LOTRO NDA has been lifted.

[Arthur_Parker]

Linky

While the NDA has been lifted this morning, posts seeking technical help are best made on the beta forums:

http://beta.lotro.com.

The lifting of the NDA has been confirmed by a more detailed post on the beta forums where it says something very like "As of today (February 12th) you’re free to talk about The Lord of the Rings Online and your experiences in our beta - in person and online. "

A short shocking review now follows.   

LOTRO is a game made by Turbine and it doesn't totally suck.

Edit to add.

European NDA lifted as well.

Feb 12th 2007, 14:00 GMT
The NDA has been lifted!

Codemasters Online Gaming announced today that following this weekend's successful Stress Test Event, LOTRO is now on the home straight and entering into the extensive Public Beta Phase which begins today.

The NDA has also been lifted which will open the floodgates to a slew of previews, articles and previously unseen material from the various gaming portals and fansites.

[Arthur_Parker]

On a more serious note, I played the hell out of the Beta for 3 months and enjoyed it more than most released mmorpg's.  Blizzard isn't going to be worried but it is pretty good.

[Venkman]

My official review: looks like SWG, plays like WoW, except the whole monsters and housing thing :)

Seriously, this is a solid game. But unlike WoW, it's not a surprise. And unlike VG, it doesn't come with years of pent-up fanboism. Any fans of the game are either coming from the genre itself, with all that training already, or coming from the Tolkien lore, who are automatically going to be disappointed by virtue of their expectations not being in the same plane of existence.

But this isn't the sort of game that'll spark SWG-debates. It just doesn't have any real controversy. Almost every debate one could have about it has either happened in other MMOs (it gleefully borrows from just about every convention) or died down years ago when the movies failed to include Barrowights.

So can a solid MMO come out and be successful without surprise or real controversy? I think we're about to find out.

[jpark]

EQ is was dangerous - WoW provided safety rails for players - LOTR puts players on a train track.

I enjoyed the game - it is a worthy addition to the market - but it is basically WoW taken to the next level.  Nice graphics, and even easier game play and questing.  The problem with the even lower risk and ease of play of the game is that it is hard to have a sense of adventure or exploration.  The progressive zone restrictions based on your level I did not like - it's reminiscent of the invisible wall thing again of DDO - but nowhere near as obvious.

The dwarven graphics were superb I thought - and the cinematics for some of the quests were much appreciated.

I was under level 10 in playing this game - so my sampling of its content was quite limited.

[tazelbain]

Is Monster Play a fulfilling game onto itself?

[SnakeCharmer]

It wasn't bad, seemed to be pretty solid without a smorgasboard of bugs.  My impression was that is very....*snooze*.  

[Arthur_Parker]

A repost of mine about monster play.

Played a bit as a War Leader, healer Uruk leader type.

All monsters start at level 50 but have very few abilities.

You get destiny points for completing quests with these you can buy combat skills, traits and different appearances for your character.

It's a bit grindy on the quests, some are well done like killing the Hobbit Mayor etc, in a few hours I managed to get my character about 20% complete.  You don't get armour or equipment.

The pvp is fun and I think the lack of real mage types actually helps prevent it turning into the standard ranged battle, sometimes it turns out like that but running battles and flanking are quite common.  Defending a keep is a sight to see, currently the free peoples have the advantage 1 on 1 but numbers (and it must be said) tactics appear to be on the side of evil.

In pvp you get infamy points which will eventually raise your rank (very grindy), higher rank allows yet more skill, trait options.  All in all it's quite well done and if they expand it further could be a real attraction for the game.  From reading the posts here you know I have played the heck out of the good side but playing a Human or Dwarf isn't a patch on playing a Uruk and slaughtering hobbits.

Edit to add, these impressions after another week of monster play.

I'm pretty much done with LOTRO, the pve side of the game is frailly good but I'm reluctant to level up to the 40's again just to be wiped again. 

The PVP is also fairly good but it's just not very complicated, think DAoC keep capture with less annoying magic.  My Warleader now has sig status and is rank 1 which means he's pretty much maxed out for advancement apart from pvp ranks.  Sadly the pvp ranks don't make that big a difference so the shortage of freeps during my play hours means rank 2 is a long grind away and I just can't be bothered.

There's going to be a shortage of monster players a few months after release if they don't add monster armour and weapons, can't see anyone sticking with the monster side for more than a couple of months as it is.

I'm not going to buy it but it was a lot better than I expected. 

[tazelbain]

Are these BGs?
What do Monsters do if there are not enough players?

[Signe]

I have to agree with what most of us have said earlier.  I felt I should have liked it more than I did.  It was pleasant but nothing grabbed me or even stood out other than the starting areas, which I found very clever and good fun.  If the only the rest of the game could have lived up to the start, I'd absolutely buy it.  After a while, I just had no motivation to log in at all.  I did, however, experience ALL the starting areas!  Elf and dwarf were the best!     Monster play was okay, though not what I expected.  I didn't find it very compelling.

[Soln]

well this is all good news IMO

I think having a solid launch with a moderate end of closed beta buzz is a successful strategy -- add more compelling content and more complex features as you learn what the players want from being in the world for awhile.  But for Christ sake, have a solid launch first.  Great to see this may be so.  At end of DDO there was enough disappointed and critical buzz that I should have listened more carefully.  This time things seem positive.  Good for Turbine.

[Slayerik]

I personally quit beta testing after seeing Gandalf and Gimli in the first noob quest I was on. I mean, come on. Gimme something to look forward to. I know its nice to have the IP, but .... bleh.

[Endie]

At last...  I hate having to bite my tongue every time speculation touches on something I'm NDAed for.

It feels like a small, incremental improvement from WoW in some ways.  There are exceptions, which are, as you might expect, often about polish: sometimes I'm aware that I'm running on pre-existing knowledge of MMO conventions, and that a newbie might have more problems knowing where to go or what to do, but that's hopefully something that the run-in to launch will see improved.

Zoning when entering or leaving buildings is horrible.  I'd forgotten how I hate it.  Collecting 10 pelts from mangy-looking wolves in an early quest is dreary.

The contrast with what I read about Vanguard pre-launch, with its huge gameplay changes and gargantuan daily patchnotes, is instructive.  I logged plenty of bugs, but they were largely minor animation issues and the like.  The instanced stuff seems nicely flexible, clearly contains shared experience with the DDO team, and is sometimes pleasantly single-playerish in feel.  Heading out into the Shire at night for the first time and only just noticing a black rider for a second or two, galloping in the distance, is the sort of nice detail that I liked.

It's not earth-shattering, but it's fun and I'll be playing it instead of WoW this year.  For a different perspective, 'er indoors likes it, too, while she actively disliked DDO and SWG and got bored of WoW c. L40.

Oh, and it runs on a machine I bought over three years ago for the wife, which is a long way off powerful now, with graphics that I prefer to those of WoW (that's the classic division on cartooniness, though).

[Venkman]

I do like that it blurs the distant elements. Seems to be a fairly new convention in MMOs, with LoTRO and VG being the only two out that do it afaik. But it's definitely nice and overdo.

This seems like the sort of game we should like, except that it's been done before.

The part that kills it for me personally is the lack of a real Mage class. That's just what I like most. Understood why they can't have that here of course, but it's one reason I liked the evolution D&D/Ultima/Everquest brought to the lore. Big bangs plsthx.

[Endie]

I personally quit beta testing after seeing Gandalf and Gimli in the first noob quest I was on. I mean, come on. Gimme something to look forward to. I know its nice to have the IP, but .... bleh.

I thought I saw the influence of the NGE here: all those people saying "the tutorial was great coz I got to meet Han and Chewie and Vader and stuff!!!1!"  Although I sympathise with you, I can also see why they did it.

[Soln]

I personally quit beta testing after seeing Gandalf and Gimli in the first noob quest I was on. I mean, come on. Gimme something to look forward to. I know its nice to have the IP, but .... bleh.

I thought I saw the influence of the NGE here: all those people saying "the tutorial was great coz I got to meet Han and Chewie and Vader and stuff!!!1!"  Although I sympathise with you, I can also see why they did it.

What would be the alternative -- waiting 6-8 months until they added Luke on Yavin 4 (which is what happened with Reb faction quest arc)?  It's a franchise IP -- put some of it up front.  Let the customer get a taste early instead of leaving them wondering if they stuff even made it in.  tomato/tomatoh

[Arthur_Parker]

Are these BGs?
What do Monsters do if there are not enough players?

Monster play is all in one big zone.  Nothing much so far, not played in a couple of weeks so missed the latest patch.

Gandalf and co are in instances so you can follow the story, he reappears later on in Bree then Rivendell, but you don't see him in two places at once, if you know what I mean.

There's a lot of nice features that I'm sure other games will copy, the titles based on achievements, conjunctions, more titles for not dying.  The instances are pretty good, I liked exploring the higher up areas, I liked getting rewards for exploring, the Shire and Rivendell are very well done.  Weathertop is great, Fornost too.

I didn't think the combat was as good as WoW and it really suffers from the "it's gets better at level 20" problem, the game really does improve the higher you go in levels which is not the way to retain new players.   My main problem with combat is I think it takes slightly too long to kill something, that's at least my impression from playing a Guardian into the 40's a few times.  Combat was really good when Guardians had a bugged skill    Also another problem is that it's difficult to feel that different from another Guardian your level.

[Falconeer]

Also another problem is that it's difficult to feel that different from another Guardian your level.

It's worth saying that for all I know, tints are back in a MMO. You can dye your armours and clothes again. Rejoice.
(Not that it will make you so different from other Guardians. I am not even sure you can dye every piece of armour).

[Merusk]

I got into beta a while back with most of the other F13ers.  I shouldn't have taken-up a spot like that, as once i patched and installed the game I couldn't get into it beyond the 4-5 hours I spent in newbie zones.   At that point the models looked like hell, gameplay was kind of clunky and nothing, NOTHING at all grabbed my interest. 

Somehow, I still got invited to the next phase of beta.  I suppose I could try it out again, but I really just can't find the motivation to do so.  :-(

[Arthur_Parker]

Falconeer, Yeah but I meant different skills and equipment, you have slotable traits that can make a big difference to your character.  No surprise that some are better than others, but some are a lot better.  Combine that with quest reward equipment that boosts your primary skils and you have a situation where it appears you have a large range of choices but most people are going to go down a similar route.

[Hutch]

OK, I'm just going to throw in my two cents worth here. I played in the beta several months ago now, and got one character (a Loremaster) to level 11, so my experiences were not extensive.

I thought the gameplay, especially the quest-driven nature of it, was highly reminiscent of WoW. Which is not a bad thing.

But, I got bored easily. This may have been because I wasn't invested in the character (who was inevitably going to be wiped) or because the game itself just bored me. Maybe it's *too* realistic. Maybe I need fireballs and gryphons and screeching raptors and snickering gnolls to keep me interested. Who knows.

All I know is, on any given day, during the beta, I found that I'd rather log into CoH than play the LotRO beta. Nowadays it's BC, but the same sentiment applies.

[Xilren's Twin]

My mostly short review.  It's a fine game, but only a very small incremental improvements over WoW, and nothing really attention grabbing "omg you must play this".  I played up to mid levels several times and tried the monster play as well.

That said, this beta was one of the smoothest ones Ive been in.  The game has been playable and stable for quite some time and about the worst technical aspect i can think of is the AI pathing not being great (my pet would very often get caught and couldn't follow and if i wasn't paying attention would despawn from getting out of range a lot.  Mobs getting stuck in places where they can't get to you, but a least you can't exploit them) and the lagopolis that was the main city of Bree.

The classes are different, but just strike as pretty underwhelming and there aren;t very many to choose from.  Lets talk two archtypes, mage/wizard and cleric/healer.  Neither exist as a pure class; the closest thing to a archtype wizard is the lore master, and they are much more crowd control and pet class then glass cannon.  No clerics; the best healer type is the Minstrel (read bard), which takes some adjustment in thinking.  Everything else play like a version of a tank; you have heavy tanks (guardians), light dps tanks (champions), secondary healer/tanks (captains), and stealthy dps tanks (burglars/rogues) and ranged light tanks (hunters).

The class I enjoyed the most was the Human Captain.  Melee class that uses two handed weapons, but can summon a pet and act as a secondary healer, but his best group healing spell is only useable when an enemy dies, otherwise is a single target heal.  Plays a little differently than a cleric or paladin.  Distinct lack of spell type abilities overall, which may fit the lore but is a tough sell to the WoW crowd.

BTW, in a nod to the lore, hit points are "morale" and many of the abilities are structured around increasing and decreasing morale.  They did a decent job with the lore.

Very quest oriented game, to the point that killing random mobs to grind is just not very rewarding compared to the exp you earn from quests.  Unless you are trying to complete an achievement.

Achievements and traits are a neat system which are inspired by CoH badges.  There are tones of things you can accomplish to earn titles, and traits, which can be slotted into your character like an upgrade.  So discovering the 6 dwarven ruins in one area may grand a trait, or killing enough wights might earn you a title, and the advanced version of that may grant you a trait that increases your might, power regen, fear resistance etc.  Does allow for some character customization, but it's not earthshattering.   

The gameworld itself is huge when you look at the map, but is very densely structured in reality.  Running from the newbie area to the mid levels probably only takes 10 minutes tops, and less time if you ride a horse route.

It's got about all you'd expect in a diku game; draggable interface, quest journals, LFG tools, build in voice chat, hot key combat, mini map, chat tools, auction house, resource collection and crafting with dropable recipes, colored equipment of several rarities, durability, bind of acquire/equip, and min level requirements.  Fairly standard mobs (wolves, boars, spiders, goblins, orcs or all stripe, undead, evil humans, etc).  Quest glowies like CoH. Fairly standard quests types (fed ex, collect, protect, escort, sneak, etc); instances for story progression quests (which can be pretty good) or certain dungeons.  Normal, signature, elite, boss, arch nemesis mob progression.

It's not a bad game, but one of the questions we kept asking during the beta was basically, "so what;s the major selling point for LotRO compared to it's competition?"  Sadly, that was never really answered, which basically means there trying to separate on IP pretty much.  Might give people something to do once their burnt out on WoW or between expansions, but i don't expect it to do huge numbers.

I damn it with faint praise.

[Signe]

Achievements and traits... I liked that bit, too.  Captain was also my favourite.  X said what I think only wordier than I'm capable of.    

[Rasix]

I was bored enough with this one to not re-download the client for the latest round of beta.

Likes:
-Stable (very stable for a turbine product). Not seeing the typical Turbine ineptitude with this one.
-Environments were pretty enough.  It feels like Middle Earth should feel.
-Guardian class was pretty fun.
-Lots of quests.  Almost too many early on.
-Achievements are cool.  Not a big selling point though.  Gives you good incentives though to try a lot of stuff.
-World changing (for you) instance quests.  Burning of Archet quest and aftermath were neat.
-Main story line quest.  Very cool IMO.  You partcipate in a parallel story line to the fellowship, while seeing members from time to time.  The last part of the arch I did (at 20) had a very cool moment at the end.  Problem is, it ran out and I couldn't find where it picked up again. 

Dislikes:
-Combat was stiff and slow. Combat animations were bland.  Combat in general was just boring.
-Only two classes really appealed to me at all.  Both melee.
-Quest descriptions were just horrid. I don't expect the log to tell me to take 20 steps to the east and 60 north and look down; but I expect to get a general and decent idea of where I should be looking for something. 
-I remember having some issues with the game's color pallete since I'm red/green color blind.  Some stuff was really hard for me to see.   This issue pretty much only affects me 
-Another personal issue: lynxes make house cat noises in the game.  Thus, when you're fighitng a lynx, it sounds like you're killing a cat.  Same blood curdling noise that my cats make when fighting each other. I really couldn't finish a quest because of it.  Creeped me out too much as a cat owner.
-Was lacking a lot of polish at the time.  But they've had time to remedy this in the time I've been away from the game.
-I don't like the art direction when it comes to characters. They look terrible.  Armor looks terrible.
-Story line running out for me just killed the game.  I'm afraid without this tether, the game has no lore appeal.
-Around level 20 I just got really bored with the game.  I started running out of quests and I just didn't feel like going out an finding new ones.

There's just nothing really new to say with this game.  If you've played WoW, you've pretty much played this game.  In fact, playing LOTRO just made me really want to play WoW again. 

I don't see myself purchasing this one, but this is the first time I've been able to say that you shouldn't duck this game because it's made by Turbine.

[Pendan]

Here is my short review. I have now played the stress test weekend and this last weekend having gotten into the beta proper with most other stress testers. My character is level 15. I am enjoying play. Unlike my 5 week Vanguard beta experience I have only had one bug that has frustrated me. Turned in less than a tenth the number of bugs per hour played in LotRO than VG (and still 7 weeks from open beta and 10 from release). I have beta tested every Turbine game but this appears to be first one will purchase.

[CmdrSlack]

Enjoyed it, blogged about it, will probably buy it. 

My main fear is really the lore nazis.  They are fun to watch when they flip out, but just imagine the hate tells.  In Elvish.

[shiznitz]

Curious how a game that is "meh done well+great IP" will do financially. If Sigil can clean up the bugs, then there will be a nice group of niche games in orbit around the big dog that is WoW.

What I haven't read yet about LotRO is are all these quests solo or group? CmdrSlack went to level 15 on the quest railroad. Was that all solo?

[Nebu]

It's a playable and pretty game that left me feeling empty.  I played a couple of characters into the 20's (entirely solo) through little more than sheer determination to be an objective tester.  The game is bland, the world is compressed, and the visuals are nice.  It's generic diku mmog version 1.56.  If pressed to write something up, my review would be an even less optimistic version of Rasix's post. 

If this is the future of MMO's, then I'm probably done with gaming. 

[palmer_eldritch]

I was bored enough with this one to not re-download the client for the latest round of beta.

Likes:
-Stable (very stable for a turbine product). Not seeing the typical Turbine ineptitude with this one.
-Environments were pretty enough.  It feels like Middle Earth should feel.
-Guardian class was pretty fun.
-Lots of quests.  Almost too many early on.
-Achievements are cool.  Not a big selling point though.  Gives you good incentives though to try a lot of stuff.
-World changing (for you) instance quests.  Burning of Archet quest and aftermath were neat.
-Main story line quest.  Very cool IMO.  You partcipate in a parallel story line to the fellowship, while seeing members from time to time.  The last part of the arch I did (at 20) had a very cool moment at the end.  Problem is, it ran out and I couldn't find where it picked up again. 

For me, that sums up the good parts very well. I would also add that imo the graphics are beautiful. This is the only MMO I have played where I really enjoyed just looking at the landscape. They also have some neat tricks, such as trees in the distance looking like watercolour trees, rather than just blurry (or just popping up when you get close).

In answer to the monster play question - there are quests for monsters to do, similar to the normal quests for normal PCs. However I didn't do much monster play. I guess  the quests are there as a timefiller when there are no PCs to kill, but you do get extra skills (not levels) for doing them.

The storyline quests are a number of chained quests seperated into "books". Each book has maybe eight "chapters". If you don't get book 1 done, you can still start book 2 (when you reach the required level) and so on. They are a mixture of solo and group quests. Mainly solo, but you might get a group quest in the middle and a group quest at the end.

I think it's possible to level up solo all the way, as there are a huge amount of quests so you are very unlikely ever to run out. However, the best loot comes from group quests such as the storyline quests.

XP comes from questing. You can grind mobs to level up, but it is very very very slow. Luckily, there is a huge amount of quests. If you go to a town or settlement and accept every quest, there's a very good chance some will be grey to you before you have finished them all (especially as finishing one quest for an NPC will often lead them to give you a new one). And there is usually more than one settlement giving quests for your level in the first place. So you can choose which ones to do, although some people seemed to find this annoying (I think it's good).

There are also a few places with just one or two NPCs giving a small number of quests, if you wander around a bit.

One nice point for explorers is that you can get character traits by exploring - discovering every ruin in a region, etc.

[Margalis]

I agree with what others have said. Overall not bad. Zoning into houses sucks. Character classes/races are bland, animations and models are not very good. You can tell it is the same AC2 engine yet again, it has a lot in common with DDO down to silly character class movies during creation.

It is an ok game but doesn't seem to bring much new to the table. I can't come up with a good answer to the question "why would I play this instead of WOW" other than you are bored of WOW.

I got bored of it pretty quickly, but I got bored of WOW quickly as well.

[Morfiend]

Admittidly I havent played the game in over 4 months. But when I last played it, it felt like WoW, with the same level of graphics, but much much less "style". Also, for shame on the blatent ripoff of WoWs UI. I mean come on.

To me the game just felt like some exec looked at WoW and said "Make me that, but with Lord of the Rings". Except the game just didnt have that special feeling that WoW gave me.

I dont think I will be buying this.

[slog]

I've been in the beta for a while.  After every wipe, I would login, create a new toon, get to level 10 ish and think to myself "Hey, this is just like WoW except it's more Brown and the character classes are less interesting."

If turbine is going to make a game that reminds me of WoW, it would need to be superior to WoW to get me to play it.  I like my Cow Shaman better.

[jpark]

This game does have an important difference from wow - the graphics are "realistic" rather than cartoony.  For some players, this could be a real point of differentiation.

[slog]

This game does have an important difference from wow - the graphics are "realistic" rather than cartoony.  For some players, this could be a real point of differentiation.

I had no idea the world I live in was so Brown.

[Nebu]

After every wipe, I would login, create a new toon, get to level 10 ish and think to myself "Hey, this is just like WoW except it's more Brown and the character classes are less interesting."

More brown than any Hoard starting zone... is that possible?

[Falconeer]

I had no idea the world I live in was so Brown.

Unless you are stuck in a temporal rift and live in the Medioevo, why should the world you live in be brown at all?
On the other hand, it makes sense that a Lord of the Rings world is brown-ish. That said, I didn't have that feeling at all. Green, maybe.