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Lord of the Rings Online: Community Spotlight: Member Preview
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
This week on the forums, user zaxtor99 showed us a glimpse into the Lord of the Rings Online stress test beta weekend. Comparing it to the popular World of Warcraft, zaxtor99's review is well done, and MMORPG.com is proud to present it, in its entirety, as our Spotlight of the Week!
- Laura Genender, Community Manager
Okay, people. I know that this game is still in beta, and is still not due out on store shelves for over a month. But most beta MMOs are not nearly this ready for release either.
Lord of The Rings Online is not perfect. And it will not please every single mmo player either. None the less, here is what I think after personally spending 12+ hours in the game on this stress test beta weekend...
I had already been granted acceptance for the stress test a last weekend and downloaded the client. (Pretty quick 3 hour download or so with a 3 MB/sec net connection). On Friday at noon eastern time, I was able to log into the game and play immediately. Once I completed a quick introduction quest to learn the layout and how to move etc.. I was in the game world with other players in front of me. And when I say other players... I mean just that. Literally hundreds of other players on my screen in front of my avatar. And the lag was ZERO. Impressive Turbine. For me only having a medium level gaming machine (AMD 4200+ Dual Core, 6800 GS 256mb Graphics card and 1 GB Ram) the game played extremely smooth at 1024x768 resolution and HIGH overall settings with VERY HIGH being the only higher Options settings selection.
;)
Read the whole article here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
My friends and I did encounter one serious issue. During the peak times in the level 1-6 area on Brandywine (town named Archten?) we logged in and found that we were apparently in different instances of the town. We could form a fellowship with each other, and could see eachother's locations on the map, but we could not see eachother's characters. Through chat we confirmed that we were looking at different sets of other players around us, as well as different spawns of mobs outside of town.
We were only able to adventure together after we all entered the end of level 6 instance. We never found any other way to get our characters into the same copy of the game environment.
Hey Siergen, just FYI this is a known issue and will be fixed for launch. The beginning goes something like this: Private Encounter (ie personal Instance), Public Instance (where you had issues), then Open World (all the people).
During peak times, multiple instances are formed for the Public Instances (in your case Archet).Sooooo, you will be able to choose which instance your friends will be in and vice versa. Furthermore, there will be quick travel too once you get in the open world so a man in bree does not have to walk all the way to Thorin's Hall to meet with his dwarf friend. Thank you turbine for that one!
Hope that helps. Coherency is not guaranteed at this time. Nyquil is still flooding the system.
The article is right on.
LOTRO is a very addicting game that will run on just about any system out there.
I have a AMD 3000+ with 1 GB ram and a 7800 gs and the game runs really smooth even with graphics set to high.
If you preorder you can play for $9.99 a month. You just can't beat that much fun at that price.
While other games have promised the world and fallen Turbine promised nothing more than a fun game but have delivered big with great graphics and sound, tons of crafting and a great story line with quests that are interesting, challenging and fun along with what so far has been an awesome community.
Hope to see you all there
When scary things get scared, that's bad...
Waitaminute! According to this:
http://www.gamespot.com/betas/lord_of_the_rings_online/index.php
It says the minimum requirements for the beta test are 2.4 GHz and the AMD 4200+ is only 2.2!
You mean I could have played in the stress test?
I assumed that anything below the min requirements would have been unplayable esp. during a Stress Test. Turbine needs to update that or release what the specs are for the game.
Yes LORTO is solid. I played the stress weekend and enjoyed it. I played all the races just to see how the intro storyline began. Humbly, I must say, LORTO hits a home run when it comes to immersing the player into the story. Cameos of main characters give your character a little carrot to look foward to the future.
It ran very well. After Vanguard hiccups and sputtering, it was refreshing to experience. To be honest, i was expecting the old DDO/ Guild Wars formula of instanced adventures and the only time you deal with the populace is when you are in towns/villages. Turbine might have got it right with instancing but not overdone.
Content critics may comment that the beginning adventures for lvl 1-6 are the same quests for the starter areas. If you are a human or halfling you only seem to get the same missions/tasks in your starter area. Mission rewards are identical. Dwarves and Elves at least have a little variation in their starter areas.
Hopefully at launch there will be more. I did remember at the Farmer Colins place there was a cellar door labeled but i could not get into. Perhaps more to come?
Waitaminute! According to this:
http://www.gamespot.com/betas/lord_of_the_rings_online/index.php
It says the minimum requirements for the beta test are 2.4 GHz and the AMD 4200+ is only 2.2!
You mean I could have played in the stress test?
I assumed that anything below the min requirements would have been unplayable esp. during a Stress Test. Turbine needs to update that or release what the specs are for the game.
When determining the effective speed of an AMD processor, use the number rating, not the gigahertz. So your proc is equivilant to a 4.2 gig proc, not a 2.2.Don't have one myself - I just saw this about them which gave the clockspeed 2.4GHz
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/a64-x2-4200/
Must have been the wrong one.
Can i have your beta info if you aren't going to use it?
I know why the reviewer opted to compare LotRO to WoW...and it's because the two games are identical. I beta'd this as well, and damn near everything (UI, combat, music, etc.) screamed WoW. The only thing that WASN'T WoW is the graphics...which are DDO. It's the exact same engine. Nothing new here.
So basically what we're looking at is yet another derivative attempt to cash in on WoW's 8 million + subscribers. Nothing new here, move along. My advice? Give up on the LotRO skin and just play the original game (that's WoW, for those who haven't been paying attention). If hardcore LotR action is what you're looking for, find yourself one of the NWN (maybe NWN2?) or TES mods and play with those; I've seen some exceptional Sauron & Witchking mods for Oblivion. Simply put, it just isn't here.
The article itself was well-written, btw. My personal opinion is that the author is woefully inexperienced in his MMO background (emphasis on PERSONAL and OPINION), but he is educated, which goes a long way.
Shame you only got WoW to compare, I find one has to compare it to EQ2 as well.
come on... if you gave crafting in WoW an 8... it should not be higher than 4. crafting in WoW is a joke. a sad joke. i hope Lord of the Rings does much better.
so, it seems the whole game is quests quests quests and leveling. how fun
what about economy? is there competition for materials or mines? does it feel like a live world (see old SWG or UO) or more like a theme park (see almost any other MMORPG out there)? are quests instanced? can burglars steal from another player?
i care zero about graphics, sound and lag. what i want is a solid playability, not a multiplayer diablo, again.
It does use an interface very similar to WoW's, and many of the play mechanics are the same, but that's like discussing a painting in terms of its brushstrokes.
The feel is that of a modern MMO, with a lot of irritants removed, so inevitably comparisons to EQ2?WoW etc. can be made. But the experience of being in the game is certainly different from WoW. I think the review did cover that well. As for the Shire being the most advanced at this stage in beta? Well yes, it is. I know some areas are unfinished, but they are being worked on of course.
Some combat details are new to me; for example, the way wolves jink as they run at me, so an arrow misses; tidy. Solo friendly. Older machine friendly. And the use of instances extends beyond what I've ever seen on those occasions where instancing is used for storyline quests. A battle-scarred dev called one example "stunning". So give it a try, YMMV of course. BTW it also seems like a game that children can join their parents in, at least in part. Try delivering mail without being spotted by nosy hobbits, or carrying food without being spotted by hungry hobbits. Humor, charm, intensity; what more could one want?
I'm so glad I stay away from LotRO on stress test weekends, and do my beta-testing at other times.
This OP has experienced exactly one other MMO. WoW. Wow... if that's all the experience I had, I'd avoid spreading my opinions around when doing comparisons, and I'd sure think twice about basing my opinions on 12 hours of stress test weekend beta test time, and then submitting my little 2 page summary to be highlighted by MMORPG.com.
Well written little editorial, though. Just not based on enough experience.
My own Beta Journal of LotRO wouldn't be all that positive, if I were vain enough to write one and expect MMORPG.com to highlight it. I don't feel immersed, I don't like the graphics, I absolutely hate the character customization options at creation, the low level quests and the world of Middle Earth we're given to quest in. But I'm not egotistical enough to bother detailing my LotRO experiences, comparing them to another game that I didn't enjoy after levelling 3 characters into the 50's.
However, and nonetheless (not none the less, it's 1 word), I hope LotRO is successful, I hope Turbine adds content and customization options, and class balancing, as well as class complimentary functions for groups, and builds a game that appeals to a wide gaming audience, so that I'll go away when beta testing ends feeling I've contributed to that development. Because I'm sure not likely to play it when it goes Live.
But then again, I haven't spent hundreds of hours over the past 2 months playing LotRO. I've been beta testing it, and that's not nearly the same thing.
Kalmenicus the LotRO Beta Tester not Player
If you look back at past Community Spotlights, the function of the column is to highlight various interesting threads that appear on the forums. This member review was chosen for that, not because someone was "vain enough to write one and expect MMORPG.com to highlight it."
Just thought that post could use some clarification.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
http://erickveil.com/
i just found this site when i was surfing on the wed at school and i alredy got 2 of my friends to get some games from here