OP GW sold arround 4 milion copies. So it's not that bad game. You could give us less successfull game as a "bad" example hehe.  It is different, yet popular. BTW, i still play that actionrpg and I think you are way off with your opinion.

It seems you are still searching your "perfect" mmorpg. Maybe Darkfall on 25th of february (new date ;)).  So no need to bash on games you don't like.

BTW I tried playing WoW recently and it's buggyness reeked of Vanguard circa release, CoH had the same models as Ultima Online, Lotro felt like GW to me, and SWG and Darkfall have so much in common it made me chuckle a little.

The title of this thread really grabbed my attention since Guild Wars is probably my all-time favorite online game and LotRO is right up there with it as "first runner up".

I *do* think the two games are alike in some respects:

*Both have a "story focus" (something that other MMOs, such as WoW) really do not have, imo.
*Both have rich, beautiful worlds.
*Both have very creative quests (mostly).
*Both have good combat systems.
*Both have "realistic", i.e., (non-WoW-cartoony) graphics.

LotRO is much more of a true MMO, however; one actually plays with and around other players much more frequently in LotRO than in Guild Wars, an "MMO" I really always treated as a single-player game with a multiplayer option.

There are two features of Guild Wars, however, that I must confess I sorely miss in LotRO: (1) rapid travel to anywhere and (2) the "NPC/Hero" option for when you can't find (or can't fully complete) a party for some quest or instance.

Thus, if I could amend the OP's thread title, I'd have said "LotRO felt like a blend of WoW and Guild Wars" because that is exactly how it feels to me. It has an epic story and realistic graphics like Guild Wars, but with a more populated, persistent-world MMO feel to it like WoW.

Just my 2¢. :)

Originally posted by jaxsundane

Originally posted by Dethnoble

Originally posted by rinoamw

Originally posted by Dethnoble

I know you guys find it easy to disqualify someone's opinion on something especially if it don't match your own opinion, to each his own. 

 

Um... isn't that what you are doing now?  Its all subjective anyway, including your own analysis...

 

 

 

 

I'm being told I'm wrong for the way I felt about the game.   I'm sorry I stepped on the feet of the LoTRO fans but I'm being honest on how I felt.  That is an honest assessment and there is nothing wrong about about my asssessment.   You might have a different feeling about things and you might like the way LoTRO was designed but I don't.

However, you cannot deny that from looting to mob placement, everything is formulaic.  Furthermore, you cannot argue that the world is actually pretty small and that it's zoned with alot of instancing where the main parts of the story are actually done the same way Guild Wars is done.

For me, just like Tabula Rasa and many other more recent MMOs, LoTRO was just another mediocre offering.  In fact, Tabula Rasa at least had me wanted to log in a few times before it became boring.

Understand something, I played both Ultima Online and Asheron's Call for several years.   I've worked on game projects for several months and currently six months on the one I'm on now  (programming and art, longest I spent on a project was 2 1/2 years).  I'm also an artist who understands patience is paramount.  I don't have a short attention span but I do recognize when something is nothing more than a shiny cover; to me that was LoTRO.

Just because people have lower standards doesn't mean someone who expects advancement  in MMO design and presentation is wrong.

 

 

Really youare being told yu are wrong for outlandish assesments like "the zones are smallish" compared to what? in an earlier post I said named all of the mmos I have experience with and war and aoc are the only ones I only played mostly starter zone and I know atleast lotro zones are larger than aoc maybe not WAR and the lore assesment was foolish too you couldn't possibly have played most of the mmos out and say any of them have better lore than lotro or does a better job of making your toon feel a part of the story.

The problem here now is that for whatever reason you didn't like lotro you stopped playing long before your opinion about alot of these issues could be truly informed (that's obvious from statements like "after I first logged on I had to force myself to do so again)

You sound like you may have seen 2% of the game world so what actuall experience could you possibly have to say the what the game world is like?

Out of all of the games I've named what other way are the mobs placed that is so much better or even different than what lotro does? If you didn't know even in real life bears and boars tend to stay in the woods, what should they do have them make suicide runs into Bree? In all I think most of us can see that though your post is well written you don't have enough experience with the game to truly know what it is you are saying so again if you didn't like it that's cool sometimes we don't like things and don't have to but you also don't need to rationalize why especially if you don't really know which it's pretty obvious you don't

As a proponent of Darkfall, Deathnoble's motives for this post are questionable.

I can compare LotRO to many games, but GW is not one of them.

To OP, I hope that Darkfall turns out to be all that you hope. Don't waste people's time in other forums. Seems you played a char maybe out of starter area and tried another?

Personally I hope Darkfall does pan out, but I do think Tasos is an idiot. I would rather hire Fozzie Bear as my main PR man to the public. Darkfall will be released on Jan 22......Wakka Wakka.

This OP makes no sense, Boxed in zones?  wtf are you talking about?

I have played both of these games a quite a bit and the comparison makes no sense.  The boxed zone makes no sense for LOTRO.  The Character customization of Guild Wars is a 1000 times more free form than LOTRO and 100 times more free form than most games.

This post just shows a fundamental lack of understanding for both games.