tip: get your goat before you enter. The easy way to do that is to get a group together and go farm the heck out of the Thorin's Hall rep dungeon of Sarnur. There are lvl50 repeatble quests you can get in Thorin's Hall plus almost every mob in Sarnur drops Thorin's rep tokens. You can get kindred with TH in a snap, and then go buy their rep goat.

I can think of one thing that would make me love Moria—Middle Earth GPS. Coming soon to the Store?

"Proceed 20 meters. Turn sort-of-leftish at steep embankment and go up hill. Turn right at Gredbyg Queen. Proceed 40 meters and leap over 5-meter-wide chasm. Leap! LEAP!"

"Recalculating. . . ."

I loved Moria, and I thought the word builders did an outstanding job of creating it. There are many places you can just stand and pan up, down, all around, and be completely in awe. The quest lines are interesting and fun. The mobs are generally densely packed, so you have to fight your way into and out of lots of areas. Which to me only adds to the feel of the place. I love working through it, but I also feel a great sigh of relief when I get to Lothlorien and breathe some fresh air again!

A big issue is that you can't ride your horse/pony in there (too trecherous!) and if it's your first time through, you'll just about finish the place before you're high enough rep with the Miners to be eligible for a goat. On the other hand, it really REALLY gives you a sense of the magnitude of the area when you have to run through it.

It wasn't always available, but there is an alternative to the goat situation. Thorin's Hall rep offers a goat, so I recommend getting kindred with Thorin's before you hit Moria so you have transportation.

Originally Posted by Yargesh

I love Moria, you get lost, you fall from great heights, there are mobs but such is life in game.

I love Moria, as well. It may be my favorite zone in the game. Several months ago, I passed through with my hunter ... now, my minstrel is making her way in the dark.

When I play in Moria, I always turn my room lights way down low to add to the effect. And ambient lighting? Well, I figure that Moria is supposed to be dark so I leave it that way.

Do I get destroyed by swarming goblins? Yes ... Do I get incinerated in lava? Of course ... Do I fall off cliffs? Well, there's a crevasse near Dolven-View that should be named after me.

But, this is what I love about Moria!

Like everyone's said, its mostly just a case of having a set of expectations based on SoA, and then Moria doesnt follow those expectations.

Its tight, its convoluted, you cant avoid most aggro mobs, theres more cliffs than Mario Bros., like everyone's said. You cant just ride from Point A to Point B, and you cant always rely on the map/minimap...you actually have to look around and learn how to navigate an area. Its player knowledge, not "character knowledge". Some players dont like that, they want to have the "character" learn it and then have the game tell them what they character "knows".

That being said, my second time through Moria was a lot better than the first, since I knew my way around already, and I knew tricks like turning up the ambient light. Its also very quick to level up, the "quest density" is much higher than in most of SoA, and you can burn through them pretty quick if you know your way around and you know which quests to look for and which to avoid. Eg, finding the Blue Crystal (i think) for one quest is really tough if you dont know how to get to it, but once you do its pretty trivial.

A lot of players really love Moria too, myself included. Its a real "love or hate" kinda place, but you just dont get people posting positive things in the forums as often as they'll post negative.

I think the issue stems from the fact that the in-game maps SUCK. You can't tell how to get from point A to point B so it just exacerbates the problems listed by others above. Even if you know the way you have to slog through many mobs to get there. Now add in the fact you went the wrong way 5 times because the map isn't clear and you're pissed off by the time you get out of the first area. You know something is wrong when jumping to your death into one of the crevasses seems like a good option (to get back to town).

Compare:

in-game map: http://lotro.mmodb.com/zones/the-fou...-stone-909.php
old fan site map: http://www.thebrasse.com/maps/lotro-...foundation.jpg

Unfortunately thebrasse.com map set is incomplete and appears to be no longer updated. Wish Turbine would have hired the person that created those maps instead of an orc with crayons. :P

I love Moria. That place rocks. It's Angmar I hate. Ugh, I can't stand that place. So depressing.

It has to do with play styles I think and individual preferences. To many people Moria is very iconic of middle earth and fantasy. Other people though maybe with a more gaming oriented perspective just want something easy to do. Others don't like things that are dark. Etc. It is one of my favorite areas though.

Some drawbacks people mention:
- Dark and gloomy. Well, that's Moria. Some people really hate Lothlorien despite it being bright and cheerful... I think Moria was too bright, in a lot of areas you should not be able to see except for your own light sources; but Turbine made it brighter for game play reasons.
- Aggroing enemies every 10 feet. Hyperbole, it's only every 20 feet as we know. But this is Moria, it's supposed to be dangerous. The problem here I think is with people who expect a zone to be a full service area instead of a full war zone. This is a convenience item though, if you make it more convenient then you lose the immersion. I do think Turbine could have made this more staged, so that you could not even get to 21st hall unless you first helped get the earlier camps established.
- Too easy to fall. Yup, I have a friend who hates this from falling all the time, due to it being hard to see or lag or because of normal trouble navigating.

But there are pluses:
- It's iconic Middle Earth, the inspiration for the modern dungeon crawl.
- Lots of lore related tidbits.
- Great artwork.
- Tons of stuff to do. Lots of solo quests, lots of places where you can group with 1 or 2 others and not make it trivially easy, lots of end game instances (and this counted even when cap was raised to 65). Lots of deeds. Even if you were at level cap for half a year there were still things to do in there.

Originally Posted by ClydeTheGreat

Recently I abandoned my lvl 36 burglar bc I ordered the retail set of Mines of Moria and loved the RK class. I was also really excited about Moria bc of the Legendary Items, the lore, and the quests seemed really cool from what I had researched. Yet every post I see is asking the quickest ways through moria, or dreading going back. It seems really cool to me. Is there something I am missing. Bear in mind I have yet to visit Moria. Not there yet.

I don't know either. I LOVE Moria!

If you have a group yes sarnur is probably the easiest but if you don't AA rep dailies take hardly any time at all so just wait for a fest and get a an AA goat is my suggestion.

Love it. It was a real blast when my mini went through it because he was could tear through those mobs like no ones buisness. I'm looking foward to putting all my alts through it. I'm guessing people don't like it because they don't like to fight and then get frustrated when they go the wrong way and have to turn around and fight all those mobs again. I dunno, i like killing orcs and i have a good sense of direction and a good memory when it comes to directions.

I think Gandalf said it best "The long, dark of Moria".

I love starting it. It's totally different than the rest of the gaming experience. It's a fantastic place to level up. And your legendary items really shoot you up the power curve.

However, after 8 to 10 levels of the place I feel claustrophobic and anxious for a change. Stepping out of Moria into the sunshine makes you want to shout. Being sent back in there to do the Lothlorien dungeons portion of the epics makes you want to weep! :-D

But really, Moria is like scotch. Some people will never get a taste for it, some love it from the start and others may come to appreciate it. But it is what it is, and you can't mistake it for anything else.

Moria is loved or hated depending on playstyle, and there's no 'right' or 'wrong' answer for a lot of it. The problem with Moria is that it deviates completely from standard MMO area design to accomodate the lore of the world, and I think that is a GOOD thing. As a result, it makes a lot of people angry due to their playstyle, while others are ecstatic. Since it's such a deviation from the standard, you find very few ambivalent people.

In fact, I'd go so far to say that Moria replicates a lot of what made older MMOs fun for small groups of people, but hard for casual players to pick up on. It's not linear by any stretch of the imagination. Failure is harshly punished. You can be overwhelmed quickly even in areas you thought safe (mass aggro or quick spawn). This makes it far less forgiving than places like Angmar (or even Carn Dum) where you can take breathers in out of the way areas that are conveniently placed. Moria has few of these.

A lot of 'modern' MMO players hate this because its hard in comparison to what they are used to. As someone who played EverQuest from its inception and remembers very well the days of 2 hour corpse runs, losing all your gear that took hours (sometimes days) to acquire due to corpse rot in a bad Befallen run, and the random death by roaming giant, I find the complaints about difficult almost hilarious, but it's true that MMOs today are WAY easier than they used to be. A guy like me LOVES Moria because it presents a more familiar challenge on a lot of levels.

Originally Posted by Lohi

- It's iconic Middle Earth, the inspiration for the modern dungeon crawl.

i know most fantasy RPG owe much to LOTR, but the specifics of the dungeon crawler too!

i never really thought about this before! so true!

I love Moria, but there are some pain points.

The worst for me was the Balin's Camp quest arc. You fight your way for who knows how long from 21st Hall to the Camp, head back to 21st only be to asked to do the trip again to kill the bugs you killed on your first trip. (With the quest-arcs that are available from the items in the camp, the first trip is definitely worth it if you haven't done it yet.) I'd be curious to see the numbers that finish that finish the 1st quest vs. the 2nd quest in the arc.

This arc (along with quite a few similar quests) could benefit greatly from the quest tech added with the Evendim re-vamp.

I love moria. Always have always will. My first toon stuggled without a goat for a long, long time. Well past level 60. Which at the time was the level cap. I'm fugal and no way was I going to plop down the price for the cheap goat when I knew I would get the better one as soon as I had the rep.

All my follow up toons have gotten the Ale league rep goat before they ever entered moria. Makes it so much easier!!

Wish I'd known about that rep goat before my first toon got to moria. Every festival I make a point of telling people to get that free goat. What a life saver.

I think the problem people have with moria is they don't like to think. They are like the newbie in my kin who was asking how to find some quest objective and everyone explained about the ring on the map and the arrow on the mini map that pointed the direction. A bit later he is irrate and yelling he is following the arrow but that it took him off a cliff and he died.

People go into moria and they run headlong over a cliff and go, 'Boy that sucked', get up and go run off another one and die again and think. Boy that is dumb. All I can say to that is; Yes, it is (was) dumb. But it is not the games fault. It is not moria's fault.

People get into too much of a hurry. They get to moria and the first thing they want to do is get to 21st hall. They have no idea how to get there. But there is the map and they open it and there is 21st hall and there they are and they try and run straight to it. Falling off cliffs. Running into walls. Beating there heads against dead ends. What they need to do is take there time and follow the quests and become familiar with each section.

Find your way to the first quest objective and back again. Then to the next. Then when you get a quest that tells you to go to a new place. Find that new place using the pathways you have already learned. When you get there. Do a couple quests. Then do the quest that sends you back to the first quest hub. Look while you go. Is there a second path between the two hubs? Explore a little.

Go along like this doing the quests at each hub as you go and you will eventually end up in the 21st hall. The only difference is you will actually know how to get back to the entrance without falling off a cliff.

Originally Posted by Fipiara

I love Moria, but there are some pain points.

The worst for me was the Balin's Camp quest arc. You fight your way for who knows how long from 21st Hall to the Camp, head back to 21st only be to asked to do the trip again to kill the bugs you killed on your first trip. (With the quest-arcs that are available from the items in the camp, the first trip is definitely worth it if you haven't done it yet.) I'd be curious to see the numbers that finish that finish the 1st quest vs. the 2nd quest in the arc.

This arc (along with quite a few similar quests) could benefit greatly from the quest tech added with the Evendim re-vamp.

People in the know wait to do the 2nd visit until after they have the epic step to 'discover (or scout) the guarded crossroads' which is on the way to balins camp. -- My first toon did not know this. But my first toon 60 was still the level cap and there was no loth so a return trip was not that big a deal.

Now with everyone in a hurry to get through I immagine most don't even find the camp for the first time.

Moria is like potato chips. First, you taste it and it's the most awesome thing you have tasted for a looong time. You start gobbling it up, your hands get dirty and it feels like you can't get enough of it. But it won't be long before you start feeling nausea, you don't want to move anywhere anymore, your veins hurt and you need fresh air and some space to run freely around. You make a promise never to touch that stuff again. But, next day you take a bite of it again and .....

Khazad-dûm! Ah, great dwarven city, how far you have fallen! But you will be reclaimed from the filthy orcs!

BARUK KHAZAD!!!!

It's...it's just perfect. I didn't really pay close attention to it at first, and then I began to see all the little things...

Such awesome things...

From the great pillars in the second hall to the dwarf-lord's gate, to the nameless things that dwell far below, and the endless stair which stretches up, up, up to a shattered balrog atop Zirakzigil...

People will complain, but they do not understand. This is Moria, the black pit. Not as the dwarves intended it to be, but as it is, ruined by many years of orcs and Durin's Bane...

Khazad-dûm will rise again!

Originally Posted by Nvara

I think the issue stems from the fact that the in-game maps SUCK. You can't tell how to get from point A to point B so it just exacerbates the problems listed by others above. Even if you know the way you have to slog through many mobs to get there. Now add in the fact you went the wrong way 5 times because the map isn't clear and you're pissed off by the time you get out of the first area. You know something is wrong when jumping to your death into one of the crevasses seems like a good option (to get back to town).

Compare:

in-game map: http://lotro.mmodb.com/zones/the-fou...-stone-909.php
old fan site map: http://www.thebrasse.com/maps/lotro-...foundation.jpg

Unfortunately thebrasse.com map set is incomplete and appears to be no longer updated. Wish Turbine would have hired the person that created those maps instead of an orc with crayons. :P

She was actually hired by SoE (Everquest etc.)

and add me to the people that LOVE Moria - presicely because it is dark and dangerous.

(and here is a little help to people that has to go to Orc watch the first time - if you enter the Heart of Fire from Silvertine Lodes, you can go straight through to Redhorn Lodes)

Okay, from someone who doesn't like the place. From a lore perspective, it is a disaster. I realise that people would need to see Moria in a game about Middle-earth, but it's such a bad representation. Let's see - two weeks after the fellowship went through there, maybe even less time than that, a group of utterly incompetent dwarfs (you'll see when you do the Walls quests) sets up a bustling series of towns, a huge city, a massive transit system, and a McDonald's on every corner. Gandalf DIED in there. And these guys are a joke. I'm also pretty sure that HP Lovecraft didn't have a big influence on the books (Foundations of Stone and Flaming Deeps, I'm looking at you), but he does on the game and the whole sci-fi spin it takes at certain parts of Moria.

I think if the game lives as far as Mordor, we will have a similar storyline.

The layout is bad, the quest writing is bad, the storyline doesn't grab me, there apparently isn't anyone at Turbine capable of drawing a decent map, and there's no alternative to the place. You have to do it to get your capstone legendary traits.

I've never had a problem fighting off orcs or whatever lovecraftian horrors are in there, but I can't stand the place. It's like one big annoyance after another, constantly getting lost on the way. I quit for a couple of years when it was end game because it was simply no fun.

It still isn't fun, but at least now you can get your toons to 55 or so outside of Moria, spend maybe 2-1/2 levels in it, and come back and do the essential stuff when it's all grey to you and at least you don't have to fight every five feet.

I'm severely visually impaired, which may be part of it. It's not that I don't like scary - Angmar is close to perfect, and the Mirkwood hits it at times, too. I just hate all the twisty corridors that lead to huge aeroplane hangers and having to fight off a bunch of mobs who are standing around wating for a bus every few feet.

Book Moria - big, dark, EMPTY for the most part (the fellowship went days without seeing anything), and really creepy. Needless to say, that isn't what's in the game. It can't be. I would have left it out as a questing zone. Not sure what I would have done, but I wouldn't have made the mess that is in-game Moria.

So I avoid it as much as possible. But Turbine thinks it's a great area, and there will, unfortunately, never be an alternative to it. That being the case, I'm glad it has its fans, but many people dislike it, too.

Originally Posted by Chanah

I've never had a problem fighting off orcs or whatever lovecraftian horrors are in there, but I can't stand the place. It's like one big annoyance after another, constantly getting lost on the way. I quit for a couple of years when it was end game because it was simply no fun.

Right. Somebody said it's dark and dangerous.

It's not.

There is nothing dangerous about all these mobs that are all standing where you can see them, all out of aggro range of each other. Very rarely there's a patrolling tougher mob. The way that it is these mobs are annoying and tedious.

If I had it my way they would suddenly rush you with a group but I guess that's too hardcore.

The nameless things were mentioned by gandalf (rather vaguely).

The dwarves CAN make headway now. Durin's Bane is dead. They just need to deal with the orcs.

I think the story starts off slow at first but then it gets completely awesome.

I actually hope one day to see it restored.

I wouldn't even call most of them towns, more like small outposts. The travel is there for our convenience. Frankly, as is, it could be darker, but I still love it.

Originally Posted by Nvara

I think the issue stems from the fact that the in-game maps SUCK.

This is probably intentional. Honest. I loved the older maps in the game before this new round of dumbing them down. I liked how they used to emulate the look of the maps in the books. Map making is not an exact science, and in this age in particular you can't logically expect accurate maps. Why would there be an accurate map of the Foundations of Stone? You're the first person down there in hundreds of years. If they did have some good maps from Balin's time then they've gotten out of date in places (ie, the map shows that you can get to Balin's Camp from the west but that route has been collapsed in the mean time).

I think this again may point to a split between players who are looking for world simulation versus those looking for game play? In-game knowledge versus out-of-game knowledge.

A point here in that I really loved the maps in Thief: The Dark Project. They're very simple sketches at times, the sort of thing you would expect a thief to have after briefly casing the joint. I really love the one where you're in some tomb and half of it just just a big circle with a question mark in the center. So it's up to the player to explore and really figure out what's what and the map is just a crude guide to where you might be. The drawback though is that it requires some spatial awareness.

Originally Posted by Gandie2

People in the know wait to do the 2nd visit until after they have the epic step to 'discover (or scout) the guarded crossroads' which is on the way to balins camp. -- My first toon did not know this. But my first toon 60 was still the level cap and there was no loth so a return trip was not that big a deal.

Now with everyone in a hurry to get through I immagine most don't even find the camp for the first time.

Yeah, I tend to do the epic and the first quest at the same time, just the way it works out.

I think the hurry up and get through also can be tied to the re-vamps and the quest layout of the newer zones. It's so quick to go 1-~40, 44-50, & 60-75 that the 50-60 (or whenever you stop to do Loth) and also the 40-44 level ranges tend to be pain points in the pace of the current leveling. Whether that's good or bad that's an entirely different discussion, but I'd suspect that outside of navigation (especially in the Great Delving), it's the pace and quest layout that cause the more headache.

Currently, I'm leveling up an alt through Moria. I'm loving the place all over again and have been taking my time doing every quest and finishing off as many deeds as I can.

For me, Moria was interesting the first time and only until I discovered that I spent most of my time falling into cracks and pits, getting lost using the truly crummy maps, and getting claustrophobic from the constant gloom and dark.

After having done Moria multiple times now, I still hate it and finish it as fast as I possbly can on alts. Even the fact that I practically have every quest memorized and never get lost anymore doesn't improve the region for me.

I guess I'm just an outdoor person or something.