This game is not WoW and people still seem to rather like it. Am I wrong?

[Triforcer]

After a few days I am having a blast.  The atmosphere in this game is second to none.  I actually feel like I am in a WORLD, which I never felt in Warhammer or AoC (WoW comes close to LOTRO on this point, but LOTRO has the edge).  I have the urge sometimes to just do nothing but run and try to see everything.

Unlike WAR, the deeds are few enough to matter and feel fun, you don't get one every two minutes because you opened your graphics options enough times.  The one thing WAR had that I wish LOTRO did was easier quest directions.  Many quests seem vaguely Mankrik-ish, and a couple I've just plain given up on after an hour of searching (fuck you, Filbert's Handkerchief). 

Overall, very positive.  I have 3-4 days left in trial, but I think I will give this a month's sub shot. 

[Numtini]

I would kill for a Quest helper or the glowing zones on the map from Conan and War. Flipping back and forth to the dynamic map is a pita and I notice it doesn't have any Moria maps on it.

[Mrbloodworth]

After a few days I am having a blast.  The atmosphere in this game is second to none.  I actually feel like I am in a WORLD, which I never felt in Warhammer or AoC (WoW comes close to LOTRO on this point, but LOTRO has the edge).  I have the urge sometimes to just do nothing but run and try to see everything.

Unlike WAR, the deeds are few enough to matter and feel fun, you don't get one every two minutes because you opened your graphics options enough times.  The one thing WAR had that I wish LOTRO did was easier quest directions.  Many quests seem vaguely Mankrik-ish, and a couple I've just plain given up on after an hour of searching (fuck you, Filbert's Handkerchief). 

Overall, very positive.  I have 3-4 days left in trial, but I think I will give this a month's sub shot. 

Quests, and directions. I normally give it that good ole collage try, then, if i am done with that. Ask on /advice. You will get a response rather quickly.

[Modern Angel]

I play the game for the atmosphere and it is awesome. There's a bit of a breakdown in the mid-20s where there are a zillion kill boars quests (and I do mean a zillion and I do mean specifically killing boars) but if you can tough it out through that you're golden.

I'm having a ton of fun on this, my third go. Still playing WoW and still raiding but LOTRO is an amazing downtime/casual/everyday time slice game.

[Numtini]

JC on a popsicle stick, I'd forgotten just how easy it is to get killed in this game and that with dread it actually has teeth, even if only a few teeth. Way to used to ez mode WoW/EQ2.

[Arthur_Parker]

I miss uo rares I guess, I have given up leveling till this Yule festival is over, doing the yule quests takes up all my time.  Having fun and finally got a snow globe, at some point I must remember to get a house so I can actually see it.

[Bismallah]

Keys still available?

[Ozzu]

Just upgraded my computer a few days ago and this game runs amazingly well with everything maxed out. I have no idea how they can manage to have an MMO run this well and look this good and everyone else just sucks at it.

[Cheddar]

Keys still available?

PM me your email address.

[Bismallah]

PM sent

[FatuousTwat]

Thanks again for the key Cheddar, but I haven't been able to play.

The internet service in my town is shit. Whenever it rains too heavily or the wind blows too much, the power goes out, and if someone farts the internet goes down.

[Cheddar]

lol No problem.  There is no pressure to sign up or anything - its just a way to let you gyus try it before committing cash money.   

[Bismallah]

Thanks Cheddar. I am 6 atm, gonna play a little more tonite. Hunter currently styling my pimp hat!

[waffel]

I've been playing for a week and a half, level 23 captain. I actually really enjoy the game. The PvE is fun, grouping is fun, good economy, good crafting system, huge world, ect ect ect.

My ONLY gripe is blue screening while in GB. I come to find out I'm BSOD'ing because of an audio DLL used by the game, made my creative, that has been causing BSODs for over a year. Turbine knows about it, creative knows about it, yet its still going on. I found multiple treads on the tech forums about it and the only solution that works now is to disable sound/run software sound. Its frustrating and there is no reason for it to still be in the game.

[Ard]

There's a bit of a breakdown in the mid-20s where there are a zillion kill boars quests (and I do mean a zillion and I do mean specifically killing boars) but if you can tough it out through that you're golden.

The boar thing was specifically referenced in their first content patch a long while back:

http://lotro.mmodb.com/quests/a-striking-absence-of-boar-1374.php

[Modern Angel]

That no boars quest shows a startling self-deprecation and makes me smile. When I quit, it was because of the fucking boar quests.

[Mrbloodworth]

That no boars quest shows a startling self-deprecation and makes me smile. When I quit, it was because of the fucking boar quests.

There are many of the newer zones that are lacking of boars, or boar quests. In fact, they understand the issue, hence that quest, the yule quest "moar-boar" and of course, the various references to needing more boars and whatnot littered through out the lands.

[Numtini]

Just upgraded my computer a few days ago and this game runs amazingly well with everything maxed out. I have no idea how they can manage to have an MMO run this well and look this good and everyone else just sucks at it.

I think they have done something in the last six months or so. It runs far better than it did in the past on the same system, both times with a new intall.

[Tarami]

Just upgraded my computer a few days ago and this game runs amazingly well with everything maxed out. I have no idea how they can manage to have an MMO run this well and look this good and everyone else just sucks at it.

I think they have done something in the last six months or so. It runs far better than it did in the past on the same system, both times with a new intall.

They're continueously tweaking the engine. Usually each patch introduces some new fairly minor graphical effect, which requires some sub-system to be recoded for the better. This is the case with sprite rendering, atmospherics, particles, far plane culling and other tidbits that I've spotted in patch notes over the year. The entire lighting model was rebuilt for Moria, from what I know. So, yeah, things are happening behind the scenes.

[Viin]

If anyone has a US key available, I wouldn't mind checking this out and see how it's changed since Open Beta. Be nice to find a fantasy game to play when I get tired of losing spaceships. 

[Cheddar]

If anyone has a US key available, I wouldn't mind checking this out and see how it's changed since Open Beta. Be nice to find a fantasy game to play when I get tired of losing spaceships. 

PM me your email.

[DraconianOne]

So when I last left this game I think I was about level 34 and faced with another mind numbingly dull run across Ost Somewhereorother.  I'm thinking about updating and having another go but is it worth getting the xpac before I get to 50?  Basically, apart from new classes (because oh god no!), what does the xpac offer people who aren't level capped?

[Cheddar]

So when I last left this game I think I was about level 34 and faced with another mind numbingly dull run across Ost Somewhereorother.  I'm thinking about updating and having another go but is it worth getting the xpac before I get to 50?  Basically, apart from new classes (because oh god no!), what does the xpac offer people who aren't level capped?

No.  Wait until 45.

[DraconianOne]

Thanks.

Now, next question.  Your avatar - what is it?

[waffel]

Thanks.

Now, next question.  Your avatar - what is it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nzEFMjkI4

[sidereal]

TechnoViking does not dance to the music.  The music dances to TechnoViking.

[Numtini]

I hit the wall tonight which is 5 days? I going to dissent bigtime here. I just can't play a 2002 game anymore. The graphics and atmosphere are great, but pretty much everything else is just dismal. I want to love it just like I did at release, but it's still crap and I don't see that anything has really been fixed that was wrong a year and a half ago.

The UI is horrible and can't be configured at all. This is just unforgiveable in 2008. You can move parts, but not other parts. And mostly all you can do is skin it. I don't want an aggro meter or a healbot that heals for me. I just want to be able to move the action bars in the middle a bit to the right so I can fit my chat window in the left lower corner. I want to tweak the icons so I can see when my buffs run out. Well I can't do that. I realize that's a bit trivial, but why put up with it when I don't have to. And someone still needs to teach Turbine what an icon is. Those aren't icons, they're very very small paintings and they all look alike particularly if you're trying to keep track of buffs or debuffs.

The LFG system is useless. I was LFG the entire time as a minstrel and got not a nibble. There's no global LFF channel and the player made one, Barrens Chat GLFF, was no help. This has been my biggest gripe in the game, it's just not possible to group and the game is designed around grouping. I log into EQ2 or WoW and I have a group in ten or fifteen minutes, so I don't think it's me. It doesn't help that the populations are really really low. I was on Landroval, I can't imagine what other servers are like.

Getting anywhere has for me been an exercise in death by green and grey. If your aggro radius is X, then mobs seem randomly placed every X-1 units regardless of terrain or road. Combined with confusing maps and a lack of UI enhancements to navigate and what you end up with is a load of frustration. Nothing like slogging your way through mobs for 20 minutes to get somewhere only to find a blank mountain wall then check your map and see your location is right on what looks like a road somewhere. Or to try to run through a bunch of greys, snag a green and get mobbed.

Quest levels still don't seem to flow well. I had an insane amount of lt blue and green and now I'm running out. They're mostly easy and low xp really. Now I can't find anything new but orange. My log is full of group quests, empty of solo or small group quests, and I have no idea where to go to find more that I can actually do.

The new combat system is to me no more interesting than the old one, it is just fiddling around for the sake of fiddling. It took a lot of the balance they had gotten to and threw it out the window for no apparent improvement.

Sorry, but I'm just not seeing it.

[Soln]

here's some possible advice, take of it what you will:

1. the chat box is probably my biggest complaint.  Next is the in-game map.  You can reduce all text to 14 pt font and change colors , but that's about it.  You can only have 6 tabs.  You can fliter what text (e.g. combat, glff) goes to which tab.

2.  you can move every bar, and you can strip the main hotbar of the bookends with a clean skin.  Check lotroui.com I think for ideas.  Every "quickslot" can be reduced/increased in size and can be moved.  It would be impossible to play without that for me.  Here's some tips:
* go into options, go to quickslots
* there are 5 quickslots, of 10 possible slots each
* press "always show quickslot #" and then open inventory to see where the bar appears
* press "shift+/" to unlock all windows -- move the quickslot where you want
* go into options and then ui settings -- scroll down and you will see the general increase/reduce every window.  Find quickslots -- you can increase/reduce the size of every quicklot.
*because I move my character vitals window to the lower right of my screen there is always some space there (because the vitals widget won't go all the way down).  You can put a quickslot in there if you want.
* I have all quickslots full with abilities, food, pots, and macros.  They are invaluable, but it takes some time to figure it out. 

3. Here's my quick write-up of how to make buttons. 

4. Make sure you have a map button with ;loc.  Here's a quick write-up that explains how to make a ;loc button with it to send a tell just to you.

5. glff and gooc are handy.  Right now they are kind of Barrens chat.  But I have found it 100% successful to spam LFG in glff, lff (which is local region) and then /region and /occ or /gooc.  gooc and ooc actually have never, ever let me down for PUG.  Honestly, if lff and glff aren't working, go try /gooc or /ooc.  Because the chat box sucks you have to try other channels some times. 

6. There's more content in larger zones in LotRO than in WoW.  And that can overwhelm you with quest tracking.  For example, one zone may have 4-6 smaller sub-zones and each of them have their own boss and elite quests.  You can roll up to a new zone like the Lone Lands and end up with 10-25 new quests if you are already lvl 23.  If you do that for every zone the cognitive load is too much.  Too many quests to track.   I quit originally because of a few things, but also because I had a full quest log (40) and none of them showed me where to go easily etc.  Best advice then is to try and stick with one zone at a time, because they are so large and leave only when you can't finish an elite quest.  That is the method my wife and I have found that works, because everyone else is doing it as well.

7. so yeah, try to finish one zone at a time.  When you have an elite group quest that's white or blue, move to the next zone since it will now have lowbie solo quests you can progress with.  It's less frustrating and you will be guaranteed to find other people in exactly the same circumstances to group with eventually.

Edit: let me know if you are Elendilmir and I'll help you out on any group quests.

[Mrbloodworth]

Numtini, what server are you on?

[Numtini]

@Soln -- Thanks, but I spent a lot of time tinkering with the interface. The bottom bar is the issue. I did a bunch of searches and they all came up that it can't be moved or broken the only thing you can do is put transparent textures on the buttons you don't want to see and cover them up with other things. I guess really it's more of a commentary that I don't want to work around a first generation interface, I want the type of interface that has been the standard since, geezus, Shadowbane. If the game was fun, I could survive one flaw like this.

On the number of quests, that's pretty much what I've been doing. One area do everything. The problem is getting to the next area. There's no indication of where such an area might be and everywhere has aggro virtually 100% of the time making exploration a complete misery. Even if you know where the next area is, there are so many blind alleys, hills, etc. I'd say the amount of aggro and the blind alleys are both bad design, plain and simple.

I dunno, I don't think I'm missing something.

@Blood -- I was on Landroval. I understand by LOTRO standards its high population, which boggles my mind.

[Reg]

You aren't trying to get to Rivendell for the first time without a guide are you? That's pure misery.

[EWSpider]

Hey Soln, who are your toons on Elendilmir?  That's where all my toons are.  I just reactivated the other day and started up a Warden.  My main is a level 50 Hunter, but I haven't really blown the dust off him yet.

Jaydow - 50 Hunter
Traywen - 30 Champ
Drevik - 16 Burglar
Miryan - 12 Warden  "Sparta!"

Mostly playing the Warden right now.

[waffel]

I'm really getting sick of the quest chains that go:
Quest 1: Kill 15 orc grunts and come back.
Quest 2: Oh, go kill 15 orc archers in the same area and come back.
Quest 3: Oh, go collect some flowers around the orc grunts and archers and come back.
Quest 4: Oh, go get a group together and kill the elite orc surrounded by a bunch of other elite orcs and come back.
Quest 5: Oh, go get a flag near the elite orcs and come back.

I understand the game is PvE, and all it has is PvE, so therefore it must be a gigantic timesink (only reason anyone is playing), but this is silly. There are quest chains I've just given up on because it really felt like a slap in the face for the game to basically tell me to go waste 20 more minutes of my time doing something I just did. Not to mention the quest chains that have you go into GB 3-4 times because it is impossible to get all the quests at the same time.

Its just, I'm running around, finishing up quests, chilling out and having a good time with the game, feeling like I'm getting somewhere and I get dumped with multiple quest objectives in the same area I just did quests. Really sucks all the fun out of it.

[Soln]

@Numtini:  I hear ya.  The only possible solution I can recommend is to go into options/Ui_setting and shrink that damn hotbar down.  It's what I did and it's working for me.  Although, it is a compromise.  Regarding zones -- it's probably a learned thing of knowing what zones are at what level.  Same as WoW.  I recommend deleting any orange or red.  The Epic questlines (the Books) will direct you always to a new zone via a new quest.  Otherwise it's the usual herald quests you're used to with FedEx.  Hope things work out for you.  BTW, Landroval I believe is not as populated as Brandywine or Elendilmir and it's the official RP server I think, so that will limit your PUG potential.

@EWSpider/Drevik:  cool -- PM me in-game. My main is Pavo (31 Hob Mins).  I'll be back in the game after the holidays after New Years.  Cheers.

@Waffel: yeah that's Turbine's design -- every zone is split up into sub-zones, and they all have at least one chained quest like this that spirals into a group elite quest.  Sometimes they rock, like Weathertop, and sometimes they are not worth the time (risk vs reward).

[acerogue26]

I'm really getting sick of the quest chains that go:
Quest 1: Kill 15 orc grunts and come back.
Quest 2: Oh, go kill 15 orc archers in the same area and come back.
Quest 3: Oh, go collect some flowers around the orc grunts and archers and come back.
Quest 4: Oh, go get a group together and kill the elite orc surrounded by a bunch of other elite orcs and come back.
Quest 5: Oh, go get a flag near the elite orcs and come back.

I understand the game is PvE, and all it has is PvE, so therefore it must be a gigantic timesink (only reason anyone is playing), but this is silly. There are quest chains I've just given up on because it really felt like a slap in the face for the game to basically tell me to go waste 20 more minutes of my time doing something I just did. Not to mention the quest chains that have you go into GB 3-4 times because it is impossible to get all the quests at the same time.

Its just, I'm running around, finishing up quests, chilling out and having a good time with the game, feeling like I'm getting somewhere and I get dumped with multiple quest objectives in the same area I just did quests. Really sucks all the fun out of it.

Whenever I quit playing LotRO, it's because this is amplified a thousand times in the lone lands. Aside from the Weathertop instance, almost every solo/light group quest is exactly as you describe. Combine that with the LL's dreary atmosphere for 10+ levels and I start to burn out pretty bad.