Can Survival Instincts Fix Progression in LOTRO?

With the Wolves of Mordor expansion announcement, the LOTRO-sphere is abuzz over the vogue new system, “Survival Instincts”. But how will this new mechanic actually affect endgame players in The Lord of the Rings Online?

What are Survival Instincts?

The new Wolves of Mordor expansion will feature a brand new system called “Survival Instincts”. This is a new progression path that is active in the expansion’s regions, and will give players new, unique tools and abilities. New additions and a modified gameplay loop sound exciting, especially considering how many levels it’s been since a level-capped character has unlocked a new ability.

However, looking more broadly at LOTRO’s design over the years, there’s also cause for concern as well as excitement over this feature. It’s great that the developers are willing to experiment with a progression loop in the game and are trying to add in some freshness with the gameplay, but the Survival Instincts system still raises some red flags. Instead of addressing some of the foundational issues with LOTRO’s progression, such as the virtue system, this mechanic sounds more like a temporary, expansion-specific power surge over already bloated systems. You may be asking:

• Why is Survival Instincts so concerning?
• Why won’t Survival Instincts fix LOTRO’s long-term progression problems?

Borrowed Power

Similarities to World of Warcraft

We have to first look at a concept commonly referred to as “borrowed power”, which World of Warcraft has become infamous for. More specifically, for years, World of Warcraft had introduced expansion-specific progression systems — like Artifact Weapons or Covenants — where you spend an entire expansion grinding for amazing new abilities, only for the game to strip them away the moment the next expansion launches just to substitute a new treadmill.

The Survival Instincts system isn’t an exact clone of any of WoW’s borrowed power systems, but it shares the same underlying design principals. Survival Instincts are only active while you are physically within the new Wolves of Mordor regions. So functionally, the result is quite similar to borrowed powers. Once the game inevitably moves on to the next major region in a future update, these abilities will essentially cease to exist for current landscape progression. Sure, they will be there for you when you go back, but the most immediate, glaring issue with this system is the mechanical whiplash it is going to create right now.

Geographical Whiplash

LOTRO is a massive game that thrives on its wide variety of content. Even the developers just recently talked about this in one of their streams. So with the implementation of Survival Instincts, think about how that would feel at the level cap. What happens when your kinship wants to run an older instance scaled up to the cap for a change of pace? What happens when you want to run some Delvings or missions that take place in older zones? As soon as you set foot outside the new Mordor, everything changes.

Thus, you are going to be constantly bouncing back and forth. One minute, you are in Wolves of Mordor with a toolkit full of cool new abilities and a modified gameplay loop, and the next, you step into a mission and they are completely deactivated. Having your rotation disrupted based purely on what geographic zone you happen to be standing in is incredibly jarring. It inherently disrupts class flow. Imagine finally getting a powerful new Survival Instincts tool just to want to run an old delving somewhere else. It would feel like you left half of your character back with the wolves.

All that said, it is possible that the developers are accounting for some of this, but based on the early info, it doesn’t sound all too likely.

A Look at Progression in LOTRO

Treadmills and Hamster Wheels

Aside from similarities to borrowed powers, taking a step back and looking at the broader picture of the game right now, Survival Instincts feels like a band-aid applied to a much deeper wound. LOTRO’s fundamental progression structure leads both to little class progression late in the game and the exhausting, endless-feeling endgame grind.

From this vantage point, let’s look at the sheer amount of vertical progression currently in the game:

• Plain old character level, probably the simplest system of all. It gives an idea of your general place in the game relative to the world and enemies.
• The core class traits system, which is now directly tied to level but stops progressing at level 140 compared to the current cap of 160. On top of that, the actual traits are still in the same format as Helm’s Deep when they were introduced at the level cap of 95.
• Perhaps the biggest grind in all of LOTRO is the Virtues system. Virtue traits progress per character and in short, there are a lot of them and a lot of levels. This is a wonderful way to boost the stats of your character, but the levels keep going up with major updates.
• The often-debated Legendary Items system, which does have a grace period when a new level cap releases, but you do want to replace all of your traceries with every level cap, and that includes enhancements, as well.
• More generally, with every level cap and major update, there is vertical progression in gear item level, as well as essences.

What all this means is that when you reach the level cap, you have this massive checklist for progression. Some things are temporary like gear, and some are more permanent like Virtues.

LOTRO’s progression is built almost entirely around endless vertical treadmills. For much of the playerbase, this is quite overwhelming and it naturally leads to progression fatigue. You spend months finally reaching the top of the mountain and getting your character new gear, only to notice your Virtues have fallen behind. Then, the next update raises the Virtue cap higher and introduces better gear, forcing you to start the exact same climb all over again.

Here We Go Again, Again

This is where probably the biggest concern with Survival Instincts comes into play. Introducing a new, regionally-locked progression system on top of this existing grind doesn’t alleviate the core problem of progression fatigue. It doesn’t replace the gear and essence grind, it doesn’t streamline Legendary Items, and it doesn’t fix the Virtues system. Instead, it just adds another mandatory chore to an already bloated checklist.

If Survival Instincts is balanced in a way where you need these regional powers to comfortably survive or complete the content in Wolves of Mordor, then it isn’t just an optional, fun side-activity. It becomes a requirement, kind of like the Light of Eärendil system the developers were trying to avoid with this. Think about a returning player coming back for this expansion. They already have to catch up on their Legendary Items and grind out new gear. Now, we are telling them they also have to grind out a localized power system just to feel effective in the new zones. It creates an incredible barrier to entry. If you are interested in these more philosophical thoughts, there is a whole Louey7 miniseries called Endgame in LOTRO. While it is a bit old and outdated, the core arguments are just as relevant today as they were then.

For Survival Instincts, though, the developers clearly recognize that players want new ways to progress and feel powerful, and we commend them for trying to deliver that. But it’s hard to agree that the solution is another system on top of LOTRO’s many systems. The core progression systems — the ones we take with us to every single zone, instance, and delving — need to be streamlined and respected before layering zone-specific borrowed power on top.

The Case for Horizontal Progression

Explanation and Examples

At this point, we’ve already taken a step back and looked at LOTRO’s progression broadly, but what if we go one step farther back? What if, instead of so much vertical progression, LOTRO had more horizontal progression? With that, the developers could give us new ways to grow our characters without adding to the monumental vertical treadmill.

There are endless ways horizontal progression could be implemented, but essentially, with this kind of progression system, numbers aren’t constantly pushed higher. Horizontal progression offers utility, unique non-combat skills, and situational builds that don’t directly inflate raw power. Guild Wars 2 almost always comes up as the gold standard here. When you unlock a mastery in GW2 it doesn’t just make your character stronger, it unlocks account-wide benefits such as gliding and mounts. It fundamentally changes how you interact with the world, and perhaps more importantly, you get to keep that utility no matter what zone you travel to next.

The Elder Scrolls Online also leans heavily into this with systems that respect the player’s time. Because gear scales to a flat cap, new expansions focus on offering different set bonuses and situational builds rather than instantly making your old gear obsolete.

Bringing It to LOTRO

It is easy for any player to say that they like the idea of horizontal progression being introduced to LOTRO, but the game is nearly 20 years old. It is practically impossible to rework the entire game to be horizontal, but it is much more practical, and possible, to limit the rampant vertical progression, endless grind, and introduce horizontal systems. In a way, war-steeds almost function like this once you get past all of the mounted combat enemies. This is a new way to navigate the landscape and you can still mount it to swiftly travel through the world of Middle-earth across every update. Making more purposefully designed horizontal systems would feel like a genuine investment into the future of LOTRO. It would also respect the time we put into our characters instead of making old things obsolete with new updates.

By contrast, borrowed power systems inherently do not respect the time that we put into our characters or them because they are built to be discarded. Again, Survival Instincts are technically different but functionally similar. There is also still time for them to change course by time the expansion launches.

Closing Thoughts

New endgame content is always exciting. But, with LOTRO’s endgame stuck in the same loop for the past few years, and with no fixing of the fundamental bloat, how “new” is it, really? While Survival Instincts sounds like it could have some cool things to change the pace of play, it doesn’t really help any of the core systems that have been built up in LOTRO’s long tenure. Survival Instincts have the potential to fuel some fun and interesting gameplay, but as advertised now, they are not the formula for an engaging endgame.