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LOTRO: a mini preview
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
I am now in beta for a week, playing long sessions the four races and the classes, exploring the realm and wanted to give a short first impression. I sort it after the classic, good, mixed, and the ugly.
1) GOOD.
a) GRAPHICS: The lands are surely breathtaking. I can easily play it on ultra high settings (intel duo2, 2 GB ram, nvidia 7950) and even then have a totally fluid and lag-free performance. Even though LOTRO is a low polygon world like WOW, it looks much more breathtaking and beautiful like the big brother. There are so many breathtaking, wonderful views where you stand in awe, looking at the lands and the design. Many places fit quite as you might imagine them from the books, like the Shire, Breeland, the area around Rivendell, Ered Luin, really scenic. The distinguished styles of Dwarf, Elves, Men and Hobbits are wonderful to look at.
b) PERFORMANCE: Even though it is beta the performance is really good. Unlike other recent games LOTRO can also be played by those who don’t have high end computers. I didn’t have any lags yet.
c) QUESTS: LOTRO has many unique and thoughtful quests, a lot beyond the usual “kill 20 of X”. Sure, LOTRO has such quests too, but many are tightly woven into the Tolkien lore, where killing mobs is often only a byproduct you do along the way. Many quests are interesting and tell a small story worth to read. One of the biggest bonuses of LOTRO though is, some quests, especially at the beginning, are filled with scripted events, which make you feel less like in a game, but like being part of a movie. In all my years playing MMOs I have not yet seen anything like that. When you finish the starter area, you and your group follows the NPC Dwalin into the instance of a mine to fight some traitors. All along are small scenes and conversations, giving a real story to your start. I must say it really felt awesome.
d) WORLD: The world design is also quite well done. Peasants talk about gossip, a blacksmith is crafting something, guards patrol and give you a warning. I am in awe every time I see some new, small detail, like when I entered the crafting area, and some NPC welcomed me with my name in a chat just out of the blue, tell me all crafting stations where free for me to use. LOTRO is full is small, wonderful things like these which make the world feel alive.
e) COMMUNITY: So far the community is extremly helpful. Whenever you are in danger someone passing by helps you, people are very friendly in every way. It is by far one of the most friendly beta communities I have ever seen. (And in that way a BIG contrast to the community of Vanguard beta, just as a sidenote.)
2) MIXED
a) SIZE: We all know size doesn’t matter. (*cough*) What I saw in LOTRO beta, looking at the world map and running through the world, it IS small. Its maybe about 40-50% the size WOW had at launch. It does not feel *that* small, because you always have forests or mountains in the distance out of reach, adding to the feeling of size. But compared to huge games like Vanguard or SWG or WOW with its addon you may feel a little claustropobic. Sure, better fill a not so big world with life than making an empty huge world, as Vanguard. But for the explorer kind of player some might wonder how long the novelty hold, especially if you take those kind of players into account who play 8 hours a day and have seen all of it all too soon. However, Turbine has promised to add more zones regularly, some say starting after about the first 6 weeks are passed. It remains to be seen how the size question will play out. As it is the game world now only covers about 40% of Eriador.
b) DIRECTIONS: I must admit in many quests I was quite lost, searching for the NPC or the target. There are only vague text descriptions like “Northwest” of XYZ, and sometimes I just could not find the place or NPC. It adds to the exploring however.
c) CHALLENGE: As it is, LOTRO is no hardcore game but clearly for the casual player with not so much time. In fact, a too great time dedication may much more ruin the game for you, if you rush through levels and places instead of taking the time to get in touch with the world. Some game veterans may find the game too easy. At the moment there are no long term goals, like housing, though Turbine has said they plan adding such a feature at some point (eventually). The combat starts to become more difficult at mid teens, while it plays fairly easy at start, which may be deceptive to some, thinking it is too easy. It isnt. The later level are have a lot of areas where groups are needed, though a soloer will definitely have his place, too.
d) DIVERSITY: If you come from vast and complex fantasy world like EQ2, Vanguard or WOW, you may feel more than a bit limited in LOTRO. Four races and a handfull classes. Elves, Dwarfs and Hobbits have about 4-5 classes, only men have 9. Class names like Captain, Loremaster or Hunter sound not very inspired nor Tolkienesque. There are none of the more fantastic races other MMOs have, wolf-men, rat-man or cow-people, which is the result of making a MMO based on a rather old, and old-fashioned book, Lord of the Rings. Back then, fantasy was in its infancy, and few of the now vast fantasy topics existed; so it feels a lot like a step back. You have only your four classic races to play, and equally you wont see many of the monster races you are familiar with in the modern fantasy worlds. Instead you have many sorts of wolfs, boars, spiders and bears to fight. Don’t expect anything too fancy. Sure, Turbine gladly added some new monsters, not canonical (which will likely upset a few Lore-mongers), but it was more than necessary. Baed on the books, you only have a very small assortment of monsters at hand. Lets hope Turbine has the courage to really expand the world and does not handle Tolkien’s words like the words of god.
3) THE UGLY
a) UI: I really hate the UI. Not that it is bad, but the icons all look so the same and it is hard to recognize many buttons, so combat becomes essentially button mashing, since you cant see what those tiny, all looking the same – icons meant. Often I found myself uncertain if a certain feature is not activated yet of if I just were unable to understand how it worked. I did not see any auto.turn feature, which may be a hindrance for ppl with manual handicaps. Overall the UI isnt terrible, but has some really ugly parts, especially those totally tiny, meaningless icons.
b) CHARACTER GENERATION: One must really wonder who designed those ugly characters. I mean, simplification is one thing, but besides Dwarfs, who are somewhat ok, humans, hobbits and elfs look horrible, especially the male characters. Why do all Elves have those ultra-high foreheads and that dreamy eyes like they were drugged? Why are all males equally square and blocky looking? Why can I select about 10 faces, all look more or less the same? And who created this unbelievable ugly haircuts, which more look like wet wig? It is really sad Turbine invested so little time into their character generation.
c) ANIMATION: Sadly, the animations are also far sub par for today. Its not all animations are bad, many NPC animations are ok. But the player characters walk, run and combat animations look plain ugly. Characters run like someone shoved a broomstick into their spine, and the combat animations are quite boring and bland. Nothing you wont feel bored after a few days watching.
d) ARMOR: Armor looks not really ugly, but not thrilling either. Most looks a lot like painted on the skin, and as such brings back bad memories of my Dungeons and Dragons trial. Every armor set I have seen is snug tight to the skin like a rubber dress, which looks especially when you are supposed to wear medium or heavy armor. WOW has solved the problem of taking few polygons and still making cool looking armor WAYS better. But since the character models are relatively set, I fear we can’t expect any great change in that department.
OVERALL: I am quite positive surprised. Playing LOTRO is quite fun. However, all beta testers I spoke to felt still uncertain if they really will buy the game. While it sure has its great moments and is overall enjoying, it also has clear shortcomings.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
1. e. THE community does not exist yet. Now it's closed-beta testers, a more savy experienced group than what will be live imo. Expect a lot of peeps who have never played an MMO before to be playing this game, because Turbine did so well on the graphics - performance - starting areas.
2. a. SIZE. Comparison with WoW sounds about right. But consider wow had 6 different starter areas, this game has 2. I mean, remember how big the tauren and night-elf starter areas were? And once finished in first day of gameplay, one never went back really. So if you discount that difference, I think it's more like 60% of WoW's size. Smaller agreed...
3. a. UI. I agree on the icons. Too small and they are trying to show too much info as a picture in them. Need more big iconic-type images for the skills. Everything else is not that bad really. I might have put this in the mixed.
3.b-d. character generation is retarded looking. But then, it's pretty irrelevant imo as well. Games that spend a lot of time on faces etc are a waste, cause no one ever sees that anyway. Better to spend more modelling and time on the world and the mobs imo. Animation is blah. Armor is blah... agree on those.
Several KEY points left out:
- Character-Customization. Will this trait thing be enough to make your character unique, resulting in different playstyles for different 'builds' ?
- End-game. PvM is not pvp. Can a game without world changing pvp last beyond x months of people maxing out their character?
- Expansions. Will turbine be able to keep up with xpacks? There's a huge world to fill up, just curious how fast they can do it...
As a game, it looks like the first part of a combo to me. It's like the leading jab of a one-two combo. Very good jab... now if they follow it up with the right-cross, in about 6 months or so, boom. They could have a real long-term winner i think...If they wait around for a year+, then it might just fizzle .... (?)
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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Nice preview. I gotta comment on this one though
I don't have time before work to search for them but there were a couple of Dev posts hinting at additional content soon after launch, by soon I mean a month or two. If you look at the release map of Eridor and compare it to a full map there is a good bit of land missing that could still be considered part of Eridor. There is Forlindon, Harlindon, and Minhiriath that are parts of Eridor and are not in at release. Note the gates that will not open like the one to Grey Havens in the Shire.
This is just speculation but I expect to see several more "zones" added for free before the next paid expansion releases, which I doubt we will see for 6 months to a year. Turbine chose to release a smaller world packed with content and add in as the majority of the players advanced rather than start with a huge world which needed content added it seems.
Naysayers aside I am looking forward to several years worth of content. That is not saying that it could not still go to hell in a hand basket if they drop the ball. But considering the potential money tree they have a hold of I am hoping that will not not happen. I think I will get my boxes moneys worth at least and am gambling 200 bucks on the life time. I can look at my game shelf and see 200 dollars plus worth of boxes that I never got a months worth of play from combined.
I miss DAoC
I think you miss the entire point. I was explaining the game to people who do not know it, and it has more limitations which are the result of rooting the game not only in a given story (that of Tolkien) but also in a quite well know and short time frame, that of the books of Lord of the Rings. I never said I wanted ratman in LOTRO, but I feel the few races and classes take out a lot of what I feel makes games fun. I dont see any sense arguing over tastes, so we really dont have to fight over that. IMO diversity and complexity are connected, and loosing one will drag down the other, but thats just how I feel about it.
People in MMOs enjoy rolling many different classes and races, they public today is used to certain fantasy topics, like Gnomes or beast-races and going to a world of Tolkien means going back behind those topics of modern fantasy. I think it is valid and important to highlight that in a preview to potential customers.
Just on a sidenote: I played SWG many years, which is set between the movies 4 and 5, so I know well how problematic such a setting is. Sure, you have a lot to build on, but you are also very inflexible. SWG and LOTRO would have been much better advised placing it in a time less well known, well described and fixed in timescale. SWG should have been in the Kotor era, as I think LoTRO should have been in any of the Silmarillion era. But thats just my opinion.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I think you miss the entire point. I was explaining the game to people who do not know it, and it has more limitations which are the result of rooting the game not only in a given story (that of Tolkien) but also in a quite well know and short time frame, that of the books of Lord of the Rings. I never said I wanted ratman in LOTRO, but I feel the few races and classes take out a lot of what I feel makes games fun. I dont see any sense arguing over tastes, so we really dont have to fight over that. IMO diversity and complexity are connected, and loosing one will drag down the other, but thats just how I feel about it.
People in MMOs enjoy rolling many different classes and races, they public today is used to certain fantasy topics, like Gnomes or beast-races and going to a world of Tolkien means going back behind those topics of modern fantasy. I think it is valid and important to highlight that in a preview to potential customers.
Just on a sidenote: I played SWG many years, which is set between the movies 4 and 5, so I know well how problematic such a setting is. Sure, you have a lot to build on, but you are also very inflexible. SWG and LOTRO would have been much better advised placing it in a time less well known, well described and fixed in timescale. SWG should have been in the Kotor era, as I think LoTRO should have been in any of the Silmarillion era. But thats just my opinion.
I agree with you on Star Wars. That has more to do with the team not having a clear idea what they wanted to do from the start. The whole NGE thing was in developement from about 6 months/maybe a year after launch. They were not sure what they wanted to do with the game from the start. Look at the extream history of the Jedi ingame. First almost no one was able to do, then they made it wasier, then easier then finally its a starter profession. On top of it, they don't even belong in the timeline. No focus.
What players are "use to" really doesn't matter. Every game is different within its own context. If I Previewed EVE why would I point out that it doesn't have enough diversity in racial selection for example? It has more then enough within the context of the game. could it have more? Sure, you throw in some bug eyed aliens. On top of it, modern western fantasy is pretty much rooted in Tolkien nowadays making it the root of the genre not the branch. Remember most every other game BUILT on Tolkien lore. What you are getting with LotR is based on the original books.
I guess you missed my point
I also see where you are coming from in the complexity/diversity but they are not necessarily always interconnected. You can have one without the other. World of Warcraft is not Complex as a game at all but fairly diverse in its racial selection. There are games that have more, there are games that have less. UO for a very long time had one single race (humans now I think you can play an elf) Is UO complex? I would think you would be very hard pressed to say "no".
SQUEAK.
--(The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)