Well I have to admit I find the old forest scary...it is just creepy. The Barrow downs were more dangerous? I'm confused what do you mean did the nerf the skeletons and what not or something? Usually there was a small fellowship of us there, but my burglar did it solo only the idiot hobbit quest was really hard since she forced me to fight in a way that is bad for a burglar.
Hmmm, never visited Dunland yet, and since I play for free didn't spend much time in Evendim...I think the next step of the epic quest will take us there though. I'm not sure about a grid pattern though they usually have people posted in a ring around a bandit or orc camp or so. Wolves, bears and other wildlife is more "regular" but again given how much you have to kill to get your various slayer deeds and or enough hides to tailor that isn't so objectionable. Actually around Estaldin in the direction of either the hill man camp or else the orc battle camp is a fairly grid like collection of things. Scary I have to admit was taking the one path to Angmar that started in that camp...I was sweating the entire time I was sneaking my way through the path. I think I was 10 or so levels too low and then there were the statues that gave you horror and so on...it was creepy and unnerving. Angmar is pretty creepy and unnerving I have to admit.
In ESO at least now I know where the wolves are, so next time I need to upgrade my armour I know where I have to go for an hour and just slaughter the wolves in a circle. I will agree that the quests have been really well done, much better than what is in skyrim. I'm pretty sure I've yet to have gotten a single kill x of Y quests...or possibly I have but somehow they don't really stand out since most of the time it is "do this" and in the act of doing so you end up killing 20 gobins or what have you. That to me is a well done quest design. What I don't like about LotRO is the built in grind...and as a free player you sorta have to pick up as many deeds as possible since they nickle and dime you for everything. That is the one thing that ESO with a sub seems to be avoiding.
The real issue that I am seeing is space, as crafting is going to eat up a huge amount of bag space, I really think they need to do a Neverwinter and split your bag up into crafting and other stuff. Cause you can have hundreds of crafting things easily by the time you are 30-th level or so. Base 10 for the gems to add traits, then 2 per crafting skll per level of crafting in clothing, woodworking and iron working, 1 for your racial metal, 2 foods per recipe (with some doubling up), 1 water per potion level, plus a dozen for reagents, then 2-3 for the potency runes, a dozen for the aspect runes, and a further 10 or so for the last rune. That is simply a huge amount of bag space.
I'm still afraid I don't see them having a retention rate of better than 10-15% after the initial month is gone on the box.
The old forest used to be so much more creepy, there was limited visibility, NO map, and the paths through the forest would randomly block and unblock, and Huorns would one hit kill you if you got too close! And the Barrow Downs heh, thats so heavily nerfed from what it was originally it's almost unrecognizable, it used to be covered in the fog effect, half the wights in the South downs were level 40 (and 50 was the cap then), the fog effects effectively hid the critters until you'd already aggroed them (no enemy indicators on the mini-map back then) or quest guide focus, you had to find your own way to things like the barrow entrances! there was no way you could have survived the Downs solo back then, hell you wouldnt venture into any of the actual barrows with just a small fellowship! Lalia was SO hard that I still squirm when doing it now, even though its a genuine faceroll now, since she can't even die anymore! Now that they've added boats to Everswim now, so you don't have to swim the length of the stupid lake over and over and over again! it's actually quite nice there
LotRo really was significantly harder on landscape than it is now, Turbine in their wisdom(HAH) have nerfed stuff so much in their desire to get as many people to level cap so they spend money buying stuff for LI's to use raiding. I actually really miss the old Old Forest and Barrow Downs, it seriously made you make sure you had your smeg together before venturing in there (though the whole getting lost in the old forest did tend to wear a little thin after awhile!)
And like Erik mentioned theres a path from ND to Angmar thats completely free from beasties, and takes you to a camp full of nice friendly Jorthkin.
LotRo is way more grindy now than ever before and moving more and more that way, presumably since it makes more sense for them to nickel & dime you with deed accelerators etc if they make it grindy, hell I'm a lifetimer in LotRo and I'm still grinding the hell out of everything, for nothing more than a title most of the time, simply because thats what they seem to be moving the game towards being.
I'm with Erik though that TESO will need to move a lot of it's special quest areas into instances, otherwise you're just going to have too many annoyed and bored people. I've not run into to much of a storage issue in TESO though, but I suspect thats because of my sell everything I don't have a use for mindset that LotRo trained me into, and the fact I'm specialising my crafting among toons (something else I've been trained into), I still only give TESO 3 months before F2P, I honsestly don't think any new MMO can survive as subs only any more.
Matt