Sorry nitefly but I am busy responding to Bursche atm. That is gonna take a couple days at least. And of course I see you carry on the tradition of quoting my quotes of your quotes expecting me to respond by quoting your quotes of my quotes of your quotes. If I get the opportunity after I answer Bursche to answer your quotes of my quotes of your quotes I will get right on it. But then again that is the tactic to basically keep one so busy trying to answer quotes of quotes of quotes that the thread is derailed into a mish mash of reading quotes of quotes of quotes that everyone loses interest and then no one can really decide if they want to play the game or not. And my answer to that is play the 7 day trial and decide for yourself, I for one and glad I did.
Looks like you're working hard for an invitation to the Anti-Troll League we just founded in the Moria thread a couple of days ago nice job !
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
Three "why LOTRO sucks" categories stated in this thread are: 1 - LOTRO sucks because it didn't picture Middle Earth as I think it should be presented. (Subjective, your perception is as valid as anybody elses.) 2 - LOTRO sucks because it doesn't have open world PvP. (It is a PvE game.) 3 - LOTRO sucks because it is not groundbreaking and you should play EQ (or something else that is older then LOTRO). (It is a fantasy based MMO's and thus have similarities with others in its category, all cruiser type warships have similarites. Perception of groundbreaking is also subjective.)
Since above three categories seem to be the worst you can say about the game it also explains why so many enjoy playing it. I can live with that.
1) I think the problem is more that the game doesn't represent the lore that is in the books the game gets its name from. I don't think people have a personal Middle Earth they would want others to follow. Just follow the books and all is fine.
Use the map made by Tolkien for one thing, the world is huge, make the game world huge.
There isn't massive amounts of aggressive beasts everywhere in the books, let the game world reflect this.
There isn't banjo playing healers in the books, don't include them in the game world.
The easy answer is this: It is a game, there has to be changes. Well, then the obvious answer to that is: There has to be income for a company, it is easier to generate that with a well-known IP on top of a randomly selected gameplay elements from other games under new labels. Both may be true, but it doesn't make the game any more akin to the litterary source material.
That is your perception and I don't happen to share it after reading and reareading books for about ten years.
And this can go on, and on, and on... I don't plan to discuss it but you fall under number 1 in my opinion.
Sorry nitefly but I am busy responding to Bursche atm. That is gonna take a couple days at least. And of course I see you carry on the tradition of quoting my quotes of your quotes expecting me to respond by quoting your quotes of my quotes of your quotes. If I get the opportunity after I answer Bursche to answer your quotes of my quotes of your quotes I will get right on it. But then again that is the tactic to basically keep one so busy trying to answer quotes of quotes of quotes that the thread is derailed into a mish mash of reading quotes of quotes of quotes that everyone loses interest and then no one can really decide if they want to play the game or not. And my answer to that is play the 7 day trial and decide for yourself, I for one and glad I did.
Looks like you're working hard for an invitation to the Anti-Troll League we just founded in the Moria thread a couple of days ago nice job !
DB
If you don't care, don't post.
If you care but there isn't a valid counter-argument available to you, people will gather together with like-minded individuals of similar proposition and continue to convince eachother that they are right. Each to their own.
This game is living on two things: The IP and Lifetime Founder members. The IP will continue to generate money for Turbine, the Lifetime Founders won't. Where Dungeons & Dragons Online found a niche and therefore a stable core of paying subscribers, Turbine this time around has sort of shot themselves in the foot (in my perspective). Lord of the Rings: Online is a peculiar World of Warcraft Light (Battlegrounds as alternate method of getting loot, simple crafting, simple questing (although in LotRO it is even simpler with a forced string to make confusion as little as possible for new MMOers I think), races that give little initial differences but play identically, classes split between the races, level system with trainers needed for getting new abilities and instead of Talents you have a simple mob grind mechanic which should be comprehensible for anyone, reputation grinds, money grind for mounts, raid instances, endgame focused around raiding/high end crafting) but where everything is simply less.
The amount of quests are fewer, the land mass is about 1/3 (excluding Burning Crusade but including all LotRO updates), the battlegrounds are fewer, the classes are fewer, the races are fewer, the replay value is less (game experience identical from character to character), customization of your character is virtually non-existant (at least in WoW you could make two or more of the same class and make characters that played very differently due to Talents), the amount of crafting disciplines is less, the amount of crafting recipees is less, the amount of models for equipment is less.
It is not a niche game so unlike for instance Dungeons & Dragons Online, City of Heroes and so on, they can't rely on a niche market, they are just World of Warcraft with a different (more demanding) graphics engine and less content. If Blizzard steps up their game it will increase the pressure on especially Lord of the Rings: Online, the pressure is not the other way around. The pressure to World of Warcraft will come from Age of Conan (DirectX10 will again mean that the bar is perhaps too high for some, leaving them in World of Warcraft) and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.
Lord of the Rings: Online is the new beginner's MMO. And that specific area is in my view not a niche, it is a stepping stone. And when people have stepped up, they rarely step down again.
I know World of Warcraft wasn't the first MMO (and neither was it the first I played, that was EQ) but it is the MMO Lord of the Rings: Online has closely tried to become similar to which is the reason for the comparison.
1) I think the problem is more that the game doesn't represent the lore that is in the books the game gets its name from. I don't think people have a personal Middle Earth they would want others to follow. Just follow the books and all is fine.
Use the map made by Tolkien for one thing, the world is huge, make the game world huge.
There isn't massive amounts of aggressive beasts everywhere in the books, let the game world reflect this.
There isn't banjo playing healers in the books, don't include them in the game world.
The easy answer is this: It is a game, there has to be changes. Well, then the obvious answer to that is: There has to be income for a company, it is easier to generate that with a well-known IP on top of a randomly selected gameplay elements from other games under new labels. Both may be true, but it doesn't make the game any more akin to the litterary source material.
That is your perception and I don't happen to share it after reading and reareading books for about ten years.
And this can go on, and on, and on... I don't plan to discuss it but you fall under number 1 in my opinion.
I think you are actually the one that is falling under the 1) heading. You have an idea about Middle Earth that is not based on the books but on something else. "My perception" as you call it of a small land mass compared to the land mass showed in Tolkien's maps and "my perception" of banjo-playing healers compared to the complete absence of such ridiculous nonsense in the books hints more strongly at you disregarding apparent, glaring deviations from the books, ie it has to do with your perception more than mine.
And to be truthful, the discussion doesn't have to go on and on. Look at the maps created by Tolkien of Middle Earth, look at the scale. Read "Fellowship of the Ring", there is according to the hobbits "20 miles from Brandywine bridge to Buckleberry ferry".
Next find any reference to banjo-playing healers. I can't think of any, but you might having a different "perception".
And last find anything that would even hint at the world being so full of aggressive creatures (just outside Bree and all the Hobbit settlements).
Also find a reason why Hobbits, Elves, and Dwarves aren't special races limited to one per account or something similar to at least somewhat live up to the books about these races being reluctant to adventure and are getting more and more scarce.
If your answers to any of these are "Game Mechanics" please enlighten me to why that "perception" is better than the one put forth by J.R.R. Tolkien. Thanks in advance.
This game is living on two things: The IP and Lifetime Founder members.
See? No point reading further. You are totally sure that you know everything and more, right?
No game will *flourish* on IP and founder members alone: SWG/Matrix Online ring a bell?
I personally wouldn't care about the IP (read the books seen the movies but not a fan by any means): i am not a lifetime founder either. Still, I can enjoy the game for what it's worth: FUN for me.
it might not be fun for you personally and for many many others, but that still does not explain the strange urge that some people have: that is to somehow explain and validate that it is the GAME that is not good enough (for all), instead of accepting that it is their own taste that does not suit this particular game.
Trust me, it is much better to accept if you don't like something, and move on, than pointless fencing about a totally subjective thing, such as a game is "good" or "not".
This game is good for many, and however hard some trolls (yes, trolls) try to validate themselves or convince the world that it is *objectively* not good enough, somehow some "perverts" will still enjoy playing it, even if they don't care about the IP and are not founders. I am one of them, but it's not really important.
DB
Edit: I might not necessarily reflect on you as "troll" above, since your posts are quite civil and may even have some valid discussion points - however, if you keep on posting bland (and invalid) generalizations as the one I quoted above, the rest of your post(s) will be rendered much less valid and valueable instantly. Just an advice...
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
Three "why LOTRO sucks" categories stated in this thread are: 1 - LOTRO sucks because it didn't picture Middle Earth as I think it should be presented. (Subjective, your perception is as valid as anybody elses.) 2 - LOTRO sucks because it doesn't have open world PvP. (It is a PvE game.) 3 - LOTRO sucks because it is not groundbreaking and you should play EQ (or something else that is older then LOTRO). (It is a fantasy based MMO's and thus have similarities with others in its category, all cruiser type warships have similarites. Perception of groundbreaking is also subjective.)
Since above three categories seem to be the worst you can say about the game it also explains why so many enjoy playing it. I can live with that.
1) I think the problem is more that the game doesn't represent the lore that is in the books the game gets its name from. I don't think people have a personal Middle Earth they would want others to follow. Just follow the books and all is fine.
I know the people criticizing how they didn't do "this" or "that" with the license hate being reminded of this, but it's reality... Turbine are strictly under a license which limits what they can and cannot do in the game. Sooo... for the quoted comment, and the supporting ones you made afterward... it seems to me your issue should be with the Tolkien people for approving Turbine's implementation.
Are you prepared to tell Tolkien Ent. that *they've* let Turbine do it all wrong and that *you* know better how it should have been done?
As for your points against the game... Your personal opinions, granted; to me, they're all nit-picking.
I'd bet any one of us in here - even those who enjoy the game - could pick at a dozen things off the top of our head that aren't exactly how it happened in the books. And.... so what? It all comes down to one very key thing: LoTRO isn't a book that only has to entertain a single person reading their personal copy of it. It isn't even a single player game where such things can be more reasonably adapted. It's a massively multiplayer game that has to entertain thousands of players simultaneously, at any given time. *Slight* difference there.
Let's take one of your comments for example... You note that there aren't creatures all over the place in the book as there are in the game. You note this as a strike against it. So how, pray tell, do you suggest they translate that more faithfully into a game where any number of people could potentially be hunting in the same area, for the same creature(s), at the same time? Would you cut back on the population so single mobs are no closer than a couple hundred yards apart? Think of the chaos that would result in when any number of people need to hunt those same mobs at the same time.
I think common-sense answers that one - and I'm sure the folks even at Tolkien Ent. recognized it as necessary, given the format of the game.
So, again, I think that you can nit-pick at it all day long and find a hundred things that aren't "by the book". But at the end of the day, those who have the ultimate say over what is close enough to the book to be included have given the green-light. Again, an unfortunate fact for those who want to criticize how Turbine's recreated Middle Earth - but a fact nonetheless.
If it wasn't acceptable to Tolkien Ent... it wouldn't be in the game.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
well if you cant accept your arguments to be discussed, perhaps you should not put them on the plate. As I said, i just wanted to share my viewpoint since yours was so surprising to me. I find it kind of intresting that these are your pro arguments for this game altho you state that you know the old school MMO's too. Why did you play MMO's for 7 years if you found them so tedious and umm... unrewarding? I wouldnt even have sticked to the genre - let alone go to a simplified wannabe MMO to praise it as the cream of MMO design. I have thought alot about lotro from early beta on and why they took the most famous fantasy license to copy&paste a cheap simplified niche MMO together instead of making a genre revolution to appeal to the genre fans. They had the chance to do that with this license - they didnt take the chance. The product that came out has few pro's - i have given credit to those already and wont repeat them. But for the genre in generall its a setback and a missed chance. And thats the disappointing part of the story. Once again: no flamin intended im just discussing away and i enjoy reading your posts actually - as i always enjoy to learn other viewpoints in a discussion. Bursche
I too am long in the MMO genre. Started even before UO (The Realm was my first MMO). I've played most of the well-known MMOs. I stay with the MMO I'm playing until I stop having fun.
I switched from EQ2 to try out Vanguard... went back to EQ2. When I got into the Beta for LoTRo... I left EQ2 and haven't even thought of going back. I'll continue to play LoTRo as long as I'm having fun.
For me, LoTRo is clearly the best and most fun MMO available. Will that always be so? Probably not, as nothing lasts forever. I will say that a lot of the negatives mentioned don't occur in my playing experience, or in my sphere of friends and kinship. Even in PUGs I don't see the attitude and carelessness that seems to plague the gameplay of other posters. Perhaps I'm just lucky.
I'll disagree on the "goofing around" aspect that was hinted at not being possible in LoTRo. Like having a group of low-levels go out and attack something, or make drunken runs to other other places, etc.
First off, that poster must not have done any of the Spring Festival activities in LoTRo. Heh... drunken fence running was most popular wasn't it? The keg that you get as a reward (House item) when you drink from it and then pass out... when you come to, you are transported to some random location in the world. Sometimes even impossible to reach locations... like the tops of mountains... the tops of buildings... in the middle of instances... etc. Very fun stuff.
Then there is the whole session play as a chicken goofing around. Come on... which other game let you play as a lowly chicken? Sure, it's a bit goofy... but that's the point right?
Then you've got bands that play music at gathering places like The Prancing Pony, and the Auction Hall, or the Crafting Hall, etc. It's pretty cool to listen and watch the crowd reactions to the impromptu bands.
Then there are the player ran events. If your kinship never did them... you should have looked for a new kinship. It's fun to just take some time out to have fun from time to time. We've done scavenger hunts, races with and without horses, runs to hard to get to places with level 5 or lower alts., hide and seeks, killing elite monsters with nothing but Upper-cut and Head-butt, etc.
There are plenty of cool events that the game system not only allows but seems to encourage. You just have to want to do it.
If it wasn't acceptable to Tolkien Ent... it wouldn't be in the game.
That right there says it all to me.
Turbine has put forth their vision for LoTRo. You either like it or you don't. Tolkien Enterprises signed off on it... actually even more than that since they extended Turbine's contract to 2014 with the option of going to 2017.
I have really tried to love LOTR but something is missing from the game. I cant put my finger on it either. The game has fantastic graphics and great attention to detail. The first time I saw a flock of birds fly over me I thought wow thats something I dont recall ever seeing in an MMO. The water is simply awesome to look at. Its the perfect blend of detail and fantasy effects. In my opinion, LOTR has the absolute best graphics of any MMO period. There are fun quests. I enjoyed those silly pie delivery quests. The game is clean and bug-free. I dont really recall any bugs or issues. Growing crops and cooking is a nice diversion. Yet even after I list all those wonderful qualities, I cant bring myself to enjoy this game. I dont know if its the classes (i find them rather unappealing). Maybe its the strong linear design. I also find the combat and its animations rather uninspiring. Each time I subscribe to LOTR I find myself completely disinterested in playing. It feels like work with all the quests. I cant just go out and explore the game and progress unless Im constantly doing quests. And I dont get any feeling of accomplishment because once I complete a quest, there are 5 more quests to follow it. And some of those quests lead to other areas with still more quests. Its too much. Dont take this as critical because I respect what Turbine has accomplished here. I was previously critical of LOTR back in beta but turbine really turned it around and launched a decent product. And they pump out a lot of free content apparently (i havent personally experienced it). I just wish the game would click for me. I have been without an enjoyable MMO home since the NGE revamp for Star Wars Galaxies. I played from launch for 1 month. I re-subscribed 2 more times since then for 1 month each. Ive played several classes but I always get bored around lvl 25.
As I first started reading, i was wondering, if not quests, what is it that you want to do? Then I saw that you are an SWG refugee. Which could mean two things:
1. You are a masochist: Questing is a foreign concept to you. Being bored with nothing particular to do is natural to you, and when you actually have a specific task with a story to follow, you feel reverse boredom, which, to the uninitiated, feels amazingly like boredom.
2. More likely (#1 was sort of a joke), you are missing the sense of being able to influence the world in some way through your actions. In SWG, you could have a small effect on the world, primarily by plopping houses in very inappropriate areas creating suburban sprawl in primitive wilderness areas, or cities that were akin to middle age villages.
Other than that, I can't imagine what you'd be looking for. If SWG was the only game that ever clicked for you, it has to do with #2.
By the way, why can't you just explore the game and advance without questing? How did you do this in SWG?
____________________________________________ im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
I have really tried to love LOTR but something is missing from the game. I cant put my finger on it either. The game has fantastic graphics and great attention to detail. The first time I saw a flock of birds fly over me I thought wow thats something I dont recall ever seeing in an MMO. The water is simply awesome to look at. Its the perfect blend of detail and fantasy effects. In my opinion, LOTR has the absolute best graphics of any MMO period. There are fun quests. I enjoyed those silly pie delivery quests. The game is clean and bug-free. I dont really recall any bugs or issues. Growing crops and cooking is a nice diversion. Yet even after I list all those wonderful qualities, I cant bring myself to enjoy this game. I dont know if its the classes (i find them rather unappealing). Maybe its the strong linear design. I also find the combat and its animations rather uninspiring. Each time I subscribe to LOTR I find myself completely disinterested in playing. It feels like work with all the quests. I cant just go out and explore the game and progress unless Im constantly doing quests. And I dont get any feeling of accomplishment because once I complete a quest, there are 5 more quests to follow it. And some of those quests lead to other areas with still more quests. Its too much. Dont take this as critical because I respect what Turbine has accomplished here. I was previously critical of LOTR back in beta but turbine really turned it around and launched a decent product. And they pump out a lot of free content apparently (i havent personally experienced it). I just wish the game would click for me. I have been without an enjoyable MMO home since the NGE revamp for Star Wars Galaxies. I played from launch for 1 month. I re-subscribed 2 more times since then for 1 month each. Ive played several classes but I always get bored around lvl 25.
youve got the veteran swg pre-cu syndrom.
"once you play swg pre-cu, no other game will do..."
thats more than just a rhyme... no other game will be enjoyable (from long term aspects) if you ever played pre-cu swg... after a while you realise that other games can be fun, but you just dont get the pre-cu feeling that you onced had, which leads you to feel bored with other games soon...
its like a curse, but on the other hand: I completely stopped playing videogames and got a lot of time for more important things in reallife...
so thank you SOE and John Smedley for healing my hunger for online games with the NGE
about lotro: lotro is a good polished linear game and thats exactly the problem: its too linear and the questsystem repeats over and over again... in a sandbox style mmo like pre-cu swg the players and the community where the content and not a linear quest system...
SOE and NGE-Star Wars Galalaxies: Raph Koster: "It's like dumping the girlfriend who has always been patient and loving to chase after the supermodel who probably won't love you back."
I can ask questions about the game in the advice channel and OMGawdz get real answers. I found it the opposite - the game helps you so much in the first 20 levels that most questions during this period where really stupid. Questgivers standing on the green path and someone asking where is the green path. People realised quick that the guy asking the question didnt bother to read the quest text at all - not even the yellow part and exactly the flaming down you describe happened. It then happened too when questions came that had a right to be asked (for really difficult to find things). I have witnessed this behaviour on Belegear in May 2007.
Bursche
Ok, I have a few minutes to spare before I have to go out and get wood for my shop before the rains come in. That pesky real life thing gets in the way from posting on forums most of the day and playing games the rest.
Here we are beginning to get to the base of what I believe is the problem for you. You are basing your statements on issues you had 10 months ago without considering or even trying the current state of the game and seeing for yourself all the changes that have been made in the game. You need to realize that logic based on past experience without revelation of the current state of being is, in itself, a level of arrogance. Although I might add that it is probably best that you don't return to the game since you have and had a preconceived notion of what the game was supposed to be, and when the game failed you raised the bar to a standard that no game will ever reach.
You played the game when it was early in its existence while it was in the "fad" period. Everyone looked forward to the game, believed it was going to be the best MMO to date, got all ready for the big day (laid out all of their MMO supplies, clothes, and books), and then "bang" the big day came. Turbine made the mistake that seemingly every other MMO is making, they released before the product was ready. And in my opinion we have SOE to thank for this standard, since we can thank them for the greedy corporate vice presidents and board of directors that shout "we make no money, ship it now!" all the while they sit in their office bearing fangs to suck the creative juices of the next designer and/or developer that dares suggest a new direction in the game that may cost a buck or two. And I believe that based on your experience with SOE (Ever-broken-Quest) you have come to accept that if it is not changed in the first month it will never be fixed, but Turbine did make strides to revamp, fix, and add content at the request of it customers. But since LoTRO was the game to beat all games, it was going to be "awesome dude", it attracted the masses of the "fad" crowd. And sadly that means every rude 12 year old that has a need to demean everyone in the chat channels because their hormones are raging and their self esteem is next to nothing, was playing LoTRO when it first came out.
Then you and many others screamed "this game SuXXoR's", and because the fad crowd is unable to formulate an opinion on their own, stood up and said "Ya it does SuXXoR!!". And most of you moved on to other games, mostly WoW, and now the proof is to ask a newb question in World of Warcraft and see what happens. And really it is best that the "haters" stay away because the community has settled to a mature level and akin to a small neighborhood social structure, rather than a teen gangland mob, and I like it the mature way.
The problem was many of us EQ veterans played that game for four years or more hearing everyday that it was the best game on the market. We believed in lies like every game has bugs just get over it. Or no one will ever beat EQ it is top dog, meaning it is the best we are going to get. Then World of Warcraft came out, and many of us die hards resisted and held to our guns that SOE was our friend and was giving us the best game possible. When in reality, while EQ was ground breaking and cutting edge stuff, it redefined what massive really was, and provided us with a WOW factor that no game will ever do again, SOE got its greedy hands on the game and set out to maximize profit while tearing down any quality the game may have had. Then World of Warcraft beckoned to us disillusioned EQ players, and we tried it, and guess what? It provided a WOW factor of its own, but the WOW factor was not in the cutting edge technology or the massive world, it was the fact that Blizzard designed a game where the quests actually worked! OMGZ! Where the system didnt crash to desktop right in the middle of a you trying to kill a mob or do a quest turn in. We realized that we had been lied to for all those years, that a game could work nearly bug free, and it was possible to build a better mouse trap in terms of playability of a game.
But now that honeymoon of Warcraft is over we seek that same feeling we got from the first time we played a truly massive game like EQ, UO, AO, AC or the like. Sadly it will never happen now that corporations have totally taken the MMO game industry over. Unless some billionaire decides to use his/her own money, create a cutting edge game with absolutely no concern for the bottom line, stick to their guns about their vision of the game, we will never be WOW'ed again.
But LoTRO provides me some things I consider cutting edge. It provides me a story line to follow, one I am familar with, meaning I don't have to wait for space aliens, dinosaurs, and demons to enter the game and be told how this is cutting edge. I can play a game that took magic and made it what it was during the medium movement of the 1920's, a truly mystical experience. It was not fireballs, ice comments, corruption, and shoot through walls kind of crap. It was the magic that was preformed that caused a person to say how did he do that, was it something up his sleeve, or maybe he knows something about the "beyond" that the rest of us don't. It was the magic that exists when a person communes with nature and a deer walks up and eats out of their hands, one that still exists today but very very rarely. It was the magic that we could never tell if it was due to slight of hand, ancient knowledge, or the power of the mind over the physical world.
And because the game did not provide the "fad" players with flash, guns, bombs, fireballs, and the ability to be "uber" many left disgruntled and disappointed. But with them left the whines, cries, and the demands of what they want the game to "morph" into, a vision of their own that is about as far away from Tolkien's books as is possible. And since they left the community has settled down, leaving the mature truly old school players in its wake, and it has developed into a nice peaceful leisure game that actually relaxes many of us and provides us with hours and hours of entertainment. I for one hope it stays that way, but I know the reality is with expansions and new marketing attempts the "fad" crowd will be back wrecking havoc in its wake with rude, arrogant, selfish behaviors, but until that time, I will enjoy what is rather than worry about what is to be.
Until next time.......................................
well if you cant accept your arguments to be discussed, perhaps you should not put them on the plate. As I said, i just wanted to share my viewpoint since yours was so surprising to me. I find it kind of intresting that these are your pro arguments for this game altho you state that you know the old school MMO's too. Why did you play MMO's for 7 years if you found them so tedious and umm... unrewarding? I wouldnt even have sticked to the genre - let alone go to a simplified wannabe MMO to praise it as the cream of MMO design. I have thought alot about lotro from early beta on and why they took the most famous fantasy license to copy&paste a cheap simplified niche MMO together instead of making a genre revolution to appeal to the genre fans. They had the chance to do that with this license - they didnt take the chance. The product that came out has few pro's - i have given credit to those already and wont repeat them. But for the genre in generall its a setback and a missed chance. And thats the disappointing part of the story. Once again: no flamin intended im just discussing away and i enjoy reading your posts actually - as i always enjoy to learn other viewpoints in a discussion. Bursche
I too am long in the MMO genre. Started even before UO (The Realm was my first MMO). I've played most of the well-known MMOs. I stay with the MMO I'm playing until I stop having fun.
I switched from EQ2 to try out Vanguard... went back to EQ2. When I got into the Beta for LoTRo... I left EQ2 and haven't even thought of going back. I'll continue to play LoTRo as long as I'm having fun.
For me, LoTRo is clearly the best and most fun MMO available. Will that always be so? Probably not, as nothing lasts forever. I will say that a lot of the negatives mentioned don't occur in my playing experience, or in my sphere of friends and kinship. Even in PUGs I don't see the attitude and carelessness that seems to plague the gameplay of other posters. Perhaps I'm just lucky.
I'll disagree on the "goofing around" aspect that was hinted at not being possible in LoTRo. Like having a group of low-levels go out and attack something, or make drunken runs to other other places, etc.
First off, that poster must not have done any of the Spring Festival activities in LoTRo. Heh... drunken fence running was most popular wasn't it? The keg that you get as a reward (House item) when you drink from it and then pass out... when you come to, you are transported to some random location in the world. Sometimes even impossible to reach locations... like the tops of mountains... the tops of buildings... in the middle of instances... etc. Very fun stuff.
Then there is the whole session play as a chicken goofing around. Come on... which other game let you play as a lowly chicken? Sure, it's a bit goofy... but that's the point right?
Then you've got bands that play music at gathering places like The Prancing Pony, and the Auction Hall, or the Crafting Hall, etc. It's pretty cool to listen and watch the crowd reactions to the impromptu bands.
Then there are the player ran events. If your kinship never did them... you should have looked for a new kinship. It's fun to just take some time out to have fun from time to time. We've done scavenger hunts, races with and without horses, runs to hard to get to places with level 5 or lower alts., hide and seeks, killing elite monsters with nothing but Upper-cut and Head-butt, etc.
There are plenty of cool events that the game system not only allows but seems to encourage. You just have to want to do it.
see, i am finally getting you dragons where i want you. What on gods blue earth does this have to do with LOTRO?
(almost) NOTHING!
The fun you take out of an MMO with these things is created by the people you do them with. Not the MMO. You can run similar events on every MMO out there if you find enough commedians to play with you.
You say LOTRO encourages to do such things, i say it limits me because the most stupid things are pointless: you cant drown so a "who dives longest without dying contest" is pointless.
A level 5 cannot harm a level 30 mob its capped out in fear of exploits i guess. In EQ 1 lvl 5 would die to a lvl 30 mob quick (even fully buffed and twinked) a group of 5 lvl5 could get a level 30 hill giant to what? 93%? I tell you what, a group of 30 drunken lvl 5 dwarfs killed a lvl 30 hill giant one day and had a big laugh.
But thats just 2 different viewpoints of equal quality. You say LOTRO encourages these side actions, i say it limits them. The point is - the side actions have nothing to do with LOTRO, they have not been invented by Turbine - its the players who do it. So swinging this flag as a lotro pro is pointless, you could swing it for every MMO, its one of the fascinating aspects of the MMO genre.
If you read Dragon Oaks posts, especially his last 2 ones and read between the lines you can work out two things easy:
At some point of his MMO childhood he must have been very disappointed with the players around him in EQ. He says they became greedy and no longer helpful and such.
YES, to a certain degree i agree - EQ did take a route it maybe should not have taken in such extremes. But do you honestly believe you will never be disappointed in lotro by other players? I remember lots of shouting and badmouthing in lotro when they introduced the "need/greed" system and people missusing it for their own benefit, letting others who really needed something alone. My personal experience in LOTRO was that it was full of kill stealing, loot stealing, ore stealing, wood stealing jerks who would let you die in a close combat so they can harvest the silver ore underneath you when you're dead.
In EQ i had hundreds of evenings where groups of dozens of people joined together to make one or two people happy. And that lasted until the very end. Dragon Oak said it was the socialising times of EQ and maybe he is right - in the beginning EQ was even more socialising friendly than it was later. Real dependancies on other classes where created, clerics where needed by everyone for their unique res skills.
Chanters where wanted for clarity. Later everyone had 2nd accounts or guilds had clarity and res bot side accounts. The dependencies broke up. And this created people who where more egoistic and less friendly + helpful. Modern MMO's make it so everyone can achieve everything with one account easy. Why do you think LOTRO had 5 char slots and 5 professions per account and server at start? So that nobody had to ask a tailor to help them smith but just log to their alt. In Jun 2007 my guildleader made us power his lvl 5 alts through the mastercrafting quests so he could grandmaster all professions with only lvl 5 toons and be INDEPENDANT of other players.
This independancy also includes: no more trading of resources from this account as he simply needs it all. No more AH buying of things he cant make himself. And so on and so on. It takes away a HUGE part of the socialising. This is not a LOTRO only problem, i hate this tendency in the complete genre but if LOTRO does one thing here - it makes it worse.
And the rushing part that dragon oak says is not happening in LOTRO. I can assure you if you try a roleplaying server and go to the green path and try to ROLEPLAY you will see 20 people rush past you who dont even realise your emote before one answers quickly and then runs off to his next quest goal.
Again guys, i am really happy for you if you have such a blast in LOTRO - but the reasons you give for that have only little to do with LOTRO itself. Dragon Oak clearly had an attitude problem in previous MMO's if he felt forced to rush, i never had this feeling in any MMO - i always took my time to level and enjoy this growing time learning my toon. In LOTRO however it was hard NOT to level too fast, even playing only 1 or 2 houers a night you can almost not avoid to hit 30 in less than 2 weeks.
I think as we are all veteran players we should not only look at the game we currently enjoy but also at the genre as a general, so that devs get feedback what sort of games are demanded.
And if i read one thing out of this thread and the discussion with you two then its, that you enjoy the social part most - yet i ask: Is Lotro really encouraging a social behaviour? What else encourages this aspect of MMO's? What have other games done for this aspect that was simplified out in WoW and LOTRO? Is it really good to simplify, limit and cap out everything where player interaction causes trouble from time to time? Is this road not leading to a totally unsocial single player MMO, where the only interaction happens in the auction house and the kinship? There will come games after LOTRO - do we want them to be even more solo friendly and less encouraging for socialising? Or do we give the devs the signal yes come on, give me more solo quests it takes forever to get exp past 45 solo.
see, i am finally getting you dragons where i want you. What on gods blue earth does this have to do with LOTRO?
(almost) NOTHING!
Bursche
Umm you do realize it was a rebuttal to the subject matter you brought into the conversation? You keep doing that, bringing subjects into the discussion and then when a person responds, ask "what does that have to do with LoTRO?" Maybe you should explain in detail why you felt the need to bring it up then?
It was you that complained about the limitations in LoTRO that kept you from experiencing things like you did in Ever-broken-Quest.
see, i am finally getting you dragons where i want you. What on gods blue earth does this have to do with LOTRO?
(almost) NOTHING!
Bursche
Umm you do realize it was a rebuttal to the subject matter you brought into the conversation? You keep doing that, bringing subjects into the discussion and then when a person responds, ask "what does that have to do with LoTRO?" Maybe you should explain in detail why you felt the need to bring it up then?
It was you that complained about the limitations in LoTRO that kept you from experiencing things like you did in Ever-broken-Quest.
Yes, exactly!
I don't recall those other MMOs giving me the option of joining forces with a multitude of other chicken-players and running en mass to Rivendell. Come on, you've got to admit that is pretty darn funny.
I don't recall other MMOs giving me the option of running a quest that I must perform a very tough hand-eye coordination test while my character is experiencing the effects of too much to drink. Then, when I do accomplish said task... I get to use a very cool "goofing around" feature.
I don't recall other MMOs that had the LoTR setting to do all this in... see that's the point.
We get to do all the things we liked from other MMOs... in Middle Earth! What could be cooler than that?
I'm sorry that you didn't find the world to your liking... there are quite a few of us that are having a blast though.
Originally posted by DonnieBrascoOriginally posted by DragonOak
If you don't care, don't post.
If you care but there isn't a valid counter-argument available to you, people will gather together with like-minded individuals of similar proposition and continue to convince eachother that they are right. Each to their own.
This game is living on two things: The IP and Lifetime Founder members. The IP will continue to generate money for Turbine, the Lifetime Founders won't. Where Dungeons & Dragons Online found a niche and therefore a stable core of paying subscribers, Turbine this time around has sort of shot themselves in the foot (in my perspective). Lord of the Rings: Online is a peculiar World of Warcraft Light (Battlegrounds as alternate method of getting loot, simple crafting, simple questing (although in LotRO it is even simpler with a forced string to make confusion as little as possible for new MMOers I think), races that give little initial differences but play identically, classes split between the races, level system with trainers needed for getting new abilities and instead of Talents you have a simple mob grind mechanic which should be comprehensible for anyone, reputation grinds, money grind for mounts, raid instances, endgame focused around raiding/high end crafting) but where everything is simply less.
The amount of quests are fewer, the land mass is about 1/3 (excluding Burning Crusade but including all LotRO updates), the battlegrounds are fewer, the classes are fewer, the races are fewer, the replay value is less (game experience identical from character to character), customization of your character is virtually non-existant (at least in WoW you could make two or more of the same class and make characters that played very differently due to Talents), the amount of crafting disciplines is less, the amount of crafting recipees is less, the amount of models for equipment is less.
It is not a niche game so unlike for instance Dungeons & Dragons Online, City of Heroes and so on, they can't rely on a niche market, they are just World of Warcraft with a different (more demanding) graphics engine and less content. If Blizzard steps up their game it will increase the pressure on especially Lord of the Rings: Online, the pressure is not the other way around. The pressure to World of Warcraft will come from Age of Conan (DirectX10 will again mean that the bar is perhaps too high for some, leaving them in World of Warcraft) and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.
Lord of the Rings: Online is the new beginner's MMO. And that specific area is in my view not a niche, it is a stepping stone. And when people have stepped up, they rarely step down again.
I know World of Warcraft wasn't the first MMO (and neither was it the first I played, that was EQ) but it is the MMO Lord of the Rings: Online has closely tried to become similar to which is the reason for the comparison.
Well I see we have two newer preachers of "Why LoTRO is a bad game and a horrible adaptation of Tolkien's work and why people shouldn't like it" in the fold.
Welcome!
You're the latest in a long line of many who've come through here with the same criticisms that have been beaten into the ground already many times over; right down to the "oh the land-mass isn't big enough. Tolkien's world was far larger" - a disingenuous argument on its face. The reasons behind Turbine's progressive approach to developing the world has been well discussed and well documented many times. Apparently you didn't get the memo.
However, I do get a kick out of this one particular comment:
" If you care but there isn't a valid counter-argument available to you, people will gather together with like-minded individuals of similar proposition and continue to convince eachother that they are right. Each to their own."
A bit anxious to pounce on anything that seems opportune, aren't we? He was making an aside, referring to a tongue-in-cheek comment started in another thread.
Though, you have accomplished something in your surprisingly long rebuttal to such a short comment. You've betrayed your arrogance on the topic - the arrogance that you, somehow, know better than we - or Turbine, or Tolkien Ent. - how the game should be. Particularly so in the bit about us "banding together and convincing each other we're right". Funny thing, how so many haters invariably betray that aspect of their personality given enough opportunity.
First, I guess you haven't read many of the back-slapping "Yeah! Good one!" posts by the haters in these very threads. Would you apply that same description to them? Or would you "stand with them" because you happen to agree?
Second, who's to say we're wrong? Who's to say anyone's wrong? You're hung up on a non-point here. There is no "right" or "wrong". There's only "You like it" or "You don't". "You play it", or "you don't".
We like the game - we don't need to "convince ourselves" of anything. We don't need anyone else telling us why we should like it or not, or why it's good or not. For you to make a comment like that indicates that you feel somehow *you're* right and we're all somehow terribly misled. Again, arrogance.
Another naive comment that's been made by many before you and is equally flawed:
"This game is living on two things: The IP and Lifetime Founder members. "
I think history proves well enough that IP is not enough to keep people playing if the game is bad. People left in waves after the NGE with SWG. Matrix Online is a virtual ghost town. Those are both popular IPs.. yet they're not wildly popular. Sorry... but the game has to offer more than just a popular setting to be successful. It has to be enjoyable enough for people to continue playing. LoTRO, for many, achieves that.
Secondly, the lifetime subscribers' contribution eventually dries up once they have played enough months to have covered their payment through monthly sub fees. After that, outside of expansions, they are no longer carrying the game financially. Again, another flawed assertion on your part.
As for the "banjo playing healers". This is simply a disingenuous criticism. I'll assume you know the prevalance and importanace of song and music in Middle Earth. Even in the real world it's believed that music has the ability to heal, soothe, encourage, etc. It can build morale, which is incidentally LoTRO's variation on Hit Points. Might just be a connection there! It's not that Minstrels are playing a magical lute, or clarinet. It's the songs they're playing. It's a creative twist on something that *does* exist in Tolkien's world - music - into a form that makes it a usable gameplay mechanic without introducing your typical high-fantasy "magical healers".
Same thing for Lore Masters throwing burning embers. They have to remain true to the lore, and cannot have fireball casting wizards all over the place. So they took what they knew could exist in the world and found a way to utilize it to a similar end. It would be no different if it were a game based on gang warfare in a modern city setting, where gang members hurl molotov cocktails at each other. Same effect... ball of fire that does damage when it hits. Somehow I have the feeling you realize all this and are simply nit-picking to find convenient "flaws" in things that are obvious and easily enough understood on their own.
But anyway... I'm sure you're going to hang around for at least a bit longer and continue to try and convince us why the game is bad, why it doesn't do justice to the books and and all that. Have fun with that. In the end, you'll eventually move on to make way for the next batch of nay-sayers... and we'll all still be playing and enjoying the game.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I can play a game that actually honors the originators view of the world they created rather than butcher it for the good of a few hardcores to maximize gameplay. And I am reading Lord of the Rings yet again while I play the story through, and I can actually relate even more to the maps, mathom houses, the shire, etc. because of it. You can? Where did Tolkien write that 95% of middle earth inhabitants are adventurers, where did he write that hobbits swarmed middle earth as powerful guardians and minstrells? Where in the books stands that almost everyone in middle earth killed quadzillions of animals to become a hero? Where are mosquitos mentioned that are bigger than a dwarf? Again, for me it was the opposite - the lore is bent and backstabbed for the sake of MMO playability every 2 inchs. There isnt much left than names that sound familiar to a book i once read and loved or a movie i seen in the cinema.
Bursche
Ok next phase, working in short stints while I do my woodwork, so this may be disjointed and somewhat broken, and for that I apologize in advance.
Yup I sure can play the game as Tolkien wrote about middle earth, and my recommendation is that you read the book again, it may help you to refresh your knowledge on Tolkien lore. It is helping me as I read (again) and play the game at the same time.
95% of the NPC’s are not adventurers, they are in the towns, villages, and inn’s of middle earth. They toil as they attempt to make a modest life while we as PC’s adventure. And since the game is linear (a major complaint of yours), my concern is not with other PC’s half way across middle earth, for to my knowledge they don’t ever really exist. But the NPC’s do and what I see is that they are as Tolkein wrote about them, working, laughing, and befuddled by what we consider to be day to day problems that they require help with in the form of quests. They do not adventure; they ask us to do that for them. And again since the game is so linear, meaning that I have a story line to follow and anything I do in the game does not modify the outcome, (which really means I can’t upset the apple cart and ruin the game for the other players), the fact there are other players has no bearing on my playing the game. In fact, the occasional player I meet along the way, and members of my kinship do not outnumber the NPC’s of the world and therefore to my knowledge do not establish your 95 percent rule. I hope you do realize that this is an RPG and if you want to be so strict with the division of what is versus what is not, perhaps you need to realize that this is a game with avatars? As you like to point out this is not a sandbox game, and therefore the existence and the number of other players has no real relevance to how I play the game, as I think do the others that enjoy LoTRO. And for the sake of argument you do realize in the first war with the witchking, most of middle earth came to the battle? As did the forces of Gondor, Rohan, and even the elves that were leaving by the shore, in the second war. And yet again read the book!!!
As to hobbits as guardians, if you read the book, and you don’t even have to go far, it is in the prologue; Tolkien makes reference to a faction of Hobbit warriors that came to the aide of Middle Earth in the first war with the witch king. It would be nice if people actually made the effort to read the story before jumping on the bandwagon of hate for the game. As far as the swarms of adventurer’s mentality, read above. I have no knowledge of other PC’s in the game, those that I do are part of my world of adventure. And since I don’t know everyone in the game, my comparison is with those that I do and the 95 percent of the NPC’s, and that makes us the minority. If I had a guardian hobbit, and group with 5 other guardian hobbits, I could immerse myself into the lore that we are the warrior groups that Tolkien made reference too, again it helps to read.
As far as the minstrels in the game, again it helps to read. Hobbits the curious creatures they, being a simple people, loved to celebrate. They loved gifts, parties, song, and dance. I guess in your mind they all sang to no tunes? They didn’t celebrate with dance even though Tolkien wrote that they did? And as with any culture it was the musicians, or as we have termed them in fantasy lore the minstrels that lead the way of celebrations. And here is the next concept, the game is based on moral, not hit points or health points. Morale is the perseverance to face the enemy, and as long as you have morale you fight on, but when the morale is gone you are DEFEATED. See how it works? Minstrels through song tell the stories and give us morale to persevere. It only takes a little imagination to see how it works, and how it is congruent to Tolkien’s lore.
And yet again if people would read the book and see where in the reciting of the history of the Hobbits you will find that life in the shire was peaceful yet had to deal with beasts like wolves. And since a wolf would tend to eat a hobbit when hungry, that is, if that hobbit decided not to defend their selves, there were in the lore those hobbits that protected the wild boundaries of the shire. So it goes to stand that if I come to the shire and help them with their problems of the beasts in the area, battling that which goes against the grain of MOST (but not all) hobbits, that being their simple nature, it goes to stand that I would be celebrated as a hero for killing that which plagues them, the wolves as written by Tolkien. And please don’t argue that hobbits were not adventures, fighters, musicians, or even out going! Most were not, but rarely some were, like Bilbo, he did not fit the mold, but he was a grand adventurer!
As far as mosquito’s being as large as a dwarf, I suppose we should be strict to the rule, take them out, also take out every American elm, sugar maple tree, and aspen that I see in the game because Tolkien never wrote about them either. But isn’t that the narrowing down of the game you complain about? I mean he did write about swamp and lowlands in the game, and you do realize that mosquito’s breed in those places? Have you ever seen the bugs in the jungles of Brazil or Africa? They are HUGE! And besides I can believe a lot more in a mosquito in the setting of fantasy RPG’s a heck of a lot more than dinosaurs, space aliens, and demons.
And in summary for your last points is to ask you to please please please, take some time, reread the book, and don’t just count on a movie to tell you what the lore is. For instance you do realize from the time Bilbo left the shire to Frodo making his way to Rivendale was about 10 years? The movie made it out like is was nearly overnight. It is very important before you talk about how this game backstabbed the lore of Tolkien you at least know what the lore was.
And lastly since your colorful comments have psychoanalyzed me and diagnosed that my problem is attitude, I have to ask who is here bashing LoTRO? I have three level 70 characters in WoW, really burned out in that game, and you don’t see me there bashing Warcraft now do you? Why, because I have nothing against Blizzard, I just want change. I want to relax when I play a game, and do the unthinkable, have fun!!! But lets notifiy the “change” police and determine that because Dragonoak wants something different he has an attitude and maybe a report to Homeland security would be in order, since he desires something outside the usual conformity of MMO’s!
Until the next time where I further prolong the agnony of these pour readers with yet another response to your quotes of my quotes of your quotes quoting me....................
Erm, just wanted to say that DragonOak and others are really doing a nice job but don't you think it is leading nowhere?
I mean, come on, the only thing that will satisfy the growler club is to stop playing LOTRO, denounce Turbine as the worst thing after the Third Reich and wow to lynch any and all Turbine employees/customers.
Maybe answer two pages of bark with one or thwo lines tops? Just a suggestion.
Erm, just wanted to say that DragonOak and others are really doing a nice job but don't you think it is leading nowhere?
I mean, come on, the only thing that will satisfy the growler club is to stop playing LOTRO, denounce Turbine as the worst thing after the Third Reich and wow to lynch any and all Turbine employees/customers.
Maybe answer two pages of bark with one or thwo lines tops? Just a suggestion.
You're actually right, but I have to admit that it is hard to resist the urge to counterpoint (understand as: stomp to ground) the cliche, weak complaints that most regular trolls manage to conjure up (and voice them over and over and over). Sometimes it's actually fun
Actuallly, the topic's title should be the ones that trolls should first read and comprehend: "it does not appeal to THEM" - THEM meaning any players who don't like this game. There is nothing wrong with someone not liking a game. However, when someone is trolling a forum of a game he/she doesn't like, for any strange unknown reason (mostly attention seeking in fact), it is a different matter - even if these trolling attemps are packaged in more or less shiny coats of "reasoning".
IMHO, someone either likes a game or not. If I like a game, I can list reasons why, but I don't need to "explain" why I actually like that game.
However, if I don't like a game, I can just simply leave it, or if I "almost" like it, I can go to the developer forums and give suggestions on how to improve.
Coming to a third party website to bitch about anything and trying to convince fans that a game is "bad", is just sad indeed.... and desperate to. Not to mention - useless and pointless.
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
...and we'll all still be playing and enjoying the game.
That's the funny part.
It's especially funny when they get all arrogant and/or mad at us having fun playing LoTRo. That just makes me think that they need to loosen that headband a few notches.
Erm, just wanted to say that DragonOak and others are really doing a nice job but don't you think it is leading nowhere?
I mean, come on, the only thing that will satisfy the growler club is to stop playing LOTRO, denounce Turbine as the worst thing after the Third Reich and wow to lynch any and all Turbine employees/customers.
Maybe answer two pages of bark with one or thwo lines tops? Just a suggestion.
I realize it was just a typo and that you probably meant VOW instead of WOW, but it still struck me as funny. Especially if you add comma after wow.
And this is based on what exactely????? Refusal to build a two sided war with PvP? I am pretty sure Tolkien himself would not have agreed to that, and I believe most others if they would understand the conditions and reasons he wrote the books in the first place! Or because there is no magic per say in the game? There really wasn't in the book either! I mean the above is just two assumptions that I could be wrong about what you mean, and I sure would like to know more.
One of the things that makes this game tiring and the community needlessly argumentative is the proclaimers of what "Tolkien himself" would have meant about this and that.
For me that broke the sense of community in the game. It would often degenerate into meaningless debacle concerning what Tolkien might or might not have thought about a given game mechanic instead of acknowledging that it is a license, a hook to lure in the customers bought and paid for by Turbine, nothing less, nothing more.
Too bad that Tolkien enterprises controls this IP, (and rather strictly I might add), so that based on what is allowed and what is not most often we can infer that is what Tolkien himself could have wanted. It might be wise for some people to actually read about the man himself, why he wrote the books, when and where he started writing the books, and the book itself in order to develop a better understanding of the game itself. Rather than argue what the game should be some Eve, WoW, EQ, Vanguard, SWG clone because "they are awesome" arguement.
Character generation is almost non-existing in this game. You get Virtues for slaughtering an ever increasing amount of mobs. This is without a doubt the most incredibly lazy character progress mechanic ever devised and forces a nearly mindless grind since most players I have seen simply start killing grey mobs for their Virtues. This is a simple numbers game, you just have to kill more and more....
And sadly we see this in every MMO out there including EQ where snakes could kick, SWG dinosaurs and alien mobs, WoW that has bears, wolves, spiders, boars and the only difference is they added demons, space aliens and dinosaurs to the mix which is outside Tolkien lore.
The small world, the banjo playing minstrels, the identical heroes (both in looks and skills), the lack of difference between the various races, the lack-lustre NPCs, the overly present and aggressive bears, boars, wolves, deers (I kid you not), spiders, and so on removes the feeling of Middle Earth that the character creation screen conjures up and the game itself, although beautiful, saps me of any ambition I might have to keep playing it.
As far as the deer you may be referring to the fact that many of the docile creatures in the game run away when you approach them. Again another unique AI of the game.
No offense intended but...
Using DARK blue text on a black background is not only irritating to the eyes, but just plain stupid.
And this is based on what exactely????? Refusal to build a two sided war with PvP? I am pretty sure Tolkien himself would not have agreed to that, and I believe most others if they would understand the conditions and reasons he wrote the books in the first place! Or because there is no magic per say in the game? There really wasn't in the book either! I mean the above is just two assumptions that I could be wrong about what you mean, and I sure would like to know more.
One of the things that makes this game tiring and the community needlessly argumentative is the proclaimers of what "Tolkien himself" would have meant about this and that.
For me that broke the sense of community in the game. It would often degenerate into meaningless debacle concerning what Tolkien might or might not have thought about a given game mechanic instead of acknowledging that it is a license, a hook to lure in the customers bought and paid for by Turbine, nothing less, nothing more.
Too bad that Tolkien enterprises controls this IP, (and rather strictly I might add), so that based on what is allowed and what is not most often we can infer that is what Tolkien himself could have wanted. It might be wise for some people to actually read about the man himself, why he wrote the books, when and where he started writing the books, and the book itself in order to develop a better understanding of the game itself. Rather than argue what the game should be some Eve, WoW, EQ, Vanguard, SWG clone because "they are awesome" arguement.
Character generation is almost non-existing in this game. You get Virtues for slaughtering an ever increasing amount of mobs. This is without a doubt the most incredibly lazy character progress mechanic ever devised and forces a nearly mindless grind since most players I have seen simply start killing grey mobs for their Virtues. This is a simple numbers game, you just have to kill more and more....
And sadly we see this in every MMO out there including EQ where snakes could kick, SWG dinosaurs and alien mobs, WoW that has bears, wolves, spiders, boars and the only difference is they added demons, space aliens and dinosaurs to the mix which is outside Tolkien lore.
The small world, the banjo playing minstrels, the identical heroes (both in looks and skills), the lack of difference between the various races, the lack-lustre NPCs, the overly present and aggressive bears, boars, wolves, deers (I kid you not), spiders, and so on removes the feeling of Middle Earth that the character creation screen conjures up and the game itself, although beautiful, saps me of any ambition I might have to keep playing it.
As far as the deer you may be referring to the fact that many of the docile creatures in the game run away when you approach them. Again another unique AI of the game.
No offense intended but...
Using DARK blue text on a black background is not only irritating to the eyes, but just plain stupid.
No, actually it is quite clever, if you listen carefully.
If it's quoted enough times, the background will actually get light grey (gets lighter with every new quoting), so in the end it will be quite readable.
It would actually be interesting to see, how many times it needs to be quoted for the background to turn totally white, so at the end the blue text would be the ONLY one which is readable
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
And this is based on what exactely????? Refusal to build a two sided war with PvP? I am pretty sure Tolkien himself would not have agreed to that, and I believe most others if they would understand the conditions and reasons he wrote the books in the first place! Or because there is no magic per say in the game? There really wasn't in the book either! I mean the above is just two assumptions that I could be wrong about what you mean, and I sure would like to know more.
One of the things that makes this game tiring and the community needlessly argumentative is the proclaimers of what "Tolkien himself" would have meant about this and that.
For me that broke the sense of community in the game. It would often degenerate into meaningless debacle concerning what Tolkien might or might not have thought about a given game mechanic instead of acknowledging that it is a license, a hook to lure in the customers bought and paid for by Turbine, nothing less, nothing more.
Too bad that Tolkien enterprises controls this IP, (and rather strictly I might add), so that based on what is allowed and what is not most often we can infer that is what Tolkien himself could have wanted. It might be wise for some people to actually read about the man himself, why he wrote the books, when and where he started writing the books, and the book itself in order to develop a better understanding of the game itself. Rather than argue what the game should be some Eve, WoW, EQ, Vanguard, SWG clone because "they are awesome" arguement.
Character generation is almost non-existing in this game. You get Virtues for slaughtering an ever increasing amount of mobs. This is without a doubt the most incredibly lazy character progress mechanic ever devised and forces a nearly mindless grind since most players I have seen simply start killing grey mobs for their Virtues. This is a simple numbers game, you just have to kill more and more....
And sadly we see this in every MMO out there including EQ where snakes could kick, SWG dinosaurs and alien mobs, WoW that has bears, wolves, spiders, boars and the only difference is they added demons, space aliens and dinosaurs to the mix which is outside Tolkien lore.
The small world, the banjo playing minstrels, the identical heroes (both in looks and skills), the lack of difference between the various races, the lack-lustre NPCs, the overly present and aggressive bears, boars, wolves, deers (I kid you not), spiders, and so on removes the feeling of Middle Earth that the character creation screen conjures up and the game itself, although beautiful, saps me of any ambition I might have to keep playing it.
As far as the deer you may be referring to the fact that many of the docile creatures in the game run away when you approach them. Again another unique AI of the game.
No offense intended but...
Using DARK blue text on a black background is not only irritating to the eyes, but just plain stupid.
Sigh, and people don't ever get my points. I am with others on this point that I would prefer to let sleeping dogs lie, but........................................
Number one, my first and foremost complaint, in between lines, is how people quote someone else quoting another OP's quotes that has quoted more quotes of quotes in quote to quote. Do you see my point? Really leaves little for creativity and input when you have one page is nothing but one person quoting quotes of even more quotes. But thanks mbrandybuck for keeping the tradition alive, I am sure everyone loves to read the same material over and over and over again.
2nd why is the GENERAL (not all but most) MMO community the most critical, self absorbed, feeders of demeaning others, harsh, bottom feeder, garden variety type of personality? I mean would it be so hard to rewrite that without the need to demoralize and humiliate another in order to build your own epeen? I mean even just by dropping the "just plain stupid" part alone would do wonders for that whole sentence and go a long way to actually making you look like something other than a physically challenged pimple face teenager that their whole goal in life it to be a "wanna be" gang banger and rule the world.
But anyway we established how stupid I am, do you feel better now?
Comments
Looks like you're working hard for an invitation to the Anti-Troll League we just founded in the Moria thread a couple of days ago
nice job !
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
Use the map made by Tolkien for one thing, the world is huge, make the game world huge.
There isn't massive amounts of aggressive beasts everywhere in the books, let the game world reflect this.
There isn't banjo playing healers in the books, don't include them in the game world.
The easy answer is this: It is a game, there has to be changes. Well, then the obvious answer to that is: There has to be income for a company, it is easier to generate that with a well-known IP on top of a randomly selected gameplay elements from other games under new labels. Both may be true, but it doesn't make the game any more akin to the litterary source material.
That is your perception and I don't happen to share it after reading and reareading books for about ten years.
And this can go on, and on, and on... I don't plan to discuss it but you fall under number 1 in my opinion.
Looks like you're working hard for an invitation to the Anti-Troll League we just founded in the Moria thread a couple of days ago
nice job !
DB
If you don't care, don't post.
If you care but there isn't a valid counter-argument available to you, people will gather together with like-minded individuals of similar proposition and continue to convince eachother that they are right. Each to their own.
This game is living on two things: The IP and Lifetime Founder members. The IP will continue to generate money for Turbine, the Lifetime Founders won't. Where Dungeons & Dragons Online found a niche and therefore a stable core of paying subscribers, Turbine this time around has sort of shot themselves in the foot (in my perspective). Lord of the Rings: Online is a peculiar World of Warcraft Light (Battlegrounds as alternate method of getting loot, simple crafting, simple questing (although in LotRO it is even simpler with a forced string to make confusion as little as possible for new MMOers I think), races that give little initial differences but play identically, classes split between the races, level system with trainers needed for getting new abilities and instead of Talents you have a simple mob grind mechanic which should be comprehensible for anyone, reputation grinds, money grind for mounts, raid instances, endgame focused around raiding/high end crafting) but where everything is simply less.
The amount of quests are fewer, the land mass is about 1/3 (excluding Burning Crusade but including all LotRO updates), the battlegrounds are fewer, the classes are fewer, the races are fewer, the replay value is less (game experience identical from character to character), customization of your character is virtually non-existant (at least in WoW you could make two or more of the same class and make characters that played very differently due to Talents), the amount of crafting disciplines is less, the amount of crafting recipees is less, the amount of models for equipment is less.
It is not a niche game so unlike for instance Dungeons & Dragons Online, City of Heroes and so on, they can't rely on a niche market, they are just World of Warcraft with a different (more demanding) graphics engine and less content. If Blizzard steps up their game it will increase the pressure on especially Lord of the Rings: Online, the pressure is not the other way around. The pressure to World of Warcraft will come from Age of Conan (DirectX10 will again mean that the bar is perhaps too high for some, leaving them in World of Warcraft) and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.
Lord of the Rings: Online is the new beginner's MMO. And that specific area is in my view not a niche, it is a stepping stone. And when people have stepped up, they rarely step down again.
I know World of Warcraft wasn't the first MMO (and neither was it the first I played, that was EQ) but it is the MMO Lord of the Rings: Online has closely tried to become similar to which is the reason for the comparison.
That is your perception and I don't happen to share it after reading and reareading books for about ten years.
And this can go on, and on, and on... I don't plan to discuss it but you fall under number 1 in my opinion.
I think you are actually the one that is falling under the 1) heading. You have an idea about Middle Earth that is not based on the books but on something else. "My perception" as you call it of a small land mass compared to the land mass showed in Tolkien's maps and "my perception" of banjo-playing healers compared to the complete absence of such ridiculous nonsense in the books hints more strongly at you disregarding apparent, glaring deviations from the books, ie it has to do with your perception more than mine.
And to be truthful, the discussion doesn't have to go on and on. Look at the maps created by Tolkien of Middle Earth, look at the scale. Read "Fellowship of the Ring", there is according to the hobbits "20 miles from Brandywine bridge to Buckleberry ferry".
Next find any reference to banjo-playing healers. I can't think of any, but you might having a different "perception".
And last find anything that would even hint at the world being so full of aggressive creatures (just outside Bree and all the Hobbit settlements).
Also find a reason why Hobbits, Elves, and Dwarves aren't special races limited to one per account or something similar to at least somewhat live up to the books about these races being reluctant to adventure and are getting more and more scarce.
If your answers to any of these are "Game Mechanics" please enlighten me to why that "perception" is better than the one put forth by J.R.R. Tolkien. Thanks in advance.
See? No point reading further. You are totally sure that you know everything and more, right?
No game will *flourish* on IP and founder members alone: SWG/Matrix Online ring a bell?
I personally wouldn't care about the IP (read the books seen the movies but not a fan by any means): i am not a lifetime founder either. Still, I can enjoy the game for what it's worth: FUN for me.
it might not be fun for you personally and for many many others, but that still does not explain the strange urge that some people have: that is to somehow explain and validate that it is the GAME that is not good enough (for all), instead of accepting that it is their own taste that does not suit this particular game.
Trust me, it is much better to accept if you don't like something, and move on, than pointless fencing about a totally subjective thing, such as a game is "good" or "not".
This game is good for many, and however hard some trolls (yes, trolls) try to validate themselves or convince the world that it is *objectively* not good enough, somehow some "perverts" will still enjoy playing it, even if they don't care about the IP and are not founders. I am one of them, but it's not really important.
DB
Edit: I might not necessarily reflect on you as "troll" above, since your posts are quite civil and may even have some valid discussion points - however, if you keep on posting bland (and invalid) generalizations as the one I quoted above, the rest of your post(s) will be rendered much less valid and valueable instantly. Just an advice...
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
1) I think the problem is more that the game doesn't represent the lore that is in the books the game gets its name from. I don't think people have a personal Middle Earth they would want others to follow. Just follow the books and all is fine.I know the people criticizing how they didn't do "this" or "that" with the license hate being reminded of this, but it's reality... Turbine are strictly under a license which limits what they can and cannot do in the game. Sooo... for the quoted comment, and the supporting ones you made afterward... it seems to me your issue should be with the Tolkien people for approving Turbine's implementation.
Are you prepared to tell Tolkien Ent. that *they've* let Turbine do it all wrong and that *you* know better how it should have been done?
As for your points against the game... Your personal opinions, granted; to me, they're all nit-picking.
I'd bet any one of us in here - even those who enjoy the game - could pick at a dozen things off the top of our head that aren't exactly how it happened in the books. And.... so what? It all comes down to one very key thing: LoTRO isn't a book that only has to entertain a single person reading their personal copy of it. It isn't even a single player game where such things can be more reasonably adapted. It's a massively multiplayer game that has to entertain thousands of players simultaneously, at any given time. *Slight* difference there.
Let's take one of your comments for example... You note that there aren't creatures all over the place in the book as there are in the game. You note this as a strike against it. So how, pray tell, do you suggest they translate that more faithfully into a game where any number of people could potentially be hunting in the same area, for the same creature(s), at the same time? Would you cut back on the population so single mobs are no closer than a couple hundred yards apart? Think of the chaos that would result in when any number of people need to hunt those same mobs at the same time.
I think common-sense answers that one - and I'm sure the folks even at Tolkien Ent. recognized it as necessary, given the format of the game.
So, again, I think that you can nit-pick at it all day long and find a hundred things that aren't "by the book". But at the end of the day, those who have the ultimate say over what is close enough to the book to be included have given the green-light. Again, an unfortunate fact for those who want to criticize how Turbine's recreated Middle Earth - but a fact nonetheless.
If it wasn't acceptable to Tolkien Ent... it wouldn't be in the game.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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I switched from EQ2 to try out Vanguard... went back to EQ2. When I got into the Beta for LoTRo... I left EQ2 and haven't even thought of going back. I'll continue to play LoTRo as long as I'm having fun.
For me, LoTRo is clearly the best and most fun MMO available. Will that always be so? Probably not, as nothing lasts forever. I will say that a lot of the negatives mentioned don't occur in my playing experience, or in my sphere of friends and kinship. Even in PUGs I don't see the attitude and carelessness that seems to plague the gameplay of other posters. Perhaps I'm just lucky.
I'll disagree on the "goofing around" aspect that was hinted at not being possible in LoTRo. Like having a group of low-levels go out and attack something, or make drunken runs to other other places, etc.
First off, that poster must not have done any of the Spring Festival activities in LoTRo. Heh... drunken fence running was most popular wasn't it? The keg that you get as a reward (House item) when you drink from it and then pass out... when you come to, you are transported to some random location in the world. Sometimes even impossible to reach locations... like the tops of mountains... the tops of buildings... in the middle of instances... etc. Very fun stuff.
Then there is the whole session play as a chicken goofing around. Come on... which other game let you play as a lowly chicken? Sure, it's a bit goofy... but that's the point right?
Then you've got bands that play music at gathering places like The Prancing Pony, and the Auction Hall, or the Crafting Hall, etc. It's pretty cool to listen and watch the crowd reactions to the impromptu bands.
Then there are the player ran events. If your kinship never did them... you should have looked for a new kinship. It's fun to just take some time out to have fun from time to time. We've done scavenger hunts, races with and without horses, runs to hard to get to places with level 5 or lower alts., hide and seeks, killing elite monsters with nothing but Upper-cut and Head-butt, etc.
There are plenty of cool events that the game system not only allows but seems to encourage. You just have to want to do it.
Turbine has put forth their vision for LoTRo. You either like it or you don't. Tolkien Enterprises signed off on it... actually even more than that since they extended Turbine's contract to 2014 with the option of going to 2017.
As I first started reading, i was wondering, if not quests, what is it that you want to do? Then I saw that you are an SWG refugee. Which could mean two things:
1. You are a masochist: Questing is a foreign concept to you. Being bored with nothing particular to do is natural to you, and when you actually have a specific task with a story to follow, you feel reverse boredom, which, to the uninitiated, feels amazingly like boredom.
2. More likely (#1 was sort of a joke), you are missing the sense of being able to influence the world in some way through your actions. In SWG, you could have a small effect on the world, primarily by plopping houses in very inappropriate areas creating suburban sprawl in primitive wilderness areas, or cities that were akin to middle age villages.
Other than that, I can't imagine what you'd be looking for. If SWG was the only game that ever clicked for you, it has to do with #2.
By the way, why can't you just explore the game and advance without questing? How did you do this in SWG?
____________________________________________
im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
youve got the veteran swg pre-cu syndrom.
"once you play swg pre-cu, no other game will do..."
thats more than just a rhyme... no other game will be enjoyable (from long term aspects) if you ever played pre-cu swg... after a while you realise that other games can be fun, but you just dont get the pre-cu feeling that you onced had, which leads you to feel bored with other games soon...
its like a curse, but on the other hand: I completely stopped playing videogames and got a lot of time for more important things in reallife...
so thank you SOE and John Smedley for healing my hunger for online games with the NGE
about lotro: lotro is a good polished linear game and thats exactly the problem: its too linear and the questsystem repeats over and over again... in a sandbox style mmo like pre-cu swg the players and the community where the content and not a linear quest system...
SOE and NGE-Star Wars Galalaxies:
Raph Koster: "It's like dumping the girlfriend who has always been patient and loving to chase after the supermodel who probably won't love you back."
Bursche
Ok, I have a few minutes to spare before I have to go out and get wood for my shop before the rains come in. That pesky real life thing gets in the way from posting on forums most of the day and playing games the rest.
Here we are beginning to get to the base of what I believe is the problem for you. You are basing your statements on issues you had 10 months ago without considering or even trying the current state of the game and seeing for yourself all the changes that have been made in the game. You need to realize that logic based on past experience without revelation of the current state of being is, in itself, a level of arrogance. Although I might add that it is probably best that you don't return to the game since you have and had a preconceived notion of what the game was supposed to be, and when the game failed you raised the bar to a standard that no game will ever reach.
You played the game when it was early in its existence while it was in the "fad" period. Everyone looked forward to the game, believed it was going to be the best MMO to date, got all ready for the big day (laid out all of their MMO supplies, clothes, and books), and then "bang" the big day came. Turbine made the mistake that seemingly every other MMO is making, they released before the product was ready. And in my opinion we have SOE to thank for this standard, since we can thank them for the greedy corporate vice presidents and board of directors that shout "we make no money, ship it now!" all the while they sit in their office bearing fangs to suck the creative juices of the next designer and/or developer that dares suggest a new direction in the game that may cost a buck or two. And I believe that based on your experience with SOE (Ever-broken-Quest) you have come to accept that if it is not changed in the first month it will never be fixed, but Turbine did make strides to revamp, fix, and add content at the request of it customers. But since LoTRO was the game to beat all games, it was going to be "awesome dude", it attracted the masses of the "fad" crowd. And sadly that means every rude 12 year old that has a need to demean everyone in the chat channels because their hormones are raging and their self esteem is next to nothing, was playing LoTRO when it first came out.
Then you and many others screamed "this game SuXXoR's", and because the fad crowd is unable to formulate an opinion on their own, stood up and said "Ya it does SuXXoR!!". And most of you moved on to other games, mostly WoW, and now the proof is to ask a newb question in World of Warcraft and see what happens. And really it is best that the "haters" stay away because the community has settled to a mature level and akin to a small neighborhood social structure, rather than a teen gangland mob, and I like it the mature way.
The problem was many of us EQ veterans played that game for four years or more hearing everyday that it was the best game on the market. We believed in lies like every game has bugs just get over it. Or no one will ever beat EQ it is top dog, meaning it is the best we are going to get. Then World of Warcraft came out, and many of us die hards resisted and held to our guns that SOE was our friend and was giving us the best game possible. When in reality, while EQ was ground breaking and cutting edge stuff, it redefined what massive really was, and provided us with a WOW factor that no game will ever do again, SOE got its greedy hands on the game and set out to maximize profit while tearing down any quality the game may have had. Then World of Warcraft beckoned to us disillusioned EQ players, and we tried it, and guess what? It provided a WOW factor of its own, but the WOW factor was not in the cutting edge technology or the massive world, it was the fact that Blizzard designed a game where the quests actually worked! OMGZ! Where the system didnt crash to desktop right in the middle of a you trying to kill a mob or do a quest turn in. We realized that we had been lied to for all those years, that a game could work nearly bug free, and it was possible to build a better mouse trap in terms of playability of a game.
But now that honeymoon of Warcraft is over we seek that same feeling we got from the first time we played a truly massive game like EQ, UO, AO, AC or the like. Sadly it will never happen now that corporations have totally taken the MMO game industry over. Unless some billionaire decides to use his/her own money, create a cutting edge game with absolutely no concern for the bottom line, stick to their guns about their vision of the game, we will never be WOW'ed again.
But LoTRO provides me some things I consider cutting edge. It provides me a story line to follow, one I am familar with, meaning I don't have to wait for space aliens, dinosaurs, and demons to enter the game and be told how this is cutting edge. I can play a game that took magic and made it what it was during the medium movement of the 1920's, a truly mystical experience. It was not fireballs, ice comments, corruption, and shoot through walls kind of crap. It was the magic that was preformed that caused a person to say how did he do that, was it something up his sleeve, or maybe he knows something about the "beyond" that the rest of us don't. It was the magic that exists when a person communes with nature and a deer walks up and eats out of their hands, one that still exists today but very very rarely. It was the magic that we could never tell if it was due to slight of hand, ancient knowledge, or the power of the mind over the physical world.
And because the game did not provide the "fad" players with flash, guns, bombs, fireballs, and the ability to be "uber" many left disgruntled and disappointed. But with them left the whines, cries, and the demands of what they want the game to "morph" into, a vision of their own that is about as far away from Tolkien's books as is possible. And since they left the community has settled down, leaving the mature truly old school players in its wake, and it has developed into a nice peaceful leisure game that actually relaxes many of us and provides us with hours and hours of entertainment. I for one hope it stays that way, but I know the reality is with expansions and new marketing attempts the "fad" crowd will be back wrecking havoc in its wake with rude, arrogant, selfish behaviors, but until that time, I will enjoy what is rather than worry about what is to be.
Until next time.......................................
I switched from EQ2 to try out Vanguard... went back to EQ2. When I got into the Beta for LoTRo... I left EQ2 and haven't even thought of going back. I'll continue to play LoTRo as long as I'm having fun.
For me, LoTRo is clearly the best and most fun MMO available. Will that always be so? Probably not, as nothing lasts forever. I will say that a lot of the negatives mentioned don't occur in my playing experience, or in my sphere of friends and kinship. Even in PUGs I don't see the attitude and carelessness that seems to plague the gameplay of other posters. Perhaps I'm just lucky.
I'll disagree on the "goofing around" aspect that was hinted at not being possible in LoTRo. Like having a group of low-levels go out and attack something, or make drunken runs to other other places, etc.
First off, that poster must not have done any of the Spring Festival activities in LoTRo. Heh... drunken fence running was most popular wasn't it? The keg that you get as a reward (House item) when you drink from it and then pass out... when you come to, you are transported to some random location in the world. Sometimes even impossible to reach locations... like the tops of mountains... the tops of buildings... in the middle of instances... etc. Very fun stuff.
Then there is the whole session play as a chicken goofing around. Come on... which other game let you play as a lowly chicken? Sure, it's a bit goofy... but that's the point right?
Then you've got bands that play music at gathering places like The Prancing Pony, and the Auction Hall, or the Crafting Hall, etc. It's pretty cool to listen and watch the crowd reactions to the impromptu bands.
Then there are the player ran events. If your kinship never did them... you should have looked for a new kinship. It's fun to just take some time out to have fun from time to time. We've done scavenger hunts, races with and without horses, runs to hard to get to places with level 5 or lower alts., hide and seeks, killing elite monsters with nothing but Upper-cut and Head-butt, etc.
There are plenty of cool events that the game system not only allows but seems to encourage. You just have to want to do it.
see, i am finally getting you dragons where i want you. What on gods blue earth does this have to do with LOTRO?
(almost) NOTHING!
The fun you take out of an MMO with these things is created by the people you do them with. Not the MMO. You can run similar events on every MMO out there if you find enough commedians to play with you.
You say LOTRO encourages to do such things, i say it limits me because the most stupid things are pointless: you cant drown so a "who dives longest without dying contest" is pointless.
A level 5 cannot harm a level 30 mob its capped out in fear of exploits i guess. In EQ 1 lvl 5 would die to a lvl 30 mob quick (even fully buffed and twinked) a group of 5 lvl5 could get a level 30 hill giant to what? 93%? I tell you what, a group of 30 drunken lvl 5 dwarfs killed a lvl 30 hill giant one day and had a big laugh.
But thats just 2 different viewpoints of equal quality. You say LOTRO encourages these side actions, i say it limits them. The point is - the side actions have nothing to do with LOTRO, they have not been invented by Turbine - its the players who do it. So swinging this flag as a lotro pro is pointless, you could swing it for every MMO, its one of the fascinating aspects of the MMO genre.
If you read Dragon Oaks posts, especially his last 2 ones and read between the lines you can work out two things easy:
At some point of his MMO childhood he must have been very disappointed with the players around him in EQ. He says they became greedy and no longer helpful and such.
YES, to a certain degree i agree - EQ did take a route it maybe should not have taken in such extremes. But do you honestly believe you will never be disappointed in lotro by other players? I remember lots of shouting and badmouthing in lotro when they introduced the "need/greed" system and people missusing it for their own benefit, letting others who really needed something alone. My personal experience in LOTRO was that it was full of kill stealing, loot stealing, ore stealing, wood stealing jerks who would let you die in a close combat so they can harvest the silver ore underneath you when you're dead.
In EQ i had hundreds of evenings where groups of dozens of people joined together to make one or two people happy. And that lasted until the very end. Dragon Oak said it was the socialising times of EQ and maybe he is right - in the beginning EQ was even more socialising friendly than it was later. Real dependancies on other classes where created, clerics where needed by everyone for their unique res skills.
Chanters where wanted for clarity. Later everyone had 2nd accounts or guilds had clarity and res bot side accounts. The dependencies broke up. And this created people who where more egoistic and less friendly + helpful. Modern MMO's make it so everyone can achieve everything with one account easy. Why do you think LOTRO had 5 char slots and 5 professions per account and server at start? So that nobody had to ask a tailor to help them smith but just log to their alt. In Jun 2007 my guildleader made us power his lvl 5 alts through the mastercrafting quests so he could grandmaster all professions with only lvl 5 toons and be INDEPENDANT of other players.
This independancy also includes: no more trading of resources from this account as he simply needs it all. No more AH buying of things he cant make himself. And so on and so on. It takes away a HUGE part of the socialising. This is not a LOTRO only problem, i hate this tendency in the complete genre but if LOTRO does one thing here - it makes it worse.
And the rushing part that dragon oak says is not happening in LOTRO. I can assure you if you try a roleplaying server and go to the green path and try to ROLEPLAY you will see 20 people rush past you who dont even realise your emote before one answers quickly and then runs off to his next quest goal.
Again guys, i am really happy for you if you have such a blast in LOTRO - but the reasons you give for that have only little to do with LOTRO itself. Dragon Oak clearly had an attitude problem in previous MMO's if he felt forced to rush, i never had this feeling in any MMO - i always took my time to level and enjoy this growing time learning my toon. In LOTRO however it was hard NOT to level too fast, even playing only 1 or 2 houers a night you can almost not avoid to hit 30 in less than 2 weeks.
I think as we are all veteran players we should not only look at the game we currently enjoy but also at the genre as a general, so that devs get feedback what sort of games are demanded.
And if i read one thing out of this thread and the discussion with you two then its, that you enjoy the social part most - yet i ask: Is Lotro really encouraging a social behaviour? What else encourages this aspect of MMO's? What have other games done for this aspect that was simplified out in WoW and LOTRO? Is it really good to simplify, limit and cap out everything where player interaction causes trouble from time to time? Is this road not leading to a totally unsocial single player MMO, where the only interaction happens in the auction house and the kinship? There will come games after LOTRO - do we want them to be even more solo friendly and less encouraging for socialising? Or do we give the devs the signal yes come on, give me more solo quests it takes forever to get exp past 45 solo.
Bursche
It was you that complained about the limitations in LoTRO that kept you from experiencing things like you did in Ever-broken-Quest.
It was you that complained about the limitations in LoTRO that kept you from experiencing things like you did in Ever-broken-Quest.
Yes, exactly!I don't recall those other MMOs giving me the option of joining forces with a multitude of other chicken-players and running en mass to Rivendell. Come on, you've got to admit that is pretty darn funny.
I don't recall other MMOs giving me the option of running a quest that I must perform a very tough hand-eye coordination test while my character is experiencing the effects of too much to drink. Then, when I do accomplish said task... I get to use a very cool "goofing around" feature.
I don't recall other MMOs that had the LoTR setting to do all this in... see that's the point.
We get to do all the things we liked from other MMOs... in Middle Earth! What could be cooler than that?
I'm sorry that you didn't find the world to your liking... there are quite a few of us that are having a blast though.
If you don't care, don't post.
If you care but there isn't a valid counter-argument available to you, people will gather together with like-minded individuals of similar proposition and continue to convince eachother that they are right. Each to their own.
This game is living on two things: The IP and Lifetime Founder members. The IP will continue to generate money for Turbine, the Lifetime Founders won't. Where Dungeons & Dragons Online found a niche and therefore a stable core of paying subscribers, Turbine this time around has sort of shot themselves in the foot (in my perspective). Lord of the Rings: Online is a peculiar World of Warcraft Light (Battlegrounds as alternate method of getting loot, simple crafting, simple questing (although in LotRO it is even simpler with a forced string to make confusion as little as possible for new MMOers I think), races that give little initial differences but play identically, classes split between the races, level system with trainers needed for getting new abilities and instead of Talents you have a simple mob grind mechanic which should be comprehensible for anyone, reputation grinds, money grind for mounts, raid instances, endgame focused around raiding/high end crafting) but where everything is simply less.
The amount of quests are fewer, the land mass is about 1/3 (excluding Burning Crusade but including all LotRO updates), the battlegrounds are fewer, the classes are fewer, the races are fewer, the replay value is less (game experience identical from character to character), customization of your character is virtually non-existant (at least in WoW you could make two or more of the same class and make characters that played very differently due to Talents), the amount of crafting disciplines is less, the amount of crafting recipees is less, the amount of models for equipment is less.
It is not a niche game so unlike for instance Dungeons & Dragons Online, City of Heroes and so on, they can't rely on a niche market, they are just World of Warcraft with a different (more demanding) graphics engine and less content. If Blizzard steps up their game it will increase the pressure on especially Lord of the Rings: Online, the pressure is not the other way around. The pressure to World of Warcraft will come from Age of Conan (DirectX10 will again mean that the bar is perhaps too high for some, leaving them in World of Warcraft) and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.
Lord of the Rings: Online is the new beginner's MMO. And that specific area is in my view not a niche, it is a stepping stone. And when people have stepped up, they rarely step down again.
I know World of Warcraft wasn't the first MMO (and neither was it the first I played, that was EQ) but it is the MMO Lord of the Rings: Online has closely tried to become similar to which is the reason for the comparison.
Well I see we have two newer preachers of "Why LoTRO is a bad game and a horrible adaptation of Tolkien's work and why people shouldn't like it" in the fold.
Welcome!
You're the latest in a long line of many who've come through here with the same criticisms that have been beaten into the ground already many times over; right down to the "oh the land-mass isn't big enough. Tolkien's world was far larger" - a disingenuous argument on its face. The reasons behind Turbine's progressive approach to developing the world has been well discussed and well documented many times. Apparently you didn't get the memo.
However, I do get a kick out of this one particular comment:
" If you care but there isn't a valid counter-argument available to you, people will gather together with like-minded individuals of similar proposition and continue to convince eachother that they are right. Each to their own."
A bit anxious to pounce on anything that seems opportune, aren't we? He was making an aside, referring to a tongue-in-cheek comment started in another thread.
Though, you have accomplished something in your surprisingly long rebuttal to such a short comment. You've betrayed your arrogance on the topic - the arrogance that you, somehow, know better than we - or Turbine, or Tolkien Ent. - how the game should be. Particularly so in the bit about us "banding together and convincing each other we're right". Funny thing, how so many haters invariably betray that aspect of their personality given enough opportunity.
First, I guess you haven't read many of the back-slapping "Yeah! Good one!" posts by the haters in these very threads. Would you apply that same description to them? Or would you "stand with them" because you happen to agree?
Second, who's to say we're wrong? Who's to say anyone's wrong? You're hung up on a non-point here. There is no "right" or "wrong". There's only "You like it" or "You don't". "You play it", or "you don't".
We like the game - we don't need to "convince ourselves" of anything. We don't need anyone else telling us why we should like it or not, or why it's good or not. For you to make a comment like that indicates that you feel somehow *you're* right and we're all somehow terribly misled. Again, arrogance.
Another naive comment that's been made by many before you and is equally flawed:
"This game is living on two things: The IP and Lifetime Founder members. "
I think history proves well enough that IP is not enough to keep people playing if the game is bad. People left in waves after the NGE with SWG. Matrix Online is a virtual ghost town. Those are both popular IPs.. yet they're not wildly popular. Sorry... but the game has to offer more than just a popular setting to be successful. It has to be enjoyable enough for people to continue playing. LoTRO, for many, achieves that.
Secondly, the lifetime subscribers' contribution eventually dries up once they have played enough months to have covered their payment through monthly sub fees. After that, outside of expansions, they are no longer carrying the game financially. Again, another flawed assertion on your part.
As for the "banjo playing healers". This is simply a disingenuous criticism. I'll assume you know the prevalance and importanace of song and music in Middle Earth. Even in the real world it's believed that music has the ability to heal, soothe, encourage, etc. It can build morale, which is incidentally LoTRO's variation on Hit Points. Might just be a connection there! It's not that Minstrels are playing a magical lute, or clarinet. It's the songs they're playing. It's a creative twist on something that *does* exist in Tolkien's world - music - into a form that makes it a usable gameplay mechanic without introducing your typical high-fantasy "magical healers".
Same thing for Lore Masters throwing burning embers. They have to remain true to the lore, and cannot have fireball casting wizards all over the place. So they took what they knew could exist in the world and found a way to utilize it to a similar end. It would be no different if it were a game based on gang warfare in a modern city setting, where gang members hurl molotov cocktails at each other. Same effect... ball of fire that does damage when it hits. Somehow I have the feeling you realize all this and are simply nit-picking to find convenient "flaws" in things that are obvious and easily enough understood on their own.
But anyway... I'm sure you're going to hang around for at least a bit longer and continue to try and convince us why the game is bad, why it doesn't do justice to the books and and all that. Have fun with that. In the end, you'll eventually move on to make way for the next batch of nay-sayers... and we'll all still be playing and enjoying the game.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Bursche
Ok next phase, working in short stints while I do my woodwork, so this may be disjointed and somewhat broken, and for that I apologize in advance.
Yup I sure can play the game as Tolkien wrote about middle earth, and my recommendation is that you read the book again, it may help you to refresh your knowledge on Tolkien lore. It is helping me as I read (again) and play the game at the same time.
95% of the NPC’s are not adventurers, they are in the towns, villages, and inn’s of middle earth. They toil as they attempt to make a modest life while we as PC’s adventure. And since the game is linear (a major complaint of yours), my concern is not with other PC’s half way across middle earth, for to my knowledge they don’t ever really exist. But the NPC’s do and what I see is that they are as Tolkein wrote about them, working, laughing, and befuddled by what we consider to be day to day problems that they require help with in the form of quests. They do not adventure; they ask us to do that for them. And again since the game is so linear, meaning that I have a story line to follow and anything I do in the game does not modify the outcome, (which really means I can’t upset the apple cart and ruin the game for the other players), the fact there are other players has no bearing on my playing the game. In fact, the occasional player I meet along the way, and members of my kinship do not outnumber the NPC’s of the world and therefore to my knowledge do not establish your 95 percent rule. I hope you do realize that this is an RPG and if you want to be so strict with the division of what is versus what is not, perhaps you need to realize that this is a game with avatars? As you like to point out this is not a sandbox game, and therefore the existence and the number of other players has no real relevance to how I play the game, as I think do the others that enjoy LoTRO. And for the sake of argument you do realize in the first war with the witchking, most of middle earth came to the battle? As did the forces of Gondor, Rohan, and even the elves that were leaving by the shore, in the second war. And yet again read the book!!!
As to hobbits as guardians, if you read the book, and you don’t even have to go far, it is in the prologue; Tolkien makes reference to a faction of Hobbit warriors that came to the aide of Middle Earth in the first war with the witch king. It would be nice if people actually made the effort to read the story before jumping on the bandwagon of hate for the game. As far as the swarms of adventurer’s mentality, read above. I have no knowledge of other PC’s in the game, those that I do are part of my world of adventure. And since I don’t know everyone in the game, my comparison is with those that I do and the 95 percent of the NPC’s, and that makes us the minority. If I had a guardian hobbit, and group with 5 other guardian hobbits, I could immerse myself into the lore that we are the warrior groups that Tolkien made reference too, again it helps to read.
As far as the minstrels in the game, again it helps to read. Hobbits the curious creatures they, being a simple people, loved to celebrate. They loved gifts, parties, song, and dance. I guess in your mind they all sang to no tunes? They didn’t celebrate with dance even though Tolkien wrote that they did? And as with any culture it was the musicians, or as we have termed them in fantasy lore the minstrels that lead the way of celebrations. And here is the next concept, the game is based on moral, not hit points or health points. Morale is the perseverance to face the enemy, and as long as you have morale you fight on, but when the morale is gone you are DEFEATED. See how it works? Minstrels through song tell the stories and give us morale to persevere. It only takes a little imagination to see how it works, and how it is congruent to Tolkien’s lore.
And yet again if people would read the book and see where in the reciting of the history of the Hobbits you will find that life in the shire was peaceful yet had to deal with beasts like wolves. And since a wolf would tend to eat a hobbit when hungry, that is, if that hobbit decided not to defend their selves, there were in the lore those hobbits that protected the wild boundaries of the shire. So it goes to stand that if I come to the shire and help them with their problems of the beasts in the area, battling that which goes against the grain of MOST (but not all) hobbits, that being their simple nature, it goes to stand that I would be celebrated as a hero for killing that which plagues them, the wolves as written by Tolkien. And please don’t argue that hobbits were not adventures, fighters, musicians, or even out going! Most were not, but rarely some were, like Bilbo, he did not fit the mold, but he was a grand adventurer!
As far as mosquito’s being as large as a dwarf, I suppose we should be strict to the rule, take them out, also take out every American elm, sugar maple tree, and aspen that I see in the game because Tolkien never wrote about them either. But isn’t that the narrowing down of the game you complain about? I mean he did write about swamp and lowlands in the game, and you do realize that mosquito’s breed in those places? Have you ever seen the bugs in the jungles of Brazil or Africa? They are HUGE! And besides I can believe a lot more in a mosquito in the setting of fantasy RPG’s a heck of a lot more than dinosaurs, space aliens, and demons.
And in summary for your last points is to ask you to please please please, take some time, reread the book, and don’t just count on a movie to tell you what the lore is. For instance you do realize from the time Bilbo left the shire to Frodo making his way to Rivendale was about 10 years? The movie made it out like is was nearly overnight. It is very important before you talk about how this game backstabbed the lore of Tolkien you at least know what the lore was.
And lastly since your colorful comments have psychoanalyzed me and diagnosed that my problem is attitude, I have to ask who is here bashing LoTRO? I have three level 70 characters in WoW, really burned out in that game, and you don’t see me there bashing Warcraft now do you? Why, because I have nothing against Blizzard, I just want change. I want to relax when I play a game, and do the unthinkable, have fun!!! But lets notifiy the “change” police and determine that because Dragonoak wants something different he has an attitude and maybe a report to Homeland security would be in order, since he desires something outside the usual conformity of MMO’s!
Until the next time where I further prolong the agnony of these pour readers with yet another response to your quotes of my quotes of your quotes quoting me....................
Erm, just wanted to say that DragonOak and others are really doing a nice job but don't you think it is leading nowhere?
I mean, come on, the only thing that will satisfy the growler club is to stop playing LOTRO, denounce Turbine as the worst thing after the Third Reich and wow to lynch any and all Turbine employees/customers.
Maybe answer two pages of bark with one or thwo lines tops? Just a suggestion.
Actuallly, the topic's title should be the ones that trolls should first read and comprehend: "it does not appeal to THEM" - THEM meaning any players who don't like this game. There is nothing wrong with someone not liking a game. However, when someone is trolling a forum of a game he/she doesn't like, for any strange unknown reason (mostly attention seeking in fact), it is a different matter - even if these trolling attemps are packaged in more or less shiny coats of "reasoning".
IMHO, someone either likes a game or not. If I like a game, I can list reasons why, but I don't need to "explain" why I actually like that game.
However, if I don't like a game, I can just simply leave it, or if I "almost" like it, I can go to the developer forums and give suggestions on how to improve.
Coming to a third party website to bitch about anything and trying to convince fans that a game is "bad", is just sad indeed.... and desperate to. Not to mention - useless and pointless.
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
It's especially funny when they get all arrogant and/or mad at us having fun playing LoTRo. That just makes me think that they need to loosen that headband a few notches.
I realize it was just a typo and that you probably meant VOW instead of WOW, but it still struck me as funny. Especially if you add comma after wow.
For me that broke the sense of community in the game. It would often degenerate into meaningless debacle concerning what Tolkien might or might not have thought about a given game mechanic instead of acknowledging that it is a license, a hook to lure in the customers bought and paid for by Turbine, nothing less, nothing more.
Too bad that Tolkien enterprises controls this IP, (and rather strictly I might add), so that based on what is allowed and what is not most often we can infer that is what Tolkien himself could have wanted. It might be wise for some people to actually read about the man himself, why he wrote the books, when and where he started writing the books, and the book itself in order to develop a better understanding of the game itself. Rather than argue what the game should be some Eve, WoW, EQ, Vanguard, SWG clone because "they are awesome" arguement.
No offense intended but...
Using DARK blue text on a black background is not only irritating to the eyes, but just plain stupid.
One of the things that makes this game tiring and the community needlessly argumentative is the proclaimers of what "Tolkien himself" would have meant about this and that.For me that broke the sense of community in the game. It would often degenerate into meaningless debacle concerning what Tolkien might or might not have thought about a given game mechanic instead of acknowledging that it is a license, a hook to lure in the customers bought and paid for by Turbine, nothing less, nothing more.
Too bad that Tolkien enterprises controls this IP, (and rather strictly I might add), so that based on what is allowed and what is not most often we can infer that is what Tolkien himself could have wanted. It might be wise for some people to actually read about the man himself, why he wrote the books, when and where he started writing the books, and the book itself in order to develop a better understanding of the game itself. Rather than argue what the game should be some Eve, WoW, EQ, Vanguard, SWG clone because "they are awesome" arguement.
No offense intended but...
Using DARK blue text on a black background is not only irritating to the eyes, but just plain stupid.
No, actually it is quite clever, if you listen carefully.
If it's quoted enough times, the background will actually get light grey (gets lighter with every new quoting), so in the end it will be quite readable.
It would actually be interesting to see, how many times it needs to be quoted for the background to turn totally white, so at the end the blue text would be the ONLY one which is readable
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
LOL!
Who would have thunk it.
For me that broke the sense of community in the game. It would often degenerate into meaningless debacle concerning what Tolkien might or might not have thought about a given game mechanic instead of acknowledging that it is a license, a hook to lure in the customers bought and paid for by Turbine, nothing less, nothing more.
Too bad that Tolkien enterprises controls this IP, (and rather strictly I might add), so that based on what is allowed and what is not most often we can infer that is what Tolkien himself could have wanted. It might be wise for some people to actually read about the man himself, why he wrote the books, when and where he started writing the books, and the book itself in order to develop a better understanding of the game itself. Rather than argue what the game should be some Eve, WoW, EQ, Vanguard, SWG clone because "they are awesome" arguement.
No offense intended but...
Using DARK blue text on a black background is not only irritating to the eyes, but just plain stupid.
Sigh, and people don't ever get my points. I am with others on this point that I would prefer to let sleeping dogs lie, but........................................
Number one, my first and foremost complaint, in between lines, is how people quote someone else quoting another OP's quotes that has quoted more quotes of quotes in quote to quote. Do you see my point? Really leaves little for creativity and input when you have one page is nothing but one person quoting quotes of even more quotes. But thanks mbrandybuck for keeping the tradition alive, I am sure everyone loves to read the same material over and over and over again.
2nd why is the GENERAL (not all but most) MMO community the most critical, self absorbed, feeders of demeaning others, harsh, bottom feeder, garden variety type of personality? I mean would it be so hard to rewrite that without the need to demoralize and humiliate another in order to build your own epeen? I mean even just by dropping the "just plain stupid" part alone would do wonders for that whole sentence and go a long way to actually making you look like something other than a physically challenged pimple face teenager that their whole goal in life it to be a "wanna be" gang banger and rule the world.
But anyway we established how stupid I am, do you feel better now?