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Lord of the Rings Online: Returning to LOTRO Part 2
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In the second installment of Phil James's "Returning to LOTRO" articles, he details his experiences trying to level his 'toon up to 40. Along the way, Phil talks about the incredible amount of lore in the game, particularly for those who are familiar with the books and movies. Check out Phil's latest adventures in Returning to LOTRO Part 2.
I’m into my second week of LotRO. Having tried out a couple of alts and the revamped starting areas, I’ve settled down and returned to my old main character. I started out this month at level 35 and decided to make level 40 my goal for the week. The reason is that the lands I’m stomping around aren’t holding a lot of interest for me. As a newbie, I started out in The Shire, which I loved. Then I moved on to Bree-Land, which was pretty enjoyable. The reason I like these areas is that they are fairly well covered in the books and films. It brings out the geek in me to take in the sights and visit NPCs from the source material.
Read more Returning to LOTRO Part 2.
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Comments
Great review. From someone who's suffering from WoW burnout, Aion pre-2.0 angst, and SWTOR desolation going to LOTRO was not only a blast from the past MMOs, but also a breath of fresh air that MMOs are catching up to Direct X 10, and 11. I also like the original feel it has which I got from Aion also. It seems some other games like to take ideas from these games and patch them into theirs which only ruins theirs, and gives everyone only a taste of what a good game is suppose to be like.
Mhmmm
You forgot the T in Trolls
LoTRO is one of those games that is fun. So is Fallen Earth. Unfortunately, my atttention cannot be held to both for long periods of time as both games are epically awesome in their own ways.
Like the review agree with it on every part. One thing that bothers me with LOTRO
I just wish they had WoW's dungeon finder utility.
This goes for any MMO out or coming out. You want us to group up and work together. Yea we can all stand around in one town and spam LFG. Or we can create a chat channel that is server wide (only for it to be taken over by spammers and trolls) to LFG.
But its alot more enjoyable to push a couple of buttons choose what role I can fill, what content I am looking for and keep on mining ore for my next lvl in crafting.
Before ya say it. I agree with finding a good guild is a great soluting to grouping. But---
I don't wanna find a Guild and wait for every first Tuesday after the first Sunday to run Barrow's nite.
Other than that this game is pretty damn enjoyable.
There is only one opinion that matters.
Nice follow up good to see the mention of the population issues too because it has come up in forums a few times lately, for the record as I know it Trollshaws seems to be a bit less populated than manyo f the zones around it's level like Evendim but yeah op is right in that many of the areas you won't see much chatting going on but don't mistake it to mean you are playing alone Bree and the other major cities are always very crowded and even though I tend to solo alot in mmorpgs I have never had trouble finding a group to do something when I wanted to do it.
Good to see an article that does well in capturing some of the things I like about LOTRO.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Apparently according to friends in game they do have something similar to the dungeon finder utility now . I don't know too much about it as I yet to use it but I gather it works in a similar way in that you get transported to the instance etc .
Phil. You're missing a lot...forgot which server you are on, but on Gladden few use the 'standard' chat channels especailly now as we have a lot of 'new' players who bring chat ediquette from their previous games (like folks debating politics on the advice channel!). Use GLFF (global looking for fellowship), regional, alliance channels (kin group channels but anyone can access), etc. These are constantly buzzing. You are 35...so skirmish. These are instana object based missions - and the same interface allows dungeon crawls too, but most advertise on GLFF for joins. Mnay in LOTRO are solo'ing, but one of the social aspects I like about LOTRO (somewhat diminshed by the new unfamaliar players) is if you see someone where you are TELL them and ask what they are doing...temp grouping is common and easy.
I've discovered the skirmishes this week. I'm not quite racing through them yet, but I am having a blast with them. Such a great and unique addition to the game.
Yeah I've been doing a few typos recently (or should that be ypos?). Normally my wife reads them after I'm done, but she has been upping her fee so expect more speeling errors in future.
If it was not for GLFF I would think that the server was empty also but on brandywine you can find 200-600 people logged into the GLFF channel at every hour of the day. Lower level people tend to hang around Bree (1-50), while the higher level players (50-65) gather in the 21st hall in Moria. Because of the new dynamic layers it might also not seem like there are a lot of people around you but there might be more on other layers.
"Onward to adventure".
Edgar F Greenwood
I benifited from the task board alot. That was a good move turbine. I leveled alot with skirmish its a blast . Like i said before, i hope they upgrade the Ah and form some kind of economy. I love to craft, but its useless if i cant make a profit.
Edgar F Greenwood
Like the review agree with it on every part. One thing that bothers me with LOTRO
http://www.acai.org
You found things a bit quiet? That may be down to your server, time zone or the fact Lotro now has instances nearly every where. Instances were a mistake, they just help to fragment the player base, you hardly hear about lag in game so it seemed a pointless move to me.
I've seen more lag with the dynamic layers than I did previous. Makes me want to avoid the AH in South Bree (the laggiest of the places).
As for tasks, I can do without them. The level range on them is very narrow, and the rep rewards are certainly gainable elsewhere.
Aurora, 4x Gaming
Great job on the review again. Lotro has always done a good job of staying original and having a solid fanbase so Im glad to see the OP is enjoying the game.
The dungeon finder thing is a tab on the skirmish join panel.
You need to check your GPU then because the only thing layers would affect is RP events, definitely not latency issues.
Thats correct, you don't have to run to the entrance any longer, also you can pick levels of the instance.
Once you hit the correct level the dungeon opens up on your skirmish panel (in its on tab). From that level on you can do that instance. Then adjust the level of mobs to your suiting. They also added daily quests to all of the dungeons. Basically increasing skirmish marks. Its a great system, I still play the game myself.
The only problem is finding a group. Your forced to spam a chat channel. The GLFF (Global Looking For Fellow) chat has been taken over by trolls. The regular LFF (looking for fellow) chat channels are restricted to zones. Thats a huge choke point as a lot of people potentially interested in doing a instance or skirmish may not be questing in that area. Most people looking to do group content are standing around in Bree spamming the LFF in that area.
There is a Looking for Fellowship Panel in the social options. They made finding adding quests you have a little easier to add to that, most people don't use it though. With the new instance changes there is not easy way to add those in.
There is only one opinion that matters.
Good review of your experience, I'm glad you shared some of those fine point about this great game!
One thing I think you posted was that the task quests require humanoid mob drops, but that's not always the case; the requested objects are just bottom-tier mob drops from various local critters (things that were previously just vendor trash). This is, indeed, a great addition to the game for reputation grinding; especially while you're already out there killing anyways. Not to mention, they are great XP when turned-in. The only drawback is that there is a limit to how many you can turn in in a day and I believe that number is about 5 (not exactly sure about that number though).
A skirmish (an instanced battle) can be joined just like WoW's dungeon finder system. I've been in a few at level 45 or so and I found that they were quite challenging and very fun.
The environments in LOTRO are amazing, but mainly because they maintain a high level of realism. The colors and proportions for objects are based on real objects in "our" world for the most part, so it makes everything that much more palatable/enjoyable as you ride from area to area. As you discover new areas and move around, it only gets better. The more I explore the more things I find that I truly enjoy, so get out there; there are always 2 or 3 zones to explore at every level range, a great consideration on Turbine's part.
In my experience, the game has always had good population numbers, but after it went F2P my profits from the Action House have sky-rocketed. Plus, the Auction House itself is more packed, as are the Stable-Master locations . . . much moreso than before. The numbers are way up even if they aren't as packed solid as some WoW servers likely are.
Better yet, I can't seem to get enough of the events. The Yule Festival is up and the new zone, Winter-Home, is very fun. Last event, Harvestmath (sp?), was an absolute blast as well. For the first time . . . well, ever, I completely stopped leveling and delved head-long into the event. I likely won't stop until I have every event reward and then some (I'm only missing the Yule yard flags at this point).
By the way, there are files that you can download that will play songs FOR you through slash "/" commands in LOTRO (a great/unique-ish feature of the game). I believe the site is lotro-abc [dot] com, and it has a bunch of .abc files for you to download and play with your in-game instrument. Just equip your instrument, type /music, then type /play creep_radiohead.abc and if that file is in your My DocumentsLOTROMusic folder on your hard drive, you'll start playing that song (folder locations may vary). If you get a couple people together, get them to download the various parts for their instruments (if the song has been broken apart by instrument), adjust the audio options to match music timings and play together! VIOLA!
In any case, keep at it, Middle-Earth offers both would-be and veteran MMORPGers a solid, fun experience all-around.
Great review, thanks.
I played lotro on release and return from time to time to check it out, but for some reason it never holds my interest for long. I think it is to do with character models and animations and motion; they just never feel quite right for me. Shame, because in other respects, I really enjoy the game and the community is one of the better ones.
Wow, talk about not caring about your work.. dude, you still dont have a T in front of Trolls... hit CTR-F and search for rolls,,, you will see what I mean.