Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
LoTRO is one of the funnest games Iv played in a long time.
Calintz333
Member UncommonPosts: 1,193
So I started playing LoTRO on Monday. Game+ Expa for 10 dollars includes 30 days of free play? Can't get a better deal anywhere.
Now I have just reached level 20 and there is a ton of things I must say I love about the game.
- Graphics are awesome almost as good as Aion when ran on DX10 and max settings.
- Storyline is really awesome, quests are well scripted even though a lot of them are typical mmorpg fare.
- Community is quite mature asking questions usually gets me a very polite and well typed answer.
- Leveling does not take forever, It only took me 3 days to reach level 20 playing Semi-casual. About 5 hours a day.
- Exp boost when you log off, As a full time college student the only thing I can say about this is "Full of win".
- Music is very solid, fits in well with the environment.
- In game voice chat, no more vent.
Even though there are a ton of great features about the game so far, There are also things that have driven me near insane because I just can't / won't get over. I mean really some of these things piss me off quite a lot.
- The armor for low levels is by far the worse most ugliest looking armor I have ever seen on any mmorpg. It is just plan horrible. If you're a person like me who likes to stop and look at your character radiating coolness then this game astronomically disappoints. Armor is the worse looking Iv ever seen level 1-20 of any game. This includes some 2.5D games. If you equip a "Outfit" which is optional clothes you can make your character look alright but it replaces a peace of the armor you had on so you can't equip it in combat. I think I should try to equip those again since I got 20 they might no longer take off my armor from what people have told me.
- Animations are kinda lame, This is not really a huge deal but the Animations in this game do kinda suck. Iv seen some of the high level 55-60 moves and none of them impress at all. Games like FFXI had better and more impressive looking attack animations / weapon skills looks back in 03.
- Chugs, Even on my machine which is a Quad core Athalon 64 8GB DDR3 Ram Dual Nvidia 1GB 9600 GTX cards the game still manages to chug a bit. I'm sure this probably has something to do with my drivers or maybe its not to friendly to AMD machines I don't know. Because when I run it on my Laptop which only has 4GB Ram Windows Vista home premium Nvidia 256 8600GT and a 2.0 Dual core processor it does not lag at all on maximum settings with DX10 running at a smooth 18-24FPS. Never chugs or anything at all.
So far the game is great. Lots of fun and by far the best value Iv gotten for my money in a long time. If the game starts to get some good looking armor I will continue to play it for a long time until FFXIV comes out. If the character armor continues to look as absolutely disgusting as it does now my eyes will probably bleed out and ill cancel by the end of my 30 days free. Ether way 30 days of entertainment for 10 dollars or staying with the game. It was a great value.
Comments
ya amd doesnt have hypertread it hurts a lot
i got a amd 64 x2 4600+ it should be faster ,way faster then a
pentium 4 3.4
nope,everywhere intel just run around amd like its not even there
we dont talk about todays tech here we talk p4 gees
so intel is way faster
my next comp will be intel processor
the thing tho is those 3 will wage a gcard war soon within 6 month
and then i wonder what will happen
hypertreading from intel makes a big difference in some application
amd is still in the race (for now)
because bottleneck is mainly hard drive for now
but that bottlenec will go away soon one way or another
espacially with the possibility to stream game instead of actually having them will soon change the way we play games
I think you misunderstand the outfit system and could be looking great right now!
If you go to your character profile their are three faint tabs to the right where you place your items on your character slots. The first one (I think it's a sword) is the armour you are actually wearing (and get the stats from). If you click the other two tabs you can create outfit 1 and 2. These outfits do NOT contribute or affect your stats. These are purely for looks. If you click the button that says show equipment (or show outfit 1 or outfit 2... it switches with each tab) you can select what look you want.
So lets say you fully equip your character but hate the pants. Go to outfit 1, put in the pants you want others to see and click the show outfit 1 button. What will happen is that the pants in outfit 1 will override the appearance of the equipment but does not affect the stats. The equipment is what you are still actually wearing. The rest of your outfit will look like whatever else you have in outfit 1 slots and if they are blank then it shows your true equipment.
It's a fun story based game. I enjoy it.
I think you misunderstand the outfit system and could be looking great right now!
If you go to your character profile their are three faint tabs to the right where you place your items on your character slots. The first one (I think it's a sword) is the armour you are actually wearing (and get the stats from). If you click the other two tabs you can create outfit 1 and 2. These outfits do NOT contribute or affect your stats. These are purely for looks. If you click the button that says show equipment (or show outfit 1 or outfit 2... it switches with each tab) you can select what look you want.
So lets say you fully equip your character but hate the pants. Go to outfit 1, put in the pants you want others to see and click the show outfit 1 button. What will happen is that the pants in outfit 1 will override the appearance of the equipment but does not affect the stats. The equipment is what you are still actually wearing. The rest of your outfit will look like whatever else you have in outfit 1 slots and if they are blank then it shows your true equipment.
Personally I've been playing the game for awhile as well and think the player characters and equipment are among the least impressive I've seen in any game. People blast eq2 and vanguard for having bad looking avatars, animations and equipment but honestly I think LoTRo is the worst. Which is ironic considering that everything else in the game looks fantastic and the gameplay is very good....
---
Ethion
I don't think it's that bad. I know I can't get my human minstrel to look good (at least yet) but my hobbit hunter, dwarf guardian and elf warden look more than acceptable.
I've been playing since beta and I agree that some armor is pretty fugly. The textures are well done IMO but sometimes there's too many different colors or patterns used on the armor, like some people call it the "clown" effect. However with the dyes and the outfit system you can put some very nice looking outfits together. I think in general they went with a more realistic and understated effect with the armor. Certain animations could really use improvements as well but I really like most of the combat ones, especially my guardian and hunter. And of course everything looks so much better with graphics all the way up. Here are some armor screens of mine I like:
Here are some pretty spiffy screens posted on the LOTRO forums.
forums.lotro.com/showthread.php
Well you can't have it all.
I mean look at games like Cabal online, or Sword of the new world amazing animations, great graphics, awesome character models and armor models but the game play is nothing but Korean grind fests.
Then you have Aion, everything you could want from an mmorpg but its based for the PvP fan over the PvE.
Just cant have it all in one package.
And those screenshots especially the ones in the link...I don't know how they pull it off. I have the game set on Max Ultra High DX10 settings and so far none of the areas / dungeons / game looks anything like that. Then again I'm only level 21.
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
.jpg)
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
.jpg)
Those images look pretty good but they still seem flat.. The world looks great but the armor just doesn't look inspiring. I'm not sure how to express it, it kinda looks flat like it is just colored on. It doesn't have any shiny parts or bumps or textures??
I tend to think that vanguard armor is the best but I don't have an active account so unfortunately I only got a couple clips from quite awhile ago to show. The last one I brightened it a little since it was pretty dark. Even EQ2 armor feels better looking to me..
Here are a couple eq2 shots or one of my characters
Here are some from lotro
---
Ethion
Those images look pretty good but they still seem flat.. The world looks great but the armor just doesn't look inspiring. I'm not sure how to express it, it kinda looks flat like it is just colored on. It doesn't have any shiny parts or bumps or textures??
I tend to think that vanguard armor is the best but I don't have an active account so unfortunately I only got a couple clips from quite awhile ago to show. The last one I brightened it a little since it was pretty dark. Even EQ2 armor feels better looking to me..
Here are a couple eq2 shots or one of my characters
Here are some from lotro
They do use bump maps, normal maps and specular highlighting. You are just accustomed to the over use of it in EQ2. LOTRO is about subtly.
Also, try putting the settings to ultra high.
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
And check if your are using the Hight Resolution client
I've never seen a better looking game (in-game) than LotRO. Aion was nice, but didn't have the same awe effect on me. I remember running one of my first missions and seeing, what felt to me, to be a living environment. My issues with LotRO had NOTHING to do with the graphics and animations (other than the bard which was just silly to me).
EQ2 wasn't anywhere close to the overall beauty of LotRO. I'm not even sure it's fair to EQ2 to mention them in this comparison.
so...