…the free version, to play on Tuesdays when Blizz is doing patches. I had forgotten that the face graphics are better than WoW’s (IMO).
Have any of you done this and how do you like it?
Thanks
Q
Quite a difference since the last time I played it (3 years ago).
Q
I have been a lifetime subscriber since last year, and I enjoy it a lot due to the fact you can play either solo, or go raiding. However, as I’m not in the US, I have to be up in wee hours of the morning to be joined in.
I really, really like the game at the beginning, but after level 60 the quests are getting rather stale. I hope they come up with more interesting twists on quests, but hey, maybe all MMO quests are all this way.
Enjoy the game, Quasimodem!. I can’t quite get my computer to work with this game, and I blame hardware.
I have lots of fun with it. Was playing last night, in fact. I still find it a better game than WoW, but I’m sure some of that is the community. Far fewer…er…Blizzard Kids. Far more respectful adults, overall.
As for the quests, let’s face it, there are only so many things you can do in the average MMO. LotRO still does better than most (Though I hear there’s a ‘throw baby bears out of trees on trampolines’ quest in Cataclysm, which is certainly…uh…innovative.). I’d recommend the game to anyone who finds the “standard” MMO style acceptable, but doesn’t like WoW for other reasons.
If I had to fault the game for anything, it’s that too much of the content is solo, so it’s hard to learn how to group. Sadly, that’s the trend everywhere in MMOs these days. I miss oldschool Everquest sometimes.
Well, I’m in the training phase for my elf and I’m trying to learn strikes. The game wants me to build 2 fervour points with the wild attack and the other one, and I’m not sure how one does that?
Thanks
Q
I gather since you’re talking about Fervor, you’re playing a Champion. First, note the gauge that surrounds the “sword” icon that shows when you’re attacking. Those 5 notches are your fervor points. There are a couple of different ways to get Fervor points:
#1: Just being in the Fervor “toggle stance” (You get it at level 4) adds a point of Fervor every 4 seconds. The Ardor “toggle stance” (level 10) adds one every 9 seconds but has fewer penalties than Fervor stance. Most champions tend to stick with Fervor stance anyway.
#2: Some attacks add fervor points. You start with Swift Strike and Wild Attack, both of which add one fervor point whenever you use them. These are forever going to be your bread and butter for fervor point gain.
#3: There are some other random abilities, such as Battle Frenzy (level 12) that just automatically add some fervor when you hit them.
You then spend fervor points for more powerful attacks, such as Savage Strikes or Brutal strikes. So what you’re going to want to do is:
Toggle on Fervor stance by clicking on it. It’ll become “highlighted” and stay on until you either click it again, click a different stance (Ardor or Glory), or are defeated. Then, once you enter combat, start with a Swift Strikes, then a Wild attack. you should now have at least two points of fervor. Now click on Savage Strikes to launch that attack.
Eh, it was okay for the first 25 levels or so. After that point I learned that the game isn’t finished. I mean yeah, it’s an MMO, and those are always being patched. This is expected and understandable.
The part that bothered me was that it seems the core components to the LOTR world are not yet included. There’s no Mordor, there’s no Gondor/Rohan, and you have to buy an expansion for the Mines of Moria. Other than the Shire, I couldn’t name another section of the LOTR world.
If you are a huge LOTR geek who knows all the backstory it would probably still be okay, but the game world didn’t seem to cater to someone who has only seen the movies once and read the books about 20 years ago (me).
Though for the price it is quite fun.
Airk, thanks for the help! That makes it much more understandable for me!
Q
I’ve been playing it for 6 days. It took me over two to download the program. I had been playing DDO and I decided to try LOTRO now that it went free to play. I’m liking this much better. I can’t be specific, but the the games do play differently.
Don’t forget to sign up for the 100,000 Turbine points give a way contest for LOTRO and DDO if you play either. Each game has a separate contest going.
This a baffling statement to me, since the progression in the game does a lot of tying VERY CLOSELY to the progress of the Fellowship - you shadow their footsteps through a large portion of the game.
As for “the game isn’t finished”… seriously? What do you think they ought to have done? Put in Gondor/Rohan/Mordor/The Shire and left everything in between unfinished? They’re growing the game as resources allow and letting people explore middle earth bit by bit.
I just bought Wednesday’s half price gold cap removal with my turbine points. Otherwise my free account is capped at 2G. Buy the upgrade today with your earned points while it’s half price.
Lots of deals going on this week. Apparently there’s a different half off every day if you need those features.
No, the main quest was quite fun. I’ll give you that. I’m not sure how it ends (or if it ends yet), but since Mordor isn’t in the game I have trouble imagining you get to play the whole story yet.
And yes, I think they should have put in the areas that people who aren’t Uber fans have actually heard of. The start was awesome. I was all running around like “Yeah, I’m in the shire! OMG there’s Bree! I can’t wait to see Helm’s Deep. Heck, I bet there’s even an end-game raid for Mount Doom that is crazy awesome!”
Then I read in the patch notes that the developers were quite proud of adding in some area called Enedwaith. If they are adding in crazy non-core cannon before the main freaking areas of the story, I can’t imagine how long it is going to take them to get to the good parts. “Coming in 2025, the path to Mt. Doom! (Mt. Doom in 2026)”
Enedwaith is one step closer to Rohan, and it is actually a ‘mini-expansion’, not like Moria. While the area is non-core, I feel that it is a good lead up to Isengard (which is coming next year). The game is soon finishing the Two Tower portion.
While the main quest doesn’t cover the route of the Fellowship, a lot of it covers material in the appendix; The quests before Enedwaith is tied in with gathering the rangers to come to Aragorn’s aid after Helm’s Deep, for example. The Mirkwood region deals with Lothlorien taking back Greenwood the Great. The timeline has been accelerated, but nonetheless these are material from the book.
Besides, the broken fan base is another thing to consider. You take one or two year off for a big expansion, they’ll start whining about lack of updates… You do the big attraction, like Rohan or Minas Tirth too soon, they complain about lack of quantity and quality.
I started playing last year (subscription), played for 6 months or so, then quit. I was playing a Guardian but didn’t like it that much. You can soak up the damage but not dish it out so it’s better suited for groups and I mostly played solo.
It did seem nice for a wow style game (I played wow and didn’t like it), but the fact that its in the LOTRO universe puts it a cut above wow in my opinion. The developers really did a good job making Tolkiens world come alive and translating that to a mmo.
I picked it up again a few months ago, after hearing a few people at work say they’ve started playing since it went free to play. This time around I have a champion and hunter (both low 30’s now). I really like both of these classes. The champion can’t take quite as much damage as my guardian but is quite a bit more offense oriented so it works out well. Hunter is even better, being able to pick off enemies from a distance is really cool and I can handle it if I get an add or two.
I really like the way Turbine has implemented the pay to play model. If you get a couple chars going and are dilligent about completing deeds, you can slowly unlock the quest packs and other stuff for free, but you can also use cash to buy points once in a while. You don’t need to spend money every month, just when you want a bunch of points.
Since I had a sub before it went free to play, I have 5 char slots and some other advantages. I am pretty into the crafting system, since you can make nice gear for all your chars even on low levels. You only need 4 chars to cover all the crafting bases, since each crafting profession covers 3 crafts. I have an Armorsmith (prospector, metalsmith, tailor), Woodsman (forester, woodworker, farmer), Historian (scholar, weaponsmith, farmer), and Tinkerer (jeweller, cook, prospector). The historian and tinkerer are 2 chars I haven’t gotten past low level, so I can’t advance their crafting quests. I’ll mail the crafting junk I collect to the chars that can use it, but I’d like to open a shared storage to save on mail costs. I can make any armor of any type, any kind of weapon, crafting tool, class items, and scrolls, all up to artisan level. You don’t NEED to have crafters but they are incredibly useful, save you a ton of money, and actually allow you to make some coin.
It seems to be a lot easier to collect shards now that you can get them from rare monsters. There are unique, named mobs that spawn fairly frequently and seem to always drop a shard. I found a bunch of these while doing slayer deeds and now have something like 5-6 sapphire shards and 10 or 12 ruby shards. The shards are used to make the single use crafting recipes, which give you much better stuff than the regular crafting gear.
The game can be pretty grindy like most mmo’s, but they’ve put in a lot of different stuff to do, there’s always something else to get or accomplish. You can invest some serious time crafting for your chars or the auction house, or take up hobbies like fishing I mostly went solo for a long time, but i’m starting to look for fellowships more now, there’s instances and skirmishes you can do with groups that are a lot of fun. Plus doing deeds and quests is always faster with more people.
What server are you guys on? I play on Elendilmir, if anyone’s on that server let me know.
You didn’t answer my question. HOW should they have put in those areas without the land in between? You can’t complain about something like this and then propose a non-solution.
I guess you didn’t remember Rivendell or the gates of Moria either? I mean, seriously. You played to like level 25 and are depressed that you can’t go raid in Mordor? I just don’t get it.
The developers are adding areas in a way that makes sense. Namely, land that connects to land that is already there. How are you planning to get to Rohan? Via magic teleporter? If the goal is to immerse people in Middle Earth, then sorry, but we need Enedwaith before Rohan. And well, if you read the lore presented in game, you’d even know what was going on there and how it relates to the plot. But you’re complaining based strictly on patch notes. Patch. Notes. On content you haven’t seen, and by the sound of it, don’t even EXPECT to have been able to see. What difference does it make whether there is a Helm’s Deep, if you’re only level 25 and don’t expect to be able to go there anyway?
@Apocalypso - I don’t know if you noticed the existance of “Overpower” while you were on your guardian, but that and a two handed weapon greatly improves the guardian’s damage output while reducing their durability. It’s intended to help them solo. You get it somewhere around level 10.
Well I don’t mean to start a heated debate here, but I’ll do my best to directly answer your question:
It feels like the game is half-done. Those areas should have been in the game well before release. The devs seem very intent on being extremely true to the cannon of the original books, which is admirable. It just seemed… I’m trying to think of the right term… disingenuous on their part. Maybe it is a fault of their marketing rather than the game itself, but everything I read about the game on their website boasted about how I would follow the story of LOTR in MMO form. What they didn’t point out is “Hey, btw, you won’t actually get to finish that story for several years, if ever. But you can finish 1/2 of it, and then come back and play the game some more in a few months to get another chapter in!”.
I was pretty invested in my character by then, at least a solid week or two of play. It pissed me off that I had put in all that time only to learn that what I’d been sold on was half a product.
And to refute what I expect will be the reply: Yes, I realize WoW and other MMO’s have new content patches, and I fully support this. WoW, however, didn’t have its entire plot scripted out decades ago.
But then again, I’m the type who won’t read a book series or watch a TV series until they are complete and I can power through them in one go. So that may be where we are having the disagreement.
The alternative, I suppose, is to go play WoW which doesn’t really have a story at all. 
You make the call.
I don’t see how it’s in any way disingenuous - did they say anywhere that it was “Shire to Mordor” or something? I mean, the name of the original game was “Shadows of Angmar” which might give some clues about what’s involved. “Mines of Moria” DEFINITELY does, etc.
Dunno. Maybe it’s just your compulsive desire to have things ‘finished’ before you start them. 
You two don’t have me fooled for a minute! 
Thanks
Q
Uh. okay.
Anyway, implementing all of Middle Earth at launch and with the level of scale and detail present in the game at the moment would have been completely technically unfeasible. The game would probably have an expected launch date of sometime early next year, and wouldn’t contain all the tuning and adjustments that’ve been made as a result of having actually been played by people for a while now.
Anywhichway, it’s a lot more intriguing to proceed towards Mordor over time than it is to go there at launch and then try to get excited for anything afterwards. From a game design and business perspective, it just wouldn’t have worked to include the obvious “end” of the game…with launch. Not if you wanted to ever get any mileage out of the game. What would you have released as an expansion? “Now! More deadly than Mordor… FORDOR!” … no. 
So… regrets to those of you who may be disappointed, but it wasn’t going to happen any other way. It’s still a great game.