It's the ancient times before Google maps and I'm looking for a stolen gold ingot some dwarf carried away to Orod Laden. Orod Laden? Where the heck is that? I can't see hide nor hair of anything called "Orod Laden" on my map. I also have to find a missing elven scout at Starkhath. Starkhath? All the quest text says is that it's "well to the east". Looking at the map, there's a whole lot of stuff that qualifies as "well to the east". Now what?

Get directions after the jump.

The maps in Lord of the Rings Online are both wonderful and terrible. They're wonderful for being as broad and non-specific as the sketches in Tolkien's books. Pressing 'M' really feels like opening an ancient paper map.

But they're terrible for how little information they have. How am I supposed to know where to find Orod Laden and Starkhath? What I eventually realize – and you'd think I'd have learned this by now – is that notable locations get a little flag icon once you've discovered them. Once I stumble into the ruins of Starkhath, a message pops up on the screen and then there's a little flag on my map labeled "Starkhath". It's as if I stuck a little pin in the paper map. How very quaint.

This approach encourages two things: 1) Exploration. In Lord of the Rings Online, it's worth roaming around an area just to make sure you reveal any stickpins and location names. It'll make it a lot easier when you have to come back for a quest. There are even deeds for finding certain locations.

LOTRO's mapping system also encourages 2) actually looking at your surroundings. The terrain matters. Roads go places. A path cut into the side of a mountain is likely there for a reason. Ruins on a distant hilltop are almost never merely cosmetic. But since the map won't always tell the whole story, you have to look for the terrain to fill in the gaps. What looks like an open approach might require a tricky path, either through a cave or along the side of a cliff. The Misty Mountains, for example, are a lot tougher to navigate than Bree-land, because they aren't as thoroughly mapped. But consider the Old Forest. Don't even bother opening the map in there; it's not going to make a lick of difference. Places in Lord of the Rings Online have personality, sometimes because they're inscrutable.

Age of Conan is an example of the exact opposite approach to mapping. In Age of Conan, nearly every quest is seamlessly and unambiguously integrated into the map. You can cross-check between the maps and quest log. Almost every single quest is explicitly connected to either a pinpointed destination or a shaded area. If you need to find an NPC, his location is exactly noted on the map. If you need to gather tapir snouts, the radius in which the tapirs are spawned is clearly indicated. Similarly, if you're bopping around in an area, you can click various icons and shaded areas on the map to see what quests are nearby.

This is convenient, but I would argue it kills the sense of being in the world. It looks like a satellite image and it plays like a GPS system. It's convenient, sure, but it indicates the fundamental misperception that convenience is synonymous with good game design. As a game designer named Andrew Mayer put it in his recent talk at the Penny Arcade Expo, game design is the art of enjoyable frustration. As I finally come to Starkhath, I realize that navigating LOTRO's sometimes baffling world is a perfect example of enjoyable frustration.

Of course, as soon as I go stumbling off into the snow looking for Orod Laden, I'm probably going to be wishing for the mapping system from Age of Conan. Barring that, there's always cheating.