I Finally Decided to Try LOTRO

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Lord of the Rings Online has been a pleasant surprise.

I remember downloading the client probably a year after it was released and being thoroughly unimpressed. I think the first character I tried was a hobbit and I couldn't make it through the starting area, it just seemed so contrived and messy at the time. Uninstalled.

Enter LOTRO some four years later.

I have to say, of all the MMO's I've decided to seriously try to dig into, this one is by far the most polished, the deepest in terms of its raw amount of content, and, in many ways, simply the funnest to play. The only other one that I've ever been able to "finish" -- DDO -- was a Turbine title as well, and it, too, eventually became a solid and tight game but one that did take several years to get that way.

They've just added so much stuff over the years to LOTRO that it's hard to include it all in any short description of the game. The world has grown to monstrous proportions, the majority of Middle Earth covered in detail. They are still releasing and planning to release more content in the future, as well; The Great River, apparently coming out this Spring, is supposed to connect the region between Lothlorien and Rohan. That brings the total number of explorable regions to... sixteen? I think? Each of which features probably an average of between 150 and 200 quests, with the game's current level cap sitting at I believe 75. That's a LOT of content and believe me, until you get into the game and realize how large and full each region is, it's hard to grasp in scope.

The gameplay is exactly what you'd expect: create an unknown Middle-Earth dork and pretend you're somehow inserted into the lore while occasionally running into Aragorn and the other big shots, just barely chipping away at the sad reality of every other MMO -- you're just here to grind. But if you don't mind that kind of thing -- otherwise you'd likely not be reading this right now -- and you think that having at least some level of developed canon slathered on top of your endlessly running around fetching this for this hobbit, killing X number of these types of baddies for that innkeeper (you know the drill) may help, it tends to at least partially justify the insanity that these types of games embody, and you wouldn't be wrong. I was actually rather pleased when a cutscene playing out the scene at the Prancing Pony Inn fired off after I progressed past a certain part in Bree. It's a pretty convincing carrot to chase after, knowing how much storyline there is there to chase.

But it (the gameplay) is very smooth. That is unless you're on a rathy noisy or laggy server, and to be honest apparently they all are a tiny bit lately as of the last update, number six I guess, which added Rohan I think, but this is quite atypical for Turbine. Generally, especially if you have a decent system, it's like walking around on butter. The animations aren't completely retarded, if a little cartooney, the game models and graphical assets are pleasing in their own way (much better than WoW, about on par with DDO but slightly better, not as good as a RIFT but cleaner), everything seems to load in quickly and can be made to look quite impressive with all the DX10 and 11 features enabled.

Things like crafting and other tertiary aspects seem to have all been paid as much attention to over the years since they're equally as deep. It struck me how much input the customer base (read: ringwraith fanboy nerds) must have had as an impact on the direction and development of the game. Some of the more brilliant ideas Turbine's come up with include a levelling game-within-the-game, the so-called virtues and their related traits, and the addictive cosmetics feature which ingeniously forces you to concentrate more on how your character looks rather than plays, further adding to the day-to-day draw of logging in. Just performing the best on your server is no longer good enough; now you've got to look your best, too.

I know this game has been out for a long time and many of you have either already made up your minds about it (or burned out on it), or, like me, never dug into it for whatever reason, and if you're the latter, I'd say it's high time to check it out. It's FtP right now up to I think like level 65 (!), and most areas are accessible as a froobie. You can also stop by your local "store" (yes, these things still exist) and pick up the Mithril Edition of the game which of course saves several hours or days of downloading time, and has some nice goodies thrown in such as a beautiful little horsie to ride around on. Bronies, yeah.

Seriously, of all the MMO's I've run into in my day, which admittedly haven't been all that many, LOTRO is so far proving to be one of my favorites. I'll probably play it for, oh, I don't know, maybe another two weeks or so...

I really wish for a singleplayer offline mmo. It would allow for good questdesign and still have a huge world to explore. Especially a LotR games would be awesome.

Although; pity post.


(I always fall asleep in mmos...)

I only played the demo, but Kingdoms of Amalur gave me that single player MMO feel. I'm not too crazy about it but I marked it for future sales.

LOTRO was great for RP purposes before it went F2P. New business model makes you pay for every fucking step you take in game. Not to mention average player IQ/age dropped significantly. UI is fucking ugly as well.

I still occasionally log in my dwarf to chat with old friends but that's about it.

It took me about a month but yeah, this is about how long this wonderful impression will last before you realize it's Just Another WoW Clone.

That's fair to say.

I've never played WoW, though.

I am starting to see some of the warts of LotRO now, mainly technical issues and a distinct lack of focus for grouping since most veterans have been maxed for years already. You have to find other newbs who are typically ESL who have absolutely no idea what they're doing. Blind invites are rampant, at least on my server.

Still, I stand by everything I said. This is a very charming yet ginormous game and one that suits the solo'er nicely. For the $14.99 I spent on it (no monthly fee), I'd say its return on my entertainment investment has already paid off.

I have very fond memories of the game, but it saddens me to see what Turbine is doing with it lately.

Glad you're having fun tho. Which class?

It's too bad you didn't try it at its peak in Vanilla (Once The Rift raid was added) - it was a very good MMO at the time, with a decent enough community of stuck-up elitists, somewhat iffy mechanics (mainly the slow combat) and very decent visuals.

Too bad Turbine went and raped their own kid with this one. Looks like those guys have absolutely no fucking idea on how to successfully manage an MMO.

Moria > vanilla imo.

Although I guess you could argue the decline was already underway then.

Moria is when the problems started to pile up. Bugged instances and raids, lack of encounter balance (overtuned/undertuned raids), LI problems that got "sorted out" with some pretty stupid means, daily grinds... But yeah, overall it was still quite good, and some of the instances were really a lot of fun. It was certainly enjoyable despite the many piling flaws.

Just a boring champion. I've managed to reach level 23 without dying once, though. I don't know if that means I'm actually pretty good or that LotRO is just fucking easy.

Champion and Hunter are the noob classes, IIRC.

Yup.

At least they are not lore breaking like rune masters. Besides hunters get to teleport everywhere.

played quite a lot when it went f2p and it's a nice ride until you bump into areas where you have to unlock the whole quest content for turbine points. i got lucky and got angmar in a -75% 'sale', so i didn't have to pay/grind for that, but everything else was a pain in the arse. managed to solo everything (even the shitty escort missions with the terribad companion AI) with a hobbit burglar up to a story mission in angmar, that cannot be completed on your own (as a burglar), where i never found anyone to team up with for it.

tried a second char as dwarf champion and it was considerably easier, but also much less fun than burglar.

All the classes have been revamped over time to make them more viable solo. Champs used to be squishy and broken, now they are powerhouses to the point of OPness - but it's a fun class to solo grey instances with once you have the gear for it. They've also removed all elite (ie. group) content from the lowbie areas and reduced mob aggro range, so now dying is actually an achievement.

So they finally fixed the clusterfuck they caused in Moria when Champs got nerfed to the point of being near-useless?

Try the LoTR mod for Mount and Blade. Its fucking too good for a modder community.

I don't remember champs ever being near-useless when I was playing. Just squishy, with some overly unintuitive mechanics. Last year or so they streamlined the class, gave it a bunch of survivability cooldowns, took away shields, fixed talents etc.

Compared to end of vanilla and start of Moria, they became retardedly squishy, and if you wanted to have survivability, you'd have to go so far into subpar territory that it'd be better to bring in a Burglar or even a Warden (sad fact - my Warden and Burg became better geared and better progressed than my main for whom I kept trying to get decent LIs - and of course once I did, they removed some LI stats and made the champ revamp so byebye 90 plat I hardly knew you). So I'd have had to spend countless hours getting a new LI set to make a subpar build seem slightly less gimped and that's pretty much when I said fuck it, why don't I play some WoW again instead.

So yeah, I'd say Champs got fucked quite hard in Moria if you were into min-maxing.

When it has a good bunch of uniqe quests that don't involve killing someone and actual exploring I'm interested. But knowing M&B I know it's hopeless. I really like M&B but I can't play another mindless grind, especially with the retarded ai

If you put it that way...

I played LotRO when it first came out, CE and everything because I am dumb and buy shit like that. Played for a month or two IIRC, got a captain to around 20 I think (leveled a few classes before settling). It is just like all hotbar mmos of it's time, the fun coming from who you are playing with. While I liked the lore and writing of LotRO much more than WoW, when about 3 of my mates started playing that I switched over with them and therefore it became a better game for me. They're almost identical though.

Holy shit, Captain. That's possibly the most boring class in the game. Or in any game I played perchance, even. Gawd. Maybe it's better at max but I got to 40 and it just WAS SO BORING.