Of course, the real focus of the expansion is the titular forest of Mirkwood, and that’s where veteran players will be doing the majority of their adventuring. One immediately receives two different impressions upon visiting Mirkwood, one positive and one negative. On the plus side, Mirkwood is very impressive visually. Players are introduced to the region in an instance that involves an army of elves essentially storming its beaches. Of course, you’ll be doing much of the grunt work, but having NPCs running around and fighting to control camps and forts really makes you feel like you’re in a war zone. It’s a pretty dark and grim one, but that’s what Mirkwood is: a dreary, depressing forest. That idea is captured well, both during the initial landing and later on as you explore the area in full. There’s a variety of well designed locations, such as a spooky swamp and a ghostly town, and they all succeed in capturing the dour vibe that Mirkwood should give off.
Unfortunately, once you get past the impressive visual design you’ll discover that not much has changed in terms of gameplay. The quests that Mirkwood offer to players are nothing you haven’t seen dozens of times already, whether you’re asked to go kill a bunch of orcs here or go gather some resource over there. Now, that’s pretty standard stuff for an MMORPG, and it would be unfair to criticise an expansion pack for maintaining a genre convention. However, questing in Mirkwood just feels like a grind. When we first entered Moria it felt like an adventure, where every quest was designed to show off the massive, foreboding dungeon. By contrast, Mirkwood’s quests appear to be designed in order to mindlessly shuffle players to the level cap so they can enjoy the latest instances and raids. That doesn’t mean the gameplay in Mirkwood is bad, far from it. It just feels as if it fails to take advantage of the setting, which is a shame to see.
