I played LOTRO from beta through Lothlorien. Then I tired a bit and played SWTOR start until about a year ago or so. When I got generally tired of MMORPGs (Hell I had been playing one or another constantly since EQ beta).
I’m starting to get the itch again, and think I will jump into LOTRO or SWTOR again. But I’m curious how the free-to-play thing works. And how is solo these days? I doubt my friends are around anymore either, so it will be me against the world most of the time most likely. I’ve never been much of a raid guy, I don’t need that kind of pressure and tension in my relax time.
I haven’t logged into SWTOR since before it went free, but a friend of mine did. He said it’s the absolute worst example of a free-to-play game he’s ever seen, with literally everything requiring a microtransaction of one kind of another.
I’m mainly biding my time until the Elder Scrolls MMO drops.
Give Guild Wars 2 a try, I am enjoying it when I am well enough to sit at my desk. You can solo, you can join a guild, and you can have the fun of zerging a boss without having to formally join a group or raid, just be at the right place and time for a spawn with enough people and have at it. There are dungeons you do need to be in a group for, but I have one toon that I have brought all the way to 80 before bothering to join a guild. It has PVP, it has world vs world, and you can even guest on a different server if you want to double the boss loot [you can only jump servers like once in 8 or 12 or 24 hours or something, I have only done it once and was going away for the weekend and it was 3 days later when I played again on my home server- but you can do a PVP that is against a differnt server which can be sort of fun.] It does have holiday events and pretty much every month there is some special event going. I just finished the Tower of Nightmares last week, and now is a Christmas sort of based one, something about a toymaker but I haven’t been well enough to be able to log in to start it.]
Buy the game and it is free to play, though you can buy gems to use in a store, or to sell to get gold but you can also use game earned gold to buy gems to use in the store.
Only for extras. You can still play all the content up through level 50 (I think the expansion to 55 is still only available for sale, but could be wrong), but pay items get you convenience options like earlier speeder training, faster xp gain, etc.
I have no problems soloing in SWTOR; you get a companion at level 10 or earlier, and that helps tremendously.
Yeah, keep in mind there are three “tiers” in SWTOR. Subscribers, preferred, and free. If you were ever a subscriber, or if you spend some about of money as a free player, you become preferred. Completely free players who’ve never spent any money at all are considerably more restricted, but what do you expect for being completely free?
The problem I had with SWTOR was mainly a lack of convenience options. I know how people like to gripe about WoW’s like of group quests and stuff, but really, while “this is an MMO, get a GROUP” sounds great in theory, running around for an hour looking for a tank in a lowbie zone kind of ruins it.
I’ve been a subscriber to LOTRO for years and have several friends who are subscribers or free-to-play.
It is perfectly possible to play through the game without paying a cent. (You are just limited in stuff like storage space, maximum currency held and bonuses reserved for subscribers.)
There are regular expansions to LOTRO (recent ones include East Rohan + Helm’s Deep) and the level limit goes up too (currently 95.)
As a Solo player, I can complete around 95% of the content (just skipping Fellowship Quests and Raids.)
I find the game immensely enjoyable and the designers are clearly true Tolkien fans.
There are 9 classes (and 4 races) to try, each with a distinct flavour and playing style.