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LOTRO - looks like it will be a new hit
Rattrap
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,599
To say first , i hate Turbine. Everyone knows that.
And i doubt I will play LOTRO.
But i feel. Strictly from marketing perspective. That LOTRO has high chance of seriously hurting Vanguard player base, and even putting dent in WOW playerbase
From watching 10 minutes long gameplay video i can draw following conclusions.
LOTRO graphics and animation looks amazing. Way, way better than Vanguard even on highest setting.
But yet as reported it runs on your ol'average PC. Users that experienced slide show FPS in Vanguard ,
reportably play LOTRO in its all graphic glory with excelent framerate.
Here LOTRO wins hands down. Not only that it looks better but it has much higher number of potential users due to low req.
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Gameplay is shallow. WoW shallow. Solo friendly. Relaxing
Again. WoW heads will love this. Casual players will love it. People new to MMO will love it.
VG has its HC players. But casuals are much higher in numbers.
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Great graphic BUT not cartoony!
This can even kill WoW. People love wow polish on graphic, but they hate that it feels like cartoon.
LOTRO looks polished but realistic.
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Last but not least - its LOTR
I have heared countless times , from my les MMO inclined friends. "I will play LOTRO"
- why? Because they love Tolkien.
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All in all
LOTRO may not be great, or new, or anything like this.
But it falls in right time, on right people... and in dry land of MMO , it might be a new king... 
For now...
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Comments
I played LOTRO beta for 3 months and I can tell you that is no threat to Vanguard.
2 different games for different people.
LOTRO is a nice made game which is a surprise from Turbine.
It is well polished and all, but I have to say that it looks too much like WOW................without PVP.
So if something, LOTRO has less to offer than WOW.
Anyway the Turbine game is a nice game and enjoyable, but that's what it is...........a nice game.
That's it, it ain't killer of anything, but it will do well.
LOTR is not as good as you may think, it is extremely 1 dimensional, in the sense it's more like a scripted 1 payer game then an MMO.
The combat is fast, but so is Vanguards. In Vanguard you feel like you're hitting something, in LOTR its very unrealistic, for instance your character can leap higher than most roofs and doorways.
I am not liking either of em too much, but for completely different reasons. if they fixed the game breaking bugs in Vanguard, I'd play it in a heart beat over LOTR.
If you haven't payed them, you can't say. Videos are almost always inaccurate.
For me though, lack of real PVP in either makes the game a lot less addicting. Monster Play in LOTR isn't looking too good. It might be later, but now everyone wants to be a monster and noone really tries to beat them down. I can se eit being interesting down the rd when there are lots of high levels in LOTR. You have to be L 40 to start attacking player-ran monsters, but only L 10 to play a monster.. seems kinda silly, and Vanguard PVP is very broken/unbalanced.
Exactly what i say mate
Vanguard surely has its own niche.
But than you have lot of people that are bored with WoW and look for next game. Now instead of Vanguard they will go for LOTRO.
And i see lot of people bored with WoW , doing the same.
And lets face it.
PvP in WOW is joke anyway. So real PvPers will rather look for games like L2 or EVE
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
I wouldnt touch a Turbine game with yours, let alone with mine.
LotR is looks to be an ok training wheel game for people who don't know better though. The best I can say about it is that those that try it may one day move on to something deeper and more challenging. We can at least hope.
Personally, the last thing I want to play in is yet another shallow kiddie fest where noone has the faintest idea how to communicate, behave, or cooperate.
btw, if casual players spent half as much time playing as they do on forums moaning about the lack of solo play they might actually get somewhere in a game. Just a thought.
LotRO has PvP... It has a pretty progressive and new look on PvP and I am excited to really dive in and try it out.
As to it looking like WoW... Uh, how did you come to that conclusion? It looks nothing like WoW (Thank God). The graphics are very realistic. From all that I have seen, they really bring the areas from the books (And movies) to life. They look really good. Not at all cartoony...
Lastly, I don't think this game will be a WoW killer. It will probably dent it, but nothing to significantly. Honestly, I think this game will do well. Talking upwards of 250K subscribers here. But I believe the majority won't be pulled from other games as much as bringing more people who love LotR into MMO gaming. There are a lot of players out there that I think will give it a shot and get hooked.
How could you possibly know what this game is gonna do. If, eventually, the game sucks fewer people are gonna play it. If it rocks vice versa.
...why do I bother anyway. To much of these threads anyway.
I
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
I have EQ2, WoW, Vanguard and Beta testing LoTR. LoTR is allot of fun and it doesnt require a super high end system to run it. Everytime I play Vanguard (I have a P4, 3.0, GEForce 7600GT and 2 gigs of ram) it stutters. I play for 15-20 mnutes and quit. I am not sure if its a bug or not, in any case, I get frustrated and log out.
LoTR is a very smooth game and the animations are so much better than Vanguard. Character movement is very smooth. Vanguard I feel like I am a stick figure. I havent given Vanguard allot of my time, so I cant go further than that. Until they fix this poor release, I will try it again. In the meantime, I plan on getting LoTR for sure.
I still play WoW and sometimes EQ2, but I was really impressed with LoTR!!
I think Rattrap nailed it pretty much. The game is a lot like WoW in that while it did not do a lot of radical new things it just took what was in a half dozen other games that worked and polished the crap out of it. MvP is not just arena BTW, it is more king of the hill DAoC style than anything else. As far as Vanguard LoTRO will not kill Vanguard, Sigil is doing quite well on that. As of this morning there are a little over 66K characters lvl 11 and above and only 22K characters above lvl 15. For a game that has been out 2 weeks now, those are not exactly overwhelming numbers.
LoTRO is just simple DIKU fun minus all the parts that suck. If you are looking for something new and different then this is not the game for you, if you just want some relaxed fun for a hour or two each night then give it a shot. It can be challanging at times, Great Barrow Dungeon anyone? However for the most part it is not very painful or overly difficult, it's just a laid back sightseeing trip through Middle Earth and I like that.
As far as the "kiddie" part most of the people that enjoy LoTRO are the older more laid back crowd. A recent survey over on the beta boards showerd that the majority of the responders were 30+. People that do not have 4 hours a night to devote to LFG and raiding. Nine times out of ten I can run my toon to a "safe" area and go AFK in less than 5 minutes, then come back and pick up where I left off. Kiddies are the ones that have the time to spend 30 minutes LFG, then play for ten , then do a corpse run, then play for ten, another corpse run etc etc
I miss DAoC
Personally I think the lack of PVP (and by that I mean real PVP not the monster PVP stuff) will be the downfall of this game. PVP not only attracts more subscribers but it gives you another option instead of just running instances and PVEing all day long.
Noone is asking for a DAOC or Shadowbane game where PVP is a central focus, but on the other hand noone is asking for a Horizons either. They should have found a middle ground, instead of this MonsterVP they came out with.
But just like every other recent MMORPG(COH, EQ2, DnD) that tried to stay away from PVP, they will find themselves revisting this subject once they see their population numbers are nowhere near what they expecting. By then, much like the other guys that tried to avoid PVP, it will probably be to late.
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You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
Hurting Vanguard playerbase shouldn't be too hard. Frankly, I'm surprised that there are people actually paying for it.
As far as LOTR, the game will be as much danger to WoW as Dungeons and Dragons Online is.
Edit: After reading Tinybina's post, I couldn't agree more. Lack of actual PvP in LOTR will be it's biggest downfall. To not introduce PvP in a game based on Tolkien's universe, universe that is built around conflict, is a crime in my opinion.
you mean like this ? oO, well combat looks really boring. I doubt this will be a hit.....
I will check it out anyways when its released, videos dont tell you always the truth but so far iam not very impressed.
Video you posted really looks bad.. but check this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcWblvBsklY
Looks good doesnt it
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Actually, Im at Beta 2 of Lotro, and the game is impressing me. After a disapointment on D&DO, I did not trusted turbine any more, but Im impressed on what she did to Lord of the Rings.
Its a really good game, easy to play, great grafics, good storyplot and so far.
I think people who plays vanguard is diferent from those who plays lotro, but Vanguard has a weak point which is system requirements. vanguard runs on 10-15 FPS after lots of tweaks in moderate graphics on my computer and lotro runs smoothly on high graphics. This can take people from Vanguard to lotro.
always love the graphics in Turbine games. Er back to topic, yes think Lotr will take second place in the Western mmorpg sector, ahead of EQ2 and Vanguard easily. Will be interesting how long it can retain people though especially when the mmorpg genre is going to be quite saturated soon with Warhammer, WoW, AoC, Vanguard, Chronicles of spellborn, Gods and Heroes.
For me, pretty game, but no depth at all. Everything is quest this, quest that, and you simply feel like being on rails all the time.
It feels like a game, nothing feels alive at all. fun to play, but no sense of accomplishment, depth or immersion.
Sorry guys, but Vanguard wins. A lot of WoW/casual players won't agree with me, but i prefer games with a bit of depth and work involved in them.
I agree with you to a degree Ratty, although I tend to think that LOTRO has the potential to be a hit over time, not really out of the gates.
As it stands now it is a very social experience, the graphics look great, it's not overly complicated and it runs on just about everything (excelent job on that last part Turbine).
Here's what it doesn' t have.
It does not have any conflict, you can't pick the bad side and you can't fight against the good side and to be quite honest, I really was looking forward to chopping up a hobbit or two. This is probably the biggest problem because after all is said and done, after all the leveling and questing, it can get pretty dull just standing around with nothing for the fight for.
It has a very limited area of Middleearth completed for release. Now hopefully this will be addressed over time with expansions of course but this is probably the biggest way to anger fans of the franchise and someone comming from games that have huge maps like SWG, EQ2 and believe it or not, even WoW feels bigger.
It has no housing! I know it's small and dumb but this is the biggest thing missing in WoW IMHO and to not release with this, especially in this case where a feeling of ownership over the land is doubly important, well it seems pure out dumb to me .
Anyways, I think it has a chance over time but at release, I think it'll make a tiny ripple in the water rather than a splash.
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The only game I have ever seen that even came close to living up to its hype was World of Warcraft. Love it or hate it, the numbers tell the tale. WoW is far and away #1 in player subscriptions. Number of active paying players is a pretty darn good benchmark to judge any MMO on. Nonetheless, with however many millions of players, there are still lots of MMOs that continue to survive in spite of WoW.
My point is that LotRO is most likely going to follow the exact same template as most all other MMOs today. The Fanbois will tout LotRO as the second coming and proclaim how it will destroy all other MMOs; the haters will claim LotRO will be the worst game ever and the majority of people will give it a try and see for themselves. Some will like it and stay, others will not care for it and move on.
The big issue I see with LotRO is that it doesn’t seem to even be trying for innovation. It is just the same old fantasy MMO with a popular name attached to it.~Synexis
SWG had a massive universe at launch, most of which felt empty. The same applies with Vanguard.
EQ2's shattered lands were tiny at launch, and the content felt incomplete.
WoW had plenty of content, spread across a reasonable landmass. I certaintly wouldn't call Azeroth 'small'.
I've yet to try LOTR (waiting for the EU beta invites) but as long as the game keeps me busy every level with
polished (tested) content, then I have no real reason to complain.
Does anyone know what the endgame is supposed to be like? Is it WoW-style raiding? Grinding out levels? Collecting money/rare parts to craft and make new gear?
Having a game that progresses via storyline sounds great...until you run out of story.
Also, since I no longer can dedicate big chunks of time to MMOG's, I have to rely on more casual/solo style of play. Am I SOL for a lot of the story stuff like I would be in WoW? Or can I outlevel some of the content and then do it solo instead of in a group?
Thanks!
Will LOTRO keep me entertained for a few months. Yep. That's definitely something Vanguard couldn't do... a couple of weeks into VG and I was yawning.
Is LOTRO a game I want to marry and settle down with for a few years. No. Play the game, enjoy it, move on. Sooner or later AoC and Gods and Heroes will release. And after those, something else will come out, like Warhammer.
So many MMOs, so little time.