What is the Current State of the Game?

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

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

[Ard]

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

[khaine]

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

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

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

[Reg]

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

[Cheddar]

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

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

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

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



edit.  Additional.

[khaine]

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

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

[Bandit]

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

[Cheddar]

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

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

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

[Riggswolfe]

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

[Yegolev]

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

[Soln]

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

[Bandit]

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

[Yegolev]

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

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

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

[Bandit]

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

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

[Tarami]

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

[Riggswolfe]

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

Brandywine?   

[tmp]

The captain drives me crazy because it seems to be the anti-warden. I have 2 active skills, one skill that depends on a crit, and the "after battle" skills.

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

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

[Riggswolfe]

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

Brandywine?   

No. Landroval.

Edit:

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

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

[Soln]

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

[Reg]

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

[Mr_PeaCH]

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

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

[Riggswolfe]

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

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

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

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

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

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

[Soln]

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

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

[Ard]

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

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

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

[tmp]

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

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

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

[Reg]

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

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

[Reg]

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

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

[Riggswolfe]

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

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

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

[Reg]

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

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

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

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

You know thats a flaw right?

Wow = Endgame.

LOTRO = The whole game.

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

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

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