Good game, they really need to give housing and crafting some developement attention.

LoTRO is a good PVE themepark quest based game.

I'm just not into good PVE themepark quest based games.

Couple things kept me from playing LOTRO. I thought the character models were bad, especially human males. I found the combat extremely boring and thought the animations were bad as well. Character movement, felt like my character was sliding and seemed very latency dependant on how it felt /shrug.Though it does many things good it just didn't keep my interest.

Originally posted by Quirhid

I have two friends who say that it is a waste of my time. No matter how fun the lore might be the game isn't for me. I trust them. I'm still bearing the scars when I didn't listen to them and played Vanguard. I can't believe I actually payed for that sh**!

Sorry you think that way, Vanguard is a very good game. It has its issues but as I've been playing it more I've felt less and less like logging into LOTRO. The world is exceptional and for the first time I truly understand the difference between having a world and having a themepark world. The difference is palpable if not for everyone.

As far as LOTRO I think it is a great game but the last Lothlorien update was a bit too sleepy for me. It was needed but I need something mroe than to just maximize my rep or do the lothlorien quests so that I can turn in leaves for things.

I don't like the conbat, movement, character models, animations or the boring classes so I couldn't have fun playing and the PVP sucks.

I played it shortly after launch for a few months, and I enjoyed it somewhat.  From what I remember:

Likes:

- the book quests

- hobbits seemed very hobbity

- seeing the towns and characters I remember from the books/lore

Dislikes:

- too many group quests

- too many elite mobs

- slooooow travel

I was also kinda 50/50 on the crafting.   There were things I liked, but often the rare ingredients required a group to defeat yet another elite mob.

The further I got towards the end game, the more and more I was forced to group, and this is when I found it got similar to Wow, where endgame = raid or die.

In any MMO I play, if I cannot continually upgrade my character without being forced to team, say bye bye to my monthly money, I'm moving on.

If you haven't played LotRO since it's first 6-8 months, then you haven't played LotRO as it has changed and expanded a lot since then. Combat is quicker now than before, the UI has been tweaked a bit, Fast travel has been expanded making it easier to get around, newbie areas are being restructured to make things a little quicker, and grouping is no longer a real requirement until Endgame (A few Epic quests still need some grouping, but a lot of the content has been toned down).

 And if you want fast combat with a bit of strategy try the Rune-Keeper. It's got to be one of my favorite classes of any MMO.

I tried it but couldn't find a class I liked.

The only thing id be missing out on if I were playing Lotro is trying to solve the mystery of where the fun went. Working through book quests with my friends til around 18 or 19 (don't really remember) then suddenly having it drop me off with no quests in sight and the need to hit 24 before i could get back to the only interesting quests in the game. I even almost got through it because we were a aoe tank healer  threesome and were running through the woods destroying all in sight but that got old way before we got closs to the next book. Theres also something about the UI and how my attack buttons look like no one gave a shit about what they look like that bothers me.

The overall experience of LOTRO was a good one because in that time i didn't pay for the box or any of the time I used and stopped as soon as it wasn't fun anymore. I missed alot of pretty cool content by not working through that little gap in cool things to do but, with no money involved i have nothing to obligate me to work through it.

Originally posted by Raknar

Originally posted by Hyanmen

 I found it to be the most fun wow clone I've played, so I agree :)

 

How is it a WoW clone? It has the engine and interface of AC2, which predates WoW. All the so called WoW-clone features that people keep saying LOTRO has were around before WoW. Turbine was one of the inventors of the MMO genre. It is WoW that is the clone.

It may not be fair to call it a "clone", apart from the obvious high fantasy similarities, but let me tell you my experience with LOTRO:

I downloaded the free trial and started a Dwarf...after a rather cool intro, one of the first quests I got was: " Go kill Lynxs and gather 10 Lynx pelts." I logged off and uninstalled.

I've already done that for 80 levels in WoW, I'm not doing it again...especially without the prospect of end game pvp.

I have often said that LOTRO (along with EvE) are the best games we are not playing

I've tried LotRO twice thus far.  I just couldn't really get into it.  I guess I was looking for a more PvP-centric game, and obviously that's not what LotRO is about. 

I'm playing now and having fun.  Does the game have problems?, area's that could be better?  Sure nothing's perfect but I just wanted to toss in a few comments concerning some of what was posted before.  I'm not going to quote ...

Not open enough, why play in a story we already know - you don't have to do the epic quest line.  Yes we all know at the end of the books the ring goes into the lava.  Big deal.  The story line they have going seems to be more in line with running alongside the books vice following in it's foot steps.  But like I said you don't have to do those quests.  Totally optional.

Only putting out part of the map at a time - Good? Bad?  It does keep the flavor that you're 'reading' a book and acting out the story.  Where it might have been limiting at game launch, for someone starting now (like me) there seems to be a number of area's I can play in.  Also some area's seem to fold back on them selves.  The dwarf starter area also seems to support lvl 40 play.  From a gaming point of view this system may also allow the dev's to concentrate their efforts on getting a smaller portion of the game right vice trying to do it in one big chunk.

Kill X number of animals quests - This is such a staple of any game it's ridiculus to even complain about it.  Same goes for fetch and carry quests or go see the man quests.  Atleast with LotRO the story write up's give it a reason it's needed.  It would be nice if someone could come up with something better but until that happens .....

Exploring vice questing - You can explore all you want.  As long as it's on the map you can go there.  I've already found some interesting places tucked away in out of the way spots.

Not enough PvP - OK that's a given, of course it is a PvE game.  Should there be Pvp in it?  I don't think so, not the kill anyone, anytime, anywhere type, wouldn't really keep with the lore, but I think the game begs for a good RvR style with 'border area's' to fight in.  The story line would even support that; area I'm doing now, north of the main town (Bree), Bad guys blew through, burned the border town, invaded towards Bree, sounds like RvR border fighting to me.  This would also give players that want to play as bad guys the ability to. 

Playing the other side - No you can't really do it.  I've heard it said that it's because the quests you'd have to do wouldn't be 'nice' one's and the Tolkien Estate won't go for that.  OK, but the dev's have found a limited way around that with the Creeps quests in the monster play area.  Not enough I know to support an entire lvl 1 - 60 toon, but it's something.  Combine the current monster play PvP with my RvR comment above, the different border areas support the differnent monster levels.  From above would be monsters at early 20's.  The monster players would have some quests in the area to level up on and mainly be there for those that wished to Pvp in the 20's.  With different border area's slowly ramping the levels up as the players progress.  Gondor, Rohen etc.... are in the future for the higher level players so wouldn't they also be good for higher level monsters?

All in all no matter if you like the games concept or not, with the free trial offers floating about it's worth taking a look at.  It does play different, if does look different, even with alot of the same idea's as other games in it, it is still it's own game and well worth a look.

I have heard (and dont know if its true) that crafting in LoTR is fairly basic.

Now to be clear, when I ask about crafting I am not asking about the physical process of making something but rather the complexity of getting materials, reciepes, what needs to be processed etc.

So I guess my question is on LOTR how does the crafting compare to say EQ2 which I consider to be fairly basic.

Lotro crafting is simpler than EQ2 but more complex than WoW. What game do you know that has a complicated and involved crafting system?

Personally, lotro was halfway interesting the first month or two of release but there are just way too many breaks with lore for my taste.  I understand that it is a game first but there are certain things that I cannot overlook while continuing to have fun. 

Originally posted by arenasb

Lotro crafting is simpler than EQ2 but more complex than WoW. What game do you know that has a complicated and involved crafting system?

well I have heard that Vanguard is more in depth and my only other crafting reference is a NWN custom mod and Darkfall
many debates on the darkfall but in my view Darkfall crafting is more interesting and "deep" than EQ2 crafting.

That said, when i was playing EQ2 I just felt like I should be able to do more which is why I havent been attracted to games that have less which is why LoTR hasn’t attracted me.

On LoTR there is also something about the world artistry that doesn’t interest me as well which is hard to put my fingure on. Aion however is an instant NO graphically for me.
 

I've played just about all mmo's out there except for a few exceptions like War and AoC, Lotro is a very enjoyable game, atleast I think so, but I want to try AION and Vanguard, also give EvE a real attempt, but LOTRO is just as enjoyable as they come. Even though you already know the story it is a new experience "living" it.

I know the game is great but it just isnt for me, the quests can be confusing sometimes and the controls are like said before sluggish and also when i played i couldnt fnd a single player to interact with.

I've tried to like that game. Three times I've tried. But the combat is just so sluggish with the abilities queue system, the character models are junk and frankly I didn't like the fact that half the backgrounds were just...painted backdrops. I couldn't even go into the forest part of the old forest, because you couldn't go between the trees. Coupled with the fact that it was just a really boring game in general since I'm not a huge Tolkien fan? Yeah... I'm not really missing out.  Some people like it. I thought it was dull beyond belief.