I was having a grand ol' time doing the new quests in the gleaming northern reaches of Farochel. So why am I, a 46th level elven minstrel, poking around the Barrow-Downs back in Bree, an area for 15th level characters?

Find out after the jump.

When I first logged back into Lord of the Rings Online after months away, my character was in some dungeon fighting high-level evil dwarves down around Thorin's Hall, the dwarven starting area. I didn't realize it at the time, but she was on the first part of the quest that introduces the new reputation system.

Lots of games do this sort of thing. It's called "faction grinding" and it's a way to level up your reputation rating with various factions. Get that rating high enough and you'll presumably unlock cool new stuff. My understanding is that it's relatively useless in World of Warcraft. It was one of the skeletal features in Hellgate: London that was never fully realized, which is probably a good thing considering the absurdity of trying to get in good with Tottenham Court Road or Kings Cross (personally, I'm a Notting Hill Gate guy).

As near as I can tell, faction grinding serves four functions in Lord of the Rings Online.

1) Faction grinding keeps you busy when you're high level. It looks like reputation gain is folded into earlier quests, but the dedicated reputation grinding doesn't kick in until around level 40 or so. At this point, you get quests to gather specific items for each of the game's various factions. For instance, underneath the Misty Mountains in Goblin Town, the goblins drop tabards. Turn these in for Rivendell reputation. But you're not going to be killing these guys until you're over level 45.

2) Faction grinding is a money sink. It seems that the main factions also accept crafting goods. You can impress the men of Bree with woodworking. The hobbits like – can you guess? – cooking. Elves like scholarly materials. Which is just my luck! My minstrel's crafting occupation is scholar. She makes scrolls, potions, dyes, that sort of thing, using found scraps of lore in the ruins of Middle Earth (as she's doing in the picture above, availing herself of the services of Elrond's Library). In fact, Delia's mount was almost entirely financed by taking advantage of the early scarcity of athelas and celebrant, which are potions for health (called morale) and mana (called power). Those potions used to fetch a pretty price on the auction house, especially when they required rare crafting materials for ingredients. They're easier to make now, and I'm consistently stocked up. But every time I ride my horse, I'm thankful for the early fumbling days of Lord of the Rings Online's economy.

3) Faction grinding a fifth track of advancement. One of my favorite things about Lord of the Rings Online – and an element of good MMO design – is that there are constantly things you can do to move forward. If you lose interest in a given activity, you can instead switch to a different activity and still progress. For the most part, these activities are inter-related. When it launched, Lord of the Rings Online let you 1) level up your character by doing quests, 2) advance the storyline by doing epic quests, 3) make money and inventory items through crafting, or 4) unlocked trait bonuses and titles by doing deeds. Now you can 5) improve your reputation rating with various groups.

4) My favorite thing about the reputation system is that it opens up the world even more. There are new areas for reputation quests in areas that high level characters would otherwise have no cause to visit any more. The aforementioned dwarven stronghold near Thorin's Hall is one such area. But the one that's pulled me away from Farochel is the new barrow in the Barrow-Downs. Next to the Old Forest, the Barrow-Downs are one of my favorite places in Lord of the Rings Online. There's a wonderfully atmospheric Great Barrows instance, and now there's an even more dangerous great barrow deep in the Downs, down the hill from the imposing ruins of Ost Gorthad. Haudh Iarchith begins with a large hall that splits into two separate tunnel systems. One is way out of my league, populated with epic Wargs and Wights, fit for players to tackle in groups. The other tunnel system is just right for me, descending down along an underground waterfall and into flooded halls.

It's nice to work my way through the undead, searching for barrow-treasure and the occasional precious Cardolan trinket (the men of Bree love those to the tune of 700 reputation, as opposed to the measly 300 you get for a pile of ten barrow-treasures). I'm not sure what I'll get if I fill up my reputation bar and progress from "friend of men of Bree" to "ally". In a way, I don't care. The undead are veritable money bags, so I'm making more money I can spend on lore for Rivendell. I'm certainly making more than I'd get from killing Farochel's fur-clad barbarians. The experience is good, and it looks like I might hit level 47 while i'm down here. But mostly, I just plain like it down here. Sometimes a grind isn't much of a grind at all.

(Click here for tomorrow's Lord of the Rings Online game diary.)
(Click here for yesterday's Lord of the Rings Online game diary.)