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LOTRO Review
Cabe2323
Member Posts: 2,939
Just a little background on me so people can get an idea of what I am comparing the game too.
I have played or beta tested:
Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Asheron's Call 2, Shadowbane, Lineage 2, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Star Wars Galaxies, Final Fantasy XI, Everquest 2, Auto Assault, ArchLord, D&D Online, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Planetside, RF Online, World of Warcraft, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and Lord of The Rings Online. I am sure I am missing some of the free to play MMO games I have tried.
And of those games I played Asheron's Call for about 3.5 years, Dark Age of Camelot about 2.5 years, World of Warcraft about 1.5 years. Nothing else for more then a few months.
First off IMHO the game isn't as much like WoW as it is like Asheron's Call 2.
The game world is beautiful, the character models are ok. The game will be great for RPers, since it has a ton of neat emotes, and the ability to make up music using your instruments. You create songs on your own using 1-8, ctrl+1-8, and shift+1-8, for a total of 24 different notes. Also some of the neat roleplaying emotes is the smoke command which has you pull out a pipe and start smoking, there is also the mood command which changes your character's facial exprensions based on what mood you place him (some examples are happy, sad, angry, calm, etc).
Combat wise it was similar to any MMO that uses an auto-attack feature with hot keys for your special attacks. The monsters that you fight seem to fit very well with what is in the lore from the books.
The game so far seems to be a decent mix of group quests and solo quests. The loot seems to be a good mix of quest rewards, loot drops, and crafted items.
Monster Play seems like a really neat and refreshing spin on PVP. The MvP feature will allow good pvp without the ganking. One thing I always hated on WoW was not only having to kill the enemy just to kill them, but also so that you could get that ore or herb you wanted to pick. With the monster play your monster character has his own set of quests that he needs to do which makes it seperate from the players in the area. The monster play takes place in the Ettenmoors(sp?) which is a high level are with rare crafting materials, group quests, etc so that people will want to come there, but they don't have to come there. You can play as an orc, spider, warg, and a couple of those uruks(sp?).
All in all I would say LOTRO is not super inovative, but just enough so. Its biggest strength will be putting out an extremely extremely polished game. It will do what Blizzard did with WoW. Which is take all the ideas from games that work and polish it up in their game world.
I personally would rate the game using this MMORPG 10.0 scale at:
Graphics: Here is a big point of contention for a lot of people. The Graphics are not cutting edge. You can run it on older PCs, which I think is a good thing. They are similar to WoW in the aspect that the game will be open to a lot of people. Thats about all that the graphics have in common with WoW. The game has beautiful scenery. The character models I think could of been done a little bit better. They are good, but something doesn't make them seem great like the world around them does. The water, environment, buildings are all great. The sky needs some atmospheric effects at night though. I personally thing they graphics are really really beautiful though. I find it hard to really notice a huge difference in why I need more advanced graphics.
Sound: I rated a little lower because I wish they could use the soundtracks from the movies (of course its not their fault they have the book IP and not the movie IP), But the ingame music is decent, just not awe inspiring like the music in the movies. Other people would probably rate sound higher or lower, its not a big deal to me since I play with the game sound turned off most of the time.
Role Playing: 10 because it just seems to have a ton of great role playing potential. The world is perfect for it. They add features like a game of tag, pie eating contests, and of course the ability to create songs.
Value: a 10 because it is a lot of fun, seems to have plenty of growth area to keep adding to the game. Turbine is the best in the business at content patches. They have a history of monthly patches that add content and aren't just bug fixes. Also, if you are a founder it is only 9.99 per month (or 200 for a lifetime sub).
Fun: Well what can I say. I have probably read the Lord of the Rings dozens of times. I love the world and Turbine has done an excellent job IMO of translating that into a MMO.
Community: The community is one of the best I have seen in a MMORPG. It was a huge breath of fresh air after the horrible community of World of Warcraft.
Performance/Lag: I rate this at a 10 because I haven't had any performance issues at all. The server/Client has never crashed on me and I can run the game lag free on my system at ultra high settings.
Customer Service: Here also Turbine has always been real responsive with their customer service. The beta boards have been good since I got in in the Alpha stage of testing. And their service was really good in Asheron's Call
I have played or beta tested:
Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Asheron's Call 2, Shadowbane, Lineage 2, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Star Wars Galaxies, Final Fantasy XI, Everquest 2, Auto Assault, ArchLord, D&D Online, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Planetside, RF Online, World of Warcraft, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and Lord of The Rings Online. I am sure I am missing some of the free to play MMO games I have tried.
And of those games I played Asheron's Call for about 3.5 years, Dark Age of Camelot about 2.5 years, World of Warcraft about 1.5 years. Nothing else for more then a few months.
First off IMHO the game isn't as much like WoW as it is like Asheron's Call 2.
The game world is beautiful, the character models are ok. The game will be great for RPers, since it has a ton of neat emotes, and the ability to make up music using your instruments. You create songs on your own using 1-8, ctrl+1-8, and shift+1-8, for a total of 24 different notes. Also some of the neat roleplaying emotes is the smoke command which has you pull out a pipe and start smoking, there is also the mood command which changes your character's facial exprensions based on what mood you place him (some examples are happy, sad, angry, calm, etc).
Combat wise it was similar to any MMO that uses an auto-attack feature with hot keys for your special attacks. The monsters that you fight seem to fit very well with what is in the lore from the books.
The game so far seems to be a decent mix of group quests and solo quests. The loot seems to be a good mix of quest rewards, loot drops, and crafted items.
Monster Play seems like a really neat and refreshing spin on PVP. The MvP feature will allow good pvp without the ganking. One thing I always hated on WoW was not only having to kill the enemy just to kill them, but also so that you could get that ore or herb you wanted to pick. With the monster play your monster character has his own set of quests that he needs to do which makes it seperate from the players in the area. The monster play takes place in the Ettenmoors(sp?) which is a high level are with rare crafting materials, group quests, etc so that people will want to come there, but they don't have to come there. You can play as an orc, spider, warg, and a couple of those uruks(sp?).
All in all I would say LOTRO is not super inovative, but just enough so. Its biggest strength will be putting out an extremely extremely polished game. It will do what Blizzard did with WoW. Which is take all the ideas from games that work and polish it up in their game world.
I personally would rate the game using this MMORPG 10.0 scale at:
| Graphics: |           |
9 |
| Sound: | |
8 |
| Role Playing: |  |
10 |
| Value: | |
10 |
| Fun: | |
10 |
| Community: | |
10 |
| Performance / Lag: | |
10 |
| Customer Service: | |
10 |
Graphics: Here is a big point of contention for a lot of people. The Graphics are not cutting edge. You can run it on older PCs, which I think is a good thing. They are similar to WoW in the aspect that the game will be open to a lot of people. Thats about all that the graphics have in common with WoW. The game has beautiful scenery. The character models I think could of been done a little bit better. They are good, but something doesn't make them seem great like the world around them does. The water, environment, buildings are all great. The sky needs some atmospheric effects at night though. I personally thing they graphics are really really beautiful though. I find it hard to really notice a huge difference in why I need more advanced graphics.
Sound: I rated a little lower because I wish they could use the soundtracks from the movies (of course its not their fault they have the book IP and not the movie IP), But the ingame music is decent, just not awe inspiring like the music in the movies. Other people would probably rate sound higher or lower, its not a big deal to me since I play with the game sound turned off most of the time.
Role Playing: 10 because it just seems to have a ton of great role playing potential. The world is perfect for it. They add features like a game of tag, pie eating contests, and of course the ability to create songs.
Value: a 10 because it is a lot of fun, seems to have plenty of growth area to keep adding to the game. Turbine is the best in the business at content patches. They have a history of monthly patches that add content and aren't just bug fixes. Also, if you are a founder it is only 9.99 per month (or 200 for a lifetime sub).
Fun: Well what can I say. I have probably read the Lord of the Rings dozens of times. I love the world and Turbine has done an excellent job IMO of translating that into a MMO.
Community: The community is one of the best I have seen in a MMORPG. It was a huge breath of fresh air after the horrible community of World of Warcraft.
Performance/Lag: I rate this at a 10 because I haven't had any performance issues at all. The server/Client has never crashed on me and I can run the game lag free on my system at ultra high settings.
Customer Service: Here also Turbine has always been real responsive with their customer service. The beta boards have been good since I got in in the Alpha stage of testing. And their service was really good in Asheron's Call
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
Comments
Currently Playing: Everything but MMORPGs
Cancelled: L2, FFXI, VSoH, LotRO, WAR, WoW
Looking Forward To: SW:TOR
If you compare the pre-order box for LotRO and the box for Vanguard you will notice LotRO has similar minimum/recommeneded requirements to Vanguard. The funny thing is, you can run LotRO with minimum specs very well. Don't even bother trying with Vanguard. It's amazing what a well thought out and experienced programming team can do...
Nice "Preview" but again, I gotta say that the game is still in beta and a "review" is premature. Preview is what you are doing. Just because they lifted the NDA doesn't mean they are finished. It just means they are ok with us talking about it. I have no idea why everyone is all fired up to "review" this game before it even launches.
Rating a game that could change tommorow or might not have everything in it yet is putting the cart before the horse.
Yes, it looks good so far and it is releasing in a little over a month but that doesn't mean its finished.
For example:
How are you going to rate "community" yet? We don't know what the public release community is going to be like.
Customer service: how on god's green earth are you going to rate customer service on a game that has no customers yet???The TESTERS are dealing with the devs and their representitives right now NOT a customer service dept. No one is paying yet so there are no customers just testers.
Performance / lag: yes beta is good BUT (thats the key) its not actually live yet. What happens on launch day and maybe turbine...oh...drops the ball and it doesn't go so well....its not like MMO's have a stellar track record in this area. Turbine has a horrible track record at running games.
Graphics: are they done yet? In the past few months I have been playing the graphics / art have changed several times.
See where I'm going with this?
Wait until the game actually releases before you "review" it.
This is the Beta TEST. This weekend is the stress TEST. The current players are Beta TESTERS
If you compare the pre-order box for LotRO and the box for Vanguard you will notice LotRO has similar minimum/recommeneded requirements to Vanguard. The funny thing is, you can run LotRO with minimum specs very well. Don't even bother trying with Vanguard. It's amazing what a well thought out and experienced programming team can do...
I read that somewhere but wasn't sure if it was true thanks for the info, that is great news. Yeah I think Vanguards minimum specs are very misleading.
Currently Playing: Everything but MMORPGs
Cancelled: L2, FFXI, VSoH, LotRO, WAR, WoW
Looking Forward To: SW:TOR
I agree preview might of been a better term to use. But I contend that some of the areas are pretty much finished and giving my opinions will help people decide if its the game for them. I rate the community because the core community will be those that have built it up during beta testing and open beta. In any online game for quite awhile after it launches there are usually 2 different communities going. The ones that beta tested it and the ones that didn't. It takes the ones who didn't quite awhile usually (not always) to catch up to the people who had more knowledge from playing in beta, so you get kind of a split between the community.
Also, If the performance/lag is good in beta I am sure it will be good at Launch. Also Turbine has a great record running games. Just because DDO and AC2 didn't catch on and become huge hits doesn't mean they weren't ready to launch. Same thing with customer service. Turbine has a great record for giving good customer service. Putting out lots of information and staying in touch with their customers. I personally would say that Turbine and Mythic have the best customer service in the business. I would rate Blizzard at the absolute worst. (your account gets hacked and they can't even seem to find a way to restore your lost items half the time.)
All in all yes your right it should of been called a preview.
Also, I keep hearing about this high-res client. I would of thought they would of added it by now if there was one. I will have to take a look around teh beta board and see if I can find any info on it. If there is a higher res client that would be great, although I think the current one works just fine.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
I hope I didn't come off to hard, if we were talking it would have been in a friendly tone.
Anyway, yeah I agree so far the game is in great shape....I just have my reservations about Turbine.