General Discussion

MMORPG.com LotRO Correspondent Matt McLean writes this article overview of the housing system in Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online.

The Lord of the Rings Online is one of the most highly acclaimed MMORPGs on the market right now, and it's mainly due to their consistent updates to the game. The folks over at Turbine Studios, the developers of LotRO, are some of the most attentive in the industry and are always listening to their loyal player-base for ideas. LotRO is also a game that lends itself to various role-playing applications, and one of those is having players own their own property in the game.

Housing was something that many of the fans of LOTRO wanted right off the bat, but Turbine was steadfast in making sure they had a stable game at launch, and housing was just not ready. Soon after the game launched in April 2007 though, housing was introduced as a part of one of their free "epic book" updates. Of course, like many MMORPGs, housing in LotRO is instanced. But unlike some other games, the neighborhoods actually exist as part of the landscape, meaning you don't have to own a house to see the houses. It's a great touch, and really adds to the lore.

Read the article here.

Well written article.

Altho LOTRO adds more freedom to housing when it comes to decorating your garden outside your house.

When it comes to interior decorating, then it still is quite a leap behind compaired to games like SWG and EverQuest2.

When Turbine get it as free as in EQ2, then housing will be trully awesome in LOTRO. Especially because you can decorate the outerior as well.

Even if the decorating gets more intuitive (which I'm not really sure it ever will)... housing in LOTRO still has next to no point. Not that I know of it having any point in any game, but still.

I don't see why logging out in your House doesn't provide a Bonus Buff of some degree when you next log in again. SOMEthing to give reason for spending your hard earned gold on one of those otherwise meaningless money-sinks.

Having the extra storage at your house is great, but I wish they had done more for crafters.

Good crafting takes up a huge amount of bag/bank/house slots. It would have been real nice if a player could buy or build his own oven/workbench/forge/study at his house and could buy extra storage for crafting mats only. As a crafter it's a real pain to be continuously running between the bank, the Auction Hall, the crafthall and your house. This was the perfect opportunity to give crafters a break and they blew it.

As it is, the house serves as little more than either decoration or bit of inconvenient extra storage.

I think there are plans to allow kinship houses to place forges and work areas inside (or outside) the kinship houses.  I'm not sure if it would be the "superior" work areas that are located in a few spots in the game, but they would at least allow you the opportunity to craft from somewhere other than a town.

Thanks for the feedback!  Keep it coming!

-G

DAoC has pretty much the exact implementation and I was never a huge fan of that system.  While it is nice to have a "house", outside of personal gratification there is no point to owning one.  It would be optimal for neighborhoods to be social gathering places, but right now they're just ghost towns.

I kind of wish they allowed players to purchase "apartments" within the major cities, at least in Bree where there would probably be such establishments in addition to going the EQ2/Vanguard/Horizons route by having set houses/lots in certain cities and areas with high traffic that players could purchase.  Sure, this would make it more difficult to provide housing to everyone, but thats where apartments would come into play(since they would be instanced). 

If for any reason you want to change houses or don't want to own your home anymore, it's very simple to do. Just access your Character panel and go to the "House" tab. You can "abandon" your house there and all of your decorations and anything in your housing chest(s) goes into escrow. Your items will stay in escrow for 14 days, so don't forget them or they will disappear forever!

I am curious.... What about if for some reason i forgot to pay my upkeep fees, my house will go in escrow right?

So are you telling me that once it does, if i dont pay it, i will loose it all? What if i was to play the game and then stop, will i eventually loose everything as well?

or is this system like EQ2 were no matter what you do, no matter how long you go away from the game, your house can still be entered by simply paying the upkeep fee?

Originally posted by senadin

If for any reason you want to change houses or don't want to own your home anymore, it's very simple to do. Just access your Character panel and go to the "House" tab. You can "abandon" your house there and all of your decorations and anything in your housing chest(s) goes into escrow. Your items will stay in escrow for 14 days, so don't forget them or they will disappear forever!

 

 

I am curious.... What about if for some reason i forgot to pay my upkeep fees, my house will go in escrow right?

 

 

So are you telling me that once it does, if i dont pay it, i will loose it all? What if i was to play the game and then stop, will i eventually loose everything as well?

 

 

or is this system like EQ2 were no matter what you do, no matter how long you go away from the game, your house can still be entered by simply paying the upkeep fee?

 

 

That is the correct option ^

I love LOTR's housing overall but there is room for improvement.

They solved the problem that Star Wars Galaxies had with in-game housing. The landscape in SWG was ruined with all the homes cluttering the terrain.

And instead of going EQ2's route, they created a neighborhood instance so we can freely explore our homes as well as our friends !

Having said that, there are two things I would love to see with LOTR's housing...

1. freedom to place items inside. right now Im stuck putting a medium piece of furniture in a medium spot. And maybe I have 4 small pieces that I love but only get 3 small spots to place. Allowing us to drop anything in those spots (or better yet drop anything anywhere) would be ideal.

2. I would love to see something done with those town center areas to motivate players to role play. The tents and such just scream "pass me a pint" but from what Ive seen, rare is it to run across another player inside an instanced neighborhood.

Give players an incentive to go to a party held by your neighborhood, maybe sitting for a pint gives us a nice buff. Or maybe you get rep rewards or a new instrument, etc.

Maybe hold a fishing contest...biggest catch wins a prize tournament in the town square. Again with incentives to get players to leave the outside world for just a bit and join in. Personally, I do most of my fishing in my neighborhood and it would be cool to see other players in there smoking a pipe and catching some fish.

Overall, I give a thumbs up to Turbine for LOTR. Its very nice to see features other than combat in an MMO.

Plaguess - guardian

Thorzz - hunter

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