Still running around Middle Earth

After a brief gaming hiatus caused by chirping capacitors (never a good thing, ever), I've been back to wandering around Middle Earth, killing things and taking their stuff. It's been quite enjoyable, even if most of the questing is of the "go kill these guys", "go gather this stuff", "collect x trophies" type. (and if you're sick of that and level 30, hit Oatbarton unless you hate hobbits. But really, if you hate hobbits, why lotro?)

I do have a complaint though. So, Nathyrra's almost 40 now, and I've been running around Everdim for well, about 10 levels. I really like the idea of helping reclaim these ancient ruins, and I love the scenery. But things I do not love, really nonobvious routes. I like randomly wandering around, seeing where I will be going next and collecting travel points, but I dislike seeing quests I have and not being able to see a clear way to get there. Here's my most annoying example...

I had quests in Rhunenlad and it took me quite a while to figure out how to get over there from Kingsfell. Looking at the map I saw two routes, going east from Melumen or going through the possible gap at the north edge of the mountains. The go east plan was foiled by a lot of giants (very powerful ones) and I was unsure about the possible gap (hence calling it possible).

You're actually supposed to go through Esteldin (a city roughly about where the second l in kingsfell is). I discovered this completely by accident while wondering where a road in Esteldin went. To Rhunenlad, as it turned out. Now, thinking about it, putting a city in a mountain pass makes sense and given that the quests in question were given to me in Esteldin, yup, probably should have occurred to me before I tried the suicidal giant run.

Thinking more about this (and yes, I've had similar problems before, this is just the most recent and painful), I like the world making sense. I like cities being on top of hills (and it makes it easy to spot them and go, ooh, what's that?) and I like the map style. Just wish the path (and if you look there is a gap path in the mountains) was slightly more obvious. But I still really love....

All those ruins/cities? I've been there, in some cases by the "ooh, what's that?" method. I love seeing stuff in game and getting to go check it out. It's the explorer in me, always wanting to know what's over there...  (these caps all taken from the top of a thing in Evendim that you get to at the end of a questline and I would remind you all that my graphics are on the lowest possible settings)