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Lord of the Rings Online: Roads Goes Ever On - Returning to LotRO
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com Lord of the Rings Online reporter Jason Parmele writes this report on his decision to leave the popular World of Warcraft for Turbine's adaptation of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings franchise.
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I'm ashamed to admit this. I'll say it once and then we're going to move past it. I did not read The Lord of the Rings until after seeing Peter Jackson's: The Fellowship of the Ring. I eventually went back to read The Hobbit, The Simillarion, Unfinished Tales and The Children of Húrin. As an addicted MMORPG player and fan of Asheron's Call I was excited when Turbine announced they had purchased the rights to develop Middle-Earth Online, now called Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). As an early beta tester I was impressed with Turbine's re-creation of Middle-Earth and when I found Gandalf's stone on Weathertop I knew this game would be special. However, it took me nearly three years to rediscover that.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
I started back at launch and i had a minstrel i got him to lvl 10 jammed out at the pony then found the scry pools, i entered one and never turned back, i became a 100% monster player.
Unfortunatly i think that pvmp has become lotros red headed step child, nothing much has happened to pvmp in 3 expansions, i understand tthat lotro is mainly about pve and the story side of things but i believe they could do more with pvmp.
My dream of monster play in lotro was not max lvl monsters secluded to one area thats 5 minutes of running across, i was hoping that one could play lvl 1 monsters in the normal areas to, i suppose i have to keep dreaming.
ill go back to lotro in a heartbeat if they had a subtantial update to pvmp (new areas, more baddy content etc etc)
I'm with ya man, I too have retired my 80 rogue in favor of LOTRO for a number of valid reasons.
The community of LOTRO is awesome. Of course any game community will appear that way when comparing to WoW. That was never a problem with me in WoW though. I played with friends from my town that I have known for years and ignored the annoying teenagers that infiltrate that game.
The optimization and coding of WoW is terrible. LOTRO is awesome... DX10, beautiful graphics and shadows and runs great. It is important to me to be able to utilize my badass computer that I own, and getting poor performance with old games because of their poor coding is a huge turnoff.
WoW is not even an MMORPG anymore, it is in it's own genre now, some sort of co-op que lobby with generic RPG character advancement. It seems the seemless open world they built is wasted now as everyone just stays in one place and ques up for dungeons or raids or pvp... That is the biggest turn off for me, I can see how others enjoy that style of gaming. I tried to make a WoW comeback after 3.3 when my friend game me Rezz scroll, but after a couple of days I hated it. I don't like the direction they took the game.
I agree, LOTRO gets alot of criticism about it's pvp. But it is really good actually, it is just very small and under developed. They could turn it into so much more if they wanted to. I think it would be a great idea to make one of the new zones for the next expansion both pve and mpvp.
Great article, although if i'm not mistaken there is a way to turn off the auto facing in combat in the options...dont quote me on that though. :P I'm actually playing Vanguard right now myself and kind of had the same experience you're talking about with LotRO. The game is vastly improved and I can honestly say the only reason tons of people aren't playing is because A) they are jaded from launch/beta and
SOE isn't going to throw any fair amount of money into this game until they see a lot of people want to play it. It's a sad circle because gamers aren't going to play it for the reason of C) No gamers are going to go to a game that they see as a "sinking ship" .
There is an option for move to target" which can be turned off. However, I'm wondering what he is talking about becasue wow has tab targetting and facing your opponenet just like lotro. so he must mean move to target.
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
I liked the article, but did it seem to just end suddenly, with no closing statements?
I kept looking for the 2nd page. still a good article. and I feel the same way.
Although I disagree about the combat. It has improved somewhat considerably since beta.
I wish my LotRO experience had been even a little bit like yours.
When I finally decided to try it, I found the quests to be terribly boring, and I could not get a soul to speak a word to me, in character or out. It was sad, for when I got to Bag End it was borderline magical for me to see it brought to life. Exploring the Shire was indescribable, seeing it in three dimensions.
But the closed off community, dull quests and crappy crafting killed it for me, and I'll never revisit it.
Ive been on and off of wow everynow and again to play with my friends and see the new updates, i mean i like wow its good but i always seem to come back to lotro been waiting for rohan for so long
got a lvl 65 warden atm but i dont really like the deeds just mainly mindless grinding on like 600 creatures is just annoying but both games have there ups and downs and with the amount of players playing wow ur likely to have lots of children playing who spam up trade channels but seems better than it was before with less gold spams i have to say
yeah, you can turn off the auto facing in lotro. i think that it may be off by default now, but it is one of the things that remember to make sure is turned off when i create a new character.
sorry about vanguard. i actually thought about trying it out a few times, but i can't justify to myself (or to my boyfriend) in paying for another fantasy based mmo right now when i've got a lifetime membership with lotro... and then there's the problem of finding the time to actually play it.
yeah, you can turn off the auto facing in lotro. i think that it may be off by default now, but it is one of the things that remember to make sure is turned off when i create a new character.
sorry about vanguard. i actually thought about trying it out a few times, but i can't justify to myself (or to my boyfriend) in paying for another fantasy based mmo right now when i've got a lifetime membership with lotro... and then there's the problem of finding the time to actually play it.
Yeah I dont blame you and LOTRO is an excellent game, if you're enjoying yourself then dont fix what isnt broken
When I read the article I had an overwhelming feeling of deja vu - and then I realized that I had almost the exact same experience with WoW, especially the part about the PvP Battlegrounds. WoW really is a victim of its own success, because the underlying game is solid. But the experience of that community (on multiple servers) just made me feel like I did *NOT* belong there.
It's not just the RP server, I play on Brandywine which is the most populated server as far as I'm aware and the community is nice. The public chat is much more respectful and people actually help each other regularly, it's a nice change of pace from most MMOs.
I agreed with a lot of this article, but the line that caught me was "I had a lot of fun playing WoW and the combat system, to me, is the best of any MMORPG." That is just crazy, the WoW combat system is terrible. And the whole game revolves around control (ex Fear, Root, Snarl, etc etc.). Everything is about stunning or stopping someone else from moving, it is annoying and terrible. But that's just my opinion.
I find it interesting that all the folks are returning to lotro, Right after I got all my character slots to 65 all of them including the new ones. I have a lifetime account to lotro, this is the first time in for me in that game to say I am retired from LOTRO. I have been playing since beta. It is clear what lotro thinks is fun and what I think is fun are two different things.
When you get all you alts to 65, at that point there is nothing left to do, except endless armor runs and skirmage runs. I wish all you guys luck. As when you get to the end game theres nothing left to do except the same old 3 and 6 and 12 man runsg.
Isn't that true of almost all mmorpg's* with the exception of sandbox types (Ultima Online) for example, or PVP?
*Haven't played many mmo games so if I'm wrong, sorry
Thats all fine but I have found most of the stable community kinships in the eu to be up their own arses a different kind of annoying group if you will. The levelling is lovely difficult and requires friends to complete it all. But the endgame is downright awful lotro is a decent story if you get to do all the books but after that you have completed your online rpg.
My family ended up going back to wow even opening more accounts up than ever before. MMORPGs are more about who you play with than the game maybe a roleplay server in wow would suit you it seems you enjoy that kind of environment.
Also the lag in the eu is awful at the moment huge load times and terrible tech support. Turbine upgraded their servers and codemasters havent I guess thats what happens when 3 people try to slice a small pie (tolkien enterprises, turbine and codemasters).
Im not upset but the nail was the tech service for me.
Jason, it appears you and I think alike. I can't say my tastes have changed (I still love PVP), but LOTRO fills a need I didn't know I had during my 4 years of WoW. Although I can't sound-bite it very well, I'd say 'completeness' comes close. Good features and good story. And, yes, very few Chuck Norris jokes.
The thing fir any games really is what you find fun and that will never be the same for everyone. There is a set of people who find the style and grind of wow just what they want. There are others who like to explore and run around a world with a story enjoyable as well. The thing really is give things a try if think it might work for you and take advantage of the fact that just about every game out there has free trials just for that. I will admit that never really played wow and never had a big desire for it after many years of EQ. Wow and others with the endless need for raids and quest for gear made my game feel like a job and was not fun and was why left EQ. With LOTRO I will admit that I find myself just wandering and exploring, walking around and seeing the spots and places that are in there from books. In doing this I end up doing some quests and get deeds as seems orcs do not like it when you go sightseeing in their camps. But what I see as biggest thin is the belief that you MUST race to level cap that fills so many games and in doing so you pass by so much in a game. I know at one point I felt that way as well and here we are 7 weeks or so out from the last expansion and just bairly hit 64 and am still exploring places in moria let alone the new areas. Even took time out and when they redid a zone took my then 61 char back there to see what was changed and while was not getting xp or the loots the experiece for me of exploring the world, of taking some friends who started playing with me and let them explore as well was quite fun. Guess in a way the song from the Black Eyed Peas 'Now Generation" fits many of the wow kids and recent trend in MMO's
I have been with LOTRO sinse beta as a founder subscriber mostly because I was impressed by the lore and the immursion isnt too bad either,, and one of THE best additions was the COSTUME CLOTHING window this effectivly removed all the clones and took the organic feel to another level.
I very much liked LOTRO up to 50ish but ive been very dissapointed with the hack and slash that is both mines of moria and now mirkwood, I am not a hack and slasher to be honest it bores me to tears and the expansions is one brawl after another after another after another most games that are on the market these days are dumbed down and focus on the arcade instant gratification fights and as a casual player cant compete with the louder voice of these warmonger FPS players looking for their next blood fix. Im not saying a game needs to be devoid of combat but I do like to see it part of the scenery not the whole pourpose for existance even the economy is combat based never seen anyone trade a stack of buscuts for a new chest piece
so yes im kind of a gamer refugee looking for a game/world with an organic real feel kind of like a coliny on a new planet with construction exploration,discovery lots of crafting, mysteries and yes combat
oh yes the star trek game is exactly the same a big steaming pile of hack and slash talk about raping Mr. Roddenberrys vision to hell.
sometimes I wish i had the skills to just write my own game
make a world, not a game, we dont want another game.
Sadly the reason many don't play it is because pvp is horribly boring...so basically gamers who enjoy pvp tend to avoid LOTRO like the plague. I'm a huge Tolkien fan but LOTRO was a big letdown for myself. I played from launch for alittle under a year until I realized how little pvp content LOTRO had (and how little they were going to do with it) and haven't looked back since.
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
I'm loving LotRO for a lot of reasons. This article title sounds very similar to a video I stumbled upon a few days ago. It's called "Goodbye, LotRO. Roads Go Ever On." If a player can quit an MMO and make a special, beautiful tribute to it when he leaves, then you know that MMO is superb.
I'm getting tired of WoW, and, even though LotRO is very similar gameplay-wise, I'm truly enjoying it. Why? Mainly, one of the biggest reasons: much better community. But, even more than that, I get a strong DAoC vibe while playing it.
Whaaaaaat? Did he say DAoC!?!?!
Yes, I did.
What I loved about DAoC even more than RvR was the authentic, immersive atmosphere and feel of the world. Albion felt like medieval Britain; Midgard felt like Norway/Denmark, and Hibernia felt like Ireland. I'm sure everyone here has experienced a heavy medieval world before in a game. Well, with LotRO, that feeling has finally returned. It's the small things that count. The buildings in LotRO look almost exactly like buildings in Albion, except with much improved textures, of course. Many small details on just about everything you see lend to immersion to a point where you really feel like you're part of Tolkien's world, just as you felt like you were really part of the realm you were fighting for in DAoC. Sounds, graphics, descriptions, almost everything is reminiscent of DAoC, and I love it. Hell, they even have horse routes that allow you to dismount mid-travel, unlike, say WoW's gryphons. Just like DAoC.
Combat is smooth and responsive (though players seem pretty weak when faced with multiple opponents - I suppose this is realistic, but it can be frustrating at times - yes, even tank/healing classes). I play a Hunter and I thoroughly enjoy turning my targets into pincushions full of arrows before they even reach me; no more stupid bear pet as a tank like in WoW (not until I play a Loremaster, anyways). UI is simple to understand, customizable, and very aesthetically pleasing. Nothing is hard to read or ugly. I especially like the crafting interface. And, speaking of which, crafting is logical (if you gather wood, then you'll be able to make bows and such) and I like the customized animations.
Granted, I haven't reached end-game or anything like that yet, and that's where most of the complaints seem to lie. I've heard Moria is horrid and things such as Radiance and drop rates for important items could be adjusted. Still, I'll worry about all that once I'm higher than level 25. I don't care if this is a themepark and not a sandbox. I love the world Turbine has created and I plan to spend my time in Middle-earth, not in Azeroth.
Edit: Yeah, if you like PvP, there are better games than LotRO out there. Still, it's an excellent PvE/role-playing game.
Naw, moria isn't horrid. There are horrid thigns about it but it's actually a fun place to be provided you are the type of person who can make your own gameplay and not listen to complaints.
It's a fun place to explore. I don't agree with how they implemented it (dwarves taking it over) as I think it would have been more fun to experience a fully non-invaded Moria but that's my taste.
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
I had about the same experience as you in regards to lotro. I quit after about 3 months. Last June I picked it up again after suffering WoW burnout and found the experience a refreshing change. I've been playing lotro ever since. Yeah, you find the occasional annoying player but no where near the overwhelming amount as there are in WoW. Lorto's got a respectful and helpful community for the most part.
It is always a wonderful thing to me when someone kicks WoW. No matter what game it is for it is refreshing to see people break free of that FAD and stop feeding that machine of addiction.
Was a great day when I was able to do it and I remember the first game that I actually tried to play honestly and without bias. I knew it was over between me and WoW that day and while I miss the many people who became friends there until we meet in another game they can never be convinced to leave. Many don't even know why they play any longer and just sit around chatting in vent or doing horrible daily quests just kind of going through the motions. One day they will wake up I tell myself.
Congrats to you author and may any of your returns to that place be brief. So much more out in game land to entertain and seek wonder and fun again.
Hey, guys, I appreciate all the comments and feedback so far.
In response to SnarlingWolf, my point is - and I know it's not too clear in the article - that I had become so accustomed to WoW's combat system it made it difficult to want to learn any new ones. I bet there are a few games out there better in that respect, but it's like me trying to use an Xbox controller...I'm all over the place. Watching me play Halo with a controller is a disgrace.
Also, guys, thanks for the tip on the auto facing. I'll look into it.
http://www.jasonparmele.com
Seems rather "closed off" with your mind when you don't allow for the way the LoTRO chat channels work (there are no global chat channels; you only speak in the region you are in, and you know how lazy people are/can be using LFG tools). You also fail to realize the disparity between server communities.
Personally I can't afford more than one subscription, and right now EQ II still holds me.
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