Technically the game ran very smooth indeed. It had less issues during the stress test than some other games I've played that have been out there for years. This even on the higher settings.
Story content was properly introduced, but will without a doubt become massive.
Landscape graphics were alright, but the character and monster models were very bland and similar, downright horrible to be honest Character customisation was extremely limited, with almost no way of telling who is who when seen running around.
Some cool ideas for character progression that generate a feeling of accomplishment, beyond levelling up.
All in all, decent game that should do well, but might not be interesting enough to keep entertain a long-term playerbase.
AC (retired); EQ (retired); DAoC (retired); Horizons (retired); EQII (retired); CoH (retired); AC II (tested); Lineage II (beta); Neocron (tested); Saga of Ryzom (beta); SWG (retired)...
Fans of the Ring novels might find it all kind of silly, but I for one was impressed with how the lore was intermixed in the quests and dialogue.
I am a huge fan of the books and I for one really appreciated all the little bits of lore dropped here and there. Like when Dwalin says the last real battle he was in was the Battle of Five Armies I know he is referring to events in The Hobbit. When he says the foe must be powerful to have captured one of the sons of Elrond I know exactly what he means. So for me putting things in the LotR context really helped make quests and characters more meaningful and distinguishes this game from other MMO fare. For me. Of course that whole dimension will be lost upon people lacking familiarity with the books so I can see why many are saying it is a good looking but otherwise standard game.
I have never playeed a game where the battles were so easy, they need to make tougher monsters, I just blew throught the levels, there never was a feelling of tension as if i wass going to die which made the game kind of boring for me
I have never playeed a game where the battles were so easy, they need to make tougher monsters, I just blew throught the levels, there never was a feelling of tension as if i wass going to die which made the game kind of boring for me
Did you kill any elite mobs? I think not unless they were light blue or green to you....
I did several fights where my character's life was in danger, even when grouped. It was fun. I just wish there were more minstrels around for groups because then I would have been willing to try the hard stuff more often.
The game ran smooth as silk on a 2 year old box, even with all the settings maxed out and 30-50 people running around me in the starter areas. The landscape was the best I've ever seen in any game, bright and vivid (I never liked Oblivion and hated Vanguard). The models were pretty good, not amazing but still nice.
I played the weekend bouncing between classes and two races (never cared for dwarf or hobbit). I was able to solo 99% of the content for the first 10 levels with the four classes I tried (and the 1% were named that I probably could have soloed but there were 4-5 people waiting for every spawn and grouping beats trying to tag first) but I did notice things starting to get harder around 10-13 and I know I would have needed to group to get a few things done. This just seems to follow the trend of not forcing grouping early on (even in the Vanguard beta I soloed to 15 with no problem with four classes).
Things I liked:
It's just a graphically beautiful game, if you're tired of developers trying for hyper realism and always missing the mark, or if you're one of those freaks like me who LIKES WoWs graphics you'll probably gonna like these too.
The story driven instancing and the way the newbie levels and zones are handled.
The classes. They are an interesting new mix. Everything you'd expect can be done... but maybe not by the class you're used to seeing do it.
Things I didn't like or worry about:
Leveling was fast, I'm hoping either it was accelerated for the beta/stress test or that it slows down, but between Saturday morning and Sunday night I got toons to levels 13, 12, 10, 8, 6, 6, and 4 (I switched servers a bit too) and that's with doing RL stuff a good part of Saturday.
Too few starting area/quests. With elves and human you got to pick your (for lack of a better word) nationality but still had the same starting areas (though separate from each other). This makes grinding out the early quests pretty easy once you've done it. I hope future releases will add some new starting areas.
Orcs. Ok, I didn't see anything labeled "Orc" but I did fight something orcish that said they were orc kin or something to that effect... please tell me orcs look better than that because these guys were just sad. EQ1 had better looking orcs.
So, in the end I really liked it. I'll be preordering, although the $200 lifetime thing just seems sorta silly to me. At the "founders" rate of $9.99 a month that's 21 months before I come out ahead (hell, 22 if you get the standard free month for buying the game) and I haven't played a game for 22 months since EQ.
This game should have been called everquest. Too many lame "go south and look for so and so" quests. The massive ammounts of quests caused me to care about none of them.
The zones and the world was very well done. Kudos to the level designers. The animations and characters models were sub par. The character models looked out of place in such a well done world.
PvE became a chore... and soon I lost interest in it.
Monster play was fun. But I cannot immagine it being fun for more than a week or two.
I would play LotRO if it was free... but it is not... so I am not.
what stress test? i found it a bit laggie at times but only near Bree.
Great starter game, its easy as Apple pie with Icecream. At this stage end game would be to easy to reach in a very short time even when taking a tradeskill or two.
(1) By far the best finished game i have seen in a very long time.
(2) Graphics,Quests, ect are all up to and better than most.
i would with ease give this a 8.5
Someone did there job and did it well i might add. and it was not i.
OK, let this post be the post that helps clear things up about this game, I have played almost all the MAIN MMO's. I have seen GOOD things in a game and BAD things as well. The Freedom of the game is that of WoW. The gameplay is that of WoW and some others. The graphics ARE PHENOMINAL. Oh by the way, WoW has the best movement of character models, and gameplay and feel. NO MATTER WHAT all you others say and hate WoW. I have to LOL because you hate the best GAMEPLAY mmo. Anyways back to this game. THE ONLY problem I had was graphics lag, and IM JUST GUESSING memoryleak problems. Like entering towns was horrible. Now before all the noobs can respond, My computer is as follows.
Intel Motherboard
2.8ghz P4 (with 1megcache)
1gDDR Ram
200g SATA HD
Nvidia 6800, 128mb DDR
with these specs, this game should not have the problem with memory as it has shown, I have lvld many races in the CLOSED BETA, and have experienced it in ALL the towns. Not an isolated issue. OTHER THAN THIS PROBLEM the only other thing I could think of is MORE RACES, not enough custimization is a key to killn a good and potential MMO. YOU MUST CATER TO CUSIMIZATION!
Theres your problem right there, you use intel :P jk. Well I guess a video card upgrade to 256 and 1 more gb of ram could help a lot with the lag you are experiencing. I didnt experience any lag, but I have 2gb of ram, a 7800gt 256 mb card and amd 3800+ dual core processor.
I have to say I enjoy this game and well there is room for improvements like all games but all in all its pretty well put together and lots of things they can put in an expansion.
I was a little upset at first be cause the stress test was on the weekend I had drill for the army but when I came back from drill I found an invite in my inbox. Hurray!!!!
OK, let this post be the post that helps clear things up about this game, I have played almost all the MAIN MMO's. I have seen GOOD things in a game and BAD things as well. The Freedom of the game is that of WoW. The gameplay is that of WoW and some others. The graphics ARE PHENOMINAL. Oh by the way, WoW has the best movement of character models, and gameplay and feel. NO MATTER WHAT all you others say and hate WoW. I have to LOL because you hate the best GAMEPLAY mmo. Anyways back to this game. THE ONLY problem I had was graphics lag, and IM JUST GUESSING memoryleak problems. Like entering towns was horrible. Now before all the noobs can respond, My computer is as follows. Intel Motherboard 2.8ghz P4 (with 1megcache) 1gDDR Ram 200g SATA HD Nvidia 6800, 128mb DDR with these specs, this game should not have the problem with memory as it has shown, I have lvld many races in the CLOSED BETA, and have experienced it in ALL the towns. Not an isolated issue. OTHER THAN THIS PROBLEM the only other thing I could think of is MORE RACES, not enough custimization is a key to killn a good and potential MMO. YOU MUST CATER TO CUSIMIZATION! OK NOOBS POST AWAY LOL
The arrogance...Oh my god. You came down from the heavenly skies to tell us mortal noobs what we have to think about this game, what we have to like and dislike, because you played all major MMOs.
I have been in closed beta now for about 2 weeks and i noticed that there were a few negative remarks about this game (which is healthy) but do please bare in mind that this game is still in closed beta stages for 1 more month and tell me when and were you have seen a better polished game in these stages i'll be buggered if there are or have been,
My first impressions of this game was WOW (not world of warcraft but wow cool) so the character models don't give the rest of the invireonment the respect it deserves so does that affect your game play? I personally think that the characters look fine, ok so you can't see the sweat coming from there heads but which mmo has such detail none to my knowledge ,i guess what im getting at is people are just so damn hard to please these days it is a bloody good game and far better than any other mmo that i have played so.
So i keep hearing that ( oh it is just the same as WOW) no it aint and you can argue with me that it is as much as you like because if ya wanna go down that track , then WOW is just a ripp off of other mmo's (EQ2) all of these games feed from each other so none are the same nor new in any way just have new story line different graphics angine and the same old community that likes to say that it is just like WOW... For God's sake if WOW is so damn good than pls keep playing it and let us real Men and Woman play the Adult games... Sheeez
LOL when I said that the gameplay and models movement was just like WoW IT WAS A COMPLIMENT ! This game has much potential, but memory problems do need to be adressed, and ofcourse MORE RACES. Oh and to the guy that thought I came from the heavenly skies to bless you all with my "non helpfull" post, LOL to you. My post was to help ppl that want to get out of WoW to realize there are other games that match its gameplay. And this is important, because basically there is no game that touches the gameplay. HENCE the millions that play the game lol. And if your an ADULT and cant figure out that WoW and LOTR has the almost exact gameplay and model movement than your cause is a lost one lol.
LOL when I said that the gameplay and models movement was just like WoW IT WAS A COMPLIMENT ! This game has much potential, but memory problems do need to be adressed, and ofcourse MORE RACES. Oh and to the guy that thought I came from the heavenly skies to bless you all with my "non helpfull" post, LOL to you. My post was to help ppl that want to get out of WoW to realize there are other games that match its gameplay. And this is important, because basically there is no game that touches the gameplay. HENCE the millions that play the game lol. And if your an ADULT and cant figure out that WoW and LOTR has the almost exact gameplay and model movement than your cause is a lost one lol. GG
God i love trolls from WoW...
The games great buddy, must feel alone being one of the few kicking dirt on Lotro, im sorry that your worried for WOW's sub numbers, but all things must die with age.
LOL, trolls from WoW ?, ok lets clear something up, I havent played WoW for almost 5months now, and IF YOU READ THE POST, IM NOT KICKING DIRT ON LOTR, Im actually complimenting it by sayn its equal to or above the type of gameplay and pvp interaction between models. I DONT care if WoW dies, lol cause my account isnt active nor will be ever. So next time you decide to call ppl "trolls" lol why dont you read the post........lol
I gotta say after playing the stress test I have come to hate turbine.... I mean I started playing... and couldnt stop.... I slept maybe 8 hours all weekend.... and then monday it was over, stranded... waiting another month to for Open beta to start All in all this game far exceeded my expectations, which I admit weren't that high, I hated DDO and thought this would be another horrible turbine title like that. This has been the most fun i've had in any mmo for years. I've been beta testing a few other games over the past few months and I doubt Im going to have time to even get patch updates in them anymore once lotr launches. The crafting was fun, the story was great and the solo and/or group play are both exciting. I'd definatly be getting the lifetime membership, and I say that with confidence after only playing for a weekend haha. Granted, I only made it to level 15, but I was not bored the entire time, not once, and no other game has ever been that intriguing to me.
You should try doing some of the chapter quests without leveling first if you want the fear of death... Me and friend were doing those out of bree (the quests you get from strider) when we were 2-3 levels below the level of the quest... we got VERY close to dying many times but luckily we only failed 1 mission (no thanks to my friend standing around doing nothing while I get all the aggro from healing him...) -_- but definatly fun and a good sense of dread
Comments
Story content was properly introduced, but will without a doubt become massive.
Landscape graphics were alright, but the character and monster models were very bland and similar, downright horrible to be honest Character customisation was extremely limited, with almost no way of telling who is who when seen running around.
Some cool ideas for character progression that generate a feeling of accomplishment, beyond levelling up.
All in all, decent game that should do well, but might not be interesting enough to keep entertain a long-term playerbase.
AC (retired); EQ (retired); DAoC (retired); Horizons (retired); EQII (retired); CoH (retired); AC II (tested); Lineage II (beta); Neocron (tested); Saga of Ryzom (beta); SWG (retired)...
Edit: Forgot, here's a link to some screenies. I felt just like a tourist in Middle-earth taking so many snapshots
I did several fights where my character's life was in danger, even when grouped. It was fun. I just wish there were more minstrels around for groups because then I would have been willing to try the hard stuff more often.
The game ran smooth as silk on a 2 year old box, even with all the settings maxed out and 30-50 people running around me in the starter areas. The landscape was the best I've ever seen in any game, bright and vivid (I never liked Oblivion and hated Vanguard). The models were pretty good, not amazing but still nice.
I played the weekend bouncing between classes and two races (never cared for dwarf or hobbit). I was able to solo 99% of the content for the first 10 levels with the four classes I tried (and the 1% were named that I probably could have soloed but there were 4-5 people waiting for every spawn and grouping beats trying to tag first) but I did notice things starting to get harder around 10-13 and I know I would have needed to group to get a few things done. This just seems to follow the trend of not forcing grouping early on (even in the Vanguard beta I soloed to 15 with no problem with four classes).
Things I liked:
It's just a graphically beautiful game, if you're tired of developers trying for hyper realism and always missing the mark, or if you're one of those freaks like me who LIKES WoWs graphics you'll probably gonna like these too.
The story driven instancing and the way the newbie levels and zones are handled.
The classes. They are an interesting new mix. Everything you'd expect can be done... but maybe not by the class you're used to seeing do it.
Things I didn't like or worry about:
Leveling was fast, I'm hoping either it was accelerated for the beta/stress test or that it slows down, but between Saturday morning and Sunday night I got toons to levels 13, 12, 10, 8, 6, 6, and 4 (I switched servers a bit too) and that's with doing RL stuff a good part of Saturday.
Too few starting area/quests. With elves and human you got to pick your (for lack of a better word) nationality but still had the same starting areas (though separate from each other). This makes grinding out the early quests pretty easy once you've done it. I hope future releases will add some new starting areas.
Orcs. Ok, I didn't see anything labeled "Orc" but I did fight something orcish that said they were orc kin or something to that effect... please tell me orcs look better than that because these guys were just sad. EQ1 had better looking orcs.
So, in the end I really liked it. I'll be preordering, although the $200 lifetime thing just seems sorta silly to me. At the "founders" rate of $9.99 a month that's 21 months before I come out ahead (hell, 22 if you get the standard free month for buying the game) and I haven't played a game for 22 months since EQ.
This game should have been called everquest. Too many lame "go south and look for so and so" quests. The massive ammounts of quests caused me to care about none of them.
The zones and the world was very well done. Kudos to the level designers. The animations and characters models were sub par. The character models looked out of place in such a well done world.
PvE became a chore... and soon I lost interest in it.
Monster play was fun. But I cannot immagine it being fun for more than a week or two.
I would play LotRO if it was free... but it is not... so I am not.
what stress test? i found it a bit laggie at times but only near Bree.
Great starter game, its easy as Apple pie with Icecream. At this stage end game would be to easy to reach in a very short time even when taking a tradeskill or two.
(1) By far the best finished game i have seen in a very long time.
(2) Graphics,Quests, ect are all up to and better than most.
i would with ease give this a 8.5
Someone did there job and did it well i might add.
and it was not i.
OK, let this post be the post that helps clear things up about this game, I have played almost all the MAIN MMO's. I have seen GOOD things in a game and BAD things as well. The Freedom of the game is that of WoW. The gameplay is that of WoW and some others. The graphics ARE PHENOMINAL. Oh by the way, WoW has the best movement of character models, and gameplay and feel. NO MATTER WHAT all you others say and hate WoW. I have to LOL because you hate the best GAMEPLAY mmo. Anyways back to this game. THE ONLY problem I had was graphics lag, and IM JUST GUESSING memoryleak problems. Like entering towns was horrible. Now before all the noobs can respond, My computer is as follows.
Intel Motherboard
2.8ghz P4 (with 1megcache)
1gDDR Ram
200g SATA HD
Nvidia 6800, 128mb DDR
with these specs, this game should not have the problem with memory as it has shown, I have lvld many races in the CLOSED BETA, and have experienced it in ALL the towns. Not an isolated issue. OTHER THAN THIS PROBLEM the only other thing I could think of is MORE RACES, not enough custimization is a key to killn a good and potential MMO. YOU MUST CATER TO CUSIMIZATION!
OK NOOBS POST AWAY LOL
Theres your problem right there, you use intel :P jk. Well I guess a video card upgrade to 256 and 1 more gb of ram could help a lot with the lag you are experiencing. I didnt experience any lag, but I have 2gb of ram, a 7800gt 256 mb card and amd 3800+ dual core processor.
I have to say I enjoy this game and well there is room for improvements like all games but all in all its pretty well put together and lots of things they can put in an expansion.
The arrogance...Oh my god. You came down from the heavenly skies to tell us mortal noobs what we have to think about this game, what we have to like and dislike, because you played all major MMOs.
Your post is not helpful at all.
Hate to say I told you so
My first impressions of this game was WOW (not world of warcraft but wow cool) so the character models don't give the rest of the invireonment the respect it deserves so does that affect your game play? I personally think that the characters look fine, ok so you can't see the sweat coming from there heads but which mmo has such detail none to my knowledge ,i guess what im getting at is people are just so damn hard to please these days it is a bloody good game and far better than any other mmo that i have played so.
So i keep hearing that ( oh it is just the same as WOW) no it aint and you can argue with me that it is as much as you like because if ya wanna go down that track , then WOW is just a ripp off of other mmo's (EQ2) all of these games feed from each other so none are the same nor new in any way just have new story line different graphics angine and the same old community that likes to say that it is just like WOW... For God's sake if WOW is so damn good than pls keep playing it and let us real Men and Woman play the Adult games... Sheeez
LOL when I said that the gameplay and models movement was just like WoW IT WAS A COMPLIMENT ! This game has much potential, but memory problems do need to be adressed, and ofcourse MORE RACES. Oh and to the guy that thought I came from the heavenly skies to bless you all with my "non helpfull" post, LOL to you. My post was to help ppl that want to get out of WoW to realize there are other games that match its gameplay. And this is important, because basically there is no game that touches the gameplay. HENCE the millions that play the game lol. And if your an ADULT and cant figure out that WoW and LOTR has the almost exact gameplay and model movement than your cause is a lost one lol.
GG
God i love trolls from WoW...
The games great buddy, must feel alone being one of the few kicking dirt on Lotro, im sorry that your worried for WOW's sub numbers, but all things must die with age.