LoTR slashes price.

[Merusk]

Just saw this on x-fire.  Buy it for 9.99 and pay 9.99 a month, ( if you pay for a year in advance.  )

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

[WayAbvPar]

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

[Nebu]

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

[Mrbloodworth]

I still say this is a fantastic game.

[Rasix]

I still say this is a fantastic game.

You say that about a lot of crap.

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

[cevik]

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

[tazelbain]

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

[tmp]

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

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

[Slayerik]

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

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

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




Someone steal this system real fuckin quick like.

[NiX]

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

[sinij]

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

[Tebonas]

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

[Tarami]

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

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

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

[Baldrake]

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

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

[Tebonas]

Boobs and Blood.

[amiable]

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

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

[Mrbloodworth]

I still say this is a fantastic game.

You say that about a lot of crap.

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

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

Its a fantastic game.

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

[cevik]

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

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

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

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

[Tarami]

Stuff about monotone mobs

Because AoC is so varied...

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

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

[cevik]

Because AoC is so varied...

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

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

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

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

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

[WayAbvPar]

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

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

[KallDrexx]

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

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

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

[amiable]

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

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

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

[Tarami]

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

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

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

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

[cevik]

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

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

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

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

[cevik]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

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

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

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

[cevik]

Thats manly because of the the IP. its LOTR, you cant really have demons running around every where in the overlands.

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

[Tarami]

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

[cevik]

This may be the strangest thing in the world to say, but I think LotR as a setting is very niche.

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

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

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

[Tarami]

It's not strange at all, in fact I completely agree.

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

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

[WayAbvPar]

I swear, if I hear that sound ever again I'm going to flip out and kill you all.

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

[Tarami]

I swear, if I hear that sound ever again I'm going to flip out and kill you all.

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

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

[tmp]

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

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

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

[cevik]

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

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

Read the rest of the thread?