ZAM's Lord of the Rings ContestFollow

Hello everyone,

Lord of the Rings online had me for a while. I played a hunter up to level 50 when the game first came out. I tried a few of the other class race combinations up to around mid 20's and I had 5 characters in all. I left the game due to the Lack of interesting or variable End Content options for me. I either had to spend 8 hours a day waiting and running Raids .. and then HOPE to get the ONE drop of a Random drop Item out of a huge group of people. Over and over again the Item I needed to aquire was not dropped by the end boss or the mini bosses along the way .. and When it did drop ONE time ... I did not earn the item.

I also got very bored camping mobs for my end level Items that had to be made out of special Items that dropped off of a certain Named mob and then it was only a chance to drop .. the list goes on. I felt too that as I gained levels my options got narrower and narrower as to where I could go and get quests and interesting things to do and see.

In the begining levels.. there were 4 areas to explore and quest in .. if I did not like Hobbit Land I could go do same level quests in the land Of MEN .. if that got boring I could head out to the Elf/dwarf area and pick up new and interesting quests. and then there was always Other areas that would offer quests of the same level. That dwindled out as we got older ... SADDLY .. very saddly. it was like they spent all their time making quests and enjoymemt for the early levels then went OH CRAPPO we are out of time to release this game .. and pushed it out the door with a few quests and very little new areas for the higher levels to explore and gain expieriance.

Those were the early days and what I can remember ... Having said all that .. I did raise a Hunter up to level 50 .. highest possible at that time .. SO I DID LOVE the game ....

I am back now .. not playing that same server .. and saddly the cost of transfering the pixels that make him up is not even in line .. 25 dollars to transfer a character ? wow .. get real here. SO I am starting over and having a blast. I like the new farming and cooking .. I like the new equipment and lots of what they have done with the game. I think the End Game equipment is even the way it should have been at launch .. I hope that Raid/endgame dungeons /instances are not as long and arduous as they once were .. Time will tell when I goet someone up that high to try them.

All in all I am happy to be back and enjoy my time in Middle earth much more then I did before.

I have been playing mmorpg's for many years, many different ones, and I've loved some aspects of each one. I passed on the beta on LOTRO and after playing for over 2 months now I can just kick myself. The quest content is wonderful. No need to grind a level unless you want to. The Moria instances are just a joy to play. They have just the right abount of toughness without being a total nightmare. The crafting system is great. I've become a craft-a-holic and i've never really liked crafting before. I don't have a super duper computer but mine can handle LOTRO on high without any problems. The graphics are really nice, mob content is great. I find myself watching the clock at work and having problems waiting for LOTRO time. This is a really fun game and I can see myself playing it for a long time to come.

I have what some intellectual people in their educated circles might call an "addiction" to MMORPGs in general, but no "addiction" as been quite as long-lasting or endearing as my love affair with LOTRO. The reasons for this are many, mostly being based on my love of the lore of Tolkein. I truly love that LOTRO is based on the books and not the movies (quite so much as other games).

The areas are huge, vast and explorable. WoW has too many areas that look same ol' same ol' all the way from one end to the other of the world. LOTRO always offers something worth looking at and I love that.

I like and dislike the crafting system. Crafting is a little more expansive and I love that I have tons of options of what I can do, what I dislike is the dependancy on other crafters specialties to make stuff.

LOTRO has some great support from Turbine, I loved DDO for many many moons and feel that Turbine will continue making LOTRO awesome.

~Bitter Rizard

I truely love this game. Being a huge MMo fan I've played them all, and the biggest selling point for me when i first heard about this game, was the option to become a lifetime member right off the bat. No more paying month to month and worrying about if i was going to have enough after bills and rent in order to play a fantastic game. The game's enviroment is so rich and full of life. Ever place you visit in LOTRO is like walking thru the LOTR books.

Another thing that i adore about this particular game is the role playing factor, at any point in time you can cut loose for a while and just play your character around other people who enjoy doing the same thing. If you're tired of getting snow-jobbed by Blizzard this is the game for you.

I have been playing LOTRO since launch. First of all, I think the game is just beautiful. I love to explore all the parts of a zone I can get to and I just keeping thinking about how good the game looks. Now that I got into Moria I was stunned all over again with the attention to detail. And I play on medium graphics!

Content, play mechanics, and crafting are some of the best I've ever come across. I have played EQ, EQ2, Dark Age of Camelot, and WOW so I have past games to compare to. I am a really casual gamer and I like the fact that this game caters to my type of playstyle. It's nice to be able to log on and actually accomplish something even if I only have a relatively short time to play.

I could go on but if anyone reads this I'm sure they know I like this game! [poll]
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For me the reason to play LoTR is the immersion created by the story. Plenty of games have compelling gameplay, or great visuals, but most lack story to pull you in.

One plays MMOS for community (in theory) so once a game with a story this good, reveals a community this committed it is impossible for a gamer like me to ignore.

That said, the gameplay is exceptional, as are the visuals. Put those facets on the same gem with LoTRO's community and immersion and you have a priceless game.

I have plowed through various MMORPGs throughout the past 11 years, ranging from Everquest 1 and 2, City of Heroes, Anarchy Online, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, and others. Through all of these games, I have not had nearly as much fun nor been drawn into a game as I have in the recent, single month playing Lord of the Rings Online. Not only are the environmental graphics exhilierating, but the ease of play and dynamics of the playable races and classes are mesmerizing. Unlike the other games listed above, I actually find myself thinking on the drive to job sites which deeds I am interested in accomplishing, what towns I should visit next for quests, and how many of the next tier resource I will have to harvest to gain my mastery of the next crafting tier. I am anxious to get home and log on to the game to continue my adventures throughout Middle-Earth. I look forward to chatting with and gaining information from the community of players LotRO has attrated who are more helpful than any I have come across, not to mention just down-right polite. Needless to say, I will be playing LotRO for many years to come and will not consider subscribing to any others until I have had my fill of this beautiful and adventurous world.

Thank you for creating such a whimsical and involving area of cyber-space.

Your fan and player,

Eric Wilhelm

AKA Slyblighte

I remember how excited I was to hear that there was going to be an MMORPG based on Tolkien's fantastic Lord of the Rings series. I kept up with all of the media releases for the game from the mechanics, all the way to the mapping system. I knew that this was going to knock the bigger MMO's off their rocker.

Well, the release came and to everybody, the general consensus was: "It's o.k". O.k?! Are you kidding? I played other major competitor's MMO's for years, and here comes something that I thought was different. (In a good way of course). I sat back and took a real hard look at how this game was really different and why it felt so good to play it. Being heavily involved with the "other game", it took no time at all to understand where these great vibes were coming from. It was coming from not having to be bound by monotonous tasks.

I really felt like I was exploring! And what do you know? I honestly wanted to read the quests! How bout' that? I was enthralled with the story right away. To be able to go "behind the scenes" of one of the greatest stories ever told was awesome to me. This game, when looked upon by individuals with gaming integrity, can be considered to be one of the most entertaining to play. Let's look at some of the key points here compared to the "other games":

1.) I actually want to play!
2.) The story really goes somewhere.
3.) The game mechanics are fluid and easy to pick up.
4.) Community infrastructure is friendly and informational.
5.) The game stays pretty much the same. No frequent "Nerfs" and game changes. (Compared to the other games)
6.) The music score is phenomenal. The sounds are very well done.

The list can go on. I think that Turbine really does a great job at putting you in the driver seat of an adventure that you won't soon forget. Call that cheesy, but it's true. When you can chat with friends out of game and talk about cool plot twists and adventures you have done, you know you're playing a great game. People who are playing other MMO's and are sucked into a life-leeching time vortex, may eventually see the light and saddle up on this horse. I, for one and obviously, give this a 10/10.

Keep it up Turbine! And thank you ZAM for presenting this soap box! Always appreciated.

-Razohr

I started playing Lotro earlier this year, and I have come to really like the game and the community. I'm an old time veteran of mmos, going back even before the early days of Everquest, and can attest that MMOs have come a long way from those 'good old days'.

I've been playing reasonably regularly since Feb, so I have no pre-moria context. I've been playing FFXI since 2003, so my comparisons will come from that perspective. I'm at level 58 (cap is currently 60), so my endgame experience is very limited. Most of my comments on that section are hearsay rather than vast personal experience.

The game is beautiful. Can't complain about that. Classes are somewhat cookie-cutter. There's healers and tanks and support jobs and DD. Same as everything else, except all jobs seem to solo well enough, unlike ffxi where all but a few jobs had to group for xp, and some solo very poorly.

Though I know this is how it works on all non-ffxi games, I immediately missed the ability to change jobs. Rolling an alt and having to start over is lame, and keeping track of other people's alts is lame. But I guess when you get xp from quests, you have to redo the quests to level. /shrug

The game is easy-mode compared to ffxi, and I guess I prefer levelling through quests (like in LOTRO) to the endless 'kill the same mob for hours on end' grind that is the standard means of level progression in ffxi.

Endgame is growing, but it's crazy limited compared to the 'more than something for everyone' that ffxi has. To be fair there's a 5 year head start that SE had, but it is what it is. Gear gating sucks and the radiance system sucks. But I guess at least there isn't zone gating like in ffxi - those that remember Chains of Promathia will know that you had to do some pretty difficult group fights to even get into some of the expansion zones.

Levelling is much faster in Lotro, and it suits me that way. The whole game is less of a grind, but by the same token the grinds themselves are less interesting. Killer deeds are stupid.

The Legendary item system (as many have said) is such wasted potential. The concept of "Customize and increase the power of your weapon by getting it levels and applying earned points against improvements" is a fantastic idea. It was implemented horribly, in that you can't pick and choose what to put those points into. The abilities you get on your weapon are a random roll, and getting ideal to your playstyle 'legacies' is next to impossible - and in the case of the best weapons, you only have a few shots at getting what you want...so the whole process of earning a 'first age weapon' might be a big waste of time.

The relic portion is also lame. Essentially I have to level and deconstruct lesser (but still legendary!) weapons...up to ten a day...to get pieces that are combined en-masse, resulting improved quality but diminishing quantity. So I have to treat legendary weapons as basic crafting materials. It just seems stupid to me.

There is still a hardcore endgame scene, but people seem to cycle out and be gone much more quickly than in ffxi, mostly because it's not as fun or rewarding and folks finish it all pretty quickly and get bored. Don't take this as me saying there's no endgame grind, there is. There's just a bunch of gear gates that force everyone to grind down the same, single specific path. So folks burn out faster with no 'aternative grind' to switch to. At least ffxi had countless endgame grinds, so you could pick your favorite or rotate to another once you burned out on one.

In the end, it's a much more visually appealing and casual game, and I would recommend it for someone who is looking for that sort of experience. The people seem more mature and friendly, and there certainly IS something to be said for roaming through a virtual middle earth. Rune Keepers and the odd Space Demon aside, the devs/quest writers do a great job of keeping everything in line with the lore, and it's a fantastic world to explore.

Oh, and PvMP is fun when there's enough people in the zone to make things happen. The moors is great distraction.

I too was (perhaps still am!) a total NOOB when it comes to MMOs. I did not even know there was such a thing until my son got hooked on another rather famous one. I observed his play sessions a few times and concluded that game was certainly of no interest to me... but being a major LOTR geek, I wondered if there was one based on Lord of the Rings. I discovered there was and the open beta was just around the corner. I applied and started playing the day the LOTRO open beta "opened".

It was a rather steep learning curve for me, since I was absolutely totally completely clueless about game mechanics, quests, you name it! But I knew the source lore intimately as I had read the books pretty much yearly for the last 30 or so years. Within a few days I knew I would play this game until either it or I died. I bought a lifetime membership the minute it was available.

It has been two years plus change since I discovered this game. I now have several lifetime accounts, play all nine classes, and have 7 of those to level cap. Obviously I love the game. The rendering of Middle Earth is absolutely stunning. The developers have taken great pains to present the various places in Middle Earth as lore-accurately as possible. The quests and epic story line really let you be a part of this great saga. They have included a lot of "fluff" stuff too (housing, festivals, a neat music system, fishing and numerous other things) that make it great fun to hang out in Merry Middle Earth.

There is room for growth and improvement of course. Housing is still VERY limited and therefore somewhat frustrating -- but that said I still own as many houses as my 3 accounts will allow me! Crafting is very satisfying particularly the first 5 tiers... the 6th has some areas of frustration that hopefully at some point (soon!) will be addressed.





Edited, Jul 16th 2009 5:04pm by linwetaralom

Hello Everybody,

I've played LOTRO since it came out and i really enjoyed it but unfortunately Stuff slowed and i couldn't get groups and i had trouble getting equipment and couldn't finish certain quests :( so i eventually left (major mistake especially before mines of Moria *doh*) I Regret leaving. But now that I'm back I've really enjoyed it more than the last time! this is an amazingly well done game and would recommend it to Any fantasy lover!

Some may ask well if you left what Brought you back?!

Well to be honest WOW Sucks a dead dogs dingy when your 80 and have nothing but pvp Haha anyways,my brother invited me to play and now we play together so i owe my brother thanks because if he didn't i'd have nothing to occupy my boring summer holidays! we both have Mines Of Moria and are Riddled with excitement.

Now another question ma be asked,okay well why do you like it better now?

My answer is simple Many things have changed and i love it! i personally find quests more enjoyable and the New holidays are FANTASTIC!! I've also found that Crafting has changed a great deal which is just amazing! (didn't think the crafting could get better but it did!) another thing is the expansion of the map Wow is that ever Cool! i personally find thinking about what they could do with other expansions. Ex make all the area's Moria and lothlorien eastward all Explorable and include places like Rohan and Isengard. Then eventually move southward! But besides my pondering possible expansions i love what they've done with the classes and I've also noticed Mobs that have been either added or re-done again AMAZING work!!!
I've also seen that you can make your own Sword/bow/spear/etc :P Anyways I must say this is currently the BEST online Game on the market In My Opinion May not have the most players but it has the best game play and high quality Graphics Great Job Turbine Keep going!!

Thanks for reading
(in game Toon name)Immrahail






Edited, Jul 17th 2009 6:10pm by Kynann

Hi there, I'm Feldenwe and I come from The Big E; the Jeweled Bell server.
I've been playing LOTRO since the betas and have been playing mostly PvMP since early when the game came Live. I was one of those who avoided to PvE unless it was ulmately necessary; but since the release of Mines of Moria the new content have given me lots to do and I am enjoyinh PvE much more than before and by being a Mintrel you get a lot of people inviting you to do stuff which is good, most times .... I went away for 2 months and I lost my house in Breeland so I claimed a new one, and that would be the Milestone at 21st Hall, When I am not in the Moors or running instances I'm usuallt there standing and ./waving at people and chatting on all the different channels that we have :)

./Cheers