Lord of the Rings online

[Callan S.]

Anyone else playing? I finally updated the client - I played a few years ago, so I have a 50 burgler who I have almost completely forgotten all the tricks of him! Halewine on landroval server.

[SpiritWebb]

Haven't tried LotRO before, heard the game was horrible.

[ConceptDestiny]

I found it pretty good, but became bored after the second day. So I dropped it and tried Eve Online.

[Jackolantern]

It is alright. It is a lot like WoW, but less flashy and with less personality. While some Tolkein fans may take offense to that former descriptor (the former is due to the game, not the source), it is not the LotR material, but rather, it is all the fantasy material that came after it. With all of the RPGs out there, an actual MMO based on LotR just seems rather generic and lackluster. Another points that many players do not like is the issue with magic in the source material. There simply cannot be a magician running around everywhere you turn, so magic was basically a no-no until the first expansion, when finally a rune-based class was added that had some basic magic. But nevertheless, a fantasy MMORPG just seems a bit lacking with almost no magic in the world. A fireball is an arrow, a healing spell is a song, a debuff spell is a battle-cry, etc. It just leaves it feeling a bit weak for me.

[Xaleph]

That`s a matter of opinion, fortunatly. I actually like the lore of lotr quite a lot. I`ve read the books a dozen times, so i can actually quite relate to that. However, my issue with the end game content is basicaly that it is not in any way related to LotR. It`s the same grind as in WoW and other MMO`s. Nevertheless, i did play it but mostly on European servers.

I actually reinstalled the game about 3 weeks ago because i heard it was a f2p now. Which is kind of cool, since the prices for the game did not feel well-compensated for the material you got on end-game.

[hallsofvallhalla]

i spent 4 days installing and patching before I could play the F2P. Then the servers are so crowded the lag is horrible.

[Jackolantern]

Yeah, I meant to say that LotRO would likely be more rewarding if you have read the books and are familiar with the characters, events, places, etc. I was basically playing it from the perspective of someone mostly unfamiliar with LotR, in which case the setting felt rather boring compared to other games.

[Callan S.]

Depends. I didn't really play alot of the warcraft RTS, so to me most of wow was chunky character sprites and an occasional wrecked siege machine.

I'm still playing - actually enjoying it more than when it was subscription, I think. I found you can accumulate turbine points by completing deeds - enough to buy horse riding training at low level, as opposed to...was it level thirty back when I subscribed? Zooming around the landscape makes play more instantly engaging (that how it works in GTA, for that matter, as well). Pretty much always bouncing from some node to some fight to some quest location, etc.

[Jackolantern]

Comparing WoW to LotRO is not really a fair comparison actually to LotRO. Warcraft was an in-house IP that Blizzard had the rights to change in whatever way they wanted to. I actually never played much of the Warcraft RTS (I don't like RTS'), but I have heard they were pretty liberal with changes that needed to happen to create an inhabitable world.

I don't believe any other MMO IP has come with so much red-tape as Lord of the Rings. It is a mixed bag for players. For those in to the LotR story, it will provide interest in the events of the game's story that simply can't be matched by new IPs. For those not into the LotR story, it will just seem like crucial aspects of the Fantasy-MMORPG genre are missing, most notably magic, character death (they use some strange moral system), etc.

[Callan S.]

On magic, it just seems a bizarre taste to have - that everyones got magic coming out the wazooo, but oh yeah, everyone lives in little huts and there is no real infrastructure about. It's like when you read a book and the author puts something in that he really didn't think about the ramifications for it and so...those ramifications are entirely absent. Even though they are screemingly obvious.

On character death...wow doesn't have character death either? I mean, someone misses something which isn't there except for a greyscale jog? And it's strange? Instead of having fake deaths with however many ressurections you need (which is utterly jarring in terms of the biggest element of conflicts - death) to instead stop pretending you have death it's strange to instead characters are beaten into a retreat (losing morale on the battlefield)?

Sometimes I wonder about shoddy game design that spins around self conflicting concepts (like saying 'black is white' which is obviously self conflicting, but here it's 'death is non-permenent', another greviously self conflicting statement), given that it then goes through thousands of minds until the point where they think, en masse, the absence of shoddy design IS shoddy design.

Anyone read the book the ipcress file, where they try to brainwash the protagonist by making him repeat self conflicting statments while sleep deprived...and gamers stay up late...Anyone ever play cyberpunk table top RPG and some player comes up with the idea that his character will make a virtual game that brainwashes people...lol