Just wanted some player feedback on some of the questions I would like to ask about the game before I go buy it.
- Is it a quest based game to level or a long boring "grind"?
- Community, is it more of a little kid/ whiney teen or people who actually enjoy the game?
- Bad lag and crashes?
- NPCs such as "Bandits" etc. flood the wilderness?
- Class and race variety? or is it like SWGwhich has only humans and Jedis?
- Team/ Group based? or Solo?
- Player housing and Clans?
- Are the graphics really as epic as they look in screenshots?
Comments
Hi. I have a champion level 22 and a few other alts, so I will try and answer your questions as best I can.
1. Definitely quest-based. The only times you will be grinding on mobs is for certain deeds that give traits that are important for your class. I wouldn't call the leveling process slow or boring either, at least at 22.
2. On Windfola, there are quite a bit of mature people. In fact, I rarely see many kids shouting in /ooc or other channels. I would assume most servers are like this.
3. Lag gets bad in Bree (the main town) but other than that no not really. Server-side crashes are extremely rare and have only happened once as far as I know since launch. Definitely a stable game. I have never crashed to desktop on my PC and haven't heard of it being a common problem.
4. The wilderness is never barren, but I wouldn't call it overpopulated either. They space out the mobs well and have a great variety, especially in the higher level zones.
5. There is a lot of race variety that I see but as for classes champions and hunters are severely overplayed and lore-masters and the most underplayed.
6. The game has a nice balance (so far) between group and solo content. I heard there isn't much solo content in the 30's but there is a content patch coming next week to address that issue.
7. Clans or guilds are called kinships in LotRO. Player housing isn't in yet but is supposed to be coming in October.
8. The graphics are great if you have the hi-res textures installed. You will have the option to install those when you get the CD. The water is simply the best I have seen in a MMO so far and the environments are nicely detailed. You will appreciate all the special little touches they added in the game and it makes the game seem like a living, breathing world.
I would recommend this game if this is your first MMORPG or if you want a fresh new game to enjoy. This game has some new features, but if you have been playing MMO's for a while you will feel right at home. If you want, I can send you a 10-day buddy key to use to try the game before you go spending $50 on it. PM me if you are interested.
btw. When I say flood the wilderness I mean if I leave a city i'm going to be swarmed with randomly placed npcs to "entertain" me on my way lol.
I am also playing,I solo more then group, playing a lore-master is a challenge but fun. Been playing since beta,and still enjoying game. You wont be sorry if you buy this game. Was bored last night on the game during the game night time and started paning camera around to look at real looking stars. To my suprize I could see the little and large dippers) and orion the hunter. If you do buy this game have fun and best of luck.
1. very quest oriented. mob grinding give you little or no xp
2. community was really great at release. as time passes and the community matures, it is degrading as more and more people buy the game. It looks pretty mature though, at least on the Euro rp server I was on
3. some lag. no crashes
4. npc placement is logical. in the wilderness, you will find sparse wild animals with bigger concentration of mobs in certain key points. You get bears and wolves in forests, bandits tend to stay near bandit camps and so do goblins even if you can find the occasional scout in the forests or plains. Civilized lands, like the farms of the shire, get almost no enemies but couple boars.
5. 4 races, 7 classes. classes are varied but I can say this is not exactly one of the strong points of the game.
6. Both. solo has more importance at start, but the most important missions are always group based and as you level the amount of group content rise withouth killing off the solo content completely.
7. no player housing at the moment. Clans, called Kinship get some love. you can decide to make a mixed race kinship or not and you get levels in the kinship that give you certain features. A shame such a system is not very well documented in the manual. You also can gain kinship-related titles and perks for your character and you can set items in the auction house to be visible by your kinship mates only. Also, you can create families, that are separate from kinships.
8. yes. at high details. at low details they become a bad copy of eq2 but as long as you keep them high, they look gorgeous.
Hope this helpes.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
1. quest based,some of them feel like a grind though..some of them make you want to slam your head through your monitor.
2. the community is great. as the game gains popularity though,you can guarentee that l33t kiddies will begin to play.Just the way it is. plus ive come across some real mouthbreathers that seem to be totally unable to understand their class mechanics,
3. none for me,ive crashed once in the month ive been playing. Lag depends on your memory,I play with 1.5G and get zero lag anywhere,other than when I first enter bree (large town).I have played on a PC with 512mb ,and it was BAD. Ive noticed however,so people with a way better system that mine have lag in bree,or perhaps crashing problems,so dont take my word as gospel. I try to be fair when I tell people about the game,and im no fanboy.
4. yeah,theres brigands,orcs and stuff that have camps in various areas of the wilderness. watch out for birds and wolves,they can smell a hobbit from 5 miles away .
5. not really,only 4 races not including monster play and 7 classes. pretty limited.
7. clans=kinships,housing coming later this year.
8. better than they look in screenshots,one thing ill say about this game,with all its faults,is that its absolutely stunning. I have a x1650 pro and 1.5G and can play on high/very high;a mid range system at best,so what it looks like on a higher end PC..ultra high with all the bells and whistles turned up must be a joy. best looking MMO ive seen since guildwars.
I'd also like to add that texture detail has the most effect on graphics lag and memory requirements. At 1.5GB, you should be able to do the high-res textures without too much problem. However, even at 1GB you start to get issues unless you drop detail a level or two. The other options were more dependent on graphics card, so if you don't have a lot of memory, try dropping the texture detail before anything else.
Its quest based, though sometimes it can still feel like a grind, and many of the requests do require a group.
Its a pretty even mix of the two.
Actually, probably one of the MOST technically stable releases I've played. Though I hear people have had problems with Vista.
Yeah, we've got bandits. More orcs/goblins though.
Good race variety; there are 7 classes but there are 1-2 you see a lot more than any of the others.
I'd say a healthy mix of both, but if you HATE one or the other, you'll have problems here.
Housing supposed to be added in October. If by clans you mean 'guilds', yes it has that. On my PC, at the highest resolution setting and max graphics settings, yes the graphics are pretty epic. I can also play this on my laptop, which will run on 'medium' and still looks fairly epic but with settings lowered for performance. Some things aren't too original - trees, rocks, grass, roads, etc. look pretty standard, but the overall landscape is extremely well done.[/b][/quote]
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...