Lord of the Rings Online - Developer Dismisses the Idea of LOTRO Classic

System · August 2020

Lord of the Rings Online - Developer Dismisses the Idea of LOTRO Classic

Over the past several years the return of Legacy, or Classic, servers have been on the rise. In the case of Lord of the Rings Online in a response to a thread looking for an alternative LOTRO experience was responded to by a developer questioning whether players truly wanted an experience of the past, bugs and all.

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6stack_Chris · August 2020

Reminds me EXACTLY what Blizzard said for Classic, exclaiming that the players don't really want something they are asking for. Yes, bugs are/were the thing, but even WoW picked the "most stable" build of the game and time-gated the content. I'm confident that if the LoTRO team really wanted to do the same they could. Hell even I would give it a good old retry at that point, I love release LOTRO.

Sovrath · August 2020

6stack_Chris said:

Reminds me EXACTLY what Blizzard said for Classic, exclaiming that the players don't really want something they are asking for. Yes, bugs are/were the thing, but even WoW picked the "most stable" build of the game and time-gated the content. I'm confident that if the LoTRO team really wanted to do the same they could. Hell even I would give it a good old retry at that point, I love release LOTRO.

I think there is more to it than that.

I saw that dev post yesterday and it was just an off remark to that particular thread. I do believe they said something a while back to the effect that they don't have a decent build for an older game at their disposal and that it wouldn't run on the hardware they use today.

Additionally, you are assuming that "early turbine" had the same developer habits as Blizzard and that they documented the heck out of everything. I suspect they didn't.

Lastly, are you also suggesting that the now Standing Stone games has the financial resources of Blizzard that they can invest in this? I suspect they don't.

Obviously, this is my limited understanding of things I have read and I would love to hear from someone who knows all this in better detail.

Sovrath · August 2020

xD_Gaming said:

I thought they did a classic server already ?

The classic server is about "content" but not about the old systems.

MD24 · August 2020

This game is getting more and more like an retirement village. Too many old F*8ts and desperate lonely house wife in this game is the MAIN problem!

Ungood · August 2020

MD24 said:

This game is getting more and more like an retirement village. Too many old F*8ts and desperate lonely house wife in this game is the MAIN problem!

and here I thought the lag and instability where the main problems.

Sovrath · August 2020

Rhoklaw said:

They've already done progression servers, so what exactly is classic? Going back to the original combat system? It was interesting before legendaries and trying to create high damage combos with your group. However, I don't feel the changes are as drastic as say EQ or SWG. I played on the most recent progression server and had a blast. I love classic servers if classic was truly significantly different, but I just dont feel that with LOTRO.

They are looking for old systems. The current "classic" server(s) are really just progression servers but with all the new bells and whistles and changes to classes.

tankrd · August 2020

Go play Pac-Man if you want old school crap.

Vorthanion · August 2020

I wouldn't want to play either versions of this game. The cash shop is so utterly invasive and immersion breaking.

Esherdon · August 2020

I would love to play the pre cash shop version of this game again. Back than it was amazing.

FrodoFragins · August 2020

Their legendary servers were a lazy cash grab. It was with the current client and systems. They never even bothered to rebalance lower leveled items that were broken after the major overhauls. They've been rushing through expansions and this is likely because they want to get players to level 100 where they can sell LI boosts and such.

They don't have the money or skills to do it honestly. People that actually still like the game are pretty lucky that it wasn't shut down.

DobbySocks · August 2020

They said during a live stream promoting their legendary servers that they do not even have the original game data to release a vanilla Shadows of Angmar even if they wanted to. So they can say they don't want to, but it's really because they can't. The game now is 90% different than it was at launch and they just made the legendary servers level gated, which was no fun and the content was too easy. That being said it's still a really fun game and have played since beta

DobbySocks · August 2020

Rhoklaw said:

They've already done progression servers, so what exactly is classic? Going back to the original combat system? It was interesting before legendaries and trying to create high damage combos with your group. However, I don't feel the changes are as drastic as say EQ or SWG. I played on the most recent progression server and had a blast. I love classic servers if classic was truly significantly different, but I just dont feel that with LOTRO.

The way we trait. Many class roles have changed since vanilla. No wardens, RKs or Beornings. A more sense of discovery. Stat changes. Higher difficulty at lower levels. Longer and more challenging instances. Different skill mechanics. Major crafting differences. There is a lot of drastic changes.

DobbySocks · August 2020

Esherdon said:

I would love to play the pre cash shop version of this game again. Back than it was amazing.

Exactly!

DobbySocks · August 2020

xD_Gaming said:

I thought they did a classic server already ?

No. It's a legendary server. No changes, just a level gated clone of the level 130 servers.

Albatroes · August 2020

Isn't their team already in a bare-bones state as is (I think they had layoffs recently?). It kind of makes sense if they don't because even Blizzard had to have entire low-man team devoted to it and still took a couple of years. Just take the legendary servers and be happy. Hell, I'd take 'legendary' servers for FFXI with the 75 cap at this stage keeping all the recent class changes, as long as it was official. I've been desperate enough to try some private servers, but I still can't get into them. I need something official otherwise it just feels like a waste of my time.

Scot · August 2020

DobbySocks said:

They said during a live stream promoting their legendary servers that they do not even have the original game data to release a vanilla Shadows of Angmar even if they wanted to. So they can say they don't want to, but it's really because they can't. The game now is 90% different than it was at launch and they just made the legendary servers level gated, which was no fun and the content was too easy. That being said it's still a really fun game and have played since beta

Welcome to the forums!

Orthelian · August 2020

They have such a skeleton crew at Standing Stone I'm not surprised about any statement nixing anything more than patches and events.

It's sad, because I really think they did the setting justice better than Amazon conceivably could. I'm cringing in my boots every day over the prospect of that one.

cameltosis · August 2020

If they released a classic server (shadows of angmar, preferably just before moria released, so we had all the content), then I'd join up immediately.

SoA time period was just the absolute best for the game, I had an absolute blast.

The main things I miss from that time period:

No trait-tree bonuses. This allowed total freedom in how you built your class, rather than being "forced" down specific trait trees due to overpowered bonuses.
Horizontal Progression at endgame - crit-crafted gear, helegrod and rift raid sets, as well as PvP gear, were all roughly equivalent. This dramatically lowered the barrier to entry for endgame, resulting in a huge endgame population. The switched to tiered gear in Moria killed off ~50% of the endgame community on my server.
Stronger group-focus to the game. there were group quests and dungeons everywhere, starting at level 3. At launch, you couldn't hit the cap without doing lots of group content (or grinding mobs for days). This resulted in a community that was "trained" to work together. PUGs were common, polite, and successful, because everyone was used to grouping up. This ethos started changing during SoA when they added more solo zones (forochel, evendim) and revamped existing zones. Moria then got rid of it completely, relegating group content only to endgame.
It had the best raid: The Rift of Nurz Ghashu. Pretty good mechanics, great setting, some cool bosses, and the best armour sets the game has ever had. Has to be played on-level with original mechanics to experience it properly.
PvP was way better. Mechanically the same, but the community actually had good reasons to go there and to engage in the Delving of Fror. Loads of PvEers would come and join in because the PvP gear (due to horizontal progression) was just as good as the raid sets. From Moria onwards, this was no longer true, so PvP shrunk to just diehards.

I actually miss the very original crafting system, which includes having to hunt down / camp rare spawns for rare mats. When I first hit level 50, I spent a lot of time hunting these rare spawns with a hunter friend, partly as I needed mats for myself, partly to sell for money. This was a fun activity for me.

However, devs decided such a system was a bit too restrictive, which is when they introduced beryl shards. Gone were all the rare mats, replaced with just a single item (beryl shards) which dropped from the rare spawns, but also randomly from pretty much anything. That change completely killed off a playstyle I enjoyed, whilst also making crafting much easier due to sheer amount of mats now available.

That original crafting system was replaced before the Rift raid was released, as well as before the Delving of Fror pvp zone was released. I'd rather have the raid and pvp than the crafting.

cameltosis · August 2020

Oh, also really miss the original implementation of the Old Forest.

No map, elite-level enemies that looked exactly like trees, and quests that you needed to do. It was a dangerous place, exciting to explore. I was really proud of myself when I finally managed to memorise the layout, had a lot of fun with PUGs as I guided them around the place.

It was a real shame when they added the map, nerfed the enemies and removed a few of the quests.

Same can be said for a lot of the instances, like Fornost, Carn Dum etc. Whilst they remained good for a few expansions, once skirmishes were introduced, they started splitting them up into "manageable" chunks and nerfing the content. I know not many people these days have the patience for a 4 hour dungeon crawl, but I loved them. Additionally, whilst a full clear took hours, they were designed in a non-linear way, so you could enter, do a bit of the dungeon for a quest, then leave. Next day, you could skip that section if you wanted, and just do the next bit.

Po_gg · August 2020

Well said camel... the old Old Forest was spot-on.

I'd debate on the old crafting's crit part, spawn camping ain't a fun activity on the long run. Maybe mixed in with the current open tapping it'd be fine.

Do miss though the crafting progression and the quests, was much better than the current iteration where you can just stand in the crafting hall and advance in your craft.

(with that said, I do have a couple of low-level crafting alts parked at their workstations

)

Game was much different then. I've said a bunch of times already how I've shelved my mini after Orion, my captain after the trait trees, probably will do my guard too now, with this latest nerf due to dumb pvp whine on a short-lived temporary pvp server...

The "old bugs" is just a cop-out however. I'm fairly certain they don't have the old code anymore so they couldn't launch a vanilla server even if they wanted to.

There were way too many changes over the 13 years, and as the recent downtimes presented they can't even keep their current code within the green...

But there's a bigger hurdle, the monetisation. Even if they had a fully working, on the fly vanilla server which only waits for a simple flip of a switch - why would they do it?

No cash shop there, the content everyone has already, the only income from it would be the subscription, which the current nostalgia-filled players (on the two legendary servers) already pay.

Probably there would be some returning players as well, but far not enough to justify for them the extra work on a new (old) server, which is vastly different from the live ones and probably would need designated staff to run.

(plus, as I said I believe they don't even have the code the first place)

Pointing at "unfixing" 13 years old bugs was a clever pull though, sure MoL is a good writer so it's the least you can expect from him

Cuddleheart · August 2020

I wish they would, at the very least, make a VIP only server with no P2W cash shop. I preferred the newer systems because it at least gives the illusion of choice. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to when Guardians and Minis only had one stance - rough going. PvP was pretty bad in the beginning as well - It took almost a year to get the first blue map. Then it was non-stop one side dominating the other for a long time. Everything was group content too. Once the initial wave of players gets through the early stuff, good luck starting late and finishing your books.

Ya, I'll just take a no cash shop server, please and thank you.

Sovrath · August 2020

Po_gg said:

The "old bugs" is just a cop-out however. I'm fairly certain they don't have the old code anymore so they couldn't launch a vanilla server even if they wanted to.

They aren't saying "we can't have an early server because of old bugs. They are offering the idea that if they were (if they "could") have an old server then all those old bugs and issues would be there.

However, you are correct, they can't have an early server because it seems they don't have the code.

Scot · August 2020

The only thing the really did that I disliked was changing the combat system and making the cash shop a money raking exercise. But since I left the level of easy mode may have also become more than tiresome.

kitarad · August 2020

Didn't Blizzard say the same thing but lo and behold we got a classic from them

lahnmir · August 2020

kitarad said:

Didn't Blizzard say the same thing but lo and behold we got a classic from them

Those loose coins that fell out of Blizzards pocket while they were laughing their way to the bank? Thats LotROs entire budget. They haven’t got the original client nor the money to make it happen/ rebuild it.

I would play though, OG Loremaster is the best class ever.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

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Lord of the Rings Online - Developer Dismisses the Idea of LOTRO Classic

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Lord of the Rings Online - Developer Dismisses the Idea of LOTRO Classic

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