Why should I leave Vanguard for LOTRO?Follow

/handstand is easily my favorite emote ever.

Yeah, been watching this a bit too, along with Warhammer, though have sworn off other games for a bit.

Geesh, MMORPG's go mainstream and we have TOO many choices.

You mean like this one other games dance animations?....?

I have to agree with others about the LotRO character models, and the gear appearance also. The characters look ok, but compared to the environment they look out of place. As far as the gear... even heavy armor looks like it's made of cloth. Metal doesn't look like it's metal. Chain mail looks like long underwear. I had this conversation with a minstrel friend the other day, and when I mentioned that heavy armor looks like cloth, he said "Does it? I don't think I've ever actually seen any heavy armor." I pointed out that I was decked head-to-toe in heavy armor, and we both laughed since there's virtually no difference in appearance between the 3 types of armor and he couldn't tell what I had on.

So yeah, they need to do a waaaaaay better job on gear appearances, and better looking character models wouldn't hurt either. Don't get me wrong, the game environment almost makes up for it, but every now and then I find myself shaking my head at how bad the gear looks.

I would beg to differ.

While its all in the eye of the beholder when it comes to aesthetics, I think heavy armour looks like heavy armour. Whilst light armour looks a lot like light armour.

I would suggest playing at higher resolutions (if possible) before critisizing the the eye-candy.

That said, I came from EQ where even with the later models, things still looked pretty crap.

While i agree that Vanguard looks fantastic, just like in real life, its more satisfying to witness a beautiful view with someone, than it is to see it alone and have to try and describe it to someone who wasnt there.

Here's Jophiel on horseback with super-dramatic GroundCam action. I dunno.. my scale armored legs look like scale armor, my chainmail tunic looks like chainmail, my plate shoulders look like metal plate and my gloves look like heavy green leather with red "bracers".

An even better armor view is my old breastplate which, up close, looks like hardened leather with steel reinforcements riveted onto it and hung over a lighter leather jerkin. A linen shift under than and you can see the edge of my leather gloves. Detailed and certainly more realistic than the "tin can" look.

Here's a little bit of Rivendell which everyone is always ga-ga over.

None of this is likely to convince anyone of anything. I'm just saying why I always shrug when I hear these Vanguard/LoTRO character model comparisons. I can't speak at all about the animations, having never played V:SoH.

All of this reminds me that I need to shoot some pictures of my Weaver

The default is My Documents -> Lord of the Rings Online

Even with those screenshots a lot of it still looks cloth-like to me. And btw I run at 1920x1200, and *everything* is cranked up to max (Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS ftw) so it's not a question of running in low resolution or with the graphics options on low.

Anyway, to contrast this screenshot gives me way more of an impression that it's actually armor as opposed to something you'd wear for pajamas. Again don't get me wrong, LotRO is a fantastic game and I enjoy it immensely, I just think the models and gear don't look so hot.

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2007/023/927504_20070124_screen011.jpg

The bronze on the scale mail actually looks like bronze. It looks like there's metal in the belt. The helm looks nice and metallic like. It all looks appropriate. The only thing on the LotRO screenshot that looks remotely like metal are the shoulder guards, and they look more like glass than metal (the red part anyway.) I dunno what it is about the LotRO gear that consistently gives me that impression, perhaps it's the lack of proper specular highlighting, or the palette... hard to put it into words. The gear just looks more like cloth than metal armor.

*Shrug* I don't know what to tell you then. It looks obviously like heavy armor to me but, well, I can't make you see what you can't see.

On the other hand, this gives me a chance to have you all gaze upon the wonder of Ceria!

Yup. That's my weaver, Ceria.Well, it's a war between the Free People and the minions of Angmar so I don't need too much justification to kill the invading Freeps

PvMP is in a single zone devoted to it so anyone entering knows what they're getting into. More like the WoW battlegrounds than the random gankfest of the EQ PvP servers.As you progress in ranks, more skins open up to you. But you can't randomly color yourself or pick weapons or anything.

Wow just wanted to commend everyone in this thread. Usually when I see posts like these comparing one game to another it becomes a flame war at some point but this has been a very mature discussion. For someone like me who is getting burnt out on WoW and seeking something new this has been very helpful. Hats off to all.