There are only two characters riding flying mounts. One is Gandalf (immortal mage) and the other is a ringwraith (undead king). Hardly the people you would call normal adventurers.
You're right thought. I should have mentioned that no flight is happening for normal adventurers in Lord of the Rings.
Yeah, the article seems to imply (not terribly well-written) that the problem with LotRO is lack of meaningful pvp. But if you asked most of LotRO's playerbase they would probably answer lack of pvp is what "went right" with LotRO. Note that Turbine is not a publicly-owned company like Sony or Activision Blizzard. It doesn't need 11 million subs to make its owners a good profit. The estimated 300k subs that LotRO has are probably more than enough.
Exactly, just like with EQ2. This game has the least amount of Epeen kiddies. And that is a BIG plus in my book.
LOTRO has one of the best communities out there at the moment.
I mention a lore aspect, you mention a technical aspect. I assume you understand that we're both right, right?
There is no flying in LOTRO because there is no flying in LOTR. I'm also glad for that, unlimited flying has been a failure as far as immersion goes on the games I've played.
I mention a lore aspect, you mention a technical aspect. I assume you understand that we're both right, right? There is no flying in LOTRO because there is no flying in LOTR. I'm also glad for that, unlimited flying has been a failure as far as immersion goes on the games I've played.
I have to agree with you. Flying sort of takes the "trek" out of adventuring. No need to carefully journey through the Haunted Forest if you can fly over it.
Right, LOTRO has so many good things going for it, the best of those things is the community, there is very little swearing, rudeness, racism in general chat or with most of the people I have met. The teenagers that do play are civilized for the most part, and that is a big plus for me because I really f*$%'n hate teenagers. Little bastards...
LOTRO looks to be one of the most successful mmorpg games on the market today. It is one of the few games on these forums that does not usually get named as a poor quality product, very few people have something bad to say about it and most of the complaints are that its to much like WoW.
Id say I am not playing it only because the combat was very boring and uninteresting to me. Very basic attack animations, very basic skills. I hate to sound like my example but yeah it was a very generic combat system. Currently I am looking for something along the lines of Phantasy star online (Combat system) but in a full mmorpg game. Until I find that Im on a 3 year mmorpg brake and counting.
That being said In my opinion LOTRO > Aion AoC WAR WoW <Add random Korean F2P> and many others. Few mmorpgs today can compare to LoTRO quality and value.
I mention a lore aspect, you mention a technical aspect. I assume you understand that we're both right, right? There is no flying in LOTRO because there is no flying in LOTR. I'm also glad for that, unlimited flying has been a failure as far as immersion goes on the games I've played.
Bullshit. There IS flying in Middle Earth.
You are using the same argument as the makers of the game.
"Let's create a fake 3D/2D bordered game" and since there is mostly no flying (of course there is), so we use that to our own advantage to save production costs.
That was the 3rd aspect: too few resources went into the game development (apart from the clunky character animation and the PvP less faction tension which makes for a rather dull - one sided - pure pve experience.
A 2 faction way made Lotro with GOOD and fluid responsive combat would have been a winner.
You play 1000's of hours with your avatars. So better have the best fluid combat in those fights.
First. The only flying there is are the Nazgul on their beasts, dragons and the Eagles. That's it.
Only the Nazgul have so called flying mounts. No other creature or race has it.
Dragons are pure evil and won't allow themselves to used as a mount.
The Eagles are too proud to be used as flying mounts and have only allowed people on their backs in very exceptional occasions.
They couldn't make a 2 faction PVP MMO game as they were bound to the Lore of the LOTR and The Hobbit books.
It would have been lore breaking to see hordes of orcs and goblins raiding The Shire lol.
That's why Turbine came up with PvMP instead. Wich has been vastly improved and the EttenMoors is actually quite fun to PVP in now with Capturable Forts and Camps.
The PvMP really IS quite good. They just have that one zone though, if they expanded it to different areas, gave the players more pvp content, it would rank as one of the best pvp systems of any game out there.
Why do people bother respond to Zorndorf who always ruins any form of discussion on this forum?
LotrO is a solid game which does alot of things better than others. The 2 biggest issues have alwyas been 1. Not enough "end game" and 2. not enough PvP (which is a good thing imo)
If WoW = The Beatles and WAR = Led Zeppelin Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
For me personally what went wrong was that it was to simular to that other game, the combat felt bland with rubbish animations and long battles.
But the quests, lore and graphics were great it's just a shame the game became tedious, you could also raid for +hope gear but as there was no PvP it felt like there was no point. (+hope gear, to do the same instances again, just a bit easier?).
Originally posted by Calintz333 Id say I am not playing it only because the combat was very boring and uninteresting to me. Very basic attack animations, very basic skills. I hate to sound like my example but yeah it was a very generic combat system. Currently I am looking for something along the lines of Phantasy star online (Combat system) but in a full mmorpg game. Until I find that Im on a 3 year mmorpg brake and counting.
This pretty much sums it up why i am not playing it either. The combat was just bland and boring.
I agree with the people that stated the lack of PvP helped this game rather than hindered it. It made for a really strong community which always seems to come up as LotRO's strong point. If they could just make the combat more interesting and add better group content , instead of all that solo questing. I'd go back.
Yeah, the article seems to imply (not terribly well-written) that the problem with LotRO is lack of meaningful pvp. But if you asked most of LotRO's playerbase they would probably answer lack of pvp is what "went right" with LotRO. Note that Turbine is not a publicly-owned company like Sony or Activision Blizzard. It doesn't need 11 million subs to make its owners a good profit. The estimated 300k subs that LotRO has are probably more than enough.
You ask a Guild Wars fanboy whats wrong with the game, and they would never say, since they blinded by fanboyism. Same thing happen with AoC beta, and War beta. LoTRO fans do the same thing.
The game lacks pvp
so? PvP is not the most important part of a game, it is the least.
I'm sorry? What went wrong with the number 2 MMO in North America? Seems like a silly question, and a very large assumption on the games quality.
---------- "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
"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.
While i would agree pvp is nt the most important part of an mmo i do feel lord of the rings could offer a few more pvp options . I m a life time subscriber and i enjoy playing it at weekends sometimes . I would nt say theres a lot wrong with the pve side of the game . My server is very busy and the community is friendly which is something i cant say of other mmos . Other than widening the pvp the only thing i would like to see changed is the character animations which are a bit stiff . If anything i would say lord of the rings online is the only real traditional fantasy rpg in the mmo world in that it follows a coherant storyline most of the others are simply virtual worlds with rpg elements put in as a side thought .
Horizons was going to be great. Tabula Rasa was going to be great. Lots of MMOs were 'going to be great.' History has proven time and again that there is no way to tell that early in production if a game is going to be great or not. History has shown that even when the idea/design seems like it's going to be great, there's no guarantee that it will even be released with those features or even as a game remotely resembling what was originally being pitched.
MMO gamers really need to pay more attention to actual fact and history than they do to the features list marketing wrote on the website or the dreamy ponderings of developers in concept and design stage.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
It didn't go wrong, but you have to admit it underperformed and didn't meet expectations. WIth an IP like LOTR, you figured bigger numbers. Turbine certainly did.
Its doing well, but it never achieved its potential due to what most people have been saying for years. The combat is boring. The classes and races are very ordinary and so was the animation. It just wasn't cool to look at. The world was not as vast and open as it should've been and the group content was pretty lacking. I wouldn't call lack of PvP a problem, but was something missing in my book. Sure you can blame it on the lore which limited what you could do, but sometimes you just have to tweak it a little to make it fun. By limiting what you could, Turbine limited its appeal.
Basically when you compare feature to feature with WOW, how open the world was, the group content, PvP, questing, class/racial choices, combat, the game was lacking or just seemed very limited...except for the music=) Thats what most peoples impressions had to be or else millions would be playing now.
Horizons was going to be great. Tabula Rasa was going to be great. Lots of MMOs were 'going to be great.' History has proven time and again that there is no way to tell that early in production if a game is going to be great or not. History has shown that even when the idea/design seems like it's going to be great, there's no guarantee that it will even be released with those features or even as a game remotely resembling what was originally being pitched.
MMO gamers really need to pay more attention to actual fact and history than they do to the features list marketing wrote on the website or the dreamy ponderings of developers in concept and design stage.
For the record, I knew both of those were going to suck. I did watch Darkfall for 7yrs though. :-| and PoTBS :-| annnnd AoC :-| Not so much AoC, but I thought it was going to be OK.
What you're saying is true, they really did have some good ideas for MEO though. Honestly, MEO probably would have had half or a quarter of the numbers LoTRO has, but if the end product would have been close to the original concept (which usually IS the case... they are CLOSE) then it would have been a great game, numbers or not.
Then again, WoW would be a GREAT game, and not just numbers, if they stuck to the original concept ideas and the ideas they kept until half way through vanilla to TBC. Good move business wise, obviously. But, I think they could have throw in quite a few of the original ideas and still had the same numbers. Pretty much the only thing that still exists from the original concept is the fact that there are 2 factions, even though nobody really knows WHY or what purpose they serve, and the fact that it's gear based.
Very true, when was the last time a game had such a nice clean release. For those that will say WoW, please remember WoW had a terrible release.
Even more so I wouldn't say wow had a terrible release universally some servers would go down and there were some bugs that went on for a few months like the kneeling bug I recall but still the release wasn't what I'd call terrible.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
The LOTRO base mechanics and such are all good, but the game is just bland.
The reason I left (as well as many others I know) was that while we enjoyed the Tolkien universe and adaptaion we did not want to walk the same tired path of all the books. They focus on the storyline quests which take all the activity of the world and ignore every other quest or interaction you have completed. It is like you have story time for a while then get relegated to menial questing for leveling. This creates a massive disconnect in gameplay.
Besides who really wants to go through another retelling of the original stories when there is so much more of the Tolkien universe to explore? They rehashed the same thing rather than take lesser known parts of the Tolkien books to jump off. It is the same old same old. So much potential wasted.
I mention a lore aspect, you mention a technical aspect. I assume you understand that we're both right, right? There is no flying in LOTRO because there is no flying in LOTR. I'm also glad for that, unlimited flying has been a failure as far as immersion goes on the games I've played.
I have to agree with unlimited flying not being a good thing for mmos. While I do love to zip around in the air to places that are unaccessable by foot, it does take away from the overall world when players can just safely fly around everywhere.
High speed mounts have a similar effect, but not to the same degree.
Honestly, MEO probably would have had half or a quarter of the numbers LoTRO has, but if the end product would have been close to the original concept (which usually IS the case... they are CLOSE) then it would have been a great game, numbers or not. - TheHatter
I think that's the area that often frustrates developers. It seems that sometimes they have what would be great for a huge amount of people and what would be totally awesome for a much smaller group, and weighing which way to go can be a difficult decision.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
A small article about LotRO. The expansion video looks sick.
Do you mean what went wrong as in why isn't it pulling down Wow numbers? Because other than that I can't see anything wrong with LOTRO, I'd even be willing to bet against those claiming it shows no growth (which is sttrange considering they have to open new servers and advise new players to try them).
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I think a better article title would have been "LOTRO: What went mostly right"
LOTRO is a great game that I think had the potential to be much bigger than it is, but it just didn't separate itself enough from other games and as a result didn't offer a compelling reason for many people to make the switch.
It has so much going for it in so many areas, but the design was rather "safe" and that has limited the game to what it is. I'm not saying that is bad, but I'm pretty sure turbine was aiming a little higher than this.
Comments
There are only two characters riding flying mounts. One is Gandalf (immortal mage) and the other is a ringwraith (undead king). Hardly the people you would call normal adventurers.
You're right thought. I should have mentioned that no flight is happening for normal adventurers in Lord of the Rings.
Exactly, just like with EQ2. This game has the least amount of Epeen kiddies. And that is a BIG plus in my book.
LOTRO has one of the best communities out there at the moment.
I mention a lore aspect, you mention a technical aspect. I assume you understand that we're both right, right?
There is no flying in LOTRO because there is no flying in LOTR. I'm also glad for that, unlimited flying has been a failure as far as immersion goes on the games I've played.
I have to agree with you. Flying sort of takes the "trek" out of adventuring. No need to carefully journey through the Haunted Forest if you can fly over it.
Right, LOTRO has so many good things going for it, the best of those things is the community, there is very little swearing, rudeness, racism in general chat or with most of the people I have met. The teenagers that do play are civilized for the most part, and that is a big plus for me because I really f*$%'n hate teenagers. Little bastards...
LOTRO looks to be one of the most successful mmorpg games on the market today. It is one of the few games on these forums that does not usually get named as a poor quality product, very few people have something bad to say about it and most of the complaints are that its to much like WoW.
Id say I am not playing it only because the combat was very boring and uninteresting to me. Very basic attack animations, very basic skills. I hate to sound like my example but yeah it was a very generic combat system. Currently I am looking for something along the lines of Phantasy star online (Combat system) but in a full mmorpg game. Until I find that Im on a 3 year mmorpg brake and counting.
That being said In my opinion LOTRO > Aion AoC WAR WoW <Add random Korean F2P> and many others. Few mmorpgs today can compare to LoTRO quality and value.
Bullshit. There IS flying in Middle Earth.
You are using the same argument as the makers of the game.
"Let's create a fake 3D/2D bordered game" and since there is mostly no flying (of course there is), so we use that to our own advantage to save production costs.
That was the 3rd aspect: too few resources went into the game development (apart from the clunky character animation and the PvP less faction tension which makes for a rather dull - one sided - pure pve experience.
A 2 faction way made Lotro with GOOD and fluid responsive combat would have been a winner.
You play 1000's of hours with your avatars. So better have the best fluid combat in those fights.
First. The only flying there is are the Nazgul on their beasts, dragons and the Eagles. That's it.
Only the Nazgul have so called flying mounts. No other creature or race has it.
Dragons are pure evil and won't allow themselves to used as a mount.
The Eagles are too proud to be used as flying mounts and have only allowed people on their backs in very exceptional occasions.
They couldn't make a 2 faction PVP MMO game as they were bound to the Lore of the LOTR and The Hobbit books.
It would have been lore breaking to see hordes of orcs and goblins raiding The Shire lol.
That's why Turbine came up with PvMP instead. Wich has been vastly improved and the EttenMoors is actually quite fun to PVP in now with Capturable Forts and Camps.
Cheers
The PvMP really IS quite good. They just have that one zone though, if they expanded it to different areas, gave the players more pvp content, it would rank as one of the best pvp systems of any game out there.
Why do people bother respond to Zorndorf who always ruins any form of discussion on this forum?
LotrO is a solid game which does alot of things better than others. The 2 biggest issues have alwyas been 1. Not enough "end game" and 2. not enough PvP (which is a good thing imo)
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
For me personally what went wrong was that it was to simular to that other game, the combat felt bland with rubbish animations and long battles.
But the quests, lore and graphics were great it's just a shame the game became tedious, you could also raid for +hope gear but as there was no PvP it felt like there was no point. (+hope gear, to do the same instances again, just a bit easier?).
This pretty much sums it up why i am not playing it either. The combat was just bland and boring.
I agree with the people that stated the lack of PvP helped this game rather than hindered it. It made for a really strong community which always seems to come up as LotRO's strong point. If they could just make the combat more interesting and add better group content , instead of all that solo questing. I'd go back.
You ask a Guild Wars fanboy whats wrong with the game, and they would never say, since they blinded by fanboyism. Same thing happen with AoC beta, and War beta. LoTRO fans do the same thing.
The game lacks pvp
so? PvP is not the most important part of a game, it is the least.
I'm sorry? What went wrong with the number 2 MMO in North America? Seems like a silly question, and a very large assumption on the games quality.
----------
"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
While i would agree pvp is nt the most important part of an mmo i do feel lord of the rings could offer a few more pvp options . I m a life time subscriber and i enjoy playing it at weekends sometimes . I would nt say theres a lot wrong with the pve side of the game . My server is very busy and the community is friendly which is something i cant say of other mmos . Other than widening the pvp the only thing i would like to see changed is the character animations which are a bit stiff . If anything i would say lord of the rings online is the only real traditional fantasy rpg in the mmo world in that it follows a coherant storyline most of the others are simply virtual worlds with rpg elements put in as a side thought .
MMO gamers really need to stop this.
Horizons was going to be great. Tabula Rasa was going to be great. Lots of MMOs were 'going to be great.' History has proven time and again that there is no way to tell that early in production if a game is going to be great or not. History has shown that even when the idea/design seems like it's going to be great, there's no guarantee that it will even be released with those features or even as a game remotely resembling what was originally being pitched.
MMO gamers really need to pay more attention to actual fact and history than they do to the features list marketing wrote on the website or the dreamy ponderings of developers in concept and design stage.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
It didn't go wrong, but you have to admit it underperformed and didn't meet expectations. WIth an IP like LOTR, you figured bigger numbers. Turbine certainly did.
Its doing well, but it never achieved its potential due to what most people have been saying for years. The combat is boring. The classes and races are very ordinary and so was the animation. It just wasn't cool to look at. The world was not as vast and open as it should've been and the group content was pretty lacking. I wouldn't call lack of PvP a problem, but was something missing in my book. Sure you can blame it on the lore which limited what you could do, but sometimes you just have to tweak it a little to make it fun. By limiting what you could, Turbine limited its appeal.
Basically when you compare feature to feature with WOW, how open the world was, the group content, PvP, questing, class/racial choices, combat, the game was lacking or just seemed very limited...except for the music=) Thats what most peoples impressions had to be or else millions would be playing now.
I had some minor problems with LOTRO, but nothing that I would qualify as "Wrong" in the game.
1. Themepark. I was hoping for something a little more sandboxy.
2. Monsters. I was fighting Bears, Spiders, and Bees at lvl 10. I was fighting bears, spiders, and bees at lvl 40. It got old.
3. I had trouble finding a group. (perhaps it was me, my toon didn't shower often, or the fact that I chose an over-populated class).
Other than that I had no problem with the game. It was alot of fun, the world was beautiful. Turned out it was just not for me.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
MMO gamers really need to stop this.
Horizons was going to be great. Tabula Rasa was going to be great. Lots of MMOs were 'going to be great.' History has proven time and again that there is no way to tell that early in production if a game is going to be great or not. History has shown that even when the idea/design seems like it's going to be great, there's no guarantee that it will even be released with those features or even as a game remotely resembling what was originally being pitched.
MMO gamers really need to pay more attention to actual fact and history than they do to the features list marketing wrote on the website or the dreamy ponderings of developers in concept and design stage.
For the record, I knew both of those were going to suck. I did watch Darkfall for 7yrs though. :-| and PoTBS :-| annnnd AoC :-| Not so much AoC, but I thought it was going to be OK.
What you're saying is true, they really did have some good ideas for MEO though. Honestly, MEO probably would have had half or a quarter of the numbers LoTRO has, but if the end product would have been close to the original concept (which usually IS the case... they are CLOSE) then it would have been a great game, numbers or not.
Then again, WoW would be a GREAT game, and not just numbers, if they stuck to the original concept ideas and the ideas they kept until half way through vanilla to TBC. Good move business wise, obviously. But, I think they could have throw in quite a few of the original ideas and still had the same numbers. Pretty much the only thing that still exists from the original concept is the fact that there are 2 factions, even though nobody really knows WHY or what purpose they serve, and the fact that it's gear based.
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Even more so I wouldn't say wow had a terrible release universally some servers would go down and there were some bugs that went on for a few months like the kneeling bug I recall but still the release wasn't what I'd call terrible.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
The LOTRO base mechanics and such are all good, but the game is just bland.
The reason I left (as well as many others I know) was that while we enjoyed the Tolkien universe and adaptaion we did not want to walk the same tired path of all the books. They focus on the storyline quests which take all the activity of the world and ignore every other quest or interaction you have completed. It is like you have story time for a while then get relegated to menial questing for leveling. This creates a massive disconnect in gameplay.
Besides who really wants to go through another retelling of the original stories when there is so much more of the Tolkien universe to explore? They rehashed the same thing rather than take lesser known parts of the Tolkien books to jump off. It is the same old same old. So much potential wasted.
I have to agree with unlimited flying not being a good thing for mmos. While I do love to zip around in the air to places that are unaccessable by foot, it does take away from the overall world when players can just safely fly around everywhere.
High speed mounts have a similar effect, but not to the same degree.
Honestly, MEO probably would have had half or a quarter of the numbers LoTRO has, but if the end product would have been close to the original concept (which usually IS the case... they are CLOSE) then it would have been a great game, numbers or not. - TheHatter
I think that's the area that often frustrates developers. It seems that sometimes they have what would be great for a huge amount of people and what would be totally awesome for a much smaller group, and weighing which way to go can be a difficult decision.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Do you mean what went wrong as in why isn't it pulling down Wow numbers? Because other than that I can't see anything wrong with LOTRO, I'd even be willing to bet against those claiming it shows no growth (which is sttrange considering they have to open new servers and advise new players to try them).
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
At least WoW actually had finished content at release.
Obviously you didn't play it at release.
I think a better article title would have been "LOTRO: What went mostly right"
LOTRO is a great game that I think had the potential to be much bigger than it is, but it just didn't separate itself enough from other games and as a result didn't offer a compelling reason for many people to make the switch.
It has so much going for it in so many areas, but the design was rather "safe" and that has limited the game to what it is. I'm not saying that is bad, but I'm pretty sure turbine was aiming a little higher than this.