f13.net

It's prettier and things work better.  Always nice to see pre-release.

The two classes I've played work quite well so far (Human Champ to 9 and Elf Guardian to 7).

I love the whole scripted parts between leaving newbie newbie land and getting to newbie land in the larger world.

Crafting needs work.  I don't know how or what kind but it does.  Much potential there.

Haven't gotten to the big city yet to check the auction house.

So far, though, so good.  I'm hopeful.

Not happy about my champ not getting plate armor until 15 (? 20? Whenever), I took armorcrafting but there's no reason to make any yet (I'm lvl 11). I smelted some bronze ingots because it seemed like the thing to do, but all the copper and tin I've harvested since the pre-order beta open preview whatever started (and I always grab ore when I can) amounted to 20 ingots. I think ore nodes spawn players, too. Ore nodes have a life expectancy of about a second. I did like that I could set it and forget it: specify 20 ingots and let it grind 'em out while I went to the kitchen. That was cool (ARE YOU LISTENING EQ2 10 with your ten seperate combines for a stack of food?).

Another test milestone: soloing an elite mob. Unfortunately, the test was spoiled by the tards camping the quest spider (in the human starting area, not the unburned one, the second one). After killing it four times while I stood there waiting (I like the /angry emote), not even inviting me in, I was able to snag a spawn but they pounded on it, too. Looked to have been a good fight between my 11 champ and a 9 elite spider, had the healing potion all set to go.

Travel seems expensive, maybe because I'm a broke newbler. 10sp to go down the road it takes me a minute (literally) to walk down is a bit steep.

I thought EQ2 fixed the sub combine thing and made it easier.  WAS I MISINFORMED??!!

Yeah, that's old news.   Just need a stack of candle/coal/water from crafting merchant. 

Man I'm all up in other threads with this nonsense today.

I thought farming was quaint (I should have my own farm, though, not some community bullshit), but it was very useless.  This was fairly early in the beta though, so they may have made it more useful?  Maybe you could use your own tobacco with the /smoke command.

Soloing seemed to run out fairly consistently around level 14, regardless of class.  Again, this was a few months ago.

No, subcombines are gone. But each combine = 2 food. *yawn*

That's LAME. Let people combine for stacks already.

Nah, i've solo'ed both a Champ and Captain well into the 20's (which is about where I stopped playing each time).  However, the storyline quest chains do start having places in them that need group for big fights in the teens, as do "dungeons" like The Great Barrow. 

Played a loremaster to 7.  Real squishy. 

Can't decide between Guardian and Champ.  They're both fun.  I don't know how much is because of the game and how much is because I haven't played a melee class in 2 years.

I love finding stuff.  Even cabbage and honey despite having NO idea what to do with it.  I want to make one of every crafting combo so I have it all covered. 

I wish I could play some MMO as a pure tradesman/trader without having to do that levelling thing.  Maybe I'll retire on a farm in the Shire and just farm.

I caved. Playing on Meneldor, Burglar. Tibby's the name.

Played a elf guardian to 7th yesterday and got bored silly.  I dunno, the Ered Luin area isn't laid out to my satisfaction.
Played a human loremaster to 9th today.  About 5 hours there.  The Bree Lands are much better to my tastes, looks great and I like the layout. 

The guardian is too button mashy.  I like to only hit 3 or 4 keys per mob.  Hey if the game has autoattack might as well benefit from it.

Crafting is a mystery, my elf found one, ONE node in three hours.  Competition is beyond fierce for resources.  I'm intrigued by the Scholar trade but haven't made anything yet.

I've been in a couple of groups and it's been pretty fun.  We even healed each other omg.  Kudos to Turbine for the /smoke command.  It was pretty fun for us to stand there and smoke while waiting on our quest mob to spawn. 

What a difference a day makes.  I was gonna chuck the game after the guardian/ered luin lands but now am enjoying it playing a humie/loremaster in Breelands.  The world looks beautiful, wish I had the rig to crank it up some more.  Sound is ok, though I get random noise bursts at times.  The quests are pretty cool and I like how you can go out and complete several at a time and go back to town and shoot up a level.

Prediction:  Years after AC, Turbine finally has a good game, it's gonna sell very well, maybe even crack a million.  Unlike Vanguard, LOTR has learnt at the feet of WoW the correct things. 

Cancelled my preorder at the slew of things that are missing or wrong with this game.  They almost copied WoW, but the game isn't complete in most areas.  I really liked the environment design, how every section of a zone had a distinctive look, but I had major issues with their UI implementation, their experience distribution, and their tradeskills system.

I was excited to fire this up on my new rig, and I was not disappointed. With all the sliders maxxed out, this game is gorgeous. I won't say "best looking", but it is the best looking one I have installed atm.

However, the core game is about the same yawn-fest that bored me in January. I decided to go with a Hunter this run, and it's ok, but everything is just so safe and contrived. They have a title you can get at 5 and 15 (and probably beyond) for not dying. Shit, I die once every couple of sessions in WoW just to either some sort of cockblockery or because I got stupid/arrogant.

I'll play until I can't anymore but don't think I'll pre-order. Not worth it yet, not with truly different stuff coming out this year (not EQ1 > DAoC "different").

Ya, the polish is pretty limited in the areas it effects in this game, unlike pre-release WoW. The interface has no concept of layers, making things like clicking interactive items through the chat windows impossible. Same with simple, annoying things like it not recognising that the right mouse button is down to let you stear if the cursor is over certain items in the ui, like mob names or health bars. Annoying crap like that just bugs me.

Also, the nerf to quest rewards they appear to have tossed in after I stopped playing beta 1 is baffling. I had a champion up to L20 who had maybe 1 gold to his name. Meanwhile I see people on the boards claim they needed to nerf the cash rewards from questing because people were too rich. Now I see posts telling people not to repair their items while leveling and not to do trade skills, where they imply it's stupid to keep your gear repaired when you are just replacing it fairly quickly, or play with trades until you have a high level character to support your trade hobby. Sigh. The extent some ppl will go to rationalize bone headed decisions from devs staggers my mind.

 I notice they have made food buffs not last as long too.

I figured out what was confusing me about the combat ability hotkeys. As the ability refreshes, the icon is grayed out until it is ready to use. But when you mouse over any icon, it grays out - wether its ready to use or not. It is completely mystifying why it would work this way - you mouse over an icon and suddenly it looks like it is still on cooldown.

Oh, and I got the "random bear growl" today. Pretty funny.

I tried to give the game some more time, but I just find it hopelessly generic. Playable, but generic. I really need something more for a gamestyle that asks so much of my time and monthly dollars.

So for the third time in my life, I tried to sit through that other asteroid movie, and in the process realized how I think of LoTRO:

LoTRO is to Deep Impact as WoW is to Armageddon.

I don't care much about critical acclaim when I'm seeking an semi-immersive action experience. Was I engaged and entertained? And if so, what qualities contributed to that?

LoTRO is full of polish in many places, looks fantastic, and is easy to learn for those expert in the concepts of diku. But WoW has style LoTRO does not have.

This isn't just about these two games. But the comparison is inevitable because the parallels are so painfully obvious. For those coming to the genre for the first time, LoTRO will be a great game. But they're going to be suffering for weeks in the same way beta testers are now from people who are visiting from WoW, seeing the parallels, and can't fucking shut up about them (it even annoys me and I've used my /ignore function all of three times in my entire career of games that support the function).

Not to go off on a tangent, but I thought Deep Impact was far superior to Armageddon.

The Jenna Jamison / Peter North one? Oh FO SHO

I liked Armageddon and got bored with Deep Impact, but I guess this is exactly the point: WoW can be Armageddon and LoTRO Deep Impact, you'll find more lovers of the former but the latter will do great at the Box Office too.

I wish I could set the font size in the text window. Not that I give a damn because I won't be playing, but that bothered me. The random bear growls I thought were kinda funny. I roleplayed it off as a mirror of my actual mental defect where I hear random bear growls in public all the time. WHAT WAS THAT? DID YOU HEAR THAT!?

The wowtards in /ooc talking about wow really drag, but I usually turn off all zone-wide chats anyway.

Were this just an Open Beta period (and, still, a poor one at that), I'd cut them some slack on many features that aren't working right, designed poorly, or are just plain missing. (NOTE TO FUTURE MMO UI IMPLEMENATORS: /trade IS A GREAT FEATURE).  But they are advertising this like it's finished, and while it's better off than most MMOs, WoW did it a lot better in more areas, though it has been around for a great deal longer.

However, take my comments on the sliding scale that WoW has created for quality expectation.  Without WoW, this MMO would probably be *awesome*.  Then again, without WoW, this would probably be a different game.  This game still ranks higher than most MMOs as far as what it brings to the table.

Discovered another fun thing that I haven't seen before.  Playing music.  I trained clarinet and lute, and bought a clarinet (for 20silver - OUCH).  I can play music by typing /music and then using the 1-8 keys with or without the shift and control keys.

Unfortunately, I'm not very good at it, but some people are!  It's fun, nevertheless.

Dancing is disappointing.

I found there to be too much lag to do music well (on my zippy 6Mb cable connection). No Hootchie Cootchie Man in Bree.

Yea, I think they crap out at 1/16 Sky, and I'm on 10mb down. Not sure. I can do some fancy things with the Lute, but won't be banging out Flight of the Bumblebee. I do like the semblance of cord work you can do though. It is fun to try stuff though. I spent half my last session hanging outside of that tavern in Combe.

Xanth: 20s is a hit at first but once you start doing the quests in that area, it lightens up.

Ya, YMMV and all that. I can't sit through more than 10 minute stretches of long stares and monotone acting. There was no stress in that movie at all whereas in Armageddon you couldn't turn away for a second without some orchestra hit or city getting pulverized. I'm a Bruce Willis fan though. I like his archetypical role.

I'm playing the open beta and while it is improved from the closed I still just find the game to be like WoW but without the fun.  The areas are beautiful but there is something which makes me hate playing it, at least solo.  It can be fun in a guild group with vent but that's mostly thanks to the other people.  Grouping can be tedious as the first hour and a half of a three hour play session must be spent getting one or two people caught up on the quest lines so that we can all do something usefull together.  They need to axe the requirement that someone must have done the first three steps in a quest chain before the fourth can be shared.  Redoing the quests is just killing me.

Ironically the only thing I find interesting is the monster play, we formed a raid and took all but one of the enemy areas and that was pretty enjoyable.  The bad thing is that it would have been nearly impossible if there were good-side players defending.  We needed all 24 people on the NPCs so once there are level 50 "free peoples" to defend you will need another raid just to run interference for them and that raid won't get credit for taking the towers so they won't be too keen on the idea.  I really like the idea of being able to play either side though, if evil is getting their ass kicked and you get demotivated you can just log on your dwarf guardian and help attack.  If you interested in monster play I suggest making one of each class now and running around to get all the quests since the evil side probably has control of the towers by now, you can't get those quests if the good side is in control.  All of the destiny points are pooled on the same account so once you have done the simple "report to so-and-so" and gotten you map to port back to your start area for all five evil toons you will easily have over 5000 destiny points to spend on a monster.  If you have OCD you could also just keep deleting and recreating the worg with the runspeed buff to get more points and have a huge pool of free points for when you main gets more ranks.

I think it's partly due to me being almost at the cap in WoW that is making me like LoTRO more atm. I just have zip for interest in raiding, and the series that leads to Hyjal looks like one long ass series of monsterous cockblocks. There's some creative quests to be sure, but goddamn if some of them haven't been pissing me off (like the one in Shadowmoon where you're getting rotten eggs in an area that periodically makes you puke). For the people who've been 70 for months, I know what lies ahead. I can already afford my bird, and about the only reason I'm playing at this point is hit 70 so I can make the purchase.

But a larger part of my resurgent interest in LoTRO is how they structured the classes. My last go around, I spent all my time looking for a class that replicated my WoW Mage, which is the first class to surpass the EQ1 Bard in my personal list of omgfun. LoTRO has no casters per se (Lore Master is a debuffer with some attack and pets). That disappointed sullied the whole thing for me, particularly once BC launched and Mages got handed all sorts of the love.

This go around I tried an open-mind. Shit if Hunters and Minstrels just aren't fun as heck. I'm leaning towards the latter. I wouldn't have tried it at all if a buddy hadn't recommended it. I don't do "healers". But, in actuality, it's closer to the EQ1 Bard roll of group buffer that can also solo (you can actually kite if you want, at least in the early levels). Looking forward to doing the /music thing with the four instruments Minstrels can use. It's gonna suck to pay 80s for them though. Two minor annoyances are:

• If I can play songs that require a Lute, why don't I have a lute in my inventory from the tutorial quest?
• Why doesn't the Minstrel Trainer sell instruments? Right now he just repairs stuff.

And I don't like the "nuker" label for Hunters, but it is a fair description. I do miss that you can't equip different types of arrows, but otherwise it's a fun mix of ranged and melee.

So anyway, I'm actually leaning closer to pre-ordering. Still have some time to talk myself out of it.

I ran to the Misty Mountains today.  Long trip, but so pretty.  Had to dodge mobs, was amazed that I didn't die - partly due to luck and partly due to small aggro ranges.

This game is very pretty.  Sightseeing is fun.

Did you hop?

Nicely played.

So I attempted World Tour yesterday.

Created a dorf, popped into the little newbie setpiece mountain... and my keypresses take five seconds to register, my system fans are suddenly whining in overdrive, and my graphics card decides to give up the ghost and I get a brilliant panoramic view of my monitor's "no signal" notice.

2.2 GHz AMD dual core, 2 gigs of RAM, 256 MB Radeon X800 with the 7.2 drivers...

I didn't think my system was that lame. But apparently it is.

--GF

Wow.  I run it on a Raedon 9k with a whopping 64 megs.

2.0 Ghz AMD dual core with 2gigs of Ram and 256MB X800 here, works without problems. With Omega 3.8.291 drivers.

In January I was playing on a 1.73gHz Athlon, Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro (120mb) and 1gb of RAM. This time I'm playing on C2D 2.4gHz, nVidia 8800 (640mb), and 2gb of RAM. Both times the game played fine. In fact, I had to fire up the five year old rig and play a round of LoTRO to really find much in the way of visual difference. Apparently the new install I downloaded for World Tour do not include the high-res texture files. But even setting that aside, this game looks freakin' awesome on even fairly old rigs. Two comparative shots:

On my old computer (http://www.darniaq.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/ScreenShot00003.jpg), on new computer (http://www.darniaq.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/ScreenShot00017.jpg).

Separated by years in tech and four months of game updates, I'd say Turbine did a way lot better at maintaining the aesthetic appeal across the generations than EQ2 or VG. Of course one might argue their licensing requirements required them do so, except DDO doesn't radically jump in appeal either.

Again though, if I'm not running the high-res textures, there may be a big visual difference I'm missing.

Well, I upgraded to 7.3s and now my adapter just spontaneously resets itself every three minutes.

I guess I should look back into Omega, but since I was able to play at least through the tutorial I'm very meh. Combat just feels like random flailing around with numbers attached. I'm surprised how big a leap it is coming out of CoX.

--GF

Short of going beyond the genre, I think you'd find MOST MMOs don't have combat nearly as momentarily-engaging as CoX.

But like any MMO, I highly recommend playing beyond the tutorial. I feel LoTRO combat begins to show itself around level 5 or 6, which kinda sucks, but not really so unusual for an MMO. It's just that combat is sorta bland and one dimensional for some classes and the diversity takes a bit longer to show itself.

Not that LoTRO could do anything to compare itself to CoX. But compared to most of the others that came before it and are of this ilk (class-based diku rpg-combat), it's not bad.

I gave it another try, lasted only four levels, and came away with the same "meh" that I had five months ago. Shame, I'm sort of bored with WOW and really wanted to find something to like. I was playing an elf minstrel and my best attack was something that sounded like the Howard Dean scream and all I could think of was "I know how you feel."

On the video side of things, X850xt 256meg, AMD dual core 2.0ghz/3800+, 2gig RAM. Fresh (24 hours old) install of windows and it was barely playable with my video card fan going bazook. And honestly, like Vanguard, I was left thinking "for what?" It just didn't think it looked like very much to me.

One thing that I've really taken away from playing the past few days is the difference between the various newbie areas.  I played humans and dwarves during the first two betas and found the human side to be rather "meh" since the main bad guys are *yawn* ... other humans.  The dwarven starting area earned many points for having me fighting goblins shortly after exiting the intro instance.  I started a hobbit yesterday, and the difference between the races was striking.  Simply by doing a "challenging" fed ex series of quests (the mail delivery quests and the pie delivery quests -- you avoid other types of hobbit while carrying the stuff on a timer), I managed to level from 6 (end of newbie instance) to 10.  Sure, I couldn't afford my skills right away, but it gave me a nifty tour of the Shire.  It also demonstrated to me that Turbine spent some time thinking about the various races and their lore within Tolkien's world. 

That said, yes, the combat is kinda meh.  I run this on my circa SWG launch machine and the graphics look just like every other "next gen" game I've played on this machine.  Quite honestly, CoX is much more impressive from a graphics standpoint on this machine.  EQ2, DDO, LoTRO, they've all just looked the same to me as far as eye candy goes.  If only for the lore alone, I am currently enjoying things.  I managed to make it into the higher levels during the other betas and while I tried to avoid spoiling the main storyline quests, once the races are all joined up in the main areas of the game, the lore aspects are still nifty.  Having never played WoW, I can't speak to whether WoW does a better job of being WoW than LoTRO.  Obviously, from the overall sub numbers that WoW has, it sure seems that WoW is doing just fine at being WoW. 

I have preordered LoTRO and while I may not continue a sub beyond the free month (largely because I am not super-versed in the end-game aspects), it is tempting to do since the pre-order sub fee is original EQ cheap.  I like to toss my money at companies that seem to do good things with MMOs.  Barring some cash flow issues, I'd have been subbed to CoX since launch.  I rather like Turbine and think that perhaps they deserve some cash for this game.  We'll see how it goes.

I gave this a spin yesterday. I like the paladin... errr... captain? Anyway, I haven't played WoW in a while and this game is fun for me. I Kill shit, get new shit, ding, get new skills. Also all my skills are connected to shouting at people. Which is fun ^^

That's the one thing that did impress me.  Shouts were shouts, complete with clouds of dust being kicked up.  Small, nice touch.

I stopped playing the captain when I hit level ten and realized that those absurd looking manslaves waving the pieces of cloth were their pets.

Yeah, those heralds or whatever they're called are ridiculous. Summoning a pet bear or something out of thin air somehow doesn't feel dumb, but summoning a pet person does.

Well, I took Darniaq's suggestion and stuck with it. My minstrel is now 9th and particularly after ending up in a few quick convenience fellowships, I am starting to really enjoy the game and I'm thinking of pre-ordering.

They've done a good job with the lore--it feels middle earthy. I like the COH-ish titles. I really like the lack of magic and the weird classes. It gives the game a different aura--a quirky sort of appeal in much the same way that AC was quirky.

The performance thing still bugs me. I just don't see what's there that should be grinding my system to a halt, but with some tweaking and the high rez textures, I'm a little more impressed and the style is certainly right. But I don't get why I'm grinding to a halt at times.

I think the game will do ok, but some of the predictions are a little on the crazy side. Maybe a couple of hundred thousand subs if they have good press after launch? I think it will be enough to be sustainable though. I'm hoping it will become the adult wow. A little less raid focused--maybe I could actually keep up with the Jones'?. A little less barrens chat.

I agree on the subs range, but that may be good enough for them. I doubt this cost anywhere near WoW to build, and Turbine did start with an existing server infrastructure in theory anyway from AC2.

I will say one competitive advantage they have is service. I think people who've been pissed off directly or indirectly by Blizzard will find a breath of fresh air just about anywhere else. Turbine is pretty darned good in this regard. At the same time, this isn't really a key selling point in the way it was when people were hoping any new developer would come along to slap around SOE's arrogant policies of yore.

Another advantage they have is patches. They, like, deliver themselves the patch data, instead of the fucking retarded torrent crap Blizzard, with all their cash, still relies on. That's another sign of dominant-induced arrogance: when you have the money to deliver patch servers to get the players what they need, but decide to rely on them getting it from Fileplanet or their friends who sat through the torrent. It's stupid and sucks and inexcusable this far from launch.

Otherwise, WoW will continue along swimmingly, probably not seeing a dip at all. LoTRO is similar enough to be easy to learn, but different enough to attract someone looking for a different experience.

To me, it's not about the Lore. It's more about the EQ2-like options. The many ways to customize a character, the /music system, the a-bit-better-but-similar crafting system, and the world that's laid out a bit more, err, "realistic" if that's the right word. WoW feels like a civil engineering study on how to move players around. That's fine and good and I still like the game (69.5 dammit... where's my gryphon mount?), but compared to LoTRO and EQ2, WoW is just way more contrived throughout.

Maybe that'll matter to enough people to put Turbine in their own money hats for a bit. For the work they did on LoTRO, they deserve some.

I've preordered and, at 10 bucks a month, it makes a great secondary game. I recently described WoW thusly to a friend: the sex isn't as frequent as it used to be but goddamn is it still good when it happens. I have a great guild and appreciate the no bullshit approach they took to the endgame; even with all of my complaints I don't see Turbine making a raiding game of the caliber and tightness of WoW's.

That said, I've levelled my last WoW character with my shaman and am ready to do some other stuff. LOTRO has a certain charm. It's like a slower paced, prettier WoW that looks pretty much spot on the way I expected Middle Earth to look like when I first read the books. That's good enough for a few months from me.

My wife and I are in pre-order and having fun - except for the 24-hour downtime that happened Tuesday->Wednesday on the euro servers.  The game isn't revolutionary but it looks great, I like the style and the lore a ton more than WoW.  As someone said, the lack of magic is a fun difference, and I like the way that combat works - my champion is kinda like a cross between playing a rogue and a warrior in WoW in some ways, and managing multiple opponents at low level is way more fun than WoW with the early integration of area moves.

I've not died yet at lvl 11, but I've been down to three morale points and 1 power, so that gets a bit of adrenaline going.  In Wow i never die before lvl 25 or so anyway at the earliest, so the criticism of Lotro's titles for not dying by lvl 5 and 15 as too easy seems a bit unfair.

The titles are cool, and are providing me with reasons to do stuff that I might not bother otherwise: I'll occasionally head off the road to fight a wolf as I know that killing 30 of them over time will get me the "Wolf Slayer" title, which sounds fun.

It might be a pre-order thing, but people are damned polite about not getting in each others' way, and about helping and so on.  I've seen no lore-flaming on the chat at all, despite someone logging in with a terrible name (on an RP server) and being a complete, 133t-5p34|< tard.

I don't really understand everything that's going on, despite enjoying it.  You could say that is a sign that the exposition is less well done than WoW, or that the mechanics aren't so brutally exposed.  A bit of both, I feel.

The elf signature quest, wandering around with Gimli in your party, is great fun, and the dungeon was better-looking than anything I've seen in WoW: I'd have been happy if Moria had been done like that.  I really want to go back there and do some more quests, and to get the chance to look around a bit more - the amount of scripted stuff going on in the signature quest meant I was always rushing on to keep pace with Gimli.

This will be the real test, though: can the live team churn out more of those scripted quests, with tons of stuff going on?  If so, great.  If not: DDO.

By the way, when I opened this thread the ad (some love/dating thing) opened a pop-up window.  Pop-ups in F13?!?

Quick note on Music changes, since I like it so much but it'snot worth a new thread:

Ch ch ch changes (http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=41818)

Minor furor over the ability for characters to soon be able to program and replay scripts rather than type/tap everything, but that's just folks hating when something can be done by *gasp* anyone.

Well, as a musician, I think it'd be nice to have an advantage online, too. Scripting does take away the magic of being a musician and really appreciating hearing someone who can play well. I think adding scripting/macro is a mistake. lern2playnub Maybe they could put in scripting so I can solo boss encounters. Your logic follows!

Nice to hear they plan on expanding things, they hit a couple of my major gripes. Someone does need to mention that stringed instruments have sustain, too ;)

Because /music is serious business.   :wink:

So why is Turbine able to put in an actual free form music system when SOE said it couldn't be done due to copyright violations? Not complaining mind you, just curious if something has changed or, more likely, SOE was just full of shit.

I think the system that Raph envisioned was a bit different.  Maybe not with these new changes.

The fear SOE had was that people would be playing covers of other songs, which technically violates someone's performance right, which is one of the rights bundled under the copyright umbrella.  So they were afraid that someone would make a stink about the ability to infringe copyright within the game.  IIRC, that was pre-Grokster, but I guess it's a semi-legit concern.  IMO, someone in legal decided to avoid the issue by not making it an option -- I personally think that it's a bit of a stretch.

Their legal team is more conservative. Turbine faces exactly the same issue. Wonder why they chose this route (which I'm glad for btw)

Dude come on. That's like saying GarageBand makes musicians irrelevant or Quark XPress mitigated the usefulness of Graphic Designers. You know better than I how much feeling and emotion a musician brings to a song each time it is played. Technology's made it possible to replicate, perfectly, any piece ever played. But it always sounds the same, and through repetition, mechanical.

The true musicians will be those who use a mix of scripting and manual playing, and they will sound the best hands down. All scripting does it make it easier for newbs to dabble and experts to get even better.

Can you actually play individual notes or just predetermined "riffs" a la AC2? I would try it myself but my client is so out-of-date it would take a while to patch it all up.

It's individual notes only, currently. Two octaves, with sharps and flats, but no variable duration (ok for Lute, sucks for Horn). The upcoming changes are apparently going to fix that latter bit, and do a few other things (as noted above).

Actually, it sucks for lutes, too. Need sustain to hold notes and chords.

The point of a good musician playing in LotRO is moot because the interface sucks, and playing a midi keyboard isn't the ideal in expression. Which is why having a minstrel that actually knows what they are doing would be so special. It might even drive some people to learn how to play music, which would be a great effect.

Just like any other content, it's not available for everyone. So non-musicians get catered to, but solo players do not. I see no reason to bother learning how to deal with LotRO's musical quirks if little johnny can just script in some Bach.

And to a lot of people, Garageband /does/ make musicians irrelevant. If you like pop music or hip-hop, musicians are irrelevant.

Honestly, I wish I had never pre-ordered this game online. Now I'm stuck with it, I guess it's a $50 lesson.

I just don't see how mashing keys 1-8 in LoTRO would drive someone to learn to play music any more than playing GH or GH2 would drive them to learn to play music.  Also, I thought you hated cockblocked content, so why is making it MORE accessible to everyone a bad thing?  Or are you only neg on content that you specifically cannot access, but are happy to exclude others?

I am honestly trying to understand the thought process, because I'd have thought more accessible would == good to you.

My thought about macroable music is that it will lead to idiots standing around zapping out stuff to be annoying. Right now it's probably too much work.

Well, the idiots are certainly currently happy to pollute OOC chat, so hopefully not.   :-D

Having been the one to bring up idiots, OOC on Landrovan doesn't seem to be too bad at all. Overall, I'm impressed with the community.

Brandywine OOC chat is pretty bad as the night drags on.  I have to admit, however, that sometimes the running politics & religion & etc. slapfights can get humorous, but only in that slow-head-shake-of-disbelief kind of way.

I think OOC is specific to region, not server-wide. Last night Slack and I were talking about OOC and I realized we were having different conversations within them. We were both out of tutorial mode too, so within the "real" game as it were. I was in the Elf area (Erud Lein) and he, err, where were you Slack? Hobbit area still?

I agree. However, at least with the Lute playing very many notes really quickly makes for some period-believable music. Meanwhile, I always thought horns were for accent and sustained notes, so nothing that I've tried to cobble together has come out good at all. I also don't like the Clarinet. And it's only the cockblockery of the 20s cost that keeps me from crabbing the Harp and that fifth instrument I can't remember the name of. I seriously thought of running two characters through tutorials to mail myself the silver that they accrue by level 6.5 (about 18s), which then reminded me of my UO days of rolling characters and drop/transferring the 5k starting Gold, which then reminded me of doing so (stupidly) in EQ1, which then reminded me that in Dikus, the cash eventually starts flowing, particularly when you live only on what you get from questing, so I'll eventually have the money anyway :)

You're caring too much. Allowing only "Specialists" to partake in an art is the ultimate life cockblock. I'd love to see a Garageband song from a non-musician be created with anywhere near the same appeal as an artist could actually put out.

But I've seen this argument too much in my life to take the bait. Any time there is change that makes something more approachable, whether it's the AOL Black September, or desktop publishing, or BASIC programming, or Flash, the establishment gets all up in arms about their unique self-identity getting assaulted. And ironically, these people were probably part of some other effort that makes things more approachable (ie, like you long lamenting cockblocked content). I always find it funny when agents of change in one area aren't too keen when it happens to them.

And why can't you cancel the order? Do it through the vendor or through your credit card company. I've had to in the past.

Neither will cancel it, I've been back and forth with both. I'm actually really goddamned fed up with online vendors in general at this point. You've got fuckers like some I won't mention on this board that ream them dry with returns and I try an honest return and get fucked by multiple vendors.

I was in the same area.  I saw you talkin' in OOC, so that's how I knew you were online.  :p  However, all of Erud Luin is NOT on the same OOC channel, as the area up by Thorin's Hall is different than the area down by Gondamon.

Yea. Each time I enter a new area I join 5 chat channels. I never read that list but assume now one is OOC.

Wow that sucks. You could try eBay. Unopened box, new account, make sure you mention it's not a character or gold your selling. I had someone scoop up my accidentally-ordered second Planetside box of all things. A brand new MMO not yet shipping in areas where people might want it should go quick.

You're subconsciously uncommitted to the idea of cancelling anyway.  You did, after all, say some time ago:

Wait...what? Uncommitted? I've been trying since then to cancel it, it took a couple of weeks to get the return emails.

You should have used Amazon, then: I cancelled from them when they fucked up the pre-order keys and they went along with it no problem.  I was simimpressed that I, um, re-ordered it from them again.  :|

I revisited my LoTRO impression:

First: I really enjoy the game. It's WoW but with an EQ2 flavour, specifically in the sheer amount of quests available and the way of telling the story.

Second: What were they thinking with combat and UI? Combat arts/abilities aren't instantaneous but wait and enqueue to perform to synchronize with the visual swinging of your weapon. This sucks! You want to copy WoW and then trip on the timing of combat (exactly like EQ2 did)?! And the hotbar icons got "greyed out (in blue)" when you hover on them giving the impression that they are unusable and actually making it hard to tell if they are available or not. This sucks even more!

Save for those two gripes, which are major cause they give me the feeling that the whole combat part "doesn't play right", I really like it. The world is awesome.

Re the queuing, I actually like that: I enjoyed that element in SWG.  But I don't see a way to display the upcoming queue.  Is there one?

The hover-over is a pest, for sure, although you eventually become attuned to the difference between greyed out and blued out.  Sorta.  I suppose I end up checking the fervour counter a lot, though.

Did you make your character in Laurelin, btw?  The EN-RP server, that is.  I did answer your question re that in another thread but either you missed it or you asked so you could avoid me.  Or both, I suppose.

My fault here Endie. Yes I read your answer but I went for a different server (Snowbourn) with some RL friends. I am not sure I made the right decision, but I didn't have any good escuse to ditch 'em.

About the bluish-hover thing, seriously: I would pay to know what the hell were they thinking. It's obviously a pest, and I hope, I REALLY hope they will pull it off eventually or I will have to look for a custom UI without that shit. Really, I would pay money to have a beer with the guy or the gal who came up with that shit and ask him/her about it. It's unbelievably stupid.

I would love to get into the minds of people who actually use their mouse to manually select a hotkey'd icon. Seriously, how can you PLAY like that? I have not manually clicked an icon since I configued UO to my F keys (and ALT-Fkey, and CLTR-Fkey).

So I haven't encountered the blush over thing.

But the enqueue thing is sorta annoying. It seems tied to a universal clock even more obviously than WoW is. It's like they won't even render an action until that clock increments, so it feels like instant, even those things that should be instant. In the case of instants, I'd rather the effect activate right away visually even if the damage doesn't come for another 0.5 seconds or whatever.

And Falconeer, I almost completely agree with it feeling like WoW with EQ2 flavor. For me it feels like slower WoW combat with an EQ2 depth of character ability customization/personalization.

The clock thing is what put me off too.

Played a Minstrel, got bizarre "out of range" messages when I tried to cram my skills too closely together, realized that I would have to deliberately time my button-mashing to the invisible server tick, soldiered on for a little bit but eventually caved.

I don't know about WoW, but I had no idea there was a server tick in CoX until years after I started playing.

--GF

I discovered something that eased my pain, not actually fixing any of the above mentioned gripes but modifying the attack mechanic enough to let it be more satisfying (or less frustrating).
Usually, when I target a mob and hit the attack button, or just right click on it to start auto attack 8 out of 10 times I get an "out of range" message and the attack fails to start. That's because:

a) the melee attack range is very short, so you have to be ultra-close to the mob to initiate autoattack.
b) contrary to other games where you can start the auto attack even if your target is not in range (while not hitting it because of the range and instead getting an "out of range" message) and then close in and your character start pummeling as soon as the target gets in range, here you can't start combat at all if your target is not in range. As I said, frustrating because the range is so short.

So, I tried this:
From the OPTIONS menu ---> Combat Options and then "Auto Move to Target" /ON.

That way, I STILL can't initiate an attack with my fav opening skill (or just autoattack) if I am not in range (something that's the norm in other games), but I can hit the autoattack button on an out of range target and my character will start closing automatically and will start hitting as soon as it is in range.

Not what it should be, but a bit better than just having to close in manually and keeping on hitting your greyed out skill until it decides that you are finally in range.

Seriously, LoTRO keeps positively surprising me day after day. I can't understand why oh WHY they neglected such little things about the legendary "Combat Done Right" that WoW somehow achieved. I hope patches will bring Turbine to their senses.

I mouse-click all icons in EQ2 and VG. My left fingers are on WASD and my right fingers are on the mouse. There is no easy way for me to hit 4 through -, let alone ctrl/alt + 4 through - without taking my hands either off WASD or off the mouse, either of which impacts maneuverability. In EQ2 my zerk is constantly shifting his position to keep the mobs' backs to the rogues and keep the mobs within AE arcs. In VG, where I play casters exclusively, the cooldowns for everything mean I cannot just hit 1,2,3,4,5 repeatedly and if I did I would get aggro anyway.

Exactly. My mind can't compute anything different than that.  :cry:

Like most 'wtf' PvE combat aspects, WoW does't have it because of PvP.  /sticky and /face were deemed 'lame' a long time ago, so they left them out so you could actually get out of range of specials and have a more engaging PvP combat.

You guys suck at mmo combat lolzerz 

 :hello_kitty:

Tsk. My autoattack is better than yours.  :heart:

This is very true: in WoW pvp I am always moving backwards and angling at the same time in order to stop the bouncing rogues from getting into backstab position.  To do that and be able to select targets and mouselook means that I have to rely on my third hand to press function keys.

DVD Box in hand  :roll:

edited to add: Am I the first to get my DVD in? Because that would be ironic as heck.

I usually use 1-3 for my most common macros and the mouse, which my right hand is on, for the rest. My hand just doesn't reach comfortably past the 3. Or honestly, I'm not so reliable on what key I hit either.

Nah, I've had it in hand since 11am this morning. Went off without a hitch though that may be because it's pretty much just the preorder on, or mostly. Not seen anyone who hadn't preordered on yet.

So does the DVD have the super high res pack that people were downloading in beta? And if so, does it make a big difference?

Mine came at 9 AM....thirty minutes after my order status at gamestop.com changed from processing to shipped.

/boggle

In this case it wasn't the autoattack. I hit one minstrel song and queued another one, but it failed with an "out of range" message even though in some cases the target was already right up in my grill. It only happened when I tried to beat the autoattack "tempo" by firing off more than one minstrel song per autoattack cycle.

--GF

I can never tell if the song isn't firing or the melee attack isn't.

On Minstrels if you try to activate a Tier 2 or 3 song before the casting is done of a Tier 1 or 2 song, it will not successfully cast and STILL smack you with the refresh timer.

My fingers are basically the same layout. What I have done over the years is put all of the my "need to use while moving" functions in the 1-5 slots (and CTRL+1-5 and SHIFT+ 1-5), which I can easily reach while pressing WASD. Higher than that is where I put abilities I don't need to use while moving around, things like group buffs, ranged damage on targets pinned by tanks, etc.

I also use, liberally, the left/right mouse button combo which in WoW, LoTRO and I think EQ2 let you run in the direction you are facing, which is good for drivebys and kiting if your character has such abilities.

Ah, ok. That makes it kind of hard to queue the songs then.

If you already have a current installation (from beta) just put the retail DVD in the drive and when the installer comes up,  check the repair option, which will ask you if you want to instal the high res textures.  The high res textures  make  the character armor look a lot more detailed; armor chinks  and seams and folds in leather are very distinct and almost bump mappy.  The ground textures appear a little sharper as well.  Overall a very subtle effect ( I am running the game on Ultra high anway so maybe that minimized the effect) so unless you are constantly stopping oogling everything/body  then you probably won't notice as much when things are in motion.

I bought the game yesterday once I tracked it down; the local Best Buy was sold out, which was actually encouraging.  So far I've played a Human Hunter (I refuse to be called Man Hunter) to level 6 and a Dwarf Champ to level 5.  The Champ is my preferred so far.  The attack animations seem to work well and combat is interesting.

I didn't care for the Hunter; the slow timing of the special attacks left me feeling like I was better off just auto-attacking.  I'm sure the numbers work out to be better with the special attacks, but overall combat seemed disjointed and awkward.

I like the overall absence of magic and the way Turbine adjusted the classes to work around that.  It gives the game a more gritty feel to it than WoW.  Of course my last WoW char was a Blood Elf, not exact a gritty race.

Is there no rest system in LOTR?  I never noticed this before, but having played this, I LIKE the absence of a rest system.  Its nice to be able to log off in the woods without feeling like you're penalizing yourself.   I'm an adventurer, goddammit, I don't need a fluffy pillow in a tiny inn to spend the night.

I'm on Arkenstone.  Is there a (semi-) official f13 server?

What about pulling off the ***BETA*** tag in the forum title, by the way?

I agree on the lack of magic.  I like the difference it makes in feel to the generic_fantasy_land_019 thing that (ironically) the third-gen Tolkien spinoffs tend to have.

There is a rest system, by the way.  It seems to accrue pretty quickly, too.  I don't know eher it works and where it doesn't: I also like the fact that not everything is explained in detail, but I admit that most people might prefer greater transparency of the mechanics.

You don't need to log out anywhere special to accumulate rest/bonus experience.  You get it automatically from just not being logged-in.  You'll see it as a blue bar tacked at the end of your experience bar.

The bonus xp only applies to kills, though -- not quests.

You know what I love about this game? It feels organic. Someone described it as a melange of EQ2 and WoW and they're spot on. EQ2 seemed almost too messy for me out in the world, maybe because the forced grouping made it seem too dangerous to wander aimlessly. WoW, now that I'm playing LOTRO way to much, seems almost sterile. It's like it was made in a lab, with scientisty types looking over the shoulders of the testers calculating precisely how many quests per square mile for levelling should go in.

LOTRO's big and just enough of a mess to feel real without going over into the world half of the spectrum enough to hurt its mass market appeal. I like it, more than I thought I would. I still have my WoW for some Karazhan raids and my scads and scads of friends, but I'll be damned if I've touched it in four days and I hadn't expected that.

The honeymoon will wear off. I've absolutely no confidence that Turbine can pull off a raiding endgame. Raiding requires a certain mathematical precision in its underlying mechanics to get right and they can't even get the crafting economics right. But until then wandering around aimlessly, oooing and ahhing at Weathertop or Bag End and a healthy dose of monster play is enough to keep me pretty much enthralled for awhile.

My big criticism of WOW partiularly the early levels is that it is like a MMPORPG on rails--very directed almost like a single player game. (Yes, this is also WOW's strength and a major reason it is such a huge hit.) And that's not a feeling I get with LOTRO. There seem to be more quests at the lower levels than WOW and they offer more choice. I'm in the human lands and I got a quest to leave the town and go to Bree and then I got more quests in town and it occurred to me that this is something you never see in WOW--when you get the quest that directs you to move on, it's a huge signpost to move on--you've pretty much finished up everything in that area or you've levelled to the point where its not worth doing. It is mathematical in that fashion.

I think they will toss in some raids, but I think the raiders will go back to WOW. I hope they won't chase that dream and will mostly do events and single group stuff in the way they did for AC.

Ditto except I never bothered to preorder.

I was very involved for years in the community in anticipation of this one. Started playing in Alpha-2 back in August of 06. Gave it up around November and have no desire to play this game.

WoW lite in a Middle Earth wrapper..............................

Um, my condolences?

Thats why I feel like an old geezer more and more. I don't get the MMOG-generation.

For me everything that holds my interest for three month is worth the money I spend for it. If it wouldn't be I would certainly have to check my sanity for wasting three months on it...

Well, I'm digging it.  I've now tried the Hunter, Champion, Captain, Lore-Master and Minstrel.  Of those I thought only the LM was a disappointment.  I'm enjoying the minstrel.  A series of spell-songs sounds like a coherent tune, at least at level 6.  And I even managed to scrap together enough silver to buy a lute, to while away the down-time.

I absolutely dig what you're saying. LOTRO is probably a three month experiment for me, at longest until Spore or Conan comes out. That's money well spent given how few of my musty old wargames they release these days.

Further reflection: crafting is an absolute mess and will cause some small segment to quit. Why? Because the economy's so out of whack on it that people won't realize how broke they are until they've already blown a wad on it. I was floored that my training at 20 amounted to 160 silver... and then I looked at my best friend and how he has 70 copper to h is name at level 17 because of crafting and repairs. There's going to be some frustrated people.

There already are.  There's a thread on the gen dis boards at the official forums about exactly that issue.  Basically, if you don't spend time killing stuff solo, you won't have squat for cash when the lv 20 training crunch hits.  Granted, there's ways to "think around" that or whatever, but the people who are solely questing -- in groups -- are the ones who will be hardest hit.  I haven't yet started using the AH, but I can see how it's going to be necessary to do so very soon.  At the moment, the only really viable tradeskill set is explorer -- largely because you can sell the ore, ingots, hides and boiled hides on the AH for a tidy sum.  The open beta period created a subset of people who just played one character to 15 and then farmed cash -- so they're looking to spend.  People like me who tried to level a few characters to 15 get by just fine, but I also primarily solo and have no problems killing the junk in my path.  I also explore and work on completing deeds/traits, so I tend to kill a ton of junk in that process.

The main trick for the cash starved is to go farm neekers and other insects in the midgewater marsh, or go hunt humanoids like goblins and brigands.

I've found Tinkering to be relatively self-sufficient, too, though I suspect that's more to do with the fact that I don't have to buy retardedly expensive mats from the trainer than anything else.

One thing I just learned from that heckalong thread was that there's a supplier in Bree (in the town hall?) that sells wax for 12c instead of 48c.  It's sad that I'm planning to find this guy...but hell, bolts of rough cloth are over 1s in cost....levelling tailoring on anything but medium armor would be insane, IMO.  Some of the materials are just wayyy too costly.

I may have gimped (i.e. doomed him to some serious grinding time) my hobbit burglar simply because I tried to level up his farming at one point.  Now that they've broken that, he's just kind of sitting there.  Cooking seems like it'll be nice once I get him some more cash and he can afford to cook again.  Food provides a very clear benefit and should be desirable to others on the AH, I guess.

The crafting system being broken has really lessened my desire to play.  It's my main enjoyment in MMOs these days, and if I can't craft, I'd rather go play a console game or something. 

Despite my infamous craftard remarks in SWG thread #872, I agree that having a solid crafting component is important to me, as well.

When I was adventuring in Butcherblock with my paladin last night, it got dark and I logged him out and logged in another character who was in town and spent the 'night' crafting. Sun came up and I logged back in with my paladin and kept on swinging sword.

The EQ2 crafting changes were one of the best changes in mmo history. I was leafing through an old notebook last night and stumbled across pages of notes for EQ2 subcombines, so I could total the raw ingredients needed for each crafted item. There was a convoluted tree of ingredients with each subcombine's recipe list branching down, each took up a page. I had one crafter then, my Sage, who I think was level 20 when I had last played before the changes. After the changes, I have almost all my  alt characters over 20 in crafting with two at/around 30, and tons of useful gear that really helps my solo playstyle.

I was considering leveling crafting concurrent to normal questing, but I remembered trying to do so in EQ1 and WoW. It's really not worth it for me right now for two reasons:

1) quests STILL (here as in WoW) give better rewards than crafted stuff. People will more quickly outgrow crafted until they realize it's not worth investing in crafted goods at all until maybe later levels, assumging it gets better. This isn't the fault of LoTRO, but rather the convention they're following. It's just easier to control the relative power of players by releasing content in a contrived fashion.

2) Costs. I would rather hoard my cash until I know what I'll need in mid and late levels. Hard lesson from EQ1. WoW was the same way. Training (and Talent respecs) were INITIALLY tough on newbies until the mid-game. Nowaday's everyone's a twink. In time Turbine will adjust the costs and people will have more cash.

In short, unless the crafting system puts out universally good stuff that are arguably at least as good as what can easily be gotten from solo questing, it's a money sink for folks looking to do more than just quest.

The mastery level items in each tier and the journeyman and higher tier items (also the lootable recipes, even for the first tier) are actually pretty spiffy and are useful even at early levels.  I say this based only on experience with tailoring medium armor and weaponcrafting/woodworking, but there ARE nice items that you can theoretically sell on the AH to newbies and whatnot.

My point was that this is generally the case when a game is new and players haven't seen what quests give. In a few months they'll realize quests give better for less, by a) it costing no money; and, b) them being how they'll normally play anyway because Quest XP is the fastest way to level AND give items. The game seems balanced right now based on what the average player can get and right now the average seems stats from quest gears. And leveling seems to happen fast enough that buying gear you'll quickly outgrow while training costs are so high isn't worth it.

HOWEVER, I have seen some stat on that talks about "crit" during creation. Does that mean that someone can create something of variable quality ala EQ2?

Also, importantly, the high training cost seems based on the player expectation that they can train every spell they get the moment they level up. That's the case even for rank newbs in WoW, but wasn't really in the early days of EQ1... unless they played the market or were twinked. Interesting way for Turbine to go.

Unless it's a bug :)

It is not variable quality but a crit item is a lot more effective. You have to gather special components, for a jeweler it will be wight treasure or lynx claws for example. You get a certain percentage to make a crit by using one of the  speacials and if successful the item is much better than the normal. For example a copper ring may give +3 of a stat while a shining copper ring might give +9 of that stat. I preferred EQII's crafting over LoTROs, but I was pretty burned out on EQII and this is a step up from WoW.

Once you hit Mastery level in a given tier of crafting (like levels) you get a base 5% chance to crit when you make something; tacking on a random drop as was said adds 50% to that chance. The base items range from moderately useful for a brief time to assy but the items you create with a crit are pretty damned nice.

Unfortunately, questing alone cannot get you the dough to advance as fast as you think.  Many people feel that when they ding a new level, they should be able to afford all of their skills -- this works till the mid-teens.  Personally, I think that traits are best gained ASAP, not organically via questing.  Some of the niftier traits (those that add stat points) seem to require work beyond the normal questing chains.  That's fine for me, I like to beat up animals for their vendor trash loot.  Sooner or later, I'll even focus on putting the purple drops (those for crafting) on the AH.  I've just been lazy in that regard because I haven't ever used any kind of AH in any game so far...but I think LoTRO may be my initiation into the world of being a merchant.  Heck, in SWG, I just put up an automated vendor (and later NPCs) in Tian Bay and let that ride.  It's the curse of my RL and my game life...I just need to learn to be more of a self-merchandizer.

ETA -- Also, some crits in crafting just give more of the processed item....extra treated wood or hides or ingots.

I actually considered purchasing this game for something to keep me amused this weekend but it seems there's no way to purchase a CD Key without buying the box at a retailer. Lack of digital distribution is sooo 5 years ago.

Ok so crits in crafting are between WoW's guaranteed sameness and EQ2s variable. Nice. I didn't like EQ2's system enough to play Tetris every time I wanted to grind a crafting skill.

That's why I said earlier perhaps Turbine did this on purpose. The instant-gratification thing is a relatively recent phenom in the genre compared to the early days of EQ1 and AC1. People were either more patient or just put up with more shit, whatever. So this may be Turbine going "old skool" on the genre when in reality, the vast majority of their first players are going to be WoW expatriates by sheer numbers alone. WoW seriously doubled the amount of active accounts in this genre in both major territories in which LoTRO launched, and that means a LOT of new people to the genre who think the rules for a class/template/DIKU game are what WoW were.

Meanwhile, us vets have been playing since every game delivered the WRONG thing, or at least something wrong enough that when a game launched with an incremental improvement, we flocked to it :)

Who you callin' "we" kemosabe?   :-D

On that note, why on earth can't farmers flax2crush and produce cloth?

--GF

Because you left EQ1 to for greener pastures. Not just the same ones as others :)

Good question.  I'm willing to bet that may be one of the "fixes" they have planned for farming.  Or, if it's not, it should be.

Inter-dependency as a social lubricant.

LoTRO crafting is not really intended to be a game entirely unto myself in my opinion. The only way it would be is if you could max out your chosen three professions at level 7. But that does not seem to be the case, which is like EQ2 and WoW.

They weren't shooting for multiple-paths-of-domination ala SWG. There's just one thing to do here (besides music) and everything is corollary to that.

That's not the prolem. The problem is that the mats you need to buy from the vendor to level crafting are OBSCENELY expensive. My friend needs steel. To convery his iron to steel he needs coal. Coal costs two silver a pop. That adds up to more than the average player can handle after a short while.

Another example is farming.  It used to be that a "poor" quality plant netted you three seeds.  You need six seeds to grow a plot.  Seeds start at 1s and some copper and go up from there.  PER SEED.  They decided that the "money train" that was high-level pipeweed farming needed a nerf, so they "fixed" the seed output to one per poor plant.  Apparently that was how it was supposed to be....right.  At any rate, before the nerf, I tried to level up to the "money train" level of farming...which is somewhere in the beyond journeyman tiers.  I spent about 100ish silver getting to journeyman.  Basically, once people got to the money level, they'd already taken so much money out of the economy that I don't really see the need for a fix.

Stupposedly, they are doing something to make it so farmers can sell junk to cooks, but since one of the professions that includes cooking also includes farming, I don't really see how that's going to work.

Suffice it to say that the cost for materials needs to come down if they're going to keep the economy tight.

Interdependency is being stifled by the highly mediocre AH and the fact that nobody has any spare money.

I dunno man. I gotta believe there's a reason Turbine keeps the costs for mats high, just like the training costs. Are they wanting people to make compromises? Like a crafter isn't going to be as good at combat at any level because they can't afford to BOTH crafting mats AND to keep their combat skills maxxed?

The only alternative is that it's a massive blunder, the sort you don't want to have at launch. If nobody can afford to do crafting until the endgame, then the only things worth making are endgame items. That makes everything ELSE just grind output. What scares me is being able to sell to NPC farmers supports this hypothesis: "no, your current creations have no value, go sell them to the money faucet". It's a death cycle, something that only continues to support the notion that relevant equipment-crafting and quest-based DIKUs don't mix (consumables generally always have a place though, if they can be afforded :P )

And you don't want this to happen at launch because if your fix only comes later when your launch players have leveled up, then the only market left for incremental gear creations is un-twinked alts and newbie players who don't know yet that quests ALWAYS provide.

I have to wonder about crafting costs also, if it was not for the disparity in the various professions I would chalk it up to them trying to discourage every hobbit and his brother from becoming a crafter. That makes no sense whatsoever after giving it a bit of thought. One would think they would want to encourage crafting rather than discourage it, even though that is what they have managed to do.

 I have managed to make quite a few coin through the jewelry trade however. It does take a willingness to sit there and grind blue and green mobs for the trophy components to make the unique. Even at that I foresee the market becoming flooded due to the fact that crafted items are not bind on equip. Turbine did a fair job on the game overall in my opinion but that fucker in charge of crafting needs to be sent packing. If I were designing it I would make quest rewards and crafted items bind on equip and regular mob drops non bind.

I noticed that too and I really can't figure what's in their crafting lead's mind.
My best guess is trying to give players a good reason to buy a crafted weapon/armour by thinking that no matter the cost, they'll be able re-sell it after use getting some of the money spent back. I did that for example. At level 20 I shelled out 150 silver for a very good crafted heavy chestpiece knowing that I should be able to get some of that back by reselling when I am done with it.
Still, if this *could* make crafted equipment a better choice for Players, it will screw crafters and crafted economy after a couple of months in the game. Don't want to even think about a year in.

I think this is a massive blunder. Jewelcrafting is fine because I have to buy precisely nothing from an npc vendor to get it up. The others? Ick.

It doesn't instill me with alot of hope for a raiding endgame when they can't get comparatively easy numbers right. Different teams, I'm sure, but both extremely numbers based. Crafting was slapped on late in beta 2 (as I recall) and it feels rushed.

Some crafting was in as early as Alpha 2 when I started, it has never been right though and still feels very incomplete to me. An example as far as I know there are no ear ring or bracelet recipes for jewelers. Pisses me off because I really enjoy the game but they have poked the pooch on crafting and some of the other social aspects such as player housing in my opinion. I have pretty much given up hope on crafting ever playing any significant role in the game. My main is a explorer and my alt is a jewel crafter so it works out well for me money wise.

Now that I know there's a grocer in the Bree Town hall who sells ALL crafting stuff at half price, it's not too bad.  I'm willing to bet that he's "broken" though, so use him while you can.

I have only one character where I feel he's probably irrevocably hosed as a crafter (my yeoman....stupid farming).  The others are an explorer, and armsman and a woodcrafter guy.  Basically mining ore and chopping wood will always be a good scene, as is making boiled leather.  Some of them have side skills that can be useful for making gear to replace quest stuff/outfit friends.  Maybe the mastery level weapons will be super neat, I don't really know yet.

I've been told that the Devs have acknowledged that half price grocer is bugged and will be fixed in the June push.  BTW not only does he sell at 1/2 price but he also buys and repairs at half.

Time to stock up on wax and whatnot, I guess.

So we've got a month then. Veteran Reward! :)

The veteran reward is the money hat you buy after grabbing components on the cheap now and selling on the AH later.

Crafting was fine before they nerfed the rest of the money in the economy. Back in late closed my Champion was poorish but had crafted a lot of items and mainly given them away or sold to vendors. Then someone started bitching that the economy had too much money in it and you got the current state of things. I think the rebalance was handled by someone in about 30 min while they waited for code to compile or something from the amount of thought that appears to have been put into it. I don't really think the pre-nerf economy was in that bad a shape to begin with, unless you consider having to think about spending money on a horse ride a healthy state of things. I'd mainly go with the not enough time to really think it through or plan anything theory on what's wrong at the moment.

Why craft?  First it's a money sink in a game where money is hard to come by.  Don't forget you want to save for your ponie at like 35th level.

Second crafted items are quickly replaced by superior quest items. Whether this holds true past the teen levels I don't know however.

So I AH all my goodies and get cash from the stupid crafters.

Crafting isn't broken, but it's seriously bent.

Plzfixkthxbai  :hello_kitty:

I'm now playing a loremaster, level 23.  Sometimes it seems hard.  Like when I see a hunter come up and pew pew, mob dies.  With me, it's more like sic pet, debuff debuff, pew pew, maybe heal pet, pew pew pew.

I think I can probably handle multiple mobs better on the fly, but I'm not sure about that.

Loremaster is a fun class, but could use .... something.  Maybe I just have to get to the next level.  Or the one after that.

I have noticed that money is finally starting to roll in pretty good at lvl 25. If I was farming, cooking, or tailoring I am sure I could spend every copper of it though.

That was my take with the class in beta.  Just seemed reallly, really passive with a side of slow.  At low levels, at least, you seemed to be able to take multiple mobs better,  or escape from multiple mobs, by efficient use of the pet.  Captain was alot more fun,  but if I could multiples it was usually bad news.

I was soured on hunters because there seemed to be a bunch of tools playing the class.  Never played around with it though.  Might be projecting my inner hate of typical-Legolas-mmo-fanboism.

Hey, tangential LoTRO question -- the wife's PC is throwing up trying to run it. It's dying somewhere in character creation -- looks like loading into the world, to be honest. What happens is that the screen goes utterly black, the sound continues.

And here's the weird bit -- the monitor light goes from green (active) to "amber" (inactive). I can't tab to windows, can't bring up the task manager, can't bring up the start menu. Have to manually reboot. (Didn't try forcing a logout or screen pause).

I went ahead an updated her video drivers (more than a bit old), set up my firewall for LoTRO to allow in the proper ports (I wasn't having problems, but I had more opened ports for my PC than hers), had her run Spybot and the like and we're about to try again.

Moving back to my point -- if it craters again, how do I get diagnostic information? I tried the Event Viewer, and the only thing odd there appeared to be a reference to something spamming open too many TCP/IP connections that timed out. (Hence the careful updating of the firewall, the AV scan, etc).

Any ideas? Ways to figure out what was going on when it croaked? (I've followed what's on the LoTRO website, but I was hoping someone here could point me to actual error codes or log events I might be missing).

Go to hardware manager and see if your video adaptor is happy? Certinly sounds like a vid card issue.

What GPU is it? Is the hard drive thrashing before it craps out?

ATI Radeon 9800. I don't hear any thrashing, although her case always runs a bit hot. Checked that the fans are both working (Video and MB) and I didn't get any alarms. I heard no hard drive thrashing.

It just black screens, the monitor light goes amber, and the sound starts stuttering. Seemed to happen right when I attempted to login -- but I have the router set right.

Wait, I've seen that -- KOTOR did that to me. Got to check what I did to fix that. Crud, can't find it. Some bug -- IIRC -- with the Dell Creative Labs 5.1 Live! drivers that had a specific patch that I now cannot find.

About the only other possible connection is that she crashes while we're both connected through the router -- she was doing fine until I logged in, but I suspect that was a coincidence.

Try going into my documents/lotro folder and opening user preferences.ini and changing FullScreen=True to FullScreen=False  That will force it into a window. It sounds like it's trying to put it into some mode that your card/monitor doesn't like.

The KB says it could be that you don't have the latest version of directx or that a firewall is asking permission and I got a firewall permission thing from the Windows XP built in firewall, so that's very possible.

She's running DirectX 9.0c, and I have windows firewall disabled -- I use the router as a firewall, and I configured that following the instructions off their web site.

Okay, I think I got it fixed -- it ran long enough for us to make it to Archet, when she decided to log off.

I removed all the ATI drivers and reinstalled them (she didn't have .NET 2.0 installed and I read there were issues when installing ATI's stuff then installing .NET 2.0). I replaced her sound card drivers, cleaned up her desktop and did a few other chores and now it seems to work.

I'm going to have to toy with my graphics settings. I'm a bit spoiled by WoW, and my system isn't exactly cutting edge. I'm running a 3 Ghz machine with 1 gig RAM, Win XP, a Radeon 9800 Pro. Turning on AA in LoTRO seems to cause a sort of hitching without much graphical improvement. I guess I'll do lurk the LoTRO boards for graphics tweaking suggestions.

Spoke too soon. As least it took about two hours to crash this time. Didn't disconnect her from the game. Another black-screen crash and reboot. I have GOT to figure out a way to get crash data off that.

I admit I haven't skimmed through this entire thread but If someone is still reading it I figured it is better to ask here than starting a new thread.

A) Is this game worth the 49.95? Since I just don't buy every mmo that comes out anymore.

B) Can I play it casual and have fun? I really don't have the time to be a catasser anymore.

C) Long term possibilities of the game.......or better yet what do you guys/gals think the shelf life is going to be for this game?

A) Yes

B) Yes. I am. I bought it as a secondary game and am doing fine. Obviously the problems of being outlevelled come in but how much pressure on you is a function of your guild more than the game.

C) This is the part I'm hazy on. I'm not impressed with the dev teams math skills. The economy seems fundamentally flawed and it's largely due to the unholy alliance of busted costs for crafting and repairs versus what you can reasonably make. Since they're planning a raiding endgame and raids are essentially giant math problems I'm not instilled with alot of confidence. Is it worth it to fart around, level up and do some monster play (which is tons of fun when there's pvp going on)? Yeah but the jury's out on how much time that can kill.

In a fit of WoW catharsis yesterday, I went out and picked this up.

I got a Dwarf Guardian to level 12 on Silverlode. I can't tell you how depressed I was when I died for the first time halfway through level 12... I wanted all the titles. =(

For some strange reason, this game is much, much more fun then it was in Beta, and I can't put my finger on why. Maybe it's because my Dwarf is such a badass. He has dark brown creased skin with orange dreadlocks. He looks like a true desert walker.

Maybe I shouldn't have made a Loremaster in beta, heh.

Do Man Loremasters still do that sex offender wiggle when they're channeling the Embers spell?

I don't typically like endgame in things I play (pre-ToA DAOC notwithstanding).  I like to get a toon to max level and then I'll often do it again on another toon.  So I don't really care about whether there's a there there at the end.

Monster play has me intrigued (because I do like pvp) and I think it's so cool that any level 10 can make and develop a lvl 50 monster for freeps vs. creeps play.

I think it's worth the 50 bucks plus at least 6 months of play if not more.  I've been playing since beta, off and on, and now have a 30 LM.  We'll see what the new expansion/content patch in June brings.

I have the exact same feeling. And deeds and titles are fun as hell. They alone can give me a night's play!

All the good buzz is getting me quite intrigued by LOTRO.  Anytime this site doesn't uniformly say something blows nuts, I usually try it  :-P

So you're voting for a Democrat in 08?

I would vote for Obama over Romney or Giuliani, both of whom I detest, for the sole reason that he is a Midwesterner.  I am tired of backslapping, belt buckle frat-boy Southerners and neurotic, cold Easterners.  The Midwest combines the good features of the rest of the country and adds a healthy dose of common sense. 

He's my pick as well, but he's also my Senator, so that has a lot to do with it.  Also, I'm tired of the Southern and East Coast types.

Back on topic, you really should play you some LOTRO, it's rather fun.  I actually felt a bit of loss last week when I was uber-busy and didn't have time to play.  I almost never feel that way about MMOs.

Yeah, like Brownback. He seems sane.

I digress... ;)

Don't expect the game to be a miracle. It's a diku that's just sloppy enough to feel like a world with some decent pvp and a reasonably innovative deeds system to customize your character. It's good for what it is. It may last you five years or one month but it's at least worth checking out.

I think the class you play determines your enjoyment.  I too had a LM as was bored.  Then I made a Minstrel and never looked back!

Sitting in the back healing while others fight for my xp and loot is a GOOD THING.  :mrgreen:

The hell that's been my life for two weeks. I'm just happy I managed to turn on the new rig once... to get some files. Works is nuts and it's cutting into my LoTRO time!

And Gore in 08 for me ;)