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I've been thinking about this for the last couple of days, since hitting 30 and the joy than is Agamaur, and seems to me that stylistically, LoTR owes far more to concepts found in EQ than WoW. The superficial stuff resembles WoW, like ui, rings on questgivers heads etc, but the way the game flows and funnels you into dungeons in the 30's and 40s seems way more EQ style than WoW.

For those that don't know, around 30 or so soloable quests dry up (supposedly fixed in the patch) and a series of group chains lead you to the local instance, where you are expected to make multiple trips to complete quests. From my experience in Augamar, I'm pretty sure they intended multiple trips because I don't think anyone could complete most of the quests there in one passs due to the drop rates and spawns of items needed. These instances are mostly outdoor rather than indoor instances, and quite time consuming to work through even for a good group. Also, the boss fights are rather difficult from my experience there with the twin Wights and the giant tree boss. I really doubt a group could do it if the door mobs were white or yellow to them. We went in with most trash being blue and it was quite challenging. This also puts me in mind of EQ, where dungeon bosses were typically a lot more difficult than the trash that surrounded them (froglock king, even what's her name in najena that dropped the robe.

Anyone else find this true? I even see a bit of the old punish the player philosophy showing through in places, like the undying title, the crippling cost of repairs even at low levels, and the taxi fares that make you have to walk everywhere unless you like being broke all the time.

 

I see a lot of resemblances to EQ and honestly, I think that's great. But I think WOW is a mediocre game because it's way too solo. A lot will be answered this week with the new patch about what direction they're taking things in.

The game does feel punitive at times, but I think that's more that I'm a minstrel and the solo quests are pure misery. Once I open up the group quests, they go down pretty quick--if I can log in at 8, get a group, do some group quests, and be offline by 10--that for a semi-casual player suits me fine. And parties are quite easy to find from what I've seen so far--and generally I've joined parties that had spots open for "anyone" after they found me so I don't think it's just that I'm a minstrel and joining full parties that are waiting for one.

What the game does feel at times is tough. It's not balanced so everything is easily achievable like WOW is. There are quests that are frustrating because the spawns are low. There are quests that are frustrating because adds make it really difficult to do alone. There are quests that are just solid good fights too.

I don't see the money complaints at all though. It's bad at level 20, but after that it's been pure easy sailing. I have 2 gold 50s or so at 34 and haven't even tried to make money or save money. I haven't found travel to be pricey at all. But I do stage, so I'm paying a couple of 10s/12s fares instead of the expensive direct fees. I assume I'll need to farm a bit for the horse. On the other hand, I've been giving away all my crafting items to our guild crafters--if they went on the AH I'd be rich.

I didn't have money problems at all and already have the 4.5 g ready to buy a horse when I hit 35 but I used every trick I could think of to get there. I sold mining picks instead of repairing them, never repaired gear except at the bree grocer and held off on repairing at all if the item was due for a replacement from a quest  and spent most of my time in the LoneLands running between towns when I would have much prefered to be taking horses. I particularly resented getting sent on long quest trips where the quest didn't even pay for the cost to ride there. Like going back to bree for the ranger  below weathertop. I don't like having to play Suzy Homemaker and count my pennies in game. I have real life for that.

The game doesn't feel like EQ that much. In EQ, you were pretty much on your own to figure out which zone you'd want to do. Once you had figured your xp farming spot, you would camp the place and grind the mobs until you levelled. LOTRO is like wow in this regard because you go where the quests tell you to go. You could grind mobs for xp but you're going to hate your life pretty quickly.

As for the solo quests and everything, first of all, i've done everything in game with 3 people. I've also done some of the group quests with a hunter-burglar combo in lonelands. People are really afraid to do quests without having perfect group and 6 people, when actually most of this stuff is doable with half a brain and half a party(to put things in perspective, we did up to the twins in Agamaur with 3 people at level 32 and we killed Ivar the other day with 3 people at 36). That said, i got up to 35 with northdown quests without doing the (exterior) fornost quests.

All the dungeons so far are made to be done in passes.
Greater barrows had 2 passes. 1 to get both parts of the keys, the chalice, killing wights. The second to get the old spirits (behind the door that requires both keys) and the boss of the instance.
Garth agamaur can be done in 3-4 passes (could be done in 1 gigantic pass i guess). You have the quest for the devout-disciples-chieftain, the quest for the ghost parts and the quest for the tree. Then you need to kil the twins to get the key for Ivar. Then you need to kill Ivar for the key to the maiden. Finally you get to kill the maiden.

This looks a bit more like WoW than EQ. In EQ, once you were in a dungeon, you were either camping a spot or crawling toward a named for the loot. Dungeons were not done in passes because there was no point in killing all the named in order (as if they were all up anyway). The multi-pass dungeon design is the way to do things now that the average gamer is a bit older and has less consecutive time to put on gaming.

And because WoW is a mediocre game, it isn't doing that well compared to other, better MMOGs.

Opinion's fine, but when it flies in the face of fact, it makes you wonder.

SUB NUMBARS DON'T LIE!@#@!!!!

That is by far the lamest argument for why WoW is a "great" game. Come off it already. Someone said that, subjectively, WoW is mediocre. Preferences can differ from pop culture and still be valid.

Brittney Spears sells millions of cds.  That doesn't make her good. It makes her popular. 

WoW is a good game, but not because many people play it. 

Actually I missed making my point more clear.  I think WoW is not a mediocre game because it makes solo play a viable form of advancement and is the focus for most of the leveling experience, and had to laugh at what was clearly the opinion of someone who prefers group play and doesn't like WoW for that reason, but was willing to call the entire game mediocre as a result without recognizing the things it does right.  Certain aspects of WoW might not be optimal, but WoW's one of the better MMOGs out there, and subscription numbers prove that, as a game with the purpose of entertainment and generating money for the business that made it, it succeeded, and beyond the wildest dreams of *anyone* in the industry.  From a business side, isn't that the point of making a game? Let's talk about individual aspects being good or bad, but calling an entire game poor based on one aspect that really boils down into personal preference doesn't hold much weight.

On another previous example, Britney Spears may suck, but then again, maybe she's not for you.  People will still buy it, and that's a sizable audience.

Every time you misuse a comma, God kills a kitten. Just remember that.

THINK OF THE KITTENS!

(http://pun.org/josh/archives/hugging-kittens.jpg)

In all seriousness, WoW is a pretty fun game. I defiled about 80 hours a week for about three months of my life into that game two summers ago. It does do quite a few things right. It also does a few things wrong. Hence why I don't play. I do agree with the "entire game is poor based on one opinion" bit.

One more thing I think is good food for thought is that no game previous to WoW ever had the amount of market penetration that WoW currently has. I think that measuring the success of WoW by the number of subscribers is viable for this reason. I also agree with your argument that millions of people like Brittney Spears, but Brittney doesn't have the amount of polish that Christina Aguilera or Alicia Keys has. Sorry.

Yeah, but all 3 of em could polish my knob!  :rock_hard:

Damn the kittens, full speed ahead!

I thought I used the commas right, at least with the complicated sentences I was trying to form. ;_;

Still I think I poorly framed my argument.  I meant to say "WoW is a good game -> higher subs" when it was interpreted as "WoW has higher subs -> good game."

I sort of see this. In a way, it's like WoW in the "amusement park ride" manner, with everything fairly guided. (Though it's interesting how you do find yourself playing in either North Downs OR Lone Lands at one point, and then similarly split later on, with it being kind of your choice.) 

The instance design is definitely more EQ, and I can't say that I care for it much. To give one example of a just horrible, brutal, stupid bit of design that should have vanished from this genre long ago, has anyone done The Troll-Keeper quest? You have to go into a cave near Lin Giliath, the elf enclave south of Esteldin in North Downs. It's an area where there's a lot of trolls around outside. The cave is instanced. You're trying to get to the boss at the end to complete a quest. One quest. There's a minor second quest for the instance, but that's it. So you'd think it'd be relatively quick, rather like a few other instanced quests? No fucking way. It's a huge, long grind that involves killing nothing but trolls, trolls, trolls, trolls and then a few Hillmen near the end. It's a cave the whole way through. There's nothing else to it. No interesting graphics or design. No interesting fights except the boss fight, which is actually whacky hard compared to the beat-down fights with 1-3 trolls on the way. (You have to clear some patrols which insta-respawn and then the boss comes with at least one, usually 3 adds, as well as the pat adds if you don't act instantly when you clear one.)  It's pure fucking tedium for virtually no reward. I want to shake the hand of the designer responsible and then punch him in the face.

Agamaur and Fornost have a LOT of the same feel to them. Haven't done Carn Dum yet, but it seems the same to me from what I read. Early reports on the new Evendim raid dungeon say it has endless spider fights, all the same.

Yes, WoW has some trash-mob filled instances, but you know, they do at least *try* to have some change-ups in the visual environment and some change-ups in the *type* of trash you clear, plus some technically challenging trash clears that aren't just beat-downs. I've come to hate Shadow Labryinth, for example, just because my guild gets their nads handed to them most of the times we go through it, but I'll give it this much: it's not just clearing fucking trolls or spiders 5,000 times to get to one leetle fight. Or apeshit loads of Hillmen in Garth Agarwen, etcetera.

EQ's virtues were not its punitive play, it was the openness and variety of zones, the richness of its world, etcetera. I guess that's true for LOTRO, and LOTRO also has some great smaller quests. But the instances? Mostly shit in my experience, except for Barrows, which I liked.

I have to agree with the last post. As much as I am loving the game AND the vastness of the instances and their locations, they are definitely too trash-filled. AS stated before, I fail to see the fun in killing 2 hours of identical trash mobs, which doesn't have a single chance of killing you, while garnering close to zero XP, to finally get to a boss prone to die, or kill you, in about 3 to 5 minutes.
Then, you are on trashcleaning duties again for a couple of hours more.

I am not a game designer but this must be addressed somehow. As it is, instances are just fun the first time you do them, but perceived as punishment the second time (not to mention not rewarding at all), and this leads to people not repeating them and not wanting to help friends. "You know... it takes 4 hours.. and I have to leave in 2... sorry.."

Maybe more XP, maybe different mobs, maybe more nameds, maybe more mobs with less HPs (to give the false impression you are progressing faster while mowing through enemies). Seriously, don't know how but this must be addressed as instances, which are impressively good at first sight, will become the black hole of LotRO.

Put me down in the camp that is starting to dislike the instances also. I love the game however I would much rather get a good duo/trio going and just farm some humanoid mobs for yellow/purple drops.

I think this and the majority of my gripes with the system would be solved by adjusting XP to give more from killing. I don't mind wading through all the mobs, but the complete lack of movement on the XP bar (and I always have blue) is deflating.

Even worse, IMO, are the outdoor elite area that aren't instance. OMFG the respawn rate is crazy in them. I did the goblin and orc camp clearing quests in North Downs last week and we had orcs respawning on the back of the damn party while we rested from killing the last ones. At least the instance respawn is a bit longer than that.

As far as instances go, Angmaur is the worst I've been in so far. I hear the later ones aren't any better though. At least the respawn is about 20 min there though. Gives you about 2 tries on the tree before you run into respawn running back to try again.

I'm sorry, I must have missed something.  Are you trying to say that any of these "artists" make anything that could be considered music?

Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous.
You spend the whole night killing 4k mobs that hit like a truck, you end up with 8k xp.
You then go and do the quests in Trollshaws and you get 8k xp in less than 30 minutes with fedex quests + 12 boars kill and 14 scavenger kills (which are all neatly packed close to the quest giver).

I understand they didnt want people to grind mob for xp, but they should up the xp on elites a ton at least.

Ya the respawn rate in outdoor elite area are pretty ridiculous. If you are on a kill quest, you usually need to find a spot with 4-5 of the mob you need to kill and wait for them to respawn. It's more efficient than running around, mowing down 2000 mobs to get to the next one of the type you need.

About Agamaur, not everything is on the same timer. The patrols at the entrance respawn a lot faster than the static spawns. So you can actually do 4-5 tries on the tree before everything really respawns. you just need to kill the patrols after 2 tries.

The game feels like EQ1 to me only because so much of it is still "messy". But the parts that are refined have a WoW-level of polish to them (with a very different graphics style of course). Turbine seems to know where they want LoTRO to be, as indicated by those areas that feel complete. But they didn't have Blizzards time and budget, so are still working on the game that wasn't fully experientially complete for all levels like WoW was. Most of the problems cited here and in general are matters of tuning, not wholesale bad design.

WoW had the same problem though. Some instances were just much better than others, whether there was only one reason to visit or five or more.

I think this is essentially correct. They went for Blizz-type polish on a much more triaged basis, and everywhere else, they just told somebody to photocopy endless amounts of stuff to make the world look quest-filled and such. I also think they have an extremely, extremely calculated metric for trying to slow down max levelling by the player population. It is not an accident that dire wolves in the North Downs share spawn points with infrequently killed aurochs, or that wolves in the Old Forest don't have a dedicated spawn area, etcetera. It's very much deliberate: they want to hang up players who are "quest-completists", which most are, on those quests and slow them down a bit. That's also why grinding experience is so poor, to prevent people stuck on low-spawn kill quests from levelling just through grinding.

WoW definitely had uneven quality in instance design (how could any game avoid it?) but I don't think there was anything as mind-numbingly awful and repetitive as Agamaur or Fornost in WoW even at the outset. Well, ok, there's the Stockades, but the Stockades is a short if bad and pointless instance. Just in visual terms, even the really boring WoW instances had a lot more variety. And I don't think this is a necessity in terms of lore or aesthetics--just look at how Gimli gushes over the caves underneath Helm's Deep in the Two Towers, or the descriptions of Fangorn, Moria, Rivendell, etc. by Tolkien. Plenty of room for more extravagant or varied visual stylings inside the instances. Agamaur isn't bad in that respect in the initial choice of red-dominant color, but then it just becomes screaming tedium in its look a ways in. 

I have found playing an LM to be frustrating.  I haven't yet played since the patch.

I've run out of solo quests.  Between being an LM and having an inconsistent playing schedule, grouping is difficult.

I would imagine being a minstrel is less frustrating in the low- to mid-30s, when the solo quests dry up.

If the quests were designed to be cockblocks by having aurochs and wargs share spawns, that's just fucked up.  Running around for a half an hour killing the same goddamned one warg that spawns for sure is not fun, and a good way to lose a player.

I think it's just a lack of content. Eventually it'll be soloable to the endgame. They just didn't have the time/cash to do so by launch.

In general I have found the Minstrel to be more survivable while soloing and more needed while groups. I attribute that to the LMs being less complete, not something fundamentally wrong with them. Maybe they were one of the later classes conceived or added?

I find that as long as you have a good guild to back you up or some good friends to help you along the way, that there isn't a problem. I'm noticing that as long as I have one of the two, I always am in position to have fun. However, if raiding is the big game-breaking deal that you say it is to you, you'll probably end up cancelling no matter what.

I said I don't like dungeons filled with trash mobs, especially trashmobs who don't give a single xp. And that's apparently true for all LotRO dungeons.

But Fornost, trash aside, is a great place. Beautiful looking, varied, part indoor and part outdoor, on multiplelevels, with interesting bosses... no seriously, great great instance.

(Hint: you need to do it all from start to finish to have the full picture)

With the new zone, I doubt you can run out of quests in the low 30's anymore.

At 36 I have a full quest log. Everything from solo to group from green to red and purple quests. The only problem with the new zone is they need to cut down on the mob density and repop times because unless you can handle 3 or 4 mobs at a time some of the quests need a duo or trio to accomplish. The Devs have already taken note of this on the official forums and a adjustment will be made very soon to where there are not 5 mobs surrounding a quest item that is supposed to be soloable.

On the other hand I was running from Eventide to Rivendale to the Trollshaws and then to Angmar to find enough soloable quests to get me a level and a half between 35 to 36. Some of those quests in the new zone you need a second person to handle all the adds.

They figured a great way to make LM needed in groups last patch. They added effects on wounds to remove the block/parry/evade  % completely from the tank. This basically makes the bear as the ultimate guardian destroyer, removing 2500 armor and then putting 3 debuffs on to ensure the tank is close to 0% mitigation/evasion.

So now, it's probably a good idea to bring on a LM with you, just to clear out the wounds from the tank.

I played my LM, and the changes to wounds have made soloing very difficult.  No more kiting.

I won't play if I'm forced to group.

Except that wounds last less than a minute, often less than 30 seconds, and leechcraft CANNOT BE CAST IN COMBAT. This is strange because although diseases last longer, the cure disease spell can be cast at any time. If the team is pulling so quickly that they're concerned about wounds, they have to slow down in order to allow time for the LM to remove them. If the group is pulling groups instead of singles, the whole point is moot. If they had made wounds last longer, that would be a major nerf to every player in the game except for LMs, for whom it would only be a medium nerf... but players might grudgingly allow them in groups, which would make them hate Turbine because frankly they'd have been forced to drag around some fragile dead weight with just a single important skill.

Until they make leechcraft combat-castable, all Turbine has done is buff wounds.

Isn't there a trait that makes leechcraft castable in combat ?

Seriously, when your tank loses his mitigation and his block, he can't tank 3 mobs at once anymore. Having the wounds off is almost as vital as having a healer.

Here's where not having played that just a portion of LotRO shows its face.

I was in a group in Fornost a few days ago and we defeated the final boss in a long and exciting battle. I was tanking (champion 46) and I died. At which point my minstrel friend, lev 47, ressed me in combat thanks to the legendary trait that allows to do so, I fought back and we won.

After the fight, the lower minstrel in the party, lev 36, started whining about how stupid is a game where the captain can res in combat while the main healer, the minstrel, can't.

I proceeded to politely explain him that LotRO isn't a game where your class is finished at level 20 and you just add upgrades to your existing abilities, but a dfferent kind of mmorpg where your char aquires diferent capabilities on his/her path from lev 1 to 50. And that yes, the minstrel can res in combat, but he/she has to wait until level 41 to get the chance of acquiring such a skill.

He went on griping that it doesn't count as a legendary trait as it's optional so not a true class skill (?) and that at 41 it's too late as the captain get it earlier, but I still think this is a good example of how LotRO, sometimes, hides its own qualities giving players room for complaints that have no real basis.

Well, it is the age of entitlement you know. Which goes some short distance in explaining the success of WoW and LotRO alike. Finding the middle ground which satisfies the largest group of players must be frustrating for developers, especially once the playerbase begins self selecting to whatever your initial product presents.

Ah, silly me.

There is a trait available at level 30 whereup, after casting "tend the sick" 300 times (with, I'd guess a 50-per-day limit like the 40-per-day 250 cast "Healer" trait has) both Tend the Sick and Leechcraft become castable in combat (Tend the Sick already was) and work on the entire fellowship simultaneously (which is actually quite nice).

Only my inexperience with the game had blinded me to the fact that Loremasters were supposed to be useful to groups (after level 30 and only if they equip a specific trait). Now I see they are truly balanced with such classes so eagerly in need of buffs as the Champion, Guardian, and Hunter.

It's really too bad that this increase in Loremaster power had to hit tanks so hard. I shudder to imagine what horrors future LM buffs will unleash upon the happier classes.

To quibble, because I feel like it :) All MMORPGs add new character abilities at later levels. The frequency of getting them slows down of course, but I can't think of an MMO where one's very last new ability is acquired merely 2/5 through the game. And if you say "Game X at launch", I'll throw LoTRO right back at ya ;)

It's not that uncommon to have a few specific class traits that are pretty much required.  For the Captain,  you'd have to be an idiot to not have the traits that decress shout time recycle (dps is basically dependent on using the follow up styles after your shout) and massively bump Last Stand equipped (equipt? Help me grammar snake).  Not to mention the Herald stengthening traits.

I like the fact that character progression isn't strictly based on what level you are.  The traits and deeds from various off the wall activities increase the amount of specialization you can accomplish.  It also helps to mitigate the "go out and grind the mob with the highest min/maxed xp reward" or "grind quests for max level".

Don't get me wrong, the loremaster is the crappiest class in game. All i'm saying is that they made one of its skill potentially necessary for end game fights (which is usually the way they balance raid play by giving every class 1 role/skill that is necessary)