f13.net

Just saw this  (http://www.lotro.com/buynow/anniversary/?utm_source=LandingPage_TryNow&utm_medium=LandingPage&utm_campaign=Anniversary) on x-fire.  Buy it for 9.99 and pay 9.99 a month, ( if you pay for a year in advance.  :oh_i_see:)

I still can't find the motivation to get it, but I thought some of you others might.

Considering the fact that the final 10.5 months of the subscription would go to waste, I am gonna skip it for now. Not enough there to keep me entertained very long.

Do you get a free month with the 9.99 box price?  That would be worthwhile since I doubt I'd play longer than a month. 

I still say this is a fantastic game.

You say that about a lot of crap.

As for LOTRO, just totally not in the mood for DIKU leveling at the moment.  At 10 bucks, this would be worth the pick up if I were.

$9.99 for this game is still about $50 too much.

I tried to buy the DD, but it keeps rejecting me.  The credit card company says they aren't even attempting to charge my card.  Serves me right for trying buy something from Turbine.

You can get character to l.10 in ~hour-two and then PvP all the remaining time as max level monster character. Though that's admittedly not for everyone, either.

The only reason I stuck with LOTRO for as long as I did was the fucking music system.

You shoulda heard my Dorf Guardian jam "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers....

And the Super Mario Theme....and Stairway.....and a buncha other cool shit.




Someone steal this system real fuckin quick like.

Don't lie, you stayed for my gay character and his antics. Also, you were my father.

I just don't think monthly fees slashing work, unless it is all the way to "free".

This thread reminds me that I should have lost my house by now. Damn AoC and the nice summer.

No worries, it just freezes nowadays. You just pay 2*upkeep to unfreeze it again along with all your stuff. :)

The 9.99 offer is an anniversity thing that seems to last longer than... well, the anniversity. It started out that way atleast.

So I was in the beta for both AoC and LoTRO, but didn't have enough time to really get into either. But from early impressions, they seemed pretty similar, and (excuse my inner Bartle), not that big a departure from the WoW standard.

So how come AoC is a smashing success while LoTRO has underwhelmed?

Boobs and Blood.

LOTRO is actually a great game for the ultra-casual set.  The housing, outfit and music system are great, lots of fluff if you are into that stuff, my wife loves it.

Gameplay is standard DIKU though, and PvP is either RAID Zerg or unbalanced as heck.  But I like a game where I can walk into some random dudes house, smoke weed and drink beer.  For some reason that never gets old for me... 

lol, this is true as far as the average goes on this board. Things is, i try to look at things for what they are, and judge them on that, rather than what came before it. LOTRO has fantastic writing, great story's, impressive graphics for its requirements, streamlined for causal play, and is set in LOTR books, as well as having impressive content updates on a nice regular clip that add content, fixes and always something new as a mechanic wise.

Its a fantastic game.

You may be bored of DIKU's, but that doesn't mean this isn't a good one.

Aragorn:  "Quickly now, Frodo needs you!  He's grown very cold, go collect 10 wolf pelts to aid his journey!  Time is short!"
*Ding*
Congratulations you are now level 10.
Aragorn:  "Quickly now, Frodo needs you!  The pass ahead is blocked, go kill 10 dire wolves to aid his journey!  Time is short!"
*Ding*
Congratulations you are now level 20.
Aragorn:  "Quickly now, Frodo needs you!  Rabid wolves are stalking us, kill 10 of them and aid the journey!  Time is short!"

I think I saw maybe 3 different creature models and 2 different humanoid models during the thousands of things I killed to get to level 25 or so.  By the end I was just sick of seeing the same 3 things over and over and over.  I don't think it's the fault of Turbine, I think it's a limitation of the story. 

LotR was a great story, since it followed a group of people through an excellent adventure.  But overall they saw only a handful of creatures, and only a few of those were wimpy enough to fight, half the shit they ran into caused Gandalf to shit his pants.  The developers seemed constrained to only use canon material, and thus there isn't much variety, in my most humble of opinions.

Because AoC is so varied...

Humans. Occasional undead. Uuh, boars. Scorpions. More humans. Do I need to mention that AoC has only human as a playable race?

My point is that it wasn't lack of variety that made LotRO the mediocre success that it was. Not saying it's the most varied diku either, but the subtle variations are a strong point for me - they just don't go from green to pink to orange from zone to zone. In fact, many of the mobs are the best monster designs I've seen - wood trolls and the wights come to mind.

Having played both I can tell you that I personally feel like I've explored a heck of a lot more varied content in AoC than I ever saw in LotRO.  Moving from Stygia to Aloquinia to Cimmeria (specifically traveling from Khopshef Province to Wildlands of Zelata to Tarantia Noble District to Field of the Dead to Eiglophian Mountains) in my leveling course makes the game feel so much more varied than anything I felt in LotRO.

I think it's a problem with the lore more than it is with the games though.  LotRO is an epic tale of some people slowly moving across the world, and thus the game plays out like that.  It seems like it's forever before you see something new.  Conan is a collection of pulp stories that have one character able to move around and do basically superhuman things.  Thus Funcom had more liberty to let you experience those different environments in a quicker way.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but moving from the Shire to Bree Land to the Lone Lands to the Northern Downs just didn't feel like I was experiencing nearly the variety..

EDIT:  Another great example is the variety you experience in WoW from (since I was undead) Tirisfal Glades to Silverpine Forest to Hillsbrad to The Barrens to Thousand Needles, etc.  Compare that to the variety you see in about the same amount of gameplay from LotRO.

Thank you for choosing which random song gets stuck in my head today. At least I won't have any trouble remembering the lyrics for this one  :awesome_for_real:

I'd say pacing of the game.  Lotro feels very sluggish, laggy, and uninteractive while AoC is pretty much the complete opposite.  For combat in AoC you always feel like you are doing something, wheither it's choosing which combo to use or how you are positioning yourself with the mobs.  It just feels better.

And whoever made fun of Lotro for getting 4 quests in a row to kill wolves, you get the same thing (literally, 4-5 quests to kill different type of wolves one after another) at FoD in AoC so I really would not use that as an argument for aoc...

I would echo this complaint as well.  In general you are given a ton of abilities, but all of them are pretty weak.  In additon the way the game is designed you "queau" up your abilities which means the ablity doens't take place until 2-3 seconds after you queau it up.  This makes clicking potions/abilities that are "oh crap" a lot more annoying because you have effectivley 2-3 less seconds to it.  They argued they designed it this way so the game was more "strategic" but I find it just seems like you are driving an old car with a bad wheel. 

Other than that it is a fun game to hang out in to pass the time, but when something comes along that is more to my liking (I'm eyeing up Warhammer) then I will head out.

Well, measured on a non-adjusted scale, both are way more varied than LotRO is, true enough. The thing is, LotRO tries to be coherent alot more than either of the mentioned games. WoW is a theme park, make no mistake about it. AoC doesn't really qualify as it's not a "world" at all but linked maps, hence can have any variation it wants. Most of all LotRO tries to stay plausible and within the setting of the game, there's a whole lot of variation that goes further than changing the colour of the foliage.

I'm not sure, but I think we're essentially saying the same thing, just from different perspectives. It's less varied, but personally I think the varition that's there once you sit down and look is pure awesomeness in comparison to WoW. WoW just seems to me to take the cheap way out.

My complaint wasn't that it was 4 quests in a row, it was that it was literally every tier of quests was the same.  I've grown to expect some major scenery changes as you hit new "power" levels, i.e. what you are seeing at 10 better be different than what you are seeing at 20, else you're not really growing in power as a character.

FoD having 4 quests in a row to kill the same thing is no bid deal, but having the same quests in the zone previous to FoD and the zone after FoD makes it feel like you aren't getting any more powerful, you're still just the wolf killer.  That was the problem I had with LotRO, the difference between the shire, bree, the lone lands and northern downs is so minuscule as to be unnoticeable, and going through those zones in order was over half the game.  I quit there, so I don't know if there was some major shift in scenery post level 28 or so.

Every game has you pulling from the same groups of mobs to do quests in the same level range (i.e. in WoW you often get 4 quests in a row to kill the same foozles, but 10 levels later you are killing some different flavor of foozles, likely again for 4 quests in a row) but I haven't ever run into a game like LotRO, where you are killing the same stuff no matter where you go on the map.  The difference being that at level 1 you kill level 1 wolves, at level 40 you kill level 40 wolves.

Sure, this is what I keep saying, the lore doesn't allow for it to be more varied.  It took 3 books for Frodo to move from the shire to mount doom, and it would be fucked up if there was a boat or some magic teleporter from the shire to mount doom in the game, it wouldn't make sense.  Thus the lore is restrictive on how much variation can exist, otherwise the books wouldn't work well with the game, because you would constantly be facing the fact that Gandalf and Frodo were idiots for not using the magic teleporter and making the epic tale into a short story.

But that doesn't stop the fact that it didn't feel varied.  In my time playing WoW, and in my time playing AoC, I can think back to those previous zones that are so different from my current zones that it makes it feel like they were almost a different game.  Thinking about three weeks ago when the stuff in Khopshef Province was so scary vs. now when the stuff in Atzel's Approach is so scary gives me enough diveristy that I feel like I'm progressing well and my character is becoming more of a "hero".  When I think of my time in LotRO it is all a blur of the same stuff over and over, and I never felt like my level 28 character was any more advanced or more powerful than my level 1 character.

Of course, I could just be pissed because I was a minstrel and playing those same damn 5 little lute riffs every time I fought a mob has given me nightmares for months and months now.  I swear, if I hear that sound ever again I'm going to flip out and kill you all.

EDIT:  And to make it worse, Turbine chose a mechanic that reinforced the fact that there was no diversity.  I like the title system, but it's silly to say "okay, kill 1000 wolves and you get a new title" because it shows that there is nothing but wolves in the game! :)

Thats manly because of the the IP. its LOTR, you cant really have demons running around every where in the overlands. also, the level things....sliding scale, thats all MMO's.

I know, I've said this in every post I've made so far.  It doesn't mean that LotRO should get a pass because Turbine was handcuffed by the IP.  If you can't make an interesting game within the confines of the IP, throw the IP away, don't use it as an excuse for a boring and bland game!

This may be the strangest thing in the world to say, but I think LotR as a setting is very niche. It's like setting a game in the biblical middle-east: Easy to understand, hard to appriciate.

It's not strange at all, in fact I completely agree.  Remember, I was originally responding to this question:


And I think we have our answer.  Because LotRO is a niche game.  It's niche because the lore requires it to be so.

I remember what you answered and it wasn't -really- what I questioned either. I only questioned that the monotony of LotRO would have been the weak point of the game for it to reach mass appeal. :-) It has many faults to stop it from that, monotony not really being a major one.

But, still, Middle-earth is hard to appriciate. It's not about wiz-wiz bang-bang instant gratification at all, not in story nor in design. Not saying that makes it superior but rather that it takes time to see its qualities when the world is done as it "should be". I know many draw a parallell between "IP sell-through" and "marketability" which I don't think is fair. They are two very different things.

This is EXACTLY how I feel about the sound that spriggans made in DAOC.

Find comfort in that in next patch (July), minstrels will use the instrument they got equipped also in combat. New animations and sounds and the lot. Being healed by the sound of a drum is a bit witch-doctorish.

Ehh, no? Sorry, but how's this supposed to be point against the game you're dissing, when it's completely made up bullshit? They have quests like these (like any other diku MMO) but these come from the random NPCs that have very little to do with the main "storyline".

It's like complaining how King Conan in AoC sends you to harvest 10 bear vaginas when it's actually some random guy in newbie zone.

Read the rest of the thread?

I did; it still has nothing to do with what you originally wrote and i replied to. And if LotRO is somehow the only game in your mind where you get to kill the same mob models with different skins across the numerous levels, then i'm pretty much at loss for words.

It's pretty much the only game of it's class where you basically enjoy the same content at level 28 (where I admittedly quit.. well.. not so much quit as realized I hadn't bothered to log on in a month or two and I probably should stop paying for it) as you do at level 1.

Not nearly the same content.  The same content.

Which is my point, everything else at least goes so far as to provide some form of variety to what you do.  Sure you're still killing 10 foozles at level 1 and level 70, but at least they are different styles of foozles in different environments.

LotRO is unforgivable in the fact that you are killing the exact same foozles with the same names and same textures and in the same barren, rocky environment with a couple of stands of trees thrown in at level 1 as you are at level 28.  The difference between the most wildly separated and distant zones that I was able to explore when I was 3/4 of the way through the game was so minuscule that every other game makes a mockery of it by 1/4 of the way in.

The first 20 levels of LOTR were quite good, I enjoyed exploring the old forest and parts prior to that.

Around 23 I was in the western Lost lands and all my quests seem to need a group, and it was hard for some reason to find out...maybe because the last lands are so...empty. Of anything. Oh sure Weathertop is nice, and I was excited to explore it...and found more empty ruins. Oh which I had seen quite enough already.

Cevik, the problem is that you're stating it as if it was absolutely true, which it isn't. You must have glossed over quite a number of smaller areas to come to that conclusion. Old Forest, Barrow-downs, Agamaur/Circle of Blood, Midgewater Marshes, Harloeg, Nan Wathren, Fields of Fornost, all have rather unique looks and that's just up to about level 25. Sure, they aren't pink and orange, but:
That's a stretch by any definition. I could probably name 15 types of mobs you get to kill in those 25 levels as well. I believe your demands for variation are just through the roof and biased when it comes to this game. I don't see how Elwynn/Redridge/Westfall (or Durotar, Barrens?) differ SO much from the same starter zones in LotRO.

Edit: Westfall, not Westlands. :-P

Sounds like you missed North Downs, where they brought Wights and hordes of orcs and goblins onto the scene. The wights were kind of cool but I guess with the Lone Lands we'd already seen orcs and goblins.

Sadly, a lot of the progression content for LoTR seems to have been designed for groups, which left soloers with the worst selection of mobs to kill possible. There were trolls in nw Lone Lands, barbarians, and an instance with walking trees and a ton of undead but if you soloed you never saw it or knew it even existed probably. You couldn't even dream about checking out the instance entrance thanks to the shit ton of signature mobs outside.

I found group play was the most fun I'd found since EQ in LoTR but it's sure amazing that in a post-WoW world they'd hide so much away behind the wall like that.

More importantly, they aren't soloable either

Sure, Durotar and the Barrens don't differ, but by the time you are 3/4 of the way through pre-TBC WoW you've seen:

Durotar, The Barrens, Stonetalon Mountains, Thousand Needles, Silverpine Forest, Hillsbrad Foothills, Desolace, Dustwallow Marsh and Strangelthorn Vale.

You'll still have The Hinterlands, Azshara, Felwood Ungoro Crater and a host of other places ahead of you.

And that doesn't include any of the dungeons.

Surely you can see the difference in variety in WoW vs. LotRO?

And I'm not really biased, I don't hate turbine or have any desire for the game to fail.  I just stopped playing it because I was bored, I knew I was going to log on and see the same stuff and kill the same things again, nothing really new.  Perhaps if I was more of a group player I would have seen some amazing variety in the game, so perhaps it's my fault.  But again someone asked why LotRO wasn't a smashing success and I'm simply trying to explain my experience as to why (and the 4 people I talked into tagging along to try the game).

I's sorry, but again this is just bull. Early levels of the game have you start either in Shire, Bree-land or that whatever it's called elf zone, neither of them being "barren, rocky environment". So no, this is quite certainly not the experience 'from level 1 to 28' And if the difference between lush staring lands, the swamps that cover parts of these areas, the barren lone-lands, the forests in Trollshaws, snowy mountains either past the Trollshaws or in the starting dwarf zones.. are "minuscule" to you then again, i don't know what to say. If difference between deserts and snow-covered mountains and forests are just "minuscule" then by this logic WoW is all the same also... because i haven't experienced any other kind of environment but these for the first half of game (1-25 or so)

Also, the names and textures on foozles do change in this game just like any other. Speaking of these others, that's a little reminder: http://www.wowguru.com/db/families/ Yeah, you totally don't kill bears and wolves and boars and spiders and other generic shit every 10 levels in any other MMO...

No. How is seeing barrens, mountains, forests, foothills, marshes and valleys in WoW different and more varied than seeing barrens, mountains, forests, foothills, marshes and valleys in LotRO? And yeah, you're not including the dungeons so i'm also not including the instances.

Musta been my video card then, because I just didn't see that much difference between:

The Lone Lands:  http://litg.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/screenshot00028.jpg (http://litg.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/screenshot00028.jpg)
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_r5JtPh5GgCg/Rm07gPmRhVI/AAAAAAAAD8I/2QbvGmL7G-Q/ScreenShot00000.jpg (http://lh3.ggpht.com/_r5JtPh5GgCg/Rm07gPmRhVI/AAAAAAAAD8I/2QbvGmL7G-Q/ScreenShot00000.jpg)
And The Shire:  http://www.massively.com/media/2007/12/os1214.jpg (http://www.massively.com/media/2007/12/os1214.jpg)

Which were geographically the furthest things apart I was able to run through in the first 25 levels.

Bree land: http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album12/Adso_s_Camp.jpg (http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album12/Adso_s_Camp.jpg) was in between, and I really don't see much difference there either.

Certainly nothing akin to the difference between silverpine forest: http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj309/skythe1/WoWScrnShot_032808_210405S.jpg (http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj309/skythe1/WoWScrnShot_032808_210405S.jpg)

And the barrens:  http://www.alphaplusguild.org/gallery/d/302-2/Entreri+joins+the+Barrens+outriders.jpg (http://www.alphaplusguild.org/gallery/d/302-2/Entreri+joins+the+Barrens+outriders.jpg)

Which are things you can see at the lowest levels of WoW.

Maybe I'm just crazy.

EDIT:  Just for the record, I don't currently have the game installed so I got all those pictures by GISing LotRO and the zone names.

The Lone Lands: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1247/1358777962_8562172c1e_o.jpg
and The Shire: http://kittenslitter.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/lotro-the-shire.jpg

yes, absolutely no difference.

This is marsh in the middle of Bree area: http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album12/Resource_Gathering_in_the_Midgewater_Marshes.jpg Clearly identical in every aspect to these other two zones.

Old Forest in LotRO: http://picasaweb.google.com/lacour2/LOTROScenicViews/photo#5071230196986775058

compare it to the Lone Lands screenshot i referenced earlier. Is the difference really "nothing akin" like between these barrens and forest screenshots of WoW, in your eyes?

oh and to round out the newbie experience, this is the dwarf/elf starting area: http://62.25.101.224/images/microsites/LOTRO/eredLuin_treesa_450.jpg
Elves are then moved here: http://members.arstechnica.com/x/rhaegar/EredLuin03.jpg when they hit level 5 or so.

these screenshots are also the google results from 1st or 2nd results page btw.

The image you chose was nothing but fog, here are better images of the midgewater marshes:

http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album12/The_Distant_Marshes.jpg (http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album12/The_Distant_Marshes.jpg)
http://lotro.allakhazam.com/mediabox/MediaBoxMarch507.jpg (http://lotro.allakhazam.com/mediabox/MediaBoxMarch507.jpg)
http://bp2.blogger.com/_yIfSctBgccs/Rzx7AG-EWjI/AAAAAAAAAmQ/eNgqJnM_w98/s1600-h/WyndolynMarshes.jpg (http://bp2.blogger.com/_yIfSctBgccs/Rzx7AG-EWjI/AAAAAAAAAmQ/eNgqJnM_w98/s1600-h/WyndolynMarshes.jpg)

So as you can see, when you choose a picture that you know, actually looks like the marsh, it pretty much looks the same as everything else.

You could probably make the argument that things in the lone lands are a slightly browner shade of greenish brown than things in the shire, otherwise I just don't see a difference:

Lone Lands: http://lh5.ggpht.com/_amYwVc-CNw8/RjysowGd-XI/AAAAAAAAAJs/xAMH8LO5_aM/ScreenShot00030.jpg (http://lh5.ggpht.com/_amYwVc-CNw8/RjysowGd-XI/AAAAAAAAAJs/xAMH8LO5_aM/ScreenShot00030.jpg)
The Shire: http://riversidemod.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/dermid_sits.jpg (http://riversidemod.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/dermid_sits.jpg)

Yes, it is what the marsh looks like when your character is actually in that area. THe game engine isn't ideal and so the fog isn't applied when viewing things from distance, like in the screenshots you cite. Still, i don't think you can argue that for a player who actually is in that area the visuals and the feel they provide are much different than what they experience elsewhere?

... are you for real at this point? How exactly does the marsh look like a forest, or desert plains or snowy mountains?

What about the screenshots i provided instead, the ones that show something more than camera zoomed on single character, or the game with all detail sliders pulled to minimum by the looks of it. Do these too look to you like just things that have slightly different shade of brown or green on them? And for this matter and using your own logic -- how is that forest and barrens screenshots you've shown any different from each other, except one is more brown and one is more yellow? Both have some trees, ground and a path through. Tell me, what's so contrasting about them?

Shire? Lone-lands? Jesus. This is just trolling.

You'd have to ask Turbine that question, I guess. ;)

EDIT:  I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree.  I canceled my account because everything looked the same, if those pictures look different to you, gratz on the special eyes I guess.. ;)

They should make it $100 for a lifetime sub.

That'd probably make me sign up, despte not having played since Beta.

Gotta agree with Tmp. If LotRO has one strength, it's the landscaping and world environment. Absolutely gorgeous world with some really awesome art detail. Only MMO on par wit WoW's world art imo. Not quite as much variety, but still a decent amount with real good terrain flow, flavour-adding detail (e.g. the way a road detours around a stream), and atmosphere (weather; subtle blur in trees or leaves; reflection or lighting; etc).

Lots of world shots in here if folks need examples:
http://www3.telus.net/public/mehwulfe/kyan/lotro/

The Shire, Evendim, and the Trollshaws are especially superb.

What kind of graphics card do you have, Kyan? I never saw terrains like that. What I did see was blurry-ass DAoC-style terrains like the ones Cevik posted. I guess my 8600 GT wasn't up to displaying the good stuff?

I've been getting this kind of graphics like on Kyan's screens with a cheap-ass 7600 gt card. It's enough to handle all advanced gfx sliders at high (and drawing distances at max) ... i'm guessing the blurry-ass effect would come as result of lower resolution textures, low quality texture filtering (anisotropic is pretty nice) and either short range or disabled frill and/or disabled distant imposters, as combination of these would leave you with blurry mess of mostly bare polygons.

In WoW I could fly from Ironforge to Booty Bay, then sail to Ratchet, and in the span of a few minutes I'll have gone from snowy mountains, to tropical jungle, to a savannah full of zebra and giraffes.  When you cover a lot of ground in WoW, it really feels like you're getting around.

LotRO runs fine (30+ FPS) at "Very High" on a 6800GT. I'm cranking every single slider to max (incl. Ultra textures, 4x AA and 16x AF) on a 7800GTX and rarely get low framerates when just doing the usual soloing/grouping. Raiding is a bit harsh, but to expect.

I'm still going back to the music being the only innovative or even cool thing about LotRO. And my wife made it 20 levels, but that's about par for the course really.

Queued combat is bad. Title system was kinda interesting reason to grind, but meh....Graphics were pretty good, but nothing too special. To me, its just not the right setting for an MMORPG.

Reading this, I'm wondering whether Lotro should have done a KOTOR and set itself in the time of the Silimerillion. One of the subtexts of the book is that magic is fading from the world, all the really nasty stuff is either dead, driven from the world or asleep and the world is turning to the time of man. In the time of the Silmarilion there was a lot more really really nasty stuff out there. Hell in one story Sauron changes shape into a vampire to get away from an Elf.

It would have given them a lot more license to play, but everyone would have been whining it wasn't the books.

It was never going to *be* the books, no matter what.  I think they would have done considerably better using the Second Age as a setting, when men were rare and magic was everywhere.  Not only more freedom creatively, but more of a sense of wonder in the players when you weren't competing directly against the movies.

--Dave

It's like SWG all over again :awesome_for_real:

They'd hardly need the IP license for this kind of generic high fantasy setting, though... nor would there really be anything setting them apart from various spin-off worlds including already existing MMOs. KotOR might work because it's really first "thousands of magic-wielding Jedi everywhere" twist on regular Star Wars that's Jedi-sparse. But "thousand magic-wielding elves everywhere" that 2nd Age rendition would be? Not so much of 'never done before' concept...

Wasn't this thing originally called "Middle-Earth Online"?

I think a few somewhat-successful films of recent years may have had a little to do with tying the licance more directly to the books. To get the casuals interested as well as the LARP and cape-wearing crowds in.

I had to get the trial because Turbine wouldn't take my money.

Even before level 10, I feel like I am trudging around.

Regarding the graphics debate between WoW and LotRO, it would probably be a good thing to remember that Tolkien described a world that was much like Earth, so the environments and the way Turbine presents them are going to be very similar to reality. While the game is fantasy, the world itself is constrained. In WoW, it's a different story. The books were written after the game was made. Blizzard has creative license to make some forest zones saturated with purple light (Teldrassil and Darkshore) all day long no matter what in order to make it look different from the green standard-ish looking Elwynn Forest. And then there are several zones saturated in yellow color, like the Barrens and Westfall. Then you've got a few jungle zones, and a couple marshes that are similar. Then you've got your red zones like Durotar and Thousand Needles and Redridge Mountains. Oh, and the white zones, Dun Morough and Winterspring.

I think WoW has a lot more creative license since they are making it up as they go, whereas LotRO must follow the lore they've licensed. It's a pity that the variance did not impress some, but I never found LotRO to be lacking in world beauty. Both games offered good immersion within the zones and offered a varied "feel". Points of interest around WoW are perhaps more interesting, but from a world building standpoint, it uses the same mountains and the same funneling in mountainous zones, albeit with slightly different colors and textures. Oh, and most of the trees are the same geometry and textures with color variances. Same goes for a lot of mobs.

Welcome to the world of game design and making your content stretch to fill a world. Whether there are larger zones that take longer to work through, or smaller more concentrated zones, both games have their merits. Since the argument of graphics is based upon opinion, there is no right or wrong here, but screenshots can be framed to support either arguement, as tmp showed swamps and marshes from within the zones, and cevik showed them from a distance to the actual swamp and marsh. LotRO and WoW both use the technique of adjusting lighting and atmosphere when characters enter a different type of zone, so... yada yada yada.

A holdover from when Sierra tried to make a Tolkien MMG. As I recall, the Sierra game was to be set in the Fourth Age, and included permadeath.

Unfortunately, Turbine doesn't have the rights to use the Silmarillion. They can use anything mentioned in The Hobbit and the main trilogy, but nothing beyond that. That constrains their ability to show canonical earlier periods.

From my second post in the thread, the first in which I brought up the lack of variety in LotRO:


And I repeated it nearly every post.  I understand the problem, it just doesn't make it less of a problem! :)

*nod* My mistake for missing it. Was reading quickly through while at work. I was distracted. :)

To be fair, two of my shots were from directly inside the swamp, one was from outside.

http://lotro.allakhazam.com/mediabox/MediaBoxMarch507.jpg
http://bp2.blogger.com/_yIfSctBgccs/Rzx7AG-EWjI/AAAAAAAAAmQ/eNgqJnM_w98/s1600-h/WyndolynMarshes.jpg

Both of those are from a guy standing in the marshes.

Fair enough, but from the ground texture and the water in the first one, I think atmospheric effects were turned off. The second one is definitely a good indicator though as I have been in that marsh before. Of course, it wasn't a "dark" marsh.


WoW has another thing going for it in that the graphics engine requires a lot lower system specs, and they make very judicious use of color and saturation to achieve the desired effects. I give their design team a lot of credit for their work on the atmosphere of the game.