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What's so good about LOTRO?
Wogg
Member Posts: 31
I'm really wondering why so many people call this the best MMO out there?
I tried it again now that it's F2P, it was fun for a few days but after that i didn't bother logging in anymore. I don't know why, it feels so basic and has nothing new to offer. All you can do is quest, quest, quest and there's barely anyone doing dungeons in the lowers levels.
Comments
The game is incredibly polished thats its strong point, but It moves at a very slow place so some people tend to get bored of it.
LOTRO did not "break the mold" of MMORPGs; many of the features/functionality can certainly be found elsewhere. What it does provide is a highly polished game withint a great IP, with the (currently) best "storyline" experience out there in my opinion.
I enjoy a lot of the class dynamics as well, especially the new classes. The combo system with Wardens rquires (and rewards) planning out combo attacks for the most benefit, while the Runekeeper forces you to manage a flow of attunement depending on whether you want to increase your damage or healing.
The crafting is decent, quests are plentiful (at least as a subscriber, I can't state for the F2P experience yet), and skirmishes bring me back to the days of "Lost Dungeons of Norrath" in a way, and are a great new experience managing your own NPC and rewards options.
Graphics and lore are it's strong points. Other than that it's like any other mainstream MMO.I think it is a mixed bag with the graphics. Still art, not so bad - get into some of the animations and it is hit and miss.
The issue with people going with the story, etc - is that it is no different than other games. What you do does not matter. You are a passenger - not a driver. You can completely skip the story - just grabbing quests, following the arrows, and doing the same quest things you do in other games.
Still, even though I find it to be hit and miss on the animations - some of them are simply beyond cool compared to games where they may not have as many bad animations but at best their best are hohum.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Here is one reason why LOTRO is popular. It may not be for everybody, but it shows what you can do other than parse combat logs. Watch the video and see what the community is like.
hmmm. I cant get it to go live.... so copy / paste to your go bar. This is last monday nites Ales and Tales. We had more attend tonite than last week. Its a weekly event in its 54th week running. One event out of many.
This is by our rather well known Welby who has proven to be a very good producer of ingame videos.
It has some of the best quest writing of any MMO. The world is absolutely amazing and beautiful. The community is pretty great. I have really enjoyed my time in Middle Earth.
another great video from Landroval. If I was not so heavily invested on Silverlode I would be doing a reroll on Landroval after seeing that vid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmEm3nW3jIw
oh and here is the direct link pasted in, sometime this editor gets funky on me also when pasting URL's. It's sort of hit and miss.
I miss DAoC
I wouldn't say the best .... but for the few months i played it i must say it's a rock solid game.
Also the quests are really good and diverse.
agree, the majority are pretty much kill x mobs and or fedex this to Balin but they sprinkle some really unique ones in there. Just did the "Admonish the Drunken Revelors" in Lothlorien, some otehr unique ones are the one where you toss the stone to distract the giants, sneaking past hungry/nosy hobbits, several involving emotes such as /bow /meditate and /look, ones where you attack a game world object
I miss DAoC
Well the game isn't groundbreaking or outstanding in modern MMO terms, so I see where the OP is coming from. But honestly, with the community, the graphics, lore, and the fun questing bundled into a free to play package, my vote goes towards top 3. Best free to play MMO by far.
#1, Wow still has that strange addictive thing wher everyone can't manage to stay away from it.
#2, EVE still is plain amazing, groundbreaking, and topped with all the pros that LOTRO has.
#3, LOTRO, mostly now because its free. Its a fun game and again, free.
EVE is (as well as WoW and LotRO) a great game, but hardly comparable to the other two games you mention; I cannot see how it has "all the pros that LotRO has": it's too different.
Your list is a bit like the following team sports top three:
1. Football
2. Synchronized Swimming
3. Hockey
But to answer the original poster: the music system is what makes LotRO so good.
Yet all valid points when talking about sports.
Just because the market is broad doesn't mean I can't rank MMOs.
That and EVE should totally be Boxing or Poker in your list. Swimming doesn't do it justice.
I also enjoy the group dynamics. Grouping in WoW is easy and fast, but it always goes down to Tank + 3xDPS + Healer, where its completely irrelevant what actual classes there are involved. And that gets mindnumbingly boring imho. With LotRO it feels like my class matters alot more than just the role i fill. There are things a warden tank can do that are not possible for a guardian and vice versa, it matters if there is a captain, burglar or champion around. And then there are the Conjunctions, which are plain fun and require quick thinking if you don't just always want to do the same.
I also love the class design, both from actual mechanics to the actual feel of class identity you have.
In WoW it lately all blurs together, if your DPS it doesn't really matter if your a Rogue, Fury Warrior, DK or even Warlock. In LotRO if there are 10 mobs that need to be dead asap you want a champion. He is the man you go too if you want to see lots of stuff die, like all at once. Same way with the Hunter and single targets, you want to see big numbers on a single mob? Maybe see a mighty manly tank cry like a little girl because the mob is ignoring him for the guy running around in a green pantyhose? He is the ... umh .. fellow you want.
Same with every class really, class balance is the main reason why i enjoy LotRO so much. Sure story, graphics etc are all important too, but if you don't like the class concept you won't have fun in a game.
I wouldn't call it the best MMO out there. I would say that it is a very well done MMO though with a very well done world. I can't help but feel the PC/NPCs and spell graphics are a bit clunky and out dated but everything else is nicely done. The biggest reason LOTRO is good for me is because of its inherent nature of soothing my OCD disorder.
The deed system is actually pretty cool. Then again, im one of those people that go for as many achievements in WOW as possible. etc.
I see, i was reading the quests in the beginning but since most of them were kill this and get that quests i quit reading them.
The graphics didn't really impress me either, but maybe that's because i've only seen the low level areas, the elven starting area for example was just ugly imo.
Pretty much all games are kill X number of this or gather X number of that. It's how it's presented that makes the game. I'll give you a couple of examples.
Last night I got a quest that on the base of it was kill 16 crows. OK standard kill mission, but the write up from the NPC was how he always felt watched, couldn't move around during daylight without the crows watching and reporting on what he was doing. Reading it you could actually feel this guy was persecuted. Another in the Elf area where you're looking for the guys kid. So you go to his buddy and he says he thinks he's down in this glade. OK since it's a quest hub you grab the other missions available. One is a simple gather wood mission, but the NPC gives you - since you're going down there, how about gathering some wood for the fire. I'd do it but I'm catching some rays, drinking wine and eating cheese. Everything he feeds you just says 'I'm lazy, why don't you do it?'.
It's not the quests themselves (although there are some really good one's), nor is it just the write up's, it's how the whole thing is packaged and presented. If all you do is grab and kill, then you are going to be bored be it this game or the next. But if you take the time to get involved with the game, then that's when it starts to shine.
Graphic's - if you crank some of your settings it really looks like a living, breathing world. Tree's, grasses swaying in the wind, birds flying etc.....
One of the big points I think goes back to something that was really good in the original SWG and that's the ability to do what you want to; play music, fish, farm, craft, explore just what ever. You can play the game how you want to. I've spent whole play sessions just planting and growing pipeweed then giving it away.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
Lotro is great because of the lore, Rp'ing, community,sound, graphics, and the story it follows.
I think its really bad for people to say that LOTRO is good because well now its free. LOTRO was always good. It bugs me that people critique based on that its now free.
It did have its cons. monster play didnt catch on, people found it slow and really it wasent a game that you would race to end game.
The game is very solid. I for one couldn't get into it because, frankly, i found the artdirection to be lacking. Animations are wonky at best, most character modells are ugly as hell and the enviroments, while good technically, lack imagination. Everything is a littel too "by the book"-Fantasy for my taste but then again that's probably the point. It's just not for me.
I am an old school gamer, my first MMORPG was EQ1 and I can tell you I love LOTRO.
I am a new F2P player in LOTRO and I already purchased the boxed MoM expansion. This game is awesome. The strong points for me:
-Beautiful graphics: The landscapes are absolutely gorgeous.
-Interesting and customizable classes.
-Plenty of quests
-Lore
-Mature community.
This is not a PvP game. For some this could be an issue, but honestly in this case I couldn´t care less. This game is making me revive the feeling of exploration and freedom I had with EQ back in the day.
I am very pleased with LOTRO. It´s a very polished product, and with the F2P transition there is plenty of new players like me and veterans returning making an interesting blend. I can see this game has a great future.
I don't understand how an oldschool gamer can see that in LotRO though. There are far too many quests, and 80% of them are junk. I must have gotten the exact same boar quest no less than 14 times before I quit, each making up a boring new reason to have me killing the same reskinned boar model. The only good thing I liked about the quest is that they didn't mark what you needed to kill on your map so you'd have to explore a little, but I believe they "fixed" that didn't they?
The community on the forums is mature, but the community in game it doesn't exist. The entire game focuses on soloing so you never meet anyone and the only time ANYONE groups is for a group quest step. You all grab the quest, run to the instance, kill the boss, then disband without saying a single word usually. And as good as the forum community is now, it used to be much better. Back when LotRO was still a sandbox game called Middle Earth Online, it had, without a doubt, the best online community ever, but Turbine screwed over its loyal fans and most of the fans of MEO left.
The lore is good in some places, but in others its simply butchered. That's what happens when you license an IP. MEO was going to stick a lot closer to the lore, but Turbine decided to axe most of their good ideas when they decided to make LotRO a WoW clone.
The classes are pretty much your standard affair. Maybe they changed this since last I played, but there was nothing customizable about them.
But yes, the graphics are kind of pretty, too bad everything is instanced and linear so it doesn't even remotely feel like a virtual world. It's very clear you're in a GAME.
But that's my rant. It's still better than WoW, but it could have been so much more.
Is this an anthology of other folks's rants collected from these boards? Not much credibility, if any in there.
"too bad everything is instanced" - if anything, this proves you have absolutely no knowledge of this game.
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
No, its a summary of MY experience with the game that I followed since 2003 to release. Back when it was still called Middle Earth Online, back when Turbine was still holding conventions for its fans and interacting with its communities, back when LotRO still had a strong mature community. LotRO's story is a sad one. But sure, if you want to write off all my observations with a simple "nuh uh" go right ahead, but I'm not the one losing credibility.
And yes, a ton of stuff is instanced. I found a random cave once while exploring and it wouldn't let me enter, text appeared saying "You cannot enter here without a quest".
What you have written down is just a clear display of the ignorance you have about LOTRO in its current form. You might have known it during development, that is possible.
But it's story is not a sad one, quite the opposite actually, it's a commercial and critical success as well. YOUR story expecting MEO and not getting it, is the one which is sad. For you
(edited for your edit: yes, there are instances. No, not everything is instanced - pretty far from it, actually.But it's ok. You actually have to play the game to know it.)
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
For me the good parts were:
Graphics
Community