f13.net

Well it is true, it's number 2 in the UK Charts.

http://www.gamersquad.com/category/PlayStation-2/Dead-goat-or-not-God-of-War-II-rules-the-chart/

http://ps2.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=13914


http://www.mcvuk.com/news/26829/UK-Charts-God-of-War-II-slaughters-chart-rivals


Not sure this deserves it own thread as it might be number 17 next week but anyway here you go.

This is the UK-only and without actual numbers is as interesting as Turbine saying that DDO was the "fastest growing MMOG in North America".

Actually I thought it was worth a post in the "Lotro nda lifted" thread, but still I think that if confirmed it could be threadworth news.
Numbers will come eventually and we'll know the truth. For know, I think it's a believable truth.
In fact, not counting LoTRO, what is supposed to be the "second fastest-selling online-only PC title after WoW"?
Anything unbeatable?

The online-only part lets them beat The Sims.

Sure it's believable but the reason why it's meaningless without actual numbers is that WoW is almost an order of magnitude larger in Europe than any other subscription-based MMORPG before it. That's a lot of uncertainty between 1st and 3rd places.

Just to make up some numbers, let's say WoW has 500K subscribers in the UK and 2nd place before LotRO came along was, say, 75K subscribers for EQ. So ignoring what "fastest-selling" means, is LotRO is on pace for, say 80K subscribers or 400K in the UK? That's a humongous difference.

It seems a little fishy to me. I did a count on logins from the social panel and it's about 1600 per server. That means about 170k total population at the moment. I love the game. The numbers are going to be successful (though maybe the licenseholders won't think so.) And for Turbine, that would make it their biggest seller, but that has to be some kind of weird marketing measure. Maybe the fastest selling SINCE wow? (Since everything else has flopped.)

The Gamestop near me had ~200 copies of LoTRO on Friday last and had ~200 copies yesterday.  I have no idea what that means other than that's a lot of shelf space.

I cannot verify the number, but I have been told that somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.6 million active accounts were in the open beta. If they could only get half of those people to buy it and pay...

In any case, it was word of mouth so it could be complete and utter bullshit. A little Wednesday speculation is good for the joints.

That's complete and utter bullshit. They did not have nearly that many servers up and running during Beta to support that many people unless by "active accounts" he meant everybody who signed up for the beta plus all their family members and their cousins and all of Turbine's forum members. And even then that probably wouldn't add up to 3.6 million.

Let me put it another way. WoW in NA has 222 servers to support it's 2+ million players. LotRO has 11 servers right now in NA and that's more than they had during Beta (which was at 4 last time I played Beta which admittedly was a while ago).

This is why paying attention to Second Life is sometimes useful.  3.6 million accounts can simply be the number of people who registered a beta account, not those who actually played for any significant amount of time.

Shit, I had a beta account and the only 2 times I logged in was before the open beta. Active accounts means fuckall.

The sales statement of "fastest-selling," while a good sign, really are meaningless without actual numbers to back them up. Everquest sold slowly to reach its highest peak. The important numbers aren't going to be boxes sold, it's subscriptions 1 month after release, when people actually have to start paying.

Numbers aside, LoTRO is a very solid DIKU that is destined to grow in the next few months, especially thanks to good reviews and the kind of viral marketing word of mouth that Brad's thing won't have. The servers are packed, the thing is polished, the content is more than enough to entertain while being addictive and until at least Conan comes out (ie: October) it can only grow. While SOE chose the wrong horse and the wrong time to launch, I'd say LoTRO did the exact opposite: perfect launch date, in between WoW burnouts and the next gen lot.

If it's already doing good, then I think Turbine has all the reasons to be happy this time. Numbers will probably confirm this, either it'll be close or not close to WoW.

I really have a hard time cheering on the success of another bland MMO.  I guess drawing more investors to the genre is a good thing.  I'll cheer that.

Then cheer it on for releasing in a more finished state than is normal for MMORPGs. Crafting and resulting effects on the economy are more than a bit fucked, but those are the damn hardest to balance in general, and I'm going to be shocked as shit the day an MMORPG launches with a properly tuned crafting and economic system. (If nothing else, MMORPG makers tend to balance for sustained post-launch economy, making the initial few months weird as fuck because the input/outputs are all screwed).

If nothing else, Turbine's getting rewarded here for putting out something that isn't crap. It's not stunning and new, but "Not a steaming pile of shit on launch" is actually pretty damn new to the MMORPG market.

Maybe now that WoW and LoTRO both launched successfully by not being piles of crap, the rest of the market will take note and add "Make sure it's not a festering pile of crap on launch, because apparently people don't stick around for a year while we finish the game anymore" to their to-do lists.

Hard as it may be to beleive, some of us actually like diku.  LIKE.  Enjoy.  Have fun.  The only real question is about execution and polish.


You guys sit in your cafe, drinking espresso, wearing your berets, twisting your moustaches and decrying the current state of the industry for its lack of innovation, but meanwhile we'll be over here having fun.

AC2 was the 2003 game of the year, and look where it is today.  DDO is a moderate success, but last I heard the servers were being merged. LotRO may start out well and become a resounding success, but from everything I've heard about it the game just seems bleh and not worth leaving my current MMO.

Only because there are no other decent offerings for current/former WOW players looking for elves dorfs and wizards....

Market Timing: A
Genre: B- (only because its tolkien)
Playability: B+ (its smooth and looks good)
Longevity: C
Retention: C+ (B+ if they can do something kickass between now and WHO or Conan)
Conversion Rate: 8.5% (Im estimating its higher than usual because of the few available alternatives)

"Let me put it another way. WoW in NA has 222 servers to support it's 2+ million players. LotRO has 11 servers right now in NA and that's more than they had during Beta (which was at 4 last time I played Beta which admittedly was a while ago)."


WOW has significantly more than 222 servers, unless of course your talking about "the login servers I see" on the login screen.
 

Loved that image :)
I want to stop having fun and go sit in a cafe with Nebu and the moustaches right NOW! (I am serious)

I don't want to take away fun from anyone...   I simply want a game to play that I haven't already played for the past 10+ years.  The MMO market is like an 80's radio station.  Sure, I love me some hair metal on occasion, but I'd really like to listen to something fresh and new as well.  It's in no way an elitist thing... it's that I've been-there-done-that ad nauseum and would like something to cleanse the palate.  

I agree that we've progressed from "I hope it runs" to "I hope that I can play without having to wait in a queue".  I still think that we should expect more, especially given the large budgets and long development cycles.  The biggest improvement I've seen in the 5+ years since the DAoC release is that the flagship titles are far more content complete than they were back in the day.  I still think there are many more improvements to be made and I do believe that customers do have some effect on this.  There are many lingering issues with LotRO (armor, crafting, style balance, spawn rates, mob placement) that will be worked out over time.  As for WoW, I think you're being far too generous in calling their launch a success.  Granted, the issues that their launch had were different of those from the past, but I'd hardly call it streamline.  I think Blizzard learned a lot about customer service in the first month after their game released. 

While I admit that I'm part of the problem (I did purchase Vanguard), I did do my part in beta.  I submitted long lists of issues that I encountered, many of which still remain at release.   

I'm not terribly up on either AC2 and DDO, but I don't think either had nearly the positive word of mouth upon launch, or near the number of subs that LoTRO seems to have gotten. It's not WoW, but it appears to have brought in more than enough players to plan for, at a bare minimum, 100k subs for the duration. I suspect, when all's said and done, that it will probably peak and level at closer to 200k than 100k, which certainly places it very profitably.

I'm not sure what coming down the pipe is a direct threat to a Tolkien DIKU -- I suspect, much like SWG had for the longest time, that LoTRO's IP means that they'll have a pretty dedicated core sub base devoted to the IP, not the game. Unlike SWG, the game doesn't suck, either.

So while I'm sure upcoming MMORPGs will pull subs from LoTRO, I don't see any existential threats to it's existance. I'm guessing (judging by the numbers and interest I see out there) that it will peak between 200k and 300k and slide down to a sustained sub base of around 200k. Really not bad at all.

Fixed to be fun, reskinned, rebadged and now the second fastest-selling online-only PC title after WOW?

I'm playing WoW right now. I can hardly say I don't or can't enjoy a decent DIKU.

It's just that LotRO is a mediocre DIKU that brings really nothing new to the party that WoW didn't already bring, and WoW is more fun to me. It's polish will garner it more subscriptions than its gameplay would.

LoTRO is a good rebound game once you get tired of the cockblockery suck of endgame WoW. Passable diku, interesting tweaks, and messy enough to feel more like a real world than WoW, where everything from Stormwind to Wildhammer was laid out by such powerful and talented civil engineers they make the Illuminati envious.

No doubt WoW is far larger than LoTRO. I suspect that'll always be the case. WoW is the natural evolution of first generation diku, and while LoTRO has one or two features that may be considered "more advanced", in total it doesn't have the competitive advantages WoW has.

However, when comparing server count you need to consider number of accounts registered per and peak concurrency supported. I'm trying to dig up the numbers, but I think WoW servers support up to 3,000-3,500 concurrent avatars while LoTRO's goes to 10,000.

Of course, even if it was 222*3,000 and 11*10,000, WoW wins hands down. But the difference is by how much. By those numbers, LoTRO in NA/EU is 1/6 the size of WoW in NA alone. Not a fight, much less a win, but damned good for a game only weeks old (to include the late-beta/pre-order crowd). If I'm wrong and LoTRO's servers only support the same concurrent logins, the situation is bleaker.

In either case, LoTRO has already hit it's peak in my opinion, because it already has been reviewed so thoroughly and expectations managed so thoroughly (Turbine is not Blizzard, DDO did not change people's opinion of them, AC2 still closed, they don't have MEGAHUGECORP publishing/funding). While WoW successfully road an entire year's worth of wave as it broke records in territory after territory, each launch feeding awareness back to the core, I think LoTRO will have completely separate launches that don't do anything for the main NA/EU market.

We'll see, but I think they're going to plateau much sooner than WoW did (which nominally seemed a few months ago) and that'll be all they ever get.

Im going to chime in here. while the aspects of the game are vanilla at best the story is very compelling. It is worth playing to unravel the story.

Yea, I should have peppered in there that I'm currently in LoTRO, gladly paying the fee. There is a LOT more story and it's a lot more integrated into the game world. Plus my earlier comment somewhere around here about Endie's (I think) opinion that it's more "messy" and better for it. The whole thing feels more natural, more organic. By that difference alone it's worth it.

Some stuff pisses me off, like the very overt system-wide clock (almost nothing except /music is instant), and the runspeed. But that's just MMO_generic_issue_01

AC2 is not really comparable to many other games. It always played like a beta, was never any fun and had some horrible design decisions baked into it, including no towns and no NPCs. (LOL - for real!)

I don't think it's hit its peak yet. It's a decent enough game that as people continue to get bored of WoW or are just looking for something new to try its subscription numbers will go up since there aren't any better alternatives out there right now unless they are masochists and decide to give Vanguard a whirl.

Edit: plurals are hard

I could not agree more. I have not had this much fun in a MMO in ages and quite frankly that is all I give a dam about. I could give a rats ass about innovation. Saga of Ryzom is innovative as hell if that is your desire but I don't see their servers getting ques any time soon.

I'm playing it to see if I can get my "the Undying" title. If I do I'll probably stay subscribed to stand around town pretending to be a lich or something.

It'll eventually die sooner than WoW one day far in the future, I agree on this, but it definitely still has to peak. Launch as been smooth and word of mouth is working its way.

"Virally".

My guild is just an example. No one was even slightly interested, but they are growing curious and slowly joining our numbers as they keep hearing good things about it.

It will steadily grow until Conan. Then, no one can say (it'll probably depend on how Funcom spent their money and time in the last few years).

One has to assume it's precisely that questionable long term viability that dictated their decision to offer a lifetime subscription fee

Good observation. Although I dont necessarily think it lacks longevity on its own, just that it's the last diku or the last big one. Next generation of MMORPG will probably stem aside from the diku-formula, and that could be what will suck away people from LoTRO.

There's nothing wrong with it when talking about longevity. It's just that people is starting to look for something different, and if that kind of difference will be delivered, then people will leave LoTRO and WoW as well (although it will take a while for the second one to go into the red zone).

Unfortunately, the expected MINIMUM lifetime of one of these MMOG's is 5 years, and if you ignore subscriber numbers and just look at how many titles are actually available in the MMO genre, you'll never get a game that you haven't played for the last 10 years.  It takes 10 years for one of these games to play out.

MMOG's are very slow, compared to single player games.  Maybe that'll be their downfall.  I'm still waiting for devs to realize this and start designing games that have an end in sight, rather than being designed to "go on forever".  Because then maybe they can put in a story arc that begins, peaks, and then ends (tragically, humorously, or into the sunset, shrug).

At launch, if you're the only title, I would think it would be pretty easy to be the "the second fastest-selling online-only PC title after WoW".

And if you're using the LotR property you're damn well should be selling that fast.

Reminds of a place in my home town that bragged they were the "largest one-level enclosed shopping center" in their radio ads  (there were 2 such malls btw).  It has since been demolished.

I was really suprised how natural and organic the world is too, especially since it is very structured quest-wise like WoW.  For some reason it seems more worldly and a lot less gamey too.  I also like how  the game emulates the passage of time like the burning of Archet instance where the world is permanently changed aftwards. Quite suprising how a little design trickery really adds to the immersion factor.

Last night I cobbled together  a second system from spare parts  for my wife and oldest son  (a Barton 1500, 512 ram and a 9600 XT with a 15 inch CRT)  which hovers around the minimum system requirements and was suprised how playable the game was at 1024 x 768 on low (not the lowest settings).  The ram is definately a bottleneck in towns as there is abundance of hard drive cacheing ala Vanguard, but in the wilderness it is perfectly smooth and playable.  The game looks  'decent' too on those settings because of the small monitor even with the shorter draw distance, and scenery pop in .  Turbine wins here too with making the game accessible on less than stellar specs.

Might even pick up a second copy and another gig of ram so  my son and I can fellow together.  We just finished watching the trilogy together and Lord of the Rings seems to be replacing Star Wars as the coolest thing going for him, and there is no way that I would subject him or myself to SWG.

[Edited to throw some snark at SWG]

I was in LoTR beta for quite awhile and the results you are seeing in the launched game is result of a tight, concise, professional, inquisitive,  well organized development and beta process.  The tools were in place to give relevant feedback.  The patch schedule had a sense of purpose, core system items getting the attention they deserved.  Open proactive feedback so people didn't fixate on issues that were in the process of being fixed. 

The also focused on *gasp* fun!

It feels like not that long ago when the Captian class didn't have a herald they planted a flag like a WOW shaman does totems.  With the non static  nature and rapid movement of the game that was not fun so Champions got Heralds which are like walking totem/Dot combo packs.  My point unlike my time in AC2 this was a polished professional process that responded to how the players felt. 

Strangely IMHO the AC2 experience prepared this development house to become better at their craft.  Cudo's to them for doing what others have not, learning from previous mistakes and using that knowledge to become better. 

Like or dislike the style of game or IP the blizzard like polish and tight game play cannot be denied. 

There's still that nagging issue that the entire UI just isn't responsive enough. I'm really hoping they correct that in time, unless they think it everything should be dictated by the universal clock, including the user having to wait for "instant" effects to take.

This was a smart move for them, not because the game is going to fail, but simply because no game is guaranteed to survive competition with titles that come out years later. There's a few games that could have benefitted from doing this, but I think most that don't have big-name licenses get sticker-shock on the multi-hundred-dollar charge.

This is slightly off topic, but I vaguely recall seeing AC2 at E3 before it came out and I remember it had some neat features like a creature's appearance changing as it took damage and visual signals for special attack openings. Did those make it into the final game and why has no one else used something similar? I'm getting a bit sick of staring at the UI.

They can easily throw away player goodwill by making more mistakes like the farming nerf which was compounded by a lie by the developers through their CM.  That sort of thing results in tarnish on that polish.

I am not  aware of the situation you describe but to be candid I wasn't necessarily talking about goodwill, I was talking about technical execution against a concept. 

yes, those actually were in the game at launch.  Things got more beat up as you hit them and they woudl do a specific animation when there was an opportunity to use your special.

Neither aspect was as cool as it sounded.  The visible damage was nice but the Hit Point bar was far more useful for seeing how damaged the mob was.  And the special attack thing didn't matter because the icon flashed too, so all you did was look for the icon to flash, push the buton and recieve your bacon.

Yeah for sure. I'm digging the game. It's a great 2nd generation MMO (in terms of PvE progress) - if by 1st generation we define it as everything from EQ through to WoW where you level by grinding, and by 2nd generation we have the WoW formula of leveling by simple quests. In fact, I think it fine-tunes that formula extremely well with systems like Deeds or all the story chapter instances. But like you said, I hope it's the end of the era and the next major PvE MMOs we see really establish a new generation leap in evolvement.

Which has a lot of potential with a company like BioWare working to enter the space; there's a lot of design that the Xbox community will demand in any BioWare RPG that could help shake up the MMO field.

People thought the same thing about FFXI.  The results were less than satisfying for most.

I'm enjoying the game a great deal. As with so many here, it's one of the few where I feel part of some kind of action. The story chapters did nothing for me in FFXI except irritate me with the fuss of finding a group to get through them so I could get back to levelling. But here, I read everything. It's the main thing in the game. There have been times in some of the epic instances where I was repositioning myself just to see what's going on. Great stuff. I'm not sure if that's the game, the quality of the lore in general, or the fact that this has all been running around in my head for 25 years since I was in jr. high school.

Game isn't all that professionally polished or executed though. No, it's not an AO style launch, it's perfectly playable--this is the third game built on the game engine after all. But everyone knows crafting is a mess economically--though quite well paced in terms of advancement and interactivity. The AH is amateur hour. There are some very significant bugs--the great barrows is a mine field of them--leave the boss' room by a few steps by accident and he locks up and your entire instance has been for naught. And even if you win, you might get locked in combat and not be able to regen for the next one. There are lines for a lot of quest mobs a la eq1. I've seen some NPCs that start out talking and then switch to text. There are no sounds affiliated with emotes. Hardware support for sound is off for some of the more popular built in chipsets. It's far from perfect and there are a lot of rough edges.

That's a way to put it Numtini, and you are telling the truth, for sure. But again, another way to put it would be that this is the most polished at launch MMORPG I've ever tried after WoW, which had lots of rough edges too after all, from the sit-loot bug to the 2 hours long queues (both issues were still in the game 6 months after launch for all I know).

So yeah rough edges, but call me de-spoiled I am having a hard time noticing them (save for the borked crafting). Nice things are completely overshadowing the stains.

I'm trying to remember, what else has flopped launched since wow? Vanguard, which everyone knew would be a joke. I can't even think of what else.

I'd argue that CoH's launch was smoother than WoW's. Smooth launches are not in the realm of the fantascially funded Blizzard, only accomplished by the lucky few. The more people perpetuate the myth that crappy MMO launches are the norm, the more Vanguards there will be out there.

City of Villians (okay not really a new game), Dungeons and Dragons Online, Matrix Online, Auto Assault, Guild Wars (assuming you count that as an MMO), SEED, Dark and Light,...lots of others I can't think of at the moment...

EverQuest 2 launched 12 days before WoW, but I think we can put that one in the lot too.

EDIT: Anyway I mean "after WoW" not in a chronological sense. WoW being the most polished MMORPG ever (can't remember how polished FFXI was. I assume it was, but my memories were wiped by their psychedelic subscription system), I'd say LoTRO comes second.

I thought CoH was fairly polished, very playable, and not extremely buggy back when it launched. I don't really remember having any problems.

FFXI was very polished, but the NA release was after it's first expansion was out in Japan, so I don't think that quite counts.

I remember seriously snarking at the WOW launch since I'd hated the game in beta. (I still think it's mediocre at best--simply perfectly executed). If I recall logins, patching, and queues were a complete disaster, though the game was fine if and when you could actually get in.

I'd completely forgotten DDO, but like Guild Wars I don't consider it to be an MMO anyway. Easy to have a stable launch if the only area is a city.

Having been the one to list problems, I agree LOTRO has had a good launch. But some of the comments I've seen are a little more optomistic than I can see :)

linky (http://spong.com/article/12495/The_Charts_God_Of_War_II_No_Longer_Worshipped/?d=200705091026&cb=5)

LoTRO snagged the #1 and #2 spots for the week ending April 28 in the PC game category according to GameDaily, I assume this was US only

Link (http://biz.gamedaily.com/charts/?id=381)

Well I'm not seeing any large influx of players into the game in NA, despite the good press. There are no new servers nor are the servers seeing lots of newbies. Concurrent logins have been pretty much stable according to the social panel. What they have (probably a little under 200k for NA/Europe) is what they're going to get.

I still like the game and they have a more than viable subscription base. I just hope with all that money they took in for D&D and Lotr, they aren't overextended.

10 servers in Europe and queues started to show up two days ago. It will grow. Slowly, steadily, it will grow.

Assuming that they can persuade it to stay online for long enough in a go not to start driving people away.  I say again (after getting back after 5 days to find login servers broken again last night): Codemasters suck monkey appendages.

I can't speak for the highly dysfunctional European servers, but in the US, the queues seem to be artificial and imposed to balance servers. (Which I think is an effective and excellent way to do it.) I have yet to wait more than 30 seconds. They are certainly not an indication that a server is full. There were queues on my server a week ago at 7 in the morning when it was at a fraction of it's prime time population and I've tracked more people online the last two days without a queue than when we were in queue.

I hope you're right, I really like the game and I'd love to see what Turbine could do in terms of ongoing storyline content with a full blown hit on their hands.

As far as new "servers" go, I thought they were doing some heavy-duty clustering. I could be wrong, but if that is the case, they can scale capacity without players seeing a new "server" to choose from. Whatever the case may be, I can't see any sort of crazy growth beyond the initial influx, either. It is becoming a crowded market and Wal-Mar... err... WoW has all the customers.

I don't think regions are instanced and a lot of the quests early on were wait in line to kill because of the bubble of people who were stuck at 15 from the pre-release. I'd say the servers are pretty much maxxed out right now because of gameplay issues.

Another new euro server, the eleventh, is coming up this week.

As I said, steadily, slowly, growing.

Europeans really, really have no fucking taste, do they ?

 :roll:

Seriously.

I made it 10 minutes in beta. Was just wayyyyy too ....meh....for me. YAY, LOOK THERE'S GANDALF and GIMLI! HEY LOOK, THIS GAME IS A WORSE VERSION OF WOW! Maybe it could have been decent if I had left the starting town I was at, but the combat was completely uninspired and the graphics were....meh, once again....So thus ended Gimpli, the dwarven guardian (or something like that).

Says the man who plays World of Warcraft. Plays a lot.
And no, this is a BETTER version of World of Warcraft.

And is European.

By your logic, I'm making my own point.

 :roll:

Well, actually, you're arguing from the particular to the general.  All he needs is you to have no taste...

Curious here, what parts are better? Combat? Crafting? Environment? 'Feel'? Questing? PvP (lol)? Endgame (noone really there yet I assume)?

Its easy to say its better, but it has to at least be released 6 months till we see how the endgame really is, cause endgame is huge. Wow raiding, as much as it gets ragged on around here, wasn't horrible pre-BC. It was fun at times. What does LOTR have to offer for endgame
?

I'd take Falconeer's comments on games with a salt-mine.   He was the one hyping the shit out of Vanguard.

Oh trust me, I throw a VG jab at em once in a while...but I find its best to save it for a major disagreement. I truely am curious here about certain aspects of LOTR. :)

I could link to my posts on the first open Lotro topic where I said it was better than WoW, and I was still in my crazy Vanguard phase. I was mouthshouted when it was still under the NDA cause I dared to say that it was good. I'm not hyping it, just observing, playing and appreciating it. Hype should hint to an exaggeration, and unless you consider exaggeration the simple fact that a game can be better than WoW, I fail to see the point.
LoTRO is by no means a great game, but it's definitely a nice iteration of the old diku/everquest model. Obviously, it's more on the WoW side than the EQ side of the stick, and I think it succeeded in besting WoW as an overall game. Where? How?


Combat isn't better. It's nice, but as someone else said WoW combat is more visceral, more arcade-y. So yes combat is better in WoW. Not by miles though. It's not like WoW against EQ2. It's just WoW against a slightly less compelling WoW-like combat.
Crafting? They are basically the same. Looks to me like LoTRO crafting allows for some better items but I'd say they are identical.
Environment? Bet your ass LoTRO wins hands down. It's true I only saw only 40 levels of WoW but I saw just 32 in LoTRO and there's no competition. LoTRO wins.
Feel? Yes, LoTRO wins.
Questing? LoTRO owns Warcraft.
PvP? WoW wins by a long shot (being PvP almost absent in LoTRO save for monster play which I still have to try against humans) as it'll probably will win in the endgame area, although no one can say it yet.
Itemization, surprisingly, is stunning in LoTRO as of now, something that can't be noticed in the first 20 levels. I won't go as far as to say that it's better in LoTRO, but aesthetically speaking, again, there's no race, LoTRO wins.

So, summing it up and looking at what I just wrote, I can't say again with a honest face that LoTRO is a better game than Warcraft. I can say though that I think it improves some core area of the game and of MMORPG in general making the experience more worthwhile and, if possible, even less grindy. To be story driven from straight to finish, in an incredible, great looking world, with every bit working smoothly, is basically what made WoW what it is.
I think LoTRO came close to completely own WoW. It didn't, mainly for the "delayed" combat. But overall, and to my tastes, yes I think it's a slightly better game.

I am not hyping it though. The fact that it'll grow it's just that, a fact (not my secret wet dream). And when I say that "the game rocks" (said in a different topic) it's partly a joke, referred to how much I am enjoying the deeds and the titles/badges. That's it, it's not hype. I am enjoying it while waiting for the UO revamp, or Conan, or Warhammer or whatever will have the kind of PvP or/and worldly elements I fancy. And as of now it shares my playtime with the grittiness of Dark Wind (that one you could say I am really hyping).


P.S (EDIT): My signature stands for my sins and mistakes of the past. Yes, I was so wrong.

You'd think you would learn from the Vanguard fanboyisms.

Just stop. Stop right now. Think of the children.

Otherwise, you have a bright future ahead of you in gay porn. As much as you have your feet in your mouth you'll have no trouble with a bundle of 'bama blacksnakes.

Falconeer, how come you feel the need to apologize or back off your previous statements.  First Vanguard, now you only like Lotro but with caveats (it's not a great game, only slightly better than WoW)?   Obviously both Vanguard and Lotro have unique features for whatever reason you liked at the time.  How can you be wrong for liking them.

Yeah, you're enthusiastic about games who cares; it's a lot better than being so jaded that you can't garner pleasure from even the best the genre has to offer.

Not trying to give you a hard time, just saying that you don't need to flip flop and/or give hesitant or  highly qualified  praise.

I agree with most of what Falconeer says.

What isn't said is that there are a lot of bugs. Not sb.exe or SWG levels of bugs. But there are bugs. And they will affect your gameplay. The economy isn't as refined. The AH interface is a disaster. The world is smaller--probably too small. There is no "end game" so if you hit 50, the game's over until they release something new. While not Vanguard, it's taxing on low end systems and has some odd quirky video bugs that cause stuttering on systems that could play vanguard with ease. Those are some pretty big points in WOW's favor.

However, the big selling point on LOTRO as compared to WOW is that it isn't WOW. While the Blizzard baiting gets tired after a while, on various LOTRO forums WOW is synonymous for immature and the lotro community is friendly and very helpful. And there are a lot of people who don't want rush to 50 then raid type of gameplay and resent Blizzard catering to it.

Honestly neither game holds a candle to today's EQ2. But the LOTRO kinship I happened up on is probably the best guild I've ever been in ever and I'm ahead of the level curve for the first time in my life. Those are compelling reasons for me personally to play LOTRO.

I'll  be brief and I won't go on on this to avoid Geldonism.

1) I don't usually apologize for my opinion as I am often right, as everyone else here is, I am sure (heh). When I am blatantly wrong, I can't keep on a straight face. That's it.

2) LoTRO is a good game. Not exactly MY kind of game and far from being a perfect game or simply a great DIKU. I'd say it's more a nice CRPG with a wonderful world than the usual fantasy mmorpg, and that's probably why I think it's better than WoW, which was unable to add any fun to the kind I had playing EQ years before.
This is why, while enjoying some of it now, I can talk good about it without stumbling in the fanboi zone.

My effort and my involvement with Vanguard and LoTRO is completely different, and I don't think there'll ever be anything I said worth an apology about LoTRO.

Numtini, a quick note: I am surprised you feel the world as small. While there are just 8 or so zones, they feel so big and diverse that I actually perceived the world as very big. Thinking about Fornost, or Old Forest, or Barrows Down, which map-wise are just very small parts of a single zone, I felt that they alone were big enough to be standalone zones in other games.

I agree with you there, in fact I'd forgotten the old forest/barrows wasn't a separate zone from the rest of Bree.

I was thinking in terms of how much there is to do and replayability. From my viewpoint at 27, it looks to me like there's basically one track to level. In WOW and to a lesser extent EQ2 I always felt I had multiple options.

Fuckall y'all.

And I agree with you on that. I guess it's the consequence of being so strongly story-driven, and that, combined with the extreme solo friendliness, is why I see and play it more like a typical CRPG than a MMORPG.

I'm at 24 and I have yet to finish up a bunch of various things in all kinds of areas...heck, I'm already getting the feeling that I'm about to get my first "out of the Lone Lands" quest soon.  I have yet to do any of the stuff up at Trestlebridge in the North Downs.  I still need to get all of the Great Barrows quests done, besides Purging the Dead and Collecting History (the one where you grab 10 chalices).  I need to finish up some exploration traits in Breeland, etc.  If anything, I almost feel like there's too much to do...heck, I'd like to head over to the Shire and grab some of the fun titles (Brewmaster, Quick Post, the Pie ones, etc.) and a couple of traits that'll level the ones I use the most. 

Maybe things'll change drastically pretty soon, but I'm about to clear out all of my blue and white quests in the Lone Lands and then see if I can weather some of the North Downs content.  I'm hoping to be levelling into the Shores of Evendim stuff, so that I can just grab that and see that portion of the world.  Apparently, part of the big June patch is meant to add some much-needed solo content for the 30s.

I like Lotro.  I'm not head-over-heels - I play Eve just as much - but I like it plenty (when the Euro servers are up).

I really like the storyline quests.  It gives it a bit of a Baldur's Gate feel that this thread is continuing rather than Wow's shorter questlines (in general: the shaman line were kinda fun for a while in WoW for much the same reason).   And, being a Bartle-Explorer, I love the huge zones.  I've been lost a few times, and stumbled into scarily high places, usually involving wights.  The Old Forest is cool: a real maze that rewards being able to recognise individual trees and hillocks.  What this place will be like in a few years when a journey from the Ered Luin might lead to the Lonely Mountain, or Rhun, or Osgiliath, or Haradwaith, or Belfalas is exciting.  Having seen the gorgeous architecture and layout of the opening dungeon for dwarves' and elves' signature quests, I can't wait to see Moria.

I feel less railroaded.  I had a quest leading me to Bree from the Ered Luin at about level 10, and thought "here we go, the quests will disappear now", as would be the case in efficiently-structured WoW.  But it's not like that.  I can go to Bree if I like (and I did, just to see stuff), but I can also stay where I am, and still have tons of quests.  Like Darniaq mentioned: it's messy and unstreamlined and just more... natural.

North Downs is the best zone in the game once you hit level 23 right up to the early 30's, I hated the lone lands.

Guess it's off to N. Downs then.  Thanks!

Hey, douche.  Part of critical thinking and having a decent debate/discussion is admitting when one is/was wrong.  Also helps with rational discourse. 

Asshat.  One of the major problems around here is people engage in mob lust without attempting any sort of discourse.  MOB LUST.  Mob lust, heh, I kinda like that term.

mob lust.

There's actually not a lot of mob lust, because it gets shouted down big. That's why it's so easy to see.

Falc, you don't need to keep apologizing. We get ya, because we've all been there.

LoTRO is a great game with room to grow. Back to the "messy" thing. WoW's polish puts people on rails. LoTRO's messiness allows for some player creativity. This is an important element to online worlds in my mind.

The best method of retention isn't what you hoard of rewards gotten along the way. It's how much choice you think you had along the way.

The questing is superior to WoW in quantity. WoW has some real quality storylines, but LoTRO has a hell of a lot more of them. Even the crappy kill X quests are parts of storylines. Makes it harder for people to catch up, but the counterbalance is immersion through lore. I'd rather have a lot of good quests that are hard for people to catch up to their friends on than a bunch of one-off forgettable nonsense there to keep people together. This is because most players want to either occasionally or mostly solo but with the opportunity to group now and again.

I agree the endgame is likely an issue. It's the classic EQ1 problem, seen again in everything that's come since. No matter the races and class variety, no matter the breadth and depth of quests, no matter the side activities, all players funnel to the same few endgame activities. It becomes harder to be compelled to do that again and again unless you like that endgame, because even if you start as a different race, you'll hit repetition at some point.

Isn't that the truth? I am pretty glad that I didn't post on here when SWG launched.  It would have been embarassing to have that on the record: "oooh, AT-ATs... stormtroopers... Krayts... bone armour!"  Well, maybe not that last one.

I should have posted this at the end of last week, I suppose.  Looks like, contrary to expectations, the trend actually remained pretty decent (http://kotaku.com/gaming/hard-hobbit-to-break/lotro-tops-pc-sales-in-usa-and-europe-259346.php):

"10th May, 2007 - Today, Turbine, Inc., Midway Games Inc. and Codemasters Online Gaming announced that The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ is the #1 selling PC title across North America and Europe based on the most recent industry reports. The Lord of the Rings Online has outsold all other PC games across North America, Germany, United Kingdom and France according to data from NPD (NA), Chart-Track (UK), GfK (France) and Media Control (Germany)."

Hmm,  that is exactly why he shouldn't have to tiptoe around for fear of ridicule.  He's got a valid  opinion, just like anyone else. 

Oh, and while you are  flippantly throwing around obscenities, why don't you bend over grab your ankles and tea bag yourself.   :evil:


[EDIT]

Just to clarify:  I like Falconeer's posts.  They are detailed and informative, and he obviously has a lot of experience with variety of different games.   He talks facts when giving his opinion.  He is also very enthusiastic about the things he's talking about, which I will reiterate is a breath of fresh air. 

My initial post was entirely about him to contining to post his thoughts  about the various games he plays without feeling the need to apologize  for being enthusiastic, or tempering his opinions   because people are going to keep throwing Vanguard in his face. 

Cheers.

Is it possible to buy this online (digital download) as of yet?

Not right now :(

I play it, but its just...cool.  Not great but cool.

It all depends on how well they do the June X-Pac.

Yes the market is weird. People rampantly undercut everything so you are mostly better off vendoring everything you find, yet lowbie heal pots sell like hotcakes.  It will be some time before things settle.

Explain this one to me.  I played two toons to the 30's in beta and the word that came to my mind was "bland" not "cool".  What is it that you find so interesting or "cool" about this title that you haven't found elsewhere?  Other than the world itself, there wasn't much that I found memorable.

There's been quite a lot of debate on this one in various thread already, but at the risk of kicking it all off again, the world is obviously a big thing.  You can't just say "other than the world itself", as I'd probably have soldiered through a bunch of levels even with Vanguard if it was set in as good a world.

The graphical style is superb at decently high settings, with forests in particular brilliantly done.  I love the fact that I have been lost a number of times, whether in the Old Forest or just the Low Lands.  The scripted starter dungeon in the level 5 signature quest for elves was more attractive and fun than anything I have seen in WoW, with a brilliant use of scope and scale and distance which really has me excited about how Moria will look.

The storyline series of quests is cracking: it really makes me feel like I am playing a more single-character type of RPG thing, with a developing world (sure, an illusion at current tech, but that's how it feels) and a story that grows with me. That said, even the fedex-style quests - of which I've only done about four or five in pushing 20 levels - just seem well written.  There are a lot of quests - a lot - which is great: I love that getting the "travel to Bree/Thorin's Halls/Wherever" quest from an NPC doesn't mean "the quests will run out any minute."  It's not that over-designed and hyper-efficient.

There's more, and I have a few criticisms too, but others will no doubt be quick to point those out.

Fair enough.  I have never been interested in story-driven gameplay.  If I want a story, I'll grab a book.  When I'm in a game, I want to play the game. 

I was impressed by the world and the visuals, but it all seemed too condensed.  It had no "world" feel to it at all since I could easily travel a couple of minutes and be someplace new.  I realize that lengthy travel times are a turnoff to most players, but they do give value to regional trade as well as the expansiveness of things.  The quests also felt a bit too much like everything I'd been through... and the zoning into buildings... ugh.  Talk about cumbersome.  Poorly implemented crafting, contrived classes, and a lack of magic also stifled what could have been a fun aspect for me as well.  It's just a preference/taste thing and I can certainly appreciate why some would enjoy this game for the setting alone. 

Cool:

* World
* Storylines and scripted stuff
* Graphics / Visuals
* It's a well crafted diku

Uncool:

* Unresponsive combat
* It's just another diku

All the rest could stand in the middle but as you can see, the cools overlap the uncools.
Anyway, in my book cool is not superb.

It's true that there are villages that are just 2 mins by each other, but on the other hand the world is anything but small. In fact, and this is surprising to me, traveling is incredibly slow and to get from Ost Guruth, far east in the Lonelands to Esteldin, in North Downs (two very important centres for questing and advancing the storyline) you can spend from a minimum 10 minutes by using (and paying) for Horses/Griffons to about three times that if you chose to go by feet. And we are not talking about going coast to coast from the two opposite sides of the game world, just two vital cities in the 20-30 range. So, as I said, while it's true that the need of inclding every small village to be true to the lore gives sometimes the feeling of a "crammed" world, there's more than you could want to explore and to walk. 

To sum it up quickly, I was so bummed out when I noticed upon logging in the first time that there were just 10 zones total, cause I smelled a small world, and I hate that. Now I am glad, cause those ten zones are HUGE and there are already too many lengthy travels.
And the weird thing is that no one is complaining. Sign that if your game and world is fun and beautiful to look at, the time you spend by walking and riding in it is not an issue.

I must have given the wrong impression: the quests aren't linear or whatever.  Well, no more than any current-gen MMO. I just meant that the standard of writing is excellent and that the quests tie into the world well.


I really love big worlds and "meaningful travel" (Brad added that to the glossary, no?).  It's the one thing about VG that tempted me for a bit.  Funnily enough, though, I find LOTRO very big-feeling.  Getting from the Low Lands to Breetown, which is a loooong way from the extremes in each direction took me ages, even missing out sightseeing in the Shire.  I couldn't help compare it with running an equivalent amount of zones in WoW, say from the Tauren starting area to.  I'm an explorer type, so having a world big enough to get lost in (repeatedly) is great.  I suspect that Bree is bigger than any city in WoW, too.


I totally agree with the zoning into buildingsL= that's a pest and breaks immersion.  And I think you're psot-on that the crafting seems to be crap, though I ignore that aspect.  But the lack of magic is great.  Quite apart from the obvious impossibility due to the lore, it just marks it as different for me.  Every bloody fantasy MMO has magic, so it's no loss to me if this one doesn't let people wave their hands and get particle effects.

You'e right overall, though: it's a taste thing.  For people who like Tolkien, this game is a must.  For those who like WoW but are bored, it's spot on.  For me, it's a good counterpoint to my main game, Eve.

Edit:  Oh, and Deeds!  Deeds are a great mechanic: intermittent, non-level advancement; extra stats for the powergamers; badges for the collectors; titles for the roleplayers.  Nice work, Turbine fellas.

It's also less predictable than other games. By comparison, WoW feels over-designed, controlling. You can grind in both games, but LoTRO's quests are less predictable in both depth and frequency. It'd be hard to make this comparison in the absence of WoW and EQ2, but there it is.

Deeds are cool, along the lines of some EQ2 stuff but more refined. They do add much depth to your character. You could grind, for example, and still gain deeds (abilities, traits) because what you're grinding on could pay off a deed. It's kinda like faction stuff in WoW but much less single-minded because in LoTRO you can do quests while you do deeds. In WoW faction stuff, the quests dry up real early.

Graphically it is superb, self-consistent with the nature in which the quests are delivered. Funny that some like Old Forest. I agree it's cool to get lost, which I do find interesting. But I don't like that it's a bunch of cleared paths surrounded by walls.

The game map and the minimap are almost useless, and while at first that's annoying, I think it also was done on purpose. It makes you pay attention a bit more, and therefore memorize things a bit better.

Finally, unless the constant spiralling-out of new content for new levels, one spends a LOT of time and levels traveling into the same adventure areas. This is a good way to use development assets more efficiently. But it's also good in that it keeps people of many levels in one area so they can collaberate in realtime. Not a night goes by some higher level doesn't stop off to lend a hand, and I pay that forward. Used to happen in WoW all the time, but players are more quickly spread out there across farther flung zones. Turbine used their limitations in budget I think to create something unique and interesting in this regard.

Or maybe it was just by accident :)

I also like song twisting. It's more manageable than EQ1's system but definitely the same feel on my Minstrel.

Combat doesn't feel as responsive, which is a bummer. But it isn't as unenjoyable as EQ2 at launch either.

If quests are just XP gates to you, steer clear of LoTRO. If you want to see something that delivers better more immersive stories than WoW, check it out. All depends on the motivation of play.

Definately what you guys said.  I think for me, the most unique and engrosing thing about Lotro is how it  simulates the  passage of time and world change through instances and other trickery.  In most similar games "time" passes soley because at one point you were level one and now you are level 30.  In Lotro that fact exists as well, but is enhanced  by the fact that   conditions  and environments physically change and actors move throughout the world.

Smoke and mirrors not doubt, but highly effective especially to those that are interested  in more than " XP gates" as Darniaq said.

In that vein, as Turbine expands the world, Moria for example will not only be  just a cool place to explore,  but also  a key part in how the narrative expands and unfolds.  The 'reason'  to explore and how your character arrives at it's gates,  will be just as important and interesting as running through it.  At least that's what I am hoping.   :lol:

For the record, I can think of 3 specific instances in which I would've beocme a barely-active subscriber (the best kind, no?) if I could have purchased a key online during a fleeting moment of Hobbit lust. When I purchase something physically I deliberate endlessly, but I'm such a whore for instant gratification.

Trust me, we have the tech for it, but people that make our boxes want the boxes sold unfortunately :) It will come some day, as with all MMOs. I don't know when and where first (which territory) though.

oops double post

postcount ++

According to the most recent NPD report I just read through, only 5% of all MMOs are purchased digitally. That shocked me too actually, but there it is. Boxes are sold because people still want it that way. Given that the target age for traditional box-based MMOs continues to creep up, it's obvious why this is: a bunch of veteran gamers who are used to purchase = install = Disk/CD/DVD-ROM, whether as a console game (the way vast majority of titles sold) or MMOGs. We don't mind so much buying expansion packs and other add-ons digitally, because we've already achieved our accepted price/value by buying the initial box.

Well, what counts as MMO to NPD?  The ones we usually think about, or things like MapleStory?

This one had a lot of ways of splitting the data. But the 5% thing is from the traditional set, people like us in demographic and playstyle preferences. If it included Maplestory or Audition, which aren't offered as boxes anywhere afaik, the data would heavily skew toward "people like to download", given the scores of millions of people who've done so. Same if they were including things like Club Penguin, Ragnorak or Gaia, as those are entirely web-based.

Or maybe it's because the big publishers still want a relationship with retailers. One of the most common questions at launch from beta testers is "where can I buy a key to activate my beta account?". The answer: "You can't, you have to buy the box". E.g. show me where on the WoW site I can buy just an account key for the game.

The single longest MMO subscription I've ever had was a three or so year one after I picked up UO:3d as an impulse buy at Best Buy.

I like direct purchase, but I can't dispute that.

I'd argue it's the other way around. But what I need to review now is whether they offer details between people who walked into a brick&mortar place to buy or they purchased the box online and had it delivered. There being a big difference there could be interesting.

I am not actually involved in Marketing or Publishing. Just my two personal cents :)

The way I see it, the people who purchase digitally are people who already know about the games and are looking for them. They know they want them, they find it online and boom, key purchased. But I would argue a majority of people are on the fence about spending $50 (I know I am in the store). They may or may not know the game already, they might not even had any intention of buying any games, but they see the boxes. They pick one up, get sold by marketing hype text and screenshots, then there's a chance they might buy the box. Maybe even a little push from a sales person close by. Shelf space and promotional things like end caps also really help. Someone might think, "whoa they sure have a lot of the "X" boxes here, it must be selling well," or "they have these in the "recommended" section, it's gotta be pretty good."

This is also why it's more popular to have digitally sold expansion packs than the original product. At the point of expansion pack, it's very very important to give the impluse buyers the chance to purchase the game, preferbly during game launch. If you are playing already, it's much easier to click a button to spend $50 to get an upgrade, instead of going to the store. You are already invested in the game, you are that much more likely to buy without external stimulants.

At the same time, if removed the extra funds from the sale price that it takes to get that box on the shelf and then sell it online for the reduced amount, I think you'd end up getting a lot more of the 'on the fence' buyers that way. I'd be interested to see if that's true, but it seems logical to me. You'd probably lose a bit in marketing as well, but then again, that end-cap shelving at best-buy isn't cheap either.

But there's the perceived price/value element. Consumers expect to pay at least $50-60 for a new game. This is of course based on a lot of markups, but it's been creeping up over the years. Now, imagine you launch WoW at the actual price were just Blizzard/VUG can make a profit, including the cost for bandwidth, markups for internal overhead, marketing/sales spend, etc. Just for arguments sake, call it $17.

Big ass MMORPG from one of the most reknowned development houses in our day with a built-in community that has previously had no problem dropping full-price-of-the-day games from that same development house at a time when all other games are sold for $50-60+. Do you think the average gamer consumer is going to see WoW the same way?

This is the challenge. Anyone who tries to cut the retail price too much gets perceived as bargin-bin stuff.

As an aside, retailers bring a lot of potential foot-traffic/impulse buys. The problem with the 'net is that it's so friggin huge you need pointers to anything of interest, which means advertisement. MMORPGs are a bunch of different hybrids, so in order to really expand its aggregate playerbase, it has to pull in from a whole bunch of different places. The concept of "gamer" walking into GameSpot is very different from targeting that potential gamer in the zillion different places they could otherwise be.

About what's cool and what's uncool, in Rivendell you finaly meet Frodo and have a night walk with him, just you and him, where he vents away his concerns. And it's an instance, but it doesn't involve fighting. Ubercool.

If it was a reknowned dev house and they advertised the reduced price due to being online only, dedicated gamers would jump at it.  For an indie that is a lot more likely, they have enough trouble getting notice, and they would have to follow the larger companies' leads.

I don't think Blizzard would have had any trouble selling a goodly number of direct downloads at $17. Trouble is, it would only be for the dedicated gamers. They probably could have still broken sales records (along with hosting servers), but I very much doubt they'd have enjoyed the growth rate they've gotten if they stuck purely with digital download. Maybe they could have hit 8.5mil subscribers eventually, but I think it would have taken much longer to do that.

That means they maybe would have only been at 5 million when Vanguard launched to leach all of the hardcore gamers away.

There's also something else the report doesn't mention and we haven't discussed yet: advertising. For every dollar a company spends to advertise a product, an excited retailer will add to that, in advertising in circulars, online, TV, with instore endgames, floor labels, posters, etc. Some estimate the value of retailers advertising directly to be as much as double or triple the value of a company's own marketing spend. Not sure I believe that applies to video games, but the regardless of the actual multiple (if any), the belief is there. Basically it goes like this: it's one thing for Vivendi to buy magazine ads and TV/radio spots. It's another for them to do that and for Best Buy to do that (and have it on endcaps/floor labels/knowledgeable pushy sales people), and GameSpot, and FYE, and Target, and Wal*mart, and so on.

Brick & mortar is the best way to go it seems, for now. At least you launch that way first and then once you've hit critical mass, move it to digital. Expansions sell well this way, as noted here and in the report, as do microtransactions (of course).

Except that the vast majority of their WoW players right now got their clients through digital downloads. Korea and China are pretty much only digital downloads. So the growth in NA and Euro would've suffered somewhat but not in Asia. But even in NA and Europe the "early adopters" are used to downloading game clients. More than half a million people downloaded the beta client in NA and a roughly similar number in Europe. And that number could've been far far larger (probably even double) if Blizzard hadn't capped the number of beta keys it gave out during the open betas. So already you are looking at perhaps 2+ million early adopters who could've downloaded it digitally in NA and Euro if that was the only choice. Add that to the 5 million Asia players and you are at 7 million digital downloads already.

That's verging on being a spoiler, dude... I wish I'd not read that.

All good points. And yet, they bothered with boxes anyway, and in fact still do so if the amount we still see on shelves is any indication. Why is that? To get maybe the other 1.5mil? I doubt it. I'd guess it's because they initially didn't think they'd do that well in China, so projected their success to be mostly in markets where boxes are still the huge draw. And maybe they thought getting 500k people to buy something is very different from getting them to grab it for free. Or maybe it's because Vivendi has an entire line or products they need to convince retailers to pick up, so didn't want to risk those relationships by not shipping their flagship to brick & mortars (who would have been pissed).

A lotta questions only 1.21 gigawatts could answer. ;)

That's pretty fucking glowing praise right there. I may have to pick up LOTRO one of these days.

Sorry, you're totally off base there. I buy games in the store because they are like 20 friggen gigs now... I got a 2MB connection... And while downloading a file THAT large I basically can't touch my computer for days... It's not like you guys have wisened up and torrented your clients yet.  We're stuck downloading it with some bullshit IE plugin thats usually buggy as hell.

Also, the game is the same price either way... so why not get the manual and the little map and crap right? It almost feels like I'm getting ripped off downloading it.

Seriously, make your client FREE... torrent it... let us play for 1 week for free and then hit us with a 1 time startup fee that's arround half the box price of the game. Maybe $30?

I wholeheartedly agree on this. The "same price" part is, as a customer, more than enough to never ever buy a videogame digitally. I can see why they have to do so, but  I don't care. I want a box and a paperslip with some fake instructions. Otherwise, keep the box and cut me 10$.

I was about to post this same thing. I like the shiney I get in the box. Including my cheesy map, manual (so I can RTFM) and some kind of keyboard key layout card. Now, if I open that box and I only have a DVD, I'm pissed but that's another story.

Sure Trippy, http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/trial/index.html?referrer=WORLDOFWARCRAFT&source=wowhome&promo=1 (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/burningcrusade/trial/index.html?referrer=WORLDOFWARCRAFT&source=wowhome&promo=1)

Once you setup your free ten day account, go to the Account Management section and select purchase full retail key.  You can also upgrade your account to The Burning Crusade at the same time.