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LOTRO is NOT a small world
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
LOTRO is NOT a small world. Just fyi, since it seems a spread rumor. Sure, its not as big as Vanguard. But it isnt small either. I ran around somewhat and the distances are quite vast in a way. If you play in a NORMAL speed and really take time to read the stories and explore the beautiful landscape you will have plenty of time ahead. Not to speak the replay-value with the starter areas and diffrerent racial questlines. Normally I dont make free ads like this, but after exploring the world a bit I just felt I had to say that. ^^
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
- the world is, compared to other hand-crafted worlds, a little over medium-sized
- the world distances are scaled down in a way that doesn't take the feeling away. It's actually NOT like a planet in SWG, where you have geenric hills for 8 miles to come, but changing evnironment.
Oh and, obligatory add: This game was build to expand, no artificial expansions in this game, no Sir. There are plans and already finished projects for the zones that are still to come, the first one in June, so you can probably guess that Turbine will add, like they do excellently did in AC, new content in short intervals.
Oh yea, and for those of you who need hard boiled facts. The running time to cross the whole map from west to east is around 1 hour, not touching zones that are in eriadors north... The known time to cross Azeroth from Stratholme to Booty Bay is 56 minutes by foot.
I admit that the game is not an explorer, "wohooo I can travel wherever I want"-game... Still, its far from being tiny or claustrophobic...
Meridion
It's really hard to say exactly how large the LOTRO world is. It has the distinct feel of being hand-crafted, in that there are many little areas that are carved out of the landscape and contain a ton of content where one can be lost adventuring for days. A good example of this is Old Forest or the Barrow-Downs in Bree-Land. Either of these two areas are extremely small portions of the map, but contain a great deal of content. I would log in for only a few hours before work during open beta, and happily killed in barrows to get money. it never got old.
Now there may not be as much landscape variety as WoW, that's for certain. WoW dumped the paintbucked on so many zones that if you viewed it from space you'd see a checkerboard on azeroth. :P It's all about different art styles, and this may be a reason people tend to think WoW has a bigger world because it has so much unique looking areas. LOTRO's maps are huge by comparison, and the promise for expansion is there, as is the room. Rohan, Gondor, Mordor, and even the more obscure locations from the trilogy have yet to be included in the game. Even the next expansion will give us a new zone centered around Lake Everdim in the north.
Small? Absolutely Not. Full of Content that will keep you busy for days and weeks and months to come? Yes.
-BA
And for the ppl that say how short it takes to get from here to there when it took this amount of time in the movie just remember that in the movie they walked 80% (or so) of the way so put ya toon on walk and see how long it takes to get some where.
You definitely can't judge a world "size" from the geographic size alone. It is a complicated thing. It's also about content. And even more so, ORIGNAL content.
Obviously they could have doubled or tripled the virtual SQUARE MILEAGE by simple streching out the roads and hills, and throw in few mob camps and a few throwaway quests and generic buildings and NPCs. But that would hardly make the world "bigger".
The world as it is: is definitely comparable to other MMOs in real, original content. The paradigm here is the opposite of Vanguard. I am not saying either one is better. I actaully think that I would prefer the Vanguard Paradigm of planning to "fill in" the world later. But either way, it's about content ,content, content. Not just virtual square mileage.
ALthough the thought is just ridiculous. The game would be fresh out of the landscape generator then. All the magic that dwells in most of the places of middle earth would be lost, because no developer team in the world could handcraft such a world, which would make the sights of middle-earth boring places.
What IS important is that the places deliever. Take the old forest. The old forest ist only a small fraction of one zone, probably half of Nektulos Forest if you ever played Everquest 2. But uh,surprise, I never got lost in Nektulos Forest, because you can just cross it, kill some mobs. Its a decorated free-to-go zone. Or Duskwood in WoW, you get in, you know where you are and thats it hooray. So what would one expect of the old forest. Same old decorated piece of unspectacular landscape... But, darn, I got lost again... And I MEAN lost, the ingame map doesn't show you the paths through the old forest, it shows you where you roughly are, that's it, so I run in circles for more than 15 minutes until I reach the Hedge again - because the area manages to feature what all the other MMO woods I've experienced failed at - providing the TRUE "dammit, this can't be right, the path I came from looked different"... Even if the mobs are 10 level lower than me, the forest is still a darn labyrinth...
Meridion
And like others have said...there is just tons of content almost everywhere, there really are no useless areas....they all have something that you can explore, gather craft mats or accomplish tasks. There's lots of places that obviously are important, but I haven't figured out their purpose, (most likely missed the quests for them..but its very hard to do all the quests, esp the lowbie ones...too many)
Like people said...its no VG.... but that doesn't mean it isn't a pretty substantial world right now.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
70% of one WoW continent maybe, not the entire WoW world. Im not a WoW fan by any stretch but just saying, ive already seen the entire lotro world(except parts of a certain zone i cant get into yet) and it is packed with things, but its not very large at all
I've also noticed an entirely new group-forming dynamic in this game: 20 people running around trying to kill these 2 invisible wolves.... groups form simply out of necessity, 'hey, are u killing lurking wolves?" ... "yep" .... "/invite". I'm not complaining; just saying that it is feeling a little cramped with the player-to-mob ratio sometimes.
This will thin out as the level variance increases. I just hope the server population growth starts leveling off, and new players go to emptier servers.
Ok, here it goes.
The are is friggin' huge.
The other day, I wanted to fast-travel from Celondim to Bree, when I saw in shock that it costs 60S (1S the other way). So I decided, that I will just run back.
I deliberately started to count the time. In 25 (!) minutes I only reached as far as Stock (eastern Shire), where I gave up and took 2 horse rides to Bree. Even with these 2 "shortcuts", the journey took more then half an hour! And Bree is only midway from Celondim to Rivendell.... I would say it takes more than an hour to run that distance.
And the expansions will be coming.. and coming...and coming
))
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
I'm with you in exploring the world. It is absolutely breathtaking. I am so enamored with the content, I could spend hours just walking around.
Very good example. I wandered through the Old Forest 2 hours until I finally found Tom Bombadil. I was SO lost, but it was fun to explore. It may not technically be big, but it FELT so big, which tells me they know how to design a game world well.
The Old Forest is a really good example why this game is so great. Technically its not big, but they still managed to make it feel friggin big. Then, being a reminscent of the "old world" it was supposed to emit a feeling, I never thought a game could transport, and the DID. I mean, it really feels like you leave the known world and enter a remaining part of the old world. That they did succeed in that is no small accomplishment!
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Very good example. I wandered through the Old Forest 2 hours until I finally found Tom Bombadil. I was SO lost, but it was fun to explore. It may not technically be big, but it FELT so big, which tells me they know how to design a game world well.
The Old Forest is a really good example why this game is so great. Technically its not big, but they still managed to make it feel friggin big. Then, being a reminscent of the "old world" it was supposed to emit a feeling, I never thought a game could transport, and the DID. I mean, it really feels like you leave the known world and enter a remaining part of the old world. That they did succeed in that is no small accomplishment!
I went in through the barrows died and spawned right a tom bombadils house which was nice and lucky! however when you do his quests and die in the chapter 11 quest you get punted out in west bree instead of at his house! Still it saved me getting lost in the woods! I dont like his hat though!