Lord of the Rings Online

Hey all. After a long hiatus from MMO's - which essentially ended when I left Asheron's Call - I've been looking for a new one which has some of the elements that gave AC its charm, AND has what AC lacks now: good graphics and an active community. As near as I can tell from bouncing around the forum a bit, LotRO has the elements lacking in abundance, but I haven't heard much talk about some of the other things. Not to force a comparison with AC - AC had its issues -  but it did do a couple things that I've often missed in more recent MMO's.

The first was the combat system, which departed somewhat from the D&D idea of statistical determination by allowing players to physically dodge projectiles. It kept us involved in the combat. Of course, there are other ways of keeping the player involved in combat, but there's my question: is combat in LotRO interesting?

The other element is the element of exploration. AC had no invisible walls; you could go just about anywhere that there was a walkable surface to (which was most places), and a good chunk of the rest you could get to by having a high jump skill. The world was completely open. Is LotRO anything like this? Can I climb those awesome mountains that crowd themselves into the backs of so many of the screenshots? Can I get into - or at least be locked out of - that house I found in the middle of nowhere?

No, no no Lotro is anything but exploration game. The zones are not so small, but still quite linear and limited. The cliffs are unpassable, there are invisible walls in instanced book quests, jump is fixed for everyone, everything is under control. You can't enter most of houses, and in addition you won't find many houses outside of towns/camps. There are no "useless" areas. Every bit of the land is used in a way.

If you seek heavy exploration game, go for Vanguard. Vanguard has tons of areas with no purpose other than to explore. Every house is enterable (and there is no loading screen when you enter it), you can talk to anyone. There are no invisible walls, you can pass any cliffs. There are rentable flying mounts for anyone or permanent flying mounts for capped levels (that finished extremly difficult quest line). VG = best exploration game. Frankly, Im playing VG only for the exploration. VG has over 14 large capital towns (each of them bigger than Bree) and without any exaggaration, VG might be 10 times larger in size than Lotro.

Originally posted by Thillian

No, no no Lotro is anything but exploration game. The zones are not so small, but still quite linear and limited. The cliffs are unpassable, there are invisible walls in instanced book quests, jump if fixed for everyone, everything is under control. You can't enter most of houses, and you won't find many houses in the middle of nowhere. There is not that many nowhere areas. Every bit of the land is used in a way.

 

What?! Alot of LOTRO is about exploration...invisible walls in instanced book quests? They are instances not the full world so yeah plus why would you want to go away from what you are supposed to be doing. There are many houses in the middle of nowhere (true you can't enter them) and many many ruins and great places to see. Many people won't find the trolls that Gandalf made into stone from the Hobbit unless they go explore. You miss alot fo really cool things if you dont explore that. You can go from the shire to rivendell at a low level if you want, granted you might die but you can if you want.

There are even deeds and things to accomplish just by exploring. So it's not 100% free (going into buildings etc.) but there is plenty of exploring to be done.

I am comparing lotro world to VG. And seriously, lotro is simply not exploration game. I am as well subscribing to lotro and I enjoy to play it from time to time. I think lotro's main point is the overall atmosphere, but surely not exploration. Just the fact you have linear instanced zones for epic books means it goes against free-exploration in the terms I understand it.

Originally posted by Thillian

I am comparing lotro world to VG. And seriously, lotro is simply not exploration game. I am as well subscribing to lotro and I enjoy to play it from time to time. I think lotro's main point is the overall atmosphere, but surely not exploration. Just the fact you have linear instanced zones for epic books means it goes against free-exploration in the terms I understand it.

Yeah for those specific quests. Other than that your not locked into anything.

Originally posted by Barrel_Rider

Hey all. After a long hiatus from MMO's - which essentially ended when I left Asheron's Call - I've been looking for a new one which has some of the elements that gave AC its charm, AND has what AC lacks now: good graphics and an active community. As near as I can tell from bouncing around the forum a bit, LotRO has the elements lacking in abundance, but I haven't heard much talk about some of the other things. Not to force a comparison with AC - AC had its issues -  but it did do a couple things that I've often missed in more recent MMO's.

The first was the combat system, which departed somewhat from the D&D idea of statistical determination by allowing players to physically dodge projectiles. It kept us involved in the combat. Of course, there are other ways of keeping the player involved in combat, but there's my question: is combat in LotRO interesting?

The other element is the element of exploration. AC had no invisible walls; you could go just about anywhere that there was a walkable surface to (which was most places), and a good chunk of the rest you could get to by having a high jump skill. The world was completely open. Is LotRO anything like this? Can I climb those awesome mountains that crowd themselves into the backs of so many of the screenshots? Can I get into - or at least be locked out of - that house I found in the middle of nowhere?

LotRO combat system is pretty much the 'standard' MMO style.  Autoattack with specials. 
 

World is quite open, and exploration is actually quite interesting, if you are a LotR fan.  Unlike most games, this one has a real purpose and link to its lore. 

LotRO actually has rewards and quests just for exploring.  Not just the standard low exp for a new area, but real permanent buffs for visiting landmarks.

If you are a Lord of the Rings fan, it really is quite nice.  But do be aware that most of the really interesting content is Group (Fellowship) targeted.  When you get to the 40's, most of the quests in your book will be Fellowship ones, if you have not been doing them.

Good Hunting

They have made 2 new zones ssince launch that are solo orienteted for 40+.

The only problem that I would see as your coming from and old AC perspective, would be the lack of character freedom.   You will not really have any options that you had in AC as far as building the character that you want.   But if you do find a class that is fun for your playstyle, that may not be an issue.   Exploration is not quite on par with AC but its definitely a very fun aspect of the game, especially if you enjoy the books.

This game is much more polished then AC ever was and they are devoting tons of dev time to it so the game is constantly improving and Turbine is really trying to give the customers what they are requesting.

Originally posted by Shoal

Originally posted by Barrel_Rider

Hey all. After a long hiatus from MMO's - which essentially ended when I left Asheron's Call - I've been looking for a new one which has some of the elements that gave AC its charm, AND has what AC lacks now: good graphics and an active community. As near as I can tell from bouncing around the forum a bit, LotRO has the elements lacking in abundance, but I haven't heard much talk about some of the other things. Not to force a comparison with AC - AC had its issues -  but it did do a couple things that I've often missed in more recent MMO's.

The first was the combat system, which departed somewhat from the D&D idea of statistical determination by allowing players to physically dodge projectiles. It kept us involved in the combat. Of course, there are other ways of keeping the player involved in combat, but there's my question: is combat in LotRO interesting?

The other element is the element of exploration. AC had no invisible walls; you could go just about anywhere that there was a walkable surface to (which was most places), and a good chunk of the rest you could get to by having a high jump skill. The world was completely open. Is LotRO anything like this? Can I climb those awesome mountains that crowd themselves into the backs of so many of the screenshots? Can I get into - or at least be locked out of - that house I found in the middle of nowhere?

LotRO combat system is pretty much the 'standard' MMO style.  Autoattack with specials. 
 

World is quite open, and exploration is actually quite interesting, if you are a LotR fan.  Unlike most games, this one has a real purpose and link to its lore. 

LotRO actually has rewards and quests just for exploring.  Not just the standard low exp for a new area, but real permanent buffs for visiting landmarks.

If you are a Lord of the Rings fan, it really is quite nice.  But do be aware that most of the really interesting content is Group (Fellowship) targeted.  When you get to the 40's, most of the quests in your book will be Fellowship ones, if you have not been doing them.

Good Hunting

Actually one of the things that has kept me away from LotRO so far is that I'm such a Tolkien nut that I have an awful hard time seeing how this could measure up to it. I realize that is unfair until I've checked it out, though.

What, exactly, do you mean by "World is quite open"? I can see how it would make sense for quest instances to be linear - after all, if you make a clear decision to jump into a long quest I don't see how you would be terribly interested in exploring until you finished it. However, I'm still not quite sure I understand all the answers to the question. Let me put it another way: if one highlighted all the visible but not travel-able landscape in red, would those amazing vistas go mostly red? Is the set of visitable locations (outside of book quests) significantly smaller than the set of observable locations?

So do ya'll enjoy combat? I fell in love with combat in CoH because it was so dynamic, involved, and fun to watch. EQ2 combat just about bored me to tears after the novelty of the group tricks wore off (admittedly, I did not play EQ2 for very long so I might just not have given it enough time). Is combat something you look forward to or sort of a necessary activity to complete quests, level up, etc?