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I dont get it....(LOTRO and VSOH)
rwgober92
Member Posts: 94
I have vanguard as of now and I am confused about some of the things people are arguing over...
I'll use titles as an example. Everyone is talking about how awsome LOTRO is because you can have titles to show what you have done in the past....well....Vanguard has that same thing, and released before LOTRO. It also has a robust character creating system though I'm not sure if LOTRO has that....
My point is, the game are alot alike and I dont see why everyone is saying Vanguard sucks and LOTRO is the way to go...it makes no sense to me. The only thing LOTRO has that Vanguard doesnt is the creature battle system where you are the monster and you fight other players...though, to couterbalance, Vangaurd has flying mounts, ingame houses, boats, addicting mini-games, etc...
So please help me out and tell me what is so great about LOTRO that it should be played over Vanguard.
Thanks
Comments
Hm, I played Vanguard and was bored to death. I played LotRO and had lots of fun. Sometimes it's as simple as that
1. Vanguard released buggier than an anthill at a Texas picnic, whereas LOTRO is very clean, with very few bugs.
2. Vanguard was not playable on a lot of people's systems without turning the graphics way down, whereas LOTRO scales more comfortably with a wider variety of systems.
3. Vanguard is more of a slog, grind type game. LOTRO is focused, by comparison, around a storyline. More people prefer quest/story-line play than the wide-open slog kind of play.
The games are not really a lot alike at all. I tried Vanguard when it was released and thought it was basically garbage -- I'll grant that the developers were ambitious, but in my opinion they failed. LOTRO is not trying to be innovative at all, but Turbine has served up a quest/story-driven, smooth, playable game.
They are two completely different games. No one is going to say that you have to play one over the other because of titles.
LOTRO is not for everyone as it has a very specific type of gameplay and is very story driven.
Vanguard is not for everyone as it has a very specific type of gameplay as well.
The issues that people have with vanguard is that it's very buggy, that it's graphics require a high powered machine and that they are not uniform throughout no matter what. Also, it has a heavier grind and is very group related. Some people say that it is the rightful successor to EQ1 (I have no idea, never played EQ1)
LOTRO is more casual friendly, you xp mostly through quests. It has less bugs and you don't really need a high powered machine to play it (though it wouldn't hurt.
Also, LOTRO is very solo friendly.
In the end you just need to play what you find fun. Too many people are too caught up in comparing games and "my game is better than your game". This is what children do. It's beyond ridiculous.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Its really a matter of personal taste.......
I play LOTRO for the community but the game is a total WOW clone. I much prefer the open endedness of VG and the ability to progress without doing thousands of quests. The roleplayers are what keep me in LOTRO not the game mechanics. I think VG is the superior game but LOTRO has the better community.
To be quite honest I am sick of the endless questing and the hand holding that WOW brought into the MMO genre. I long for the days of early post release SWG with its skill system and open ended make your own story attitude. I miss pre luclin EQ and its complexity and tight community.
The golden age of MMO is over welcome to the future.......may God have mercy on us.
Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture.
I read about Vanguard 2 years ago, and waited, and beta'd, and was devoted. They sold me out, not only that, they didn't deliver on promises. Vanguard does not/did not have titles like LOTRO. They just have things like journeyman lumberjack, not web-slasher/guardian of the halls.
LOTRO compels you, it has content and a story to drive you. Vanguard has a large open world with nothing to do. When I played there were no flying mounts yet, houses were pointless, boats were hell to get and bugged (I was a lumberjack and was a day away from getting a caravel, owned a sloop since only the few had them). By mini-games I assume you mean diplomacy and crafting, aka grindfest 20,000. You don't even get anything from diplomacy but stupid buffs. The entire continent of Kojan is a noobie land, that's all it's there for. LOTRO has more entrancing environments, they aren't just copy/pasted over and over till an inch on a map is an hour trip.
The main thing that LOTRO has that Vanguard doesn't? Content and fun. Also a development team that doesn't lie, and is very organized. You won't believe the number of people that agreed that release didn't even feel like release. I have yet to find one bug in LOTRO, whereas if you read my post history there is a lengthy list of Vanguard's.
Personally I believe that LOTRO has fixed everything I'd ever had a problem with in an MMO, and I am very glad I quit Vanguard and tried out LOTRO. I was expecting it to suck and was pleasantly surprised when I found myself enthralled, whereas Vanguard was toted to be the end-all be-all of MMO's and flopped. EQ's big brother? More like EQ's mildy retarded distant cousin wearing a foam helmet dressed in a trash bag.
Well, to tell you the truth, Vanguard graphics still look phenominal on all the lowest settings (because I've tried it) and are about the same as WoW graphics wise on their worst.
As for the storyline, Vanguard has very much of that if you would read the quests that you are given. Its just that, in vanguard, you dont know what to expect (which is what makes it so great). For instance, the Vulmane have a very solid storyline all to themselves against the Bloodhowlers and their heritage that can be approached by any type of player, be it adventuring, deplomacy, or even crafting and harvesting. The game is just more dynamtic and can be approached by any angle, rather than the LOTRO approach which is VERY direct and to linear in my opinion
I read about Vanguard 2 years ago, and waited, and beta'd, and was devoted. They sold me out, not only that, they didn't deliver on promises. Vanguard does not/did not have titles like LOTRO. They just have things like journeyman lumberjack, not web-slasher/guardian of the halls.
LOTRO compels you, it has content and a story to drive you. Vanguard has a large open world with nothing to do. When I played there were no flying mounts yet, houses were pointless, boats were hell to get and bugged (I was a lumberjack and was a day away from getting a caravel, owned a sloop since only the few had them). By mini-games I assume you mean diplomacy and crafting, aka grindfest 20,000. You don't even get anything from diplomacy but stupid buffs. The entire continent of Kojan is a noobie land, that's all it's there for. LOTRO has more entrancing environments, they are just copy/pasted over and over till an inch on a map is an hour trip.
The main thing that LOTRO has that Vanguard doesn't? Content and fun. Also a development team that doesn't lie, and is very organized. You won't believe the number of people that agreed that release didn't even feel like release. I have yet to find one bug in LOTRO, whereas if you read my post history there is a lengthy list of Vanguard's.
Personally I believe that LOTRO has fixed everything I'd ever had a problem with in an MMO, and I am very glad I quit Vanguard and tried out LOTRO. I was expecting it to suck and was pleasantly surprised when I found myself enthralled, whereas Vanguard was toted to be the end-all be-all of MMO's and flopped. EQ's big brother? More like EQ's mildy retarded distant cousin wearing a foam helmet dressed in a trash bag.
I also played in beta and it was very broken then...I am talking in modern times though, after updates and after the game has been fixed
Your post lost all credibility when you suggest that LOTRO are a lot alike. If they were then Vanguard wouldn't be in the mess it's in.
You're referring to Vanguard's lore which imo was not very good. Everything had been done, and nothing was refreshing. Oh noes, zombies are in targonor, killing ur dewdz. /yawn. I read most of the 82 pages of lore when I was hooked. I found Vanguard to be extremely predictable and nothing new, especially not the king of all MMO's. Grind a dungeon, sell crap, buy some overpriced crafted gear, grind another dungeon. I was fine with this as EQ was great imo, but then they nerfed the whole game by decreasing mob hp and increasing xp. Why? To get to endgame and have nothing to do? You'll think the game is great until you reach mid-20s to your 30s and you'll realize there is nothing to do, just like I did.
The thing about LOTRO is that it's based on such an incredible work, and yes, people want to live that storyline. The thing is, there is the main story arc, but there are tons of quests outside of that. More quests than Vanguard even thought of putting in, a great deal of them being fun rather than "oh, kill 10 of these, those, and that. G**D******" I find myself having a great deal of fun in LOTRO while I was so bored in Vanguard. I was in an incredible guild, had lots of in-game friends and rl friends that played, and the opinion was unanimous. The game was empty, and not what they told us it was going to be. While I believe my guild is still intact and doing well, a few of us went to LOTRO after I found out that it didn't suck, and all of us are loving it.
Also, the graphics being good on the lowest setting? Are you kidding? I like paper cutouts as much as the next guy, but seriously. Those graphics are something the original macs could handle, yet due to poor optimization many can't even run that. I ran it on high, and they still didn't impress me much. It seemed like the graphic artists threw the concept sketches out the window and made a bland world. It's a shame because Keith Parkinson did amazing work.
I didn't quit playing Vanguard till sometime in March though, right after they decreased mob health. That was the last straw, I didn't feel like being lied to anymore.
Played Vangaurd, now im in Lord of the rings, i like Lord of the rings better, but there are a few things, like the flying mounts and housing system that i miss from vangaurd. there are two things in Lord of the ring that i like better, My Guild TCO is there, and alos the questing and the world feel alot more fun, seeing weathertop Rocks !!
SWG Reffuge to Ryzom
lotro is a joke. too shallow, too small, a waste of bandwidth.
I do agree that LOTRO has a great following and some great things that would be cool to see yourself ( i am a huge fan myself) but i have heard it is also way to easy and that more of a challenge needs to be given....how true is this? Vanguard is incredibly hard but very rewarding when you do level (such as mounts at level 10!)
I'm not going to tell you what to play - play what you want. People rave about LOTRO because it's a well made game and does exactly what the Devs told us it would do. It's a lot of fun to play too, IMHO.
I havn't played vanguard, but I am sure there are talented writers for the quests in that game. But you really want to know why LOTRO probably has the edge over VG when it comes to the stories? - It's because of the very depth of Tolkien's books; acclaimed as one of the best literary works of fantasy ever created. Vanguard likely wouldn't even exist were it not for Tolkien's vision.
I don't think any game's background story could compare to LOTRO's IP... but I digress, so back to the point...
LOTRO and VG are two entirely different concepts when it comes to game mechanics. One is a story-driven PvE game, and the other is a sandbox game. It's like comparing apples to oranges. You might notice that all the greatest RPGs ever created had an excellent storyline: Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, KOTOR etc. Turbine simply took that concept and created an MMO around it. That is why it seems "linear" in your opinion, but I'm still wondering if you have even played LOTRO past the newby area and found out really how much the game opens up beyond that.
All the angles that you mentioned here are in LOTRO too. Surprise surprise, beyond the main story arc, LOTRO can be quite dynamic too - though I'm sure not quite to the extent that VG promises. I'm sure that given time, VG will be a great game, it's just sad that it seemed to be released too early and when it wasn't ready for the public - but I'm going on popular opinion there; that's what most folks seem to say about it.
Finally, I want to ask you something: Why have you come to the LOTRO forums to defend Vanguard? I mean, it's pretty obvious that you prefer that game over LOTRO...
....Vanguard and hard in the same sentence? If you'd have thrown the words "used to be", then I'd concede that. While I'd appreciate more challenge being added into LOTRO, it doesn't bother me too much. It's not the hardest by any means, but you can still die from making a mistake like pulling an unexpected add.
Levelling is one of my favorite parts of LOTRO, it seems to level at just the right pace and reward you for each level instead of at "checkpoint" levels. It's a game that's meant to be fun the whole way through it seems, and so far it is.
Another good thing about LOTRO? No paladins. They were massively overpowered in Vanguard. All their moves did too much damage and gained too much hate for a class that could perform heals. Hell, some of their moves gained more hate than us Dreadknights. I never had a problem outhating a pally because I know how a DK works and how to play it, but a noob pally shouldn't be able to outpull a noob DK.
This fella here supplies us with ample, well-thought out arguments. If you had any doubts about V:SoH or LOTRO, they should be gone now.
For the OP - When I played in the Vanguard beta 3 and open beta I felt there really wasn't much to do and the world felt empty and lifeless. This morning in LoTRO I was trying to decide whether to do some quests, grind some mobs for trophys to use in crafting, grind mobs for traits, just do some crafting or simply sit and smoke my pipe in Bree and shoot the breeze in guild chat while "people watching". That is just me of course and may or may not give you an idea on why I prefer LoTRO.
I miss DAoC
This fella here supplies us with ample, well-thought out arguments. If you had any doubts about V:SoH or LOTRO, they should be gone now.
No, still don't get it. Honestly. Both games are good ones, the best with LO*TR was the release. Rest isnt that much of ones opinion.
The grass is GREENER in lotr, it's designed that way
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Lotro runs great on very most computers, and i mean GREAT! Vanguard sucks even on high end computer. And lotro graphic is even overall better. Character creation is not wat makes a mmorpg better than another.
Vanguard has not a particular story, lotro has the story of the greatest book ever (after the bible of course ^^). So, in vanguard you don't feel part of a great plot, you wander aimlessly, in lotro there'a great story, and you feel like you take part in the journey to save the middle earth.
Lotro has better minigames maybe (such as music). Lotro WILL implement houses in the future, and maybe flying (i'm almost sure, as the lore tells that there are big birds that you can ride).
Vanguard is in beta after 3 months from release. Lotro is one of the very few games to be released STABLE (unlike wow). There are only noticeable problems with Vista, but every software has problems with newly released OS.
A living creature that has stopped evolving is not worth existing.
I really enjoyed my time in Vanguard. Didnt have many issues with bugs. Only crashed a couple times due to chunk lines. I went to Vanguard originally to get into the crafting system. It is a pretty nice system. Only problem I had with it was way too many complications made the grind too much of an annoyance.
The classes were awesome and had alot of variety. Graphics are beautiful. Besides the crafting complications that really annoyed me, I left Vangaurd for LOTR cause my friends didnt want to play and the time required to see any achievment was growing steadily by the mid 30s.
While I view the classes in LOTR a bit more blah than vanguard, I am really getting into the story and my champion is getting much better. The world is pretty large unlike many say. No where near as large as Vanguard at the opening, but big enough. I have found tons to do and if they continue to publish content frequently I dont think I will be bored anytime soon.
I personally think Vanguard and LOTR were developed for different audiences. Kinda hard to compare these two MMOs with that in mind.
Triston Master Carbine/Master Swords (SWG Eclipse)
Triston 29 Warden (EQ2 Permafrost)
Weland 70 Hunter (WoW Hellscream)
Suidan 36 Cleric (Vanguard Flamehammer)
Suidan 50 Champion (LOTR Gladden)
I played both Vanguard and LoTR and there are a number of reasons why Lotr succeeds while vanguard fails. Now we all know how Vanguard has crashes, lag, loading and such, but lets assume vanguard didn't have all that, i still prefer LoTR.
The main reason for me is that LoTR has something which Vanguard so much misses. Life. LoTR feels alive, its landscape, its villages, it has RP tools and emotes to make you feel part of a world, and the world itself is consistent and beautifully designed.
Vanguard on the other hand feels like a game instead of a world, in fact it feels like a huge empty game. Where LoTR graphics soothe atmosphere, vanguard feels boring and lifeless. Where i found a complete lack of emotes, roleplaying tools of any kind or bustling towns in Vanguard, LOTR has all that AND music, and SMOKING, and inns that are bustling with roleplayers. The fact that all the players are so scattered in vanguard makes it feels empty, but the fact that the npc's in vanguard don't do anything but stand in one spot makes it much worse. In Lotr however you feel the npc's are really alive, going about their business and talking to each other and themselves they feel part of the community.
Then there is the world and storyline itself. Now I like LoTR story but im not a hardcore fan by any means. That being said, vanguards storyline(s) never immersed me in any way. I mean sure some of them where nicely written, but because theres no amazing overarching storyline and because the NPC's are basically lifeless idiots with some text you don't get immersed at all, and the result is you feel part of a game instead of part of an exciting storyline. LoTR however is completely different, not only is the main storyline exciting and proffesionally excuted (beating even FF11online and guildwars), but even the side quests are fun and often very interesting to follow.
These things all contribute to Middle Earth being a far more immersing place then Telon. And thats strange becuase before these games where released i was far more excited about Vanguard. The fact that it had no instances made me think the game would be the perfect world to immerse myself in, but how wrong was i, and how suprised am i now after quitting vanguard and buying Lotr.
Finally, while the lack of a consistent and immersing world is my main reason (aside from the horrible performance and lame graphics) that i didn't like vanguard, there are plenty of other reasons. My main gameplay technical reason is the fact that LoTR is far more group friendly. In Vanguard i used to spend at least 30 to 45 minutes finding a group, in LoTR with its fantastic LFF interface i get groups almost instant, its just so much better designed, and the fact that the world is small helps a lot with forcing people to quest together, while in vanguard at any time of day grouping with your guildies was not possible because they where scattered all over this huge empty world. Now they may fix that with teleporters in vanguard, but i can already see they will never manage to make the game as friendly for grouping and raiding as LOTR.
Another strong point in LoTR is its quests. Yes it too has many collect this/kill that quest, but in LoTR i am constantly suprised by fun and original quest idea (like the pie delivery quests for example) while in Vanguard at no point EVER was i suprised by any of the quests in that game.
Vanguard was a great idea that was horribly executed. Lord of the Rings online was a simple and perhaps boring idea, but an idea that was executed to perfection.
Now I don't care much about the difference between traits and gear, the deeds and how you get your skills. My main gripe with Vanguard is simply that its not a nice and friendly world to live in, it is empty and cold where LoTR is bustling with a much friendlier community. You feel part of a cozy and close world instead of lost in a lifeless desert.
And that my friend, is far more important then titles, traits or character creating options. It's even more important then performance and graphic quality to me, something which LoTR is doing perfectly and Vanguard as everyone knows obviously lacks.
100% agreed.
I beta'd both and currently play Vanguard, for a lot of reasons. Basically I got bored quickly playing LOTR...it seemed too easy, linear, instance-heavy, I didn't like the UI, the combat was somehow unfulfilling....however the graphics and perfomance was great.
Vanguard had more of a feel of a huge open world...much better variey of classes....no lame restrictions like everything being soulbound...its more challenging and group oriented - but also has great solo play. At 29 I've soloed 75% of the time or more. To me its main shortcoming is difficulty finding groups due to the large world and slow travel. Luckily they have started fixing that by adding limited teleports.
If you like Vanguard, play Vanguard, thats so easy, it hasnt been out for that long that you should switch from it..i didnt like Vanguard, for many reasons, but personally I dont like bashing games, only warning other people about them....
and i hate when people start rating old games too high when a new numberone comes out..
does everquest2 really have better graphics then lotro?
fun vs no fun is the deciding factor these days
Seriously, my 2 cents: Never EVER limit yourself by having to choose between these games. Try them both. You will NOT find any neutral opinions about games on the net. I prefer LOTRO over Vanguard, but the person next to me might feel completely different.
In the end, seeing is believing.