Exploring Middle-earth: Bree-town

[Ramen]

Ready to talk about Bree? Post your comments below!

[Gedrevn]

For the players in LOTRO, Bree is an excellent travelers' destination just east of the Shire, and is a center for news, commerce, and social interaction within the game...Bree is designed to feel like a living town, albeit a town in its declining years. It is an important social center of the game, as well, so there are a number of common areas throughout which players of many different races and skill levels.

I don't love Bree like I do Staddle and pretty much all of The Shire from their atmosphere. And Bree isn't calm with the quaint feeling you get with Combe. But it is a very functional city, well designed and I would say that I like Bree as what is basically the largest city in the game at the moment.

However, Bree has never really felt alive. Certainly the addition of non-merchant NPC's helps, and just having merchants does a lot to add functionality to the city. And I have to say, the Cat Lady's house was most excellent! It's just that it doesn't have the bustle and interaction that a city really seems like it would.

The one thing I really miss from Everquest (and I say this with a grain of salt, as I really, REALLY don't want to try to compare this game or any of it's player classes to MMO's) but they did a really good job in city interaction design with the amount of buildings that you could enter, and the random NPC movement and interaction. To have 90% of a city be a facade just kills the feeling of size and life. Certainly most of the NPC merchants are not going to be used for more than selling or repairing, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have more than three shops in town.

From the excerpt of the Bree-town description I hope that the phrase, "albeit a town in its declining years" is true in its meaning and that real cities such as Minas Tirith have a bit more of the city feel and interaction.

[AeonicStorm]

Bree town as I have visited and come to memorize where everything is, has satisfied my need for a "one stop shop" zone. Though the horse costs to get from Lone-Lands and North-Downs to Bree is a good 20-30silver round-trip, it is still sometimes worth it.

Some things should be added to Bree, that troubled me because they weren't there as I explored.

1)Interactable Guards: Where you can walk up to a Guard, choose an option to speak to him/her, and then that opens up more options that you can click anywhere from the location of Auction House to the location of Burglar trainer. It would be VERY helpful to be able to tap a guard on his/her shoulder and ask for directions, quick and simple, leaving those of us who havn't memorized the town blue-print a beacon of light in the darkness that is the mind of an unsavvy Bree-citizen.

I will edit this post as I come up with suggestions in the future.

[Rigour]

My instruction booklet that I got with the game indicated that there was a way to pick a point on the map and a thin line would appear at your feet to guide your way. Did that make it to launch?

[Spatchkin]

I'm just gunna throw this out there...but I think bree should be instanced, that way you can spread players out a bit, make the houses not instanced to reduce the lag and frustration some of us get while running through bree.

[PaulH2]

For the most part, I like Bree-town, but one thing I think is missing is a little detail in places.

For example, why is the grocer in the town hall? Surely it would be better to give him his own grocer's shop. That's the type of detail I think is missing.

I also agree that being able to ask for directions within the town would be handy. It was a nightmare in closed beta as things kept moving around (as many NPCs were moved into instances, the AH was created etc.), but even now, when you get to Bree-town for the first time, finding anything is pretty hard.

Paul

[Shannong]

Bree doesn't have enough visual variety. All the buildings and streets are essentially the same looking. Compare the monotony of Bree to say, Michel Delving or Thorim's Gate.

Also, many important NPCs are hidden inside buildings and therefore very very very hard to find the first time or two. For example, finding the burglar trainer was tedious at best.

[Cyndawen]

When you're in Bree, open up your map. Turn on your map pointers, and you'll be able to see where all the class trainers are and the AH and the bank and the mailboxes and the bard and so on.

[Keyera]

bree used to have more "hussle and bussle" (sp)

but they moved all of the vendors inside a few patches back to reduce lag.