f13.net

Can someone give me a quick "state of the game"?  I played at release however there were a few things that bugged me so I stopped playing.

1.  Woefully incomplete at the top end.  (I had heard the fleshed out a lot of quests)
2.  Gear really doesn't make a huge difference on your character.  Loot was very shallow.

Hows the game playing compared to other MMOs out there?  Is it as satisfying and fun to play?  If you can comment on the satisfying MMO experience bit, what other MMOs did you find the same way so I have some point of reference.  I had a high 30ish Guardian a year ago.  I enjoyed my time to get there and it was very fun, however I'm looking for something to play around in and I'm curious to see where this game is at.

Progress on fleshing things out is a little weak, but I think we're finally through all the class updates, which fills out the skills to 50. Gameplay is a bit more solid because of that. They've shifted a lot of stuff away from hardcore grouping--though I still pine for a global LFF channel. They've also added what amount to "solo" stances to the more group oriented characters that increase damage at a cost to group support skills. This has really changed things for minstrels and guardians. I think it's one of the better games out there right now. On the negative side of things, where we are now is really where we should have been at release and it should not have taken this long to get here.

I can't really tell you anything about equipment. They've added a lot and redone crafting significantly. I don't craft and I don't particularly have any "uber" equipment, so I couldn't tell you if it really is all that or not.

They have added a lot of RP stuff. Housing, dressing room system (stick stuff in appearance slots for looks only--which means everyone looks pretty snazzy), music, dancing and that kind of thing. There's a large amount of new gaming content as well, some new zones, including some raid encounters and a clone of DAOC's Darkness Falls.

Populations seem to have bounced back a lot. The community is a treat, particularly if you've been playing WOW.

The patch notes archive is at http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Category:LOTRO_Releases

if i'm bored of WoW, is there enough in LOTR to keep me interested or should I wait for ...a different non-medieval non-vehicular MMO setting that isn't SWG?

There's a free trial for 14 days.

I loaded it up last night again.  It's still a pretty game.  If you've never played it before you should at least play it for a week at least to try out the dungeons etc.  The only thing you will have to get used to is the combat.  It's different.

I still remember all the quests from a year ago.  Fun.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll go check it out then

Spring pub crawl quest FTW.

Yea but that pie quest in the shire was full of "DAMNIT I HAVE TO WALK ALL THIS WAY AGAIN!?"

Oddly enough, I didn't much mind the Shire delivery quests...it was a fun way to learn the fastest way around the terrain.

If doing them a second time, I'm not so sure I'd enjoy that. But I have yet to try.

There are tons of other things to do instead. A lot of the the starter areas have very different "Quests" or game play associated with them, so you can still roll a hobbit, move to the dwarven area, and just quest there instead, if hobbit life is to sleepy for ya.

Yeah each area almost has enough content on their own to get you to the first shared area. I did a little bit of the northern Shire and a few quests at that eastern Marsh in the human land, but otherwise the dwarf area of Ered Luin was mostly enough to get me to the Lonely Lands or whatever that Lv15-25ish region in the south-east is called.

As a whole, the game is great at a casual pace. I don't think the endgame could sustain me as my main game, but I've been playing it off and on since beta and release, and I'm enjoying it more than ever. I'm active in two other MMOs right now but I still find myself tempted to log into LotRO every couple weeks. It's a really gorgeous world; Champion gameplay is one of my favorite melee classes; great animations and well modeled armor. Just a good casual questing game. Lots of fluff. I like that Turbine carved out that sort of niche rather than trying to compete with WoW/EQ on an endgame raid/dungeon level.

Yeah, I log in once a month or so, paying my rent, doing sightseeing, doing some quests, seeing whats new.

I don't think it could sustain me if I was playing it constantly, but as it stands now it is perfect to satisfy the MMOG cravings I get every few weeks for a few days.

if i love to play scrappers in CoH, which class is for me on LOTR, i picked Loremaster to see fireballs, but felt underwhelmed 6 levels later. Clearly this guy is party-based class with debuffs, not that 'visceral' sort of play type so perhaps Champion / Brigand is better?

Guardian: Tank
Minstrel: Healer
Burgler: Mid-DPS, buffer, stealther etc.  Nice hybrid
Champ: Melee DPS
Hunter: Ranger DPS
Captain: Support, Buffer, Minor Healer
Loremaster: CC, Pets, some DPS, debuffs etc.

I think thats how it goes.

Lore Master is a minor healer as well.

Hunters are rather fun to play, IMO. Mind, it's not the same as a WoW Hunter.

Plus we get an orbital death laser! They call it "Rising of the Sun," but I know in my heart it's a satellite firing a particle beam down to smite my foes.

Yeah, Loremaster is a squishy jack-of-all-trades. A bit of debuffer/mezzer, a bit of pet class, a minor nuke, and a bit of healer.

Hunters are all the same...

it's more like a pure dps class minus a pet i feel. i think i'm giving LOTRO a miss, it felt very bland. I'm not even on 3rd day of game. Just messing around for 2 hours.

Yep, and don't think that staff is weak as well. Also toss in quite a bit of Crowed control.

lol looks like we're in the gaming graveyard now.
I think I'll just go play Loremaster for now, the melee classes lacks the pace. I rather just see as much as I can before finishing this trial.

So is Everquest 2. Seems almost every MMOG is here now.

I'd ask for a reason, but I can't be bothered to care about MMOGs that much these days.

I hit 50 with my first toon last night, my Minstrel.  LOTRO is a game that really grew on me.  The dungeons are great, the loot not so much.  Plus new and fun content fairly often.  Unlike WoW with it's latest 25 man raid that 1% of the pop plays.

It's getting a new zone; Forochel with the next patch and they do fun stuff besides.

My wife saw me playing EvE and got jealous, so she re-started her LOTRO account (we played the first 2 months or so and then quit) and demanded I return with my Captain to help her level. 

I was actually very pleasantly suprised...

1.  They actually have a functioning PvP system that, while limited, seems stable and has room for epic fights as well as smaller skirmishes (so far I have only MP'd because my main is so low in level).

2.  Lots o' fluff. I mean a ton.  You can spend countless hours crafting, learning to play music, etc...  My main was a Yeoman, so last night I farmed up a punch of pipe-weed, brewed some beer, and just wandered into random folks houses that they have left open to the public and just started drinking beer, smoking up and playing "Stairway to Heaven" on my lute.  It was actually pretty hilarious when one of them came home.  I suppose I have finally found my RP-niche:  drunken, drug-addicted squatter.  :evil:

3.  PvE combat is about an order of magnitude more interesting than wow.  While I have less abilities, I tend to use almost all of them in difficult group combat.  Do I use my morale enhancing pet or my power increasing pet?  Do I ditch the pet all together for a standard?  Should I thorw a minor heal or try to burn the monster down so I can use my large group heal?

Much, much more fun than spamming 3 abilities over and over again.

4.  Chill community:  I have yet to meet a total retard in game.  People  who group with you tend to be friendly.  The boards are not a cessppol of idiocy.

Fluff?  Houses?  Much as I lol at their "fighter, warrior, um... sword guy" class roster, I am intrigued.

The LotRO trial is for 7 days. The EQ2 trial is for 14 days.

(I recently did both, tried really hard to like them, and came away never wanting to play either again, also thinking LotRO was the weaker game. Hope you like it better.)

I never understood that particular problem of yours anyway.

Abilities that use power are akin to spells. So every class has the equivalent of magic abilities. The Captain is very close to the EQ Shaman, he shouldn't even count as a sword guy class. The Guardian is a type of Def Warrior and the Champion is the Melee DD (Ranger,Blademaster, Off Warrior, etc).

The play VASTLY different, the only one playing like a classic tank is the Guardian.

The fluff is excellent, yes. I had a new moment of "you'll never believe what just happened" yesterday.

I bought a keg to decorate my house. Once its hooked up, you can drink from it. I knocked one back and noticed the "drunkenness" state icon was already flashing, meaning it will expire soon. Hm. The tooltip says the effect will only last 10s (drunkenness usually lasts 5m), and the description notes, "You feel the urge to party... somewhere." I tap the keg twice more, the drunknness visual effects increasing.

Then the screen whites out.

Loading screen...

Suddenly I'm in a room at the Forsaken Inn.

My new house decoration is a random tavern teleportation device.

Really? Thats really cool. So you started drinking at your house....and somehow ended up at the bar. lol.

Did you have your pants?

I like where this is going!

Flavor.  If your class roster reads "paladin, holy knight, crusader" or "warlock, bad magician, witch with a penis" I'm going to be annoyed, even if they do play differently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Fraser#Memphis_trousers_affair

Meh, I never really looked back past the 3rd day of the trial. I gave the melee class a try only to feel like it's lacking the 'punch' when I landed blows, I felt like I was swinging at empty air half the time. Especially the animation on dual wields, quite floaty and impact-less.

That could have been your animation settings.

Maybe, but I find the control very squishy as well. It's tolerable because there's so much else in the game I like, but I wouldn't consider it optimal.

Can I get an update from those playing currently?  Population, ease of soloing or pairing? 

I keep hearing about "problems with combat... slow" -- is that the case?  What are the things to avoid then?  Thanks.

I'm playing, but on the EU realms.

Soloing is good (duoing is great I'd say), it has a few rough spots, mostly in the 30-40 range, but if you can suffer a few pugs it shouldn't be an issue. Usually plenty of alts around (since LotRO doesn't have much of a meaningful endgame.) Levelling is slow, I had 20 days /played to 50 at mid-tempo on my second character. Levelling is really the meat of the game, though.

And yes, combat is... slow. Some describe it as "fighting underwater", but personally I've come to like it, plus you get alot of neat abilities. Avoid lore-master if you can't stand slow, because they are slow in more ways than just combat. Champion and Guardian are good, packs a punch and puches a pack.

However, I could recommend one of you rolling a burglar. Conjunctions are awesome to have in a duo, plus you got good CC and then get two-man stealth (Share the Fun) around level 42.

Did they nerf leveling at release or something?  Last time I played was in Beta, I made level 42 or 43 a couple of times, I don't remember it needing that much /played.

I'm considering trying the game again as I upgraded my pc recently and I remember the visuals being excellent.  I'm in the EU as well, what are the server populations like and is there a main euro forum somewhere for LOTRO?  Also did they ditch codemasters?

I might have taken it slower than "mid-tempo", I really can't recall, but I wasn't in any sort of hurry. I do think my first toon was faster though, because I felt more pressed to get it to the endgame. At work, so can't check, but you might want to slash 5 days from those 20... but anyways - I think the levelling is really enjoyable so it doesn't feel very fair to assess its grindiness just from the time it takes to ding 50.

Also, if you care to wait a few weeks, you'll get the two new classes to choose from, Rune-keeper and Warden, that are coming in the first expansion.

I'm not racing to the level cap, not at all, and I'm having a great time.  It's about the story and quests and exploration for me.  I'm not in a hurry so I can't say if it is slow or not, but I think racing to the endgame is a mistake.  There's a huge amount of stuff to do if you are inclined, and more to come in the expansion.  If I wanted to race to cap, I'd play WoW or EQ2 or something else with a crappy world, quests, graphics and lore.

I'm going slow because I have been tracking down every Shire quest and knocking them out... and having fun doing it.  A great example is the Deed I have for drinking local beers, ales and wines which is complimented by quests where I help tavernmasters get things for the upcoming Brewer's Moot.  Yeah, I could spend money to simply buy the drink for the Deed, but it's more fun to do the quest, and I get XP for it.  Entirely possible that this is not for you.

Soloing is fine most of the time since XP comes from quests rather than foozle-whacking, although there are clearly-marked quests where you will want some help.

The graphics are great, in my opinion.

Yeah, I'm only talking about level speed because I fully explored the game in beta up to the 40's.  If they had nerfed leveling that would put me off because I'd be stuck for weeks seeing most of what I've already gone through.

No worries, it has not been nerfed. I'm probably just an inefficient leveller. :-)

They've added Evendim (25-35) and Tal Bruinen (35-40) since release though, so there's some new content also in the -40 span. At ~40+ you got new areas in Misty Mountains, Angmar has been completely revamped (progression-wise, it's pretty good now) and there's Forochel which is a brand new 38-50 zone.

There have been at least 2 zones, if not more, added since beta, offering an entirely diffrent avenue for leveling, and are well outside the main story line (the book quests).

Thanks.  My wife and loved the Shire -- too bad someone didn't make an all-Hobbit MMO -- so taking quests is Ok.  But I just want to make sure we don't get stuck in a kill-foozle grind and/or are ineffective for long periods. 

So if the leveling curve is flat'ish is the itematization better than launch to get help people be effective?

I haven't had any equipment trouble, not to my knowledge anyway.  I find the odd neat weapon/armor and sometimes I can use it but mostly not.  I'm happy about how I can, soon enough, craft a bow that is better than the one I have now but at the same time I'm doing alright with the one I have.  Then again I don't have the loot-peen thing in this game that I had in others.  In any case, I don't feel ineffective at all as a hunter.  I've never been in a fellowship larger than a duo, either.

I'm playing as a loremaster with my wife now; she's a champ.  I still feel pretty useful, but maybe that's because last time I played a LM it was in alpha. :awesome_for_real:

Itemization is fairly well balanced I think. As in most games, for meleers it's mainly about finding a large mofo of a weapon in order to be effective. There are some, as noted, really nice crafted purple stuff while levelling. For "casters", minstrel and lore-master, itemization isn't as good, but the auto-scaling of spells works well enough I've found.

Also, I think all non-DPS classes got DPS skills and updates with their class patch. Guardians got Overpower stance now, for example, which is +20% damage but no blocking. Minstrels got War-song stance, which shortens cooldowns on some DPS skills and enables a few others. Lore-masters got the lynx as a pet, which is a pretty effective AoE DPSer too.

You still in the guild?

As far as I know?

My secondary is Uluphant and I'm having a fine time bringing the wife up to speed on MOG gameplay.  She's a one-woman pickup group. :awesome_for_real: Recently we went into the Chetwood at level 7 and she ran right into a named wolf and three brigands because she was reading some text on something and not seeing my fellowship chat of "hey", "run", "RUN".  I walked downstairs and said "Hey, don't do that."  "I died!"  "Uh, yep."

Yeah, this title is great for initiation of new mmoers. Good to hear your potentially still in the guild, we may be back shortly.

Maybe it's not too late to give LotRO another go?

I sure won't.  Dreadful pve with even worse pvp.  No thanks.

Dreadful is a tad harsh.  I remember my reaction in beta was a hearty MEH.   I just wondered if it had improved.

You do know they are redoing the combat a bit with MoM. The impression I get it will be less level based and more straight stat based.

I dont think it will change the 'underwater' feel much but the mechanics are apparently changing. I'd say wait and see. Beta reports aren't talking about this aspect much.

I did a write-up on the new combat system in another thread;

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15000.msg533334#msg533334

I think it explains most of it, even if it's a bit incoherent. :oh_i_see:

LotRO has improved alot the past year and a half. Enough to warrant a trial visit I'd say.

Well, on this recommendation I bought a lifetime membership....... :ye_gods:

This is speculation, but the 'underwater feel' might also change at least for one of the newly added classes (the rune-keeper) ... as it's purely skills-based dps/healing class with no auto-attacks that are normally insterted in the combat queue. The testers mentioned much more 'snappy' feel to it, although some mentioned it may be more universal tweaks done to all classes and/or animation system. Interesting either way.

on the speed of levelling, my 2nd fully levelled up character has something like 3 weeks /played at this point, but i'd estimate the actual levelling took maybe half of that time so ~10 days, rest was spent at level cap. And i actually spent quite a bit of time idling or on cosmetic fluff. Would say it's more beneficial to play this game casually, as the "rest xp" you gain while offline speeds up the process considerably, making each mob kill worth twice the regular xp or something similar.

Research the classes and think outside the box.  My guardian became a million times fun after I ditched the shield and went with a 2 handed weapon.

Guardian with Overpower and 2H is :heart:

The only class which you want adds with. "Oh shi- wait! This means I get more parry responses. MOAR MOBS!"

So I'm wondering about this issue as well now. Moria...well, it kind of interests me just in a pure lore sense.

Where I sort of gave up on LOTRO was when I hit my low 30s and was doing Fornost. Getting even guild groups, let alone PUGs, started to be difficult because people were very spread out in their level ranges but for various reasons it seemed to us that the party levels needed to be tightly packed. Plus Fornost was an enormous borefest in terms of trash-clearing and tedium--I just remember lots of attempts where we all just decided to bag it because it was taking so long to get anywhere or accomplish anything interesting. Plus I thought monster play was an interesting idea but implemented really, really badly, and I didn't see much that made me think either of these things would change.

So has the game gotten better in this respect? If you start a new toon now, are you pretty much doomed to solo levelling for a long haul?

Focusing on Fornost at level 30 is a mistake.  Its entire design is for catass people. 

If you had explored you would have found 2 other areas chock full of fun.  As far as solo - no.  I have not found any issue finding PUG's.  Normally I duo with a clan member, though.  Its nice not worrying about elite quests :)

Oh, I was all over the map at 30. I just had a bad feeling that Fornost was a sign of things to come rather than an isolated mistake. I was also really annoyed with the problems of monster play that clearly arose from a hasty last-minute design.

I don't feel like my hunter is underwater and I have plenty of buttons to press when fighting and watching my Focus bar... but I'm not really into the frantic combat right now.  The Loremaster is still blocked by the slow-ass skill cooldowns, speedwise, but I don't have too much trouble killing things.  The trouble is that I end up watching the cooldown timers.  Only level 7 with the LM, though, so I might have more to do after I get more skills.

LMs are funny in that sense. Solo, they're pretty slow and remain so up to 50, but in a group it's hectic as hell. Cycling and timing stuns and debuffs is actually both quite challenging and quite interesting. It's a real tide-turner class in groups.


Although PvMP is getting love in MoM:
- General changes to Freeps and Creeps (http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/257-developer-diary-pvmp-enhancements)
- Zone changes (http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/255-developer-diary-the-ettenmoors-re-vamp)

There'll be a defence buff in place for the outnumbered side, CTF-like objectives, no item wear from PvPing and lots more tweaks. I can't say exactly what's changed, because I don't PvP myself but it's there to read. :-)

There are some other areas like it, but I've taken my LM to 49 skipping them all, and with Forochel I'll easily be hitting the level cap without doing even half of Angmar. Actually, the LM has only grouped a handful of times, mostly with just one other player I knew from outside the game. The only thing I feel I've missed is the epics, which can't be completed solo even if you're 18 levels over the quest (or so I discovered last time I went back to where I got stuck in the Lone Lands / Agamaur arc).

I think with Fornost--and what I heard about Angmar was what made me think this was only the beginning--what annoyed me most was just the overwhelming amount of trash even before you actually got into the instance and then more inside. It just seemed like a terrible design decision: when you've got people who want to go in your instance, make it easy for them to do that, because getting a group that can go in is hard enough.

Ummm, it is a short run into the instance.  Also, there is a summon horn right there (at the entrance).   :oh_i_see:

I dunno, it's been a long time. I just remember a couple of guild runs where we spent a ton of time killing pointless shit before anything even remotely interesting happened.

Ok resubbed with MM expansion. 

Advice plz.

1) wtf to do (e.g. best deeds, how to get phat lewt, coin)

1.5) most populated server?  (brandywine?)  advice?

2) best duo class (e.g. champion/minstrel or guardian/minstrel, ? wut?)

For what it's worth...

1.)  Run quests, particularly the epic (book) quests.  Gear is good for the most part, and the quests are actually pretty entertaining for an MMO.  Don't spend money on anything except repairs, a horse, and extended bank space.  I honestly never grinded for experience.  Group quests are fun, but a good PUG is hard to find.  The best deed is probably Valour for the morale benefit.  Always a slayer deed (kill xxx foozles).  After that it depends heavily on class and what stats you want to boost.  You will likely be pushing morale/vitality/might or morale/power/will.  Do the exploration deeds as they are usually easy.

1.5)  Not sure.  I play on Silverlode, activity is adequate, not great.

2.)  I would guess Champ/Minstrel.  I have seen a Champ/LM duo work pretty well.  Guard/Minstrel will never die, but no damage equals painfully long fights.  I enjoy my Burglar character solo, but not sure how effective it would be 2-man.

The current state of the game is quiet.  Moria should restore some activity, but for how long?  Still enjoying it, though.  Turbine's free content additions have been pretty impressive.

1) Valour/Justice are usually the first to be recommended.  Crafting itself is a bit of a money-sink itself.  It is much more profitable to be an explorer and sell the resources (ore/wood/skins). My explorer was making 10 times the amount of cash than my crafters, and was much better outfitted. Obviously, a diligent auctioneer will make quite a bit more cash than one who sells all to vendors.

2) I always understood that Brandywine was the most active server, but I was on Silverlode (50 Captain) as well.

3) Best duo? Good question - all the classes are pretty solid in LoTRO.  The new classes might alter my decision, but I would agree with champ/minstrel.  Although just from reading Warden/Runekeeper or Champ/Runekeeper might now be the most efficient.

I'm on Landroval, it is plenty busy. For a duo, I'd go with hunter/minstrel (I know nothing about the new classes yet). I prefer hunter because of all the instant travel options. Huge time saver in my opinion.

I'm on Brandywine with Cheddar.  The population suits me fine, I'm sick of places like the EC Tunnel and The Barrens.  You can find a crowd in Bree-town if you want but I can get some nice quiet time outside the city.  I'm pretty casual in that I don't go looking for the best X or most efficient Y, I just do the quests, deeds and explore.  Only craft when I feel like it.

I'm enjoying the hunter, good solo and duo.  Recently started a guardian and it's nice to be able to take on things that con higher than me.

Cool.  I always thought Brandywine had the most pop.  Is is a West coast or East coast server?

Dunno.  I tend to play late in the evening (around midnight) or early in the day and there are always plenty of people around.  LotRO definitely has a better playerbase then WoW. 

Is there no more free trial?  I was thinking about taking a look-see over the holidays now that the game has been out for a while, but I don't see anything about a trial on the LotRO official page.

I'm going to play again as soon as they let me resub. I had a founder's account and I can't resub because it tells me there is "
no price plan". From the forums it seems that since I was on that 9.99 pricing and lost it when I canceled their pricing plan database is confused. Customer service should be able to fix it for me. Eventually.

same thing happened to me, twice, both accounts.  Two separate days.  You get a "40001" error right?  CS has to manually enter you.  You can get the $9.99 only if you resub for 3 months. 

I was pissed they don't have PDT times for support.  Have to call by 5pm or nothing.  That's crazy for a net company.

I'm actually going to do the lifetime I think when the time comes.

Edit: Well. I got through to CS. They gave me one month at $9.99. I see the charge at my bank. But my account says pending cancellation. *sigh* I'm going to call them again and see what's up with that. I've never had to work this hard to give a company money before!

did the lifetime when I was flush with cash. Allows me to have my MMO fix without shelling out for something different. or dealing with resubbing.

Would one of you returning to the game give a quick reaction summary?  I'd love to hear your reactions to gameplay after being away for a bit.  I'm considering givign LotRO another try, but am hesitant since I had such a luke warm reaction to it in beta. 

In the meantime, I'm playing CoH.... again.

Someone already posted this?

Mines of Moria Preview: Awesome Sauce
The expansion to Lord of the Rings Online was worth the wait.
By Sanya Weathers (http://www.massivegamer.com/gamelist.php?game=8&section=features&view=34)

I don't think so... but I came here to post a small disclaimer, as it had bugged me before I had played it.

Don't trust the screenshots. Eregion and Moria look nothing like them. In the screens you only see the detail clipping and get annoyed about low-res textures in the distance, but in movement, it's beautiful. Holy hell, it's beautiful. I'm finding spots around Eregion where I just want pop a tent in to move in permanently. It doesn't look only spectacular, like high fantasy often does, it looks convincing. The pointy wizard's hat goes off to the world team at Turbine.

I'm now off to try, at measly level 51, to pay my respects to the last king of Khazad-dûm. :-)

I'm such a nerd.  :grin:

You're not the only nerd.

And I've taken something like 400 screenshots of LotRO since I started playing, trying to capture the feel of being inside it. A few of the best are here (http://stormwaltz.gamerdna.com/images/).

Ok. I finally got my account setup. Sheesh. They had to reactivate it twice because apparently it was cancelled twice. Same with my wife's account. Don't ask me how.

My main was only level 40 when I stopped. I'm starting to remember why, I had hit a wall of fellowship quests and was having trouble completing them. I explored a little and joined a crafting guild and looked at cosmetics and stuff. I'm guessing they added more content at around my level for soloers. I just need to find it!

There may not be while they make it work with the Expansion. Expect it soon however.

Goto the brandywine server.

Forochel :-)

Is there anything new and fun for non-level 50s to do?

Evendim (25-35), Forochel (40+), Tal Bruinen (35+) are new zones, you got quite a bit of fluff like housing and the cosmetic system and if you got Moria, there are also crafting guilds which you can join. Ettenmoors have been rebalanced and reshaped in Moria aswell, so you can always pick up a L60 monster character (without needing Moria I believe). With Moria, you also got two new classes to play, Rune-keeper, which uses a kind of balancing system to DPS and heal, and Warden, single-target DPS/tank which got a combo system for combat.

Fun? I don't know, if you liked the game enough the first go, it hasn't gone to a bad place since, quite the opposite. More soloable and better quest lines.

2 new classes, many zones have been revamped. MvP also got tweaked.

*combat seems faster, to me at least.  Not WoW fast but sufficient
*warden is pure luv.  Solo'd the lvl6 elite in the starting area at lvl4.
*graphics changes -- not sure, but small tweaks by myself and Turbine's changes have made the experience run very well
*quests still great -- funny how they are so memorable, while I couldn't say anything I did in BC zones like Nagrand
*UI changes impressive -- ability to move all UI controls is great, and the changes to the paperdoll and various char info I think is terrific (e.g. different outfits, quest log is better than WoW mod I depended on)
*story book instance progression is still a great way to move people through the world
*housing -- better than DAoC's, not quite SWG (static plots)
*mounts -- haven't got one yet, but all there
*auction -- I made 2 gold in 1 night selling off crafting resources -- amazing, when you remember that silver is the base currency

I'm not in a fellowship yet so can't comment on those controls.  But yeah I'm glad so far I resubbed.

Only complaint:

* no view into servers -- which are East/West coast, populations.  May have to move eventually, but TBD (I'm on Elendimir)

That's all very promising feedback.  Thanks for taking the time.

Could anyone suggest a few duo combinations that might be worthwhile?  I enjoy playing healers, so the traditional healer/tank may be one option but I'm open to two hybrids as well.  I'm thinking about giving the game a try with an old friend and we want to complete as much of the content as a duo as possible.  If you have any suggestions of crafting, that would be a plus as well.

Me and my lady do a Hunter and Burgler combo, works out well. Hunter for all the swift traveling for people like me who are casual. Loremaster is my other class, hes somewhat of a jack of all trades. Healing (limited!), DOT, DPS, and buffs. For a more traditional set up, mistrial and tank. Hunter and loremaster are a good combo also.

Also do not forget, Brandywine server.


I still say the quest log/tracker in this game is the best ever created for a game.

And here I resubscribe yet again, Turbine, why can't I quit you! :angryfist:

  :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:

Duoing... I recently got my wife into this since she cannot get The Sims 2 to run anymore, and she has really taken to it despite the MOG learning curve.  We initially went with Champion/Loremaster, which worked well enough as long as she (Champ) didn't do anything too crazy and I avoided drawing aggro.  I didn't like the LM so much.  These days we seem to be duoing mostly as a pair of hunters and we are doing fine.  I have a guardian that I leveled from zero to nine in about four hours which I like a lot but I haven't paired up yet.

The thing about crafting is that you need to cooperate with other players or your own alts if you want to get the most out of it.  Alternatively, you can just pick something that suits your needs.  My hunter is a woodworker/forester/farmer, so I can use forester/woodworker to make clubs and bows for my own use, and pass staves to my loremaster.  Farming is stupid.  The sets of crafting disciplines you have to take are terribly artificial, and while I can see why they did it that way, I don't much care for it.

I have a lot of love for the Quest interface.

Brandywine.

My wife and I are playing a Guard (her) / Minstrel (me) duo.  Given I thought the Minstrel was a typical cloth wearing healbot but instead has range, buff, dps it's going well.  We just want to level up, but the Rune also has heals and terrific dps so it may be an alternative down the road.  Let us know.

Agreed, the quest log is awesome and it got even awesomer for Moria. Now it stores any gossip text regarding a quest too. :)

And yes, it runs very, very well considering the level of graphics. It makes WAR look pathetic when it's churning out as large crowds with twice the polygon count. I had 50 or 60 people around me on a Geforce 7800GT and it didn't drop below 15 FPS.

Are you planning on getting Moria with the resub? It's $30 I think for the digital upgrade. Then I could suggest a Rune-keeper as the "healer" of the duo, it will double as healer and DPSer depending on what affinity you have at the moment. Otherwise I could recommend a burglar, it's cool having conjuctions as a duo (go green and you got the healing you need), plus you got pretty good CC. It's definitely an underrated class.

For the tank a champion would suffice, but I find guardians much, much more fun, even as solo toons. It just feels like their attacks have more oomph.

One of you should go tinker (prospector, jeweller, cook), the other might wanna go historian (scholary, weaponsmith, farmer). That way you complement eachother neatly, the tinker farms hard metals for the weaponsmith who in turn can farm for the cook.

Captains make very decent jack of all trades as support character -- they can heal fairly well especially if they pick traits towards that, step in and tank in a pinch, give very nice buffs to their party, can do some damage, come with optional pet, and when all else fails can rezz dead people while in combat. You could probably pair them either with another captain or more dps-oriented character like champion. Or with guardian/warden if you want to keep it more safe.

Replacing captain in such pair with 'traditional' minstrel can work well too, as minstrels have option to switch on their damage mode when healing isn't high priority.

For fun there's also options of running as two burglars -- burglars are very survivable characters (though maybe less so with the expansion combat changes) and the ability to open fellowship maneuvers give them really nice synnergy, where two burglars can pull off together quite more than they could individually.. and individually they already can pull off awful lot.

Thanks for all the input, especially the crafting tips.  I think Rune/Guard may be the way to go and yes, I'm likely to grab the expansion as well.  The fact that the game has crafting, housing, and mounts will likely break me from CoH, at least for a month or two.  

In the event I'm ever to find a guild to group with, would these classes be useful to larger parties or are they pretty abundant?  Suggestions for duo partners that are also useful in larger parties would be great as well.

RKs might be a bit overpopulated (it's new after all) but if you bring a guardian you will almost always be in demand, and the RK DPS'es well enough not to be in the way.

Brandywine server. We have some f13 members already in a guild.

What is the level ranges of F13ers now? anyone at 50+?

Other members of the guild are, and i know cheddar is.

How large is your guys guild on Brandywine?  I'm coming back for the third time now, but all my characters are on Windfola.  None of my friends are still playing it or joining up with me this time though, so I'm not entirely against rerolling elsewhere.  Might actually give a serious try at hitting 50 this time around  :awesome_for_real:

After my gaming group of real life friends now have all quit WAR , one went back to EQ just to try the merc system with their old characters , another to back WoW , two to EQ2 , I decided I'd give this a go again and pickup the expansion and start new

Made a Warden and I'll have to say , with the DX10 and settings at high at 1920 it looks damn good , and the short time I've played it's been reasonably enjoyable

Nothing earth shattering , but fun enough to much around with , this might be the game that holds me over till Aion , might dabble in EQ2 also , but so far its been enjoyable trying this out

I had a good time with it last summer - probably too good a time really. I played too much and burned myself out getting to 35. I expect I'll pick up the new expansion and reactivate in a few months though once I've gotten tired of WoW again.

Me.  I also have a range of characters. My Minstrel is my current favorite, but is a bitch to solo with - he is around 20ish.  I also have a burg and guardian around 30. 

The game becomes awesome sauce at intervals, and it really never stops all the way to 50.  Right when it starts feeling grindy and annoying you will discover a new area and viola, fall in love all over again.



edit.  Additional.

For the folks that stuck with it from launch , how are Captains nowadays ? For some reason I just enjoyed the class overall but it seemed a bit weak originally

Had read a few bits and pieces on boards that made it sound like they had upped them somewhat and was considering starting one of them also to alternate with a warden

We broke down and signed up for at least one month.

Just broke down and bought the expansion.  I went to transfer my 50 Captain over to Brandywine, but the transfer services are not in service for the moment and no ETA.  I will most likely start up an alt on brandywine till then.

Captains are awesome.  DPS, buffs, and the ability to do a little bit of what other classes do (heal, ress, etc).  Very well rounded, good for groups, and can solo.

As soon as I can find some solo quests for my 40 I'll be good to go. I hear there is a new region south of the trollshaws that should help me with that.

My main is 19 and currently knocking out baby deeds in Bree-land, but I will probably go do some Old Forest quests in the next few days so I can get to 20 and play dress-up.  Why am I only level 19?  I have completed every non-crafting quest and deed in The Shire, and several in Ered Luin. :oh_i_see:

19 was when I stopped playing at launch.  Dunno.  I found the Old Forest tough at the time and the area north of Bree bleak and grindy.  We'll see -- now nearly 16.

Old Forest is much more enjoyable with it fully mapped now.  It was crazy before, very maze-like....and it would change!  In the past, I would just avoid it all together with my alts.

I personally thought it was better the old way. Much more mystery and adventure. But oh well, its not nearly as time consuming anymore due to its static nature and being fully mapped.

It's much better if you don't spoil it with maps. :oh_i_see:  If it still changed, my wife would probably destroy her computer in a fit of rage since she has the worst sense of direction ever.

It's still a little tough at times, but with two hunters at 18/19, the only real resistance we get is from the trees.  These suck because of mis-clicks.  We both died when we took turns accidentally right-clicking on a live tree instead of the one we just killed, the worst part being we were ecstatic that we took on two in a row and lived.

I haven't been north of Bree, but when I get bored I just go play around in some other starter area.  Before I went into Bree-land, I was jerking around in Ered Luin... but then I'm a huge Deed-whore.

I am indeed a deed-whore as well, but that's what finally drove me away from the game.  The deeds get more insane exponentially.  I know it was my choice to grind them - but I hate not completing them all.

If you go north of bree, east of the horse farm there is spectacular scenery. A lake with all of the turtles around it.  Always barren as hell. Only a couple of quests in total there.  Easily one of the best areas to farm ore nodes as well.  Take yer wife out to the lake and enjoy the solitude.

A really neat thing in Volume 2 (the epic line in Moria) - every relevant NPC got unique greetings/completion voice-overs for each quest, a short phrase that captures the essence of the quest text. Not as costly as full VO, but still very nice to hear the NPC say "I thank you for these pick-axes, they will come in handy" instead of "Hello there" when you turn in the quest.

So far I'm enjoying my time back. I've played a bit of my level 40 champ, got my captain to level 10, and leveled a warden to 12. The warden is fun because the class is so interactive. The captain drives me crazy because it seems to be the anti-warden. I have 2 active skills, one skill that depends on a crit, and the "after battle" skills.

Brandywine?   :eat:

I find captains hectic enough class in the environment they're designed for, i.e. lynchpin of a group. Keeping eye on everyone's morale is typically enough to give regular healers tunnel vision, but as captain you're expected to handle that as well as deal damage, counter possible debuffs applied to group, pull mobs off the main healer if there's any, place marks on the mobs which will help your group the most at the moment and finally make use of the 'on defeat' skills too.

Captain's complexity doesn't come from having complicated means to execute simple task (hold mob attention by smacking it in the face) but from having to juggle multiple --and on their own simple-- tasks at once. When playing solo they're largely on autopilot yeah, since most of this stuff won't apply.

No. Landroval.

Edit:

Tmp, yeah, I've seen Captains in my groups and they seem to be very busy. The problem is I didn't find the class that fun solo, and I don't group often enough to want to do the solo parts. I have 2 friends who are resubbing and one will probably try a warden and one will probably try the rune keeper. I may run my Captain with them and my wife's level 8 burglar. So, we'd have a warden, captain, burglar, and runekeeper running around. That'd make a nice little group I think.

BTW, I'm quite happy to find that groups for "low level" content are still possible. I did most of volume 1 book 4 last night with a group. We only split up because one of our minstrels wasn't high enough level to get the last two classes and one of our captains had to leave for some rl emergency. Still, we had my champ, my wife's hunter, 2 captains, and 2 minstrels for awhile. I'm not sure I was ever below full health!

Seems to have been a perfect time to return.  Everyone has RM/Warden alts they're leveling, or other alts to help their friends level up the new alts.  Point is groups are everywhere.  And I particularly like how they increased all the resource drops and spawns.  Moar slugs.

Are the new epic weapons available to characters lower than level 50? I'm still looking for reasons (aside from rolling up one of the new classes) to resubscribe with my mid 30s burglar.

I'm throwing my hat in as a first time LOTROer.  I located a bargain bin copy of the SOA original; don't have the MoM expansion and will probably wait till prices drop sometime after Xmas for that (bargain gamer ftw).  So far I like what I hear and like what I see when I played last night for the first time.  Peachburt / Guardian on Brandywine.  Would love to hook up with the F13 kinship?

I gather I'll be missing out on some new zones, new classes and new content but there should be plenty available in the original to keep me occupied for quite a while (esp. as a lowbie) right?

Yeah. You can easily solo to max level. (Well, the original max level.) And right now you can probably find groups for quite a few of the fellowship quests. Also, they have a global looking for fellowship channel that can be helpful though on my server it is part glff and part chat, though it's not nearly as bad as Wow barrens chat.

/joinchannel glff then go to your chat options by right clicking on the tab and put a check mark next to user channel 1. To talk in the channel just type /1. You won't really need glff until you're out of lowbie areas. (Probably early 20s or so.)

Add Grimst, Fallia, Issa, Trucegore, Marween to your friends list. See one of them come online, harass them for an invite.


Absolutely. I don't even have the expansion yet.

This whole game could just be the starting zones.  /burp

Just owned the Old Forest last night.  Now onto the Advanced wood hewer trait -- "kill 60 trees" lol.  I hate me some trees.  Almost as much as I hate those Old Forest spiders. 

God... weaver's den STILL creeps me out... I just wandered around in there finishing up old quests on my loremaster last weekend.

Theoretically you might be able to pick up and do Volume 2 Book 1 of the epic storyline at lvl.45, and you get the 'starter' epic weapon at about middle point of it. That's still quite a few levels away from 30-something, though.

Regular legendary wepons drop with requirement of lvl.51+ and you can't use them anyway until you have that Book 1 thing completed.

Hmm. That was a short sighted decision on Turbine's part. Or was the vast majority of their subscribers past and present really at max level?

Well, its a major selling point for the expansion, and yes, i would say there are a large number of players that are 50, many i suspect have been making alts until now, and probably are again with the two new classes. There is still quite a number of things for people with out the expansion and lower than 50.

So, it was not short sighted, simply because, well, you want it now don't you?  :grin:

/shrug. Well I haven't got a 50. And I would guess that since people like me without level 50s can't take advantage of one the coolest parts of the expansion we're more likely not to bother resubscribing to LOTRO.

But clearly people like me are a tiny, tiny minority.

Yeah, like how WOW made Death Knights available as a level 1 starting class. Stupid Blizzard. Oh, and I love how raiding games have level 1 raids.  

I'm not here to upset the local fanboys. I played and enjoyed the game all last summer but once I hit 35 I had nothing much I needed to strive for. At that point I started to find the game slow and grindy and I quit.

Some people wouldn't feel that way and I wish them the very best of luck.

In the meantime I'm happily playing WoW where the devs figured out that most of the fun was at higher levels and took steps to make leveling a new guy as painless as they possibly could.

Eventually, I'll tire of WoW and if I get bored enough maybe I'll pop back into LOTRO for a while. Who knows? Maybe the grindy, boring parts will have been removed by then.

You know thats a flaw right?

Wow = Endgame.

LOTRO = The whole game.

Anyway, local fanboys? WTF? Other than Riggswolfe being a little sarky because of your comment, i don't see any fanbois here.

There are still lots of things in LOTRO that the expansion brought that do not require it. With the expansion they added things for players OF ALL LEVELS to the game, not just the end. However i would love to see them lower the mount level requirement, and up the XP rate slightly, they have so much content however, that even rolling an alt you can do things you never did before after you reach Bree. I suspect that they will increase XP across the board as they add more zones to the game, they have a hobbit ( :grin: ) of adding at least two a year (full zones).

Side note: It truly is OK to just not like the style of a game. Really it is.

Which is why I said "Some people wouldn't feel that way and I wish them the very best of luck."

Besides Fallia, I also have Uluphant and Fatwing, but I'm not an officer so I can't get you in myself.  Also Cheddar is Arzo and he is an officer.

I signed up, haven't played since beta.  Strange that if I hadn't tried WAR I probably wouldn't be playing this again.  Turbine always make a nice engine, love the water effects.

I will be back soon - been working 14 hour days. 

Not sure about it; legendary weapons just seem to be placed as carrot for later part of the game. Without spoiling too much, your intial lack of legendary weapon is used as part of the plot, so it wouldn't make much sense if you had one from the beginning.

Keep on mind they also introduce two new classes in the expansion, and these new characters also have to go through usual 1-50 levelling experience without getting their legendary weapon from the start. So it just makes that gear something to look forward to.

Just wanted to jump back in the thread to ask a question and give a brief report.

Do we (Riders) have any sort of guild site outside of this forum here or anything that I should know about?

So far I am absolutely loving this game and I wish I had stumbled on in a long time ago.  I always have been a bit of a LOTR nerd but for whatever reason I haven't been much into MMOing the past couple of years.  Anyways, they have really nailed the atmosphere and lore; it's just fun to walk around and see what the townspeople have to say sometimes.  Getting groups to get certain quests done has been easy and overall the whole community seems to be at a higher maturity level than most (which isn't necessarily saying much but still).

Thanks to the Kinship as well; I've gotten a full set of heavy armor for my Guardian who just hit 15.  I'm doing the Explorer trade and concentrating on gathering and refining ore, wood and leather.  Anything you need (first two tiers so far) let me know.

No.  We pretty much use this forum as our defacto kin forum; since almost all the Rider members are f13 related anyhow it works well enough for us.  Plus its really a loosely formed guild.  If you ever need help with anything let Marween or myself know.

If you want to mail Fallia about four bronze ingots, it would save me about thirty minutes. :awesome_for_real:

Just thought I'd chime in with "correct". You can do Book 1 at 45 and solo it if you know your class well. I was able to do it and the expedition quests (to do the Fall of Moria session play) with only a little help from a random burglar in the half-orc caves.