Lord of the Rings Online

[Asher]

Recap: You are saying nothing new and spamming the thread. Stop threadjacking.

Ming!
/me tugs on Ming's sleeve.

Make him stop.

[Asher]

New video of Mines of Moria:

[conmcb25]

Ok lets discuss the game since we can't seem to get along discussing whether the game is good or not

OK Post 2005 now, the new engine and the new concept.

I thought the original premise for expansions was that Middle Earth was divided into quadrants.

The first one being centered around the Northwest part of Middle Earth, The shire, Rivendell, Weathertop, The Blue Hills, etc. Essentially what was released in the initial game.

And the Mines of Moria I thought was supposed to be an update to that or at least Turbine hinted around at that if I remember correctly.

And the next "expansion" would be Rohan/ Gondor (SW quadrant) or Mirkwood, The lonely Mountain. The iron hills, etc. (The NE quadrant.)

Now granted that was a long time ago and pre release, and I haven't followed the game hardly at all on there website since then.

Did they change the goals or the direction for expansions?

Have they said anything about this in a developers diary?

And whats the game like today for someone just starting out, are there still plenty of n00bs around or are most folks skewed to the higher ends level wise?

[Asher]

They haven't said specifically what's next, but they are following the path of the fellowship.

There's lots of lowbies and lots of high level people, but I think most of the lowbies are alts. Alts are very popular from what I can tell.

[vee4473]

The mines of moria introduce the mines, eregion and lothlorien I think (not a lore geek so I might have the names wrong). As far as future lands, whatever plans they have they will never say openly to us that's for sure.

Turbine is really tight lipped about info. They didn't even start giving out much info on the expansion until a couple weeks ago.

There was a dev diary today about revamping the way stats work in Moria in preparation for "the next 10 years" as they put it to ensure that characters can advance steadily without hitting a cap or something like that.. It's on the front page of lotro.com but they just revamped their site and it's slower to load now.

The community there is good, but it's like geek factor turned up to 11, elitist in some respects. For the past couple months there have been threads, even one dedicated to it, stickied, about discussing the introduction of the runekeeper class in the expansion as the first damage dealing magic caster and what the lore obsessed think about it. Alot of the Tolkien die hards were up in arms about it.

They didn't want any type of magic class because of the lore etc..(only Gandalf and Sarumon used high magic! It doesn't fit in the world!") and definitely not one that "looks" like it uses magic. How they'd quit etc. Some say they won't even group with one..It was amusing although the geek in me understands the passion there. I even posted in those threads once or twice.

I see people in most level ranges most of the time. I have some alts. Warhammer has cut into my time there lately, but I have not stopped playing by a long shot. Luckily lotro isn't really as bad as wow in terms of having to regularly poop sock to really get ahead so taking a break doesn't hurt as bad.

[Asher]

http://www.massively.com/2008/10/23/lotro-announces-a-second-bonus-xp-weekend/

In preparation for Lord of the Rings Online's upcoming expansion on November 18th, Turbine has announced a second bonus weekend for current and former players from October 30th through November 3rd. This weekend mirrors a previous event at the beginning of October which offered the same incentives. For former players, you're invited to come back to Middle-earth to experience the loads of new content an prepare yourself for Mines of Moria.

All players can expect a +25% bonus to their XP, which should help to get those characters just high enough to enjoy some of the new high-end content in Moria. Check out the official announcement page for more information on downloading or patching the client and getting back into the game.

[Kinjiru]

Alright, I'm in. What servers do y'all play on?

[DrSpike]

All this MMO talk has awakened the MMO bug in me. However, with Wrath of the Lich King about to come out I think I'd be better off playing WoW.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Kinjiru
Alright, I'm in. What servers do y'all play on?

I think we're all on different ones. I play on Brandywine.

[Aeson]

I played LOTRO, mostly just MP on Meneldor though, and a bit on freep side on Landroval. Lucked out and guessed right on the lifetime sub deal, going with the $9.99/mo till I was sick of it. Ended up with ~$100 into the monthly fees, and am not going back. My friends who are in the MoM beta tell me that PvMP was hosed even further, which doesn't suprise me. The rest of the game looks good though.

Too bad about LOTRO PvMP. It coulda been great (it's the only PvP I've ever found the least bit compelling), but the devs wouldn't listen to reason. Instead of making combat more fluid, or at least not ****ing with it, they covered the moors in tar, and instead of working to balance the combat into something fun for both sides (leave it asynchronous like I preferred, or balanced like most players wanted), they just went all out and made superchars to overshadow any imbalances. Though they did hit a nice "balance" by making combat unfun for both sides that way.

I won't go into which MMO is the best... since I hadn't played many of them much, since UO, EQ, and AC. (I did try AC II, EQ II, Guild Wars, Lineage II, and Horizons... but just betas and never had much time to spend on them.)

In any case, I'd say LOTRO is definitely worth the price. Even if you just run through the questline once with a character, it'll give more gameplay than most RPGs, and has one of the better graphics engines, storylines, and atmosphere that I've seen in a game. And once it's not fun anymore, just stop paying. /shrug

(Though most MMO players will probably get best value from lifetime. I just could never stick with any MMO long enough for that to pay off.)

[Asher]

Much more details on the new Legendary Items in the Mines of Moria: http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdia...ry-item-system

Very cool, I think

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Asher

It's already paid off for me...and it's really nice knowing I can just not play for 3-4 months or more without paying monthly just to keep the chars active.

So what? With World of Warcraft, you can cancel your monthly subscription and then your toons will still be there whenever you want to reactivate your account.

[Asher]

Originally posted by MrFun


So what? With World of Warcraft, you can cancel your monthly subscription and then your toons will still be there whenever you want to reactivate your account.

And keep paying every ****ing month while you play.

And if you wanna play just for one weekend, you get to pay for the WHOLE MONTH.

[MrFun]

Again, so what?

If LOTRO requires a monthly subscription for those who missed out on the one-time payment for lifetime subscription, the expense is close to the same as WoW.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by vee4473
The mines of moria introduce the mines

Who'd thought?