It is looking too little too late for Lotro I'm afraid. I played Lotro from alpha testing through into the recent expansion, Rise of Isengard and Turbine is bent on dumbing down the game to try to compete with WoW and SWTOR which is why SWG failed.

Until Turbine upgrades their character models, fixes the crafting, and gets rid of "pay-to-win" content in the stores Lotro will always be a lost cause unfortunately.

Say what you want but LOTRO is the one game that has stayed on my hard drive.  I can play on and off for free when I am spending more time in a new MMO and when I get bored I can jump back in and pay while I wait for the next MMO. 

Originally posted by Thillian

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by WhySoShort

If I'm not mistaken, Tolkien Enterprises actually told Turbine they couldn't make a two faction game. It wasn't the game developer's choice, it's just the price of using a famous and important IP.

The difficulty is that every fampus battle in the Middle Earth universe has a set outcome. For example, the forces of evil could not win at Helm's Deep. LOTRO is heavily story driven, and it would be hard to write a story for the evil side because they would just lose over and over again. Imagine the quests. "Hey, set this ladder up and kill 10 Helm's Deep defenders." "Good job, too bad we lost anyways."

That they did, and with good reason, aside from yours, of course. 

There are few fantasy books that exist that focus LESS on the antagonist than the Middle Earth books do.

Hell, you never even SEE the main antagonist in the books.  And the only time you see the other villains, like Saruman and Gollum, is when they're with the heroes.  Movie scenes, like where Saruman addresses his army, or talks with the orc guard about tearing down the forest to build weapons and seige equipment, NEVER happened in the books.

The books were TOTALLY from the perspective of the good guys.  So it's not really in the spirit of the novels to create a factional game.

Not that I'd have refused the game had they used factions, but still, the way it is now is much more in line with the Middle Earth books and how the story is told.

You are wrong. Tolkien Enterprises did not give any restriction towards the lore. The lore is solely limited by the developer's idea of how much will the consumers tolerate it.

Tolkien Enterprises sold many licenses to various games (video games / board games), where players can play the evil side with its own story and objectives.

 

 

But all of those games are based on the movies, aren't they? The Jackson movies are considered to be a non-canon separate universe by Tolkien Enterprises. That's why New Line Cinema's logo (instead of TE's) show up on all of those products. 

I think it's only loosely based on the movies. None of the characters look like the actors (which I actually love) and the story follows the book, not the movies (e.g. there were no Tom Bombadil or Radagast the Brown in the movies and they play a role in both the game and the book)

As for the game dying or not doing well, I couldn't disagree more. Plenty of people running around and according to Xfire it has twice as many players as Rift

So there's really little not to like about the game

-The lore is awesome

-The storyline is engaging

-There are plenty of surprises here and there (e.g. I was really shocked when the monster I was suppose to hunt turned out to be poor little hungry Gollum who I had to chase for five minutes, also once in a while you come upon a really interesting quest in the middle of nowhere)

-The game is quite serious compare to other games and though it does have plenty of humour, it's mostly in the beginning in Hobbiton, just like the book, once you start you story, it gets really grim and evil from there.

^^^although this could also be a disadvantage because sometimes I just want to have a fun game that can cheer me up and LOTRO is a little too grim at times

-all the achievements and the grind that you have to do is actually meaningful and rewards you with character development rewards, making you tidy bit stronger or giving you new cool skills to play around with.

-monster play is actually TONS of fun. for me personally, it feels like miniature DAOC: it has positional attacks, there's plenty of sneaking around and even siege like experience, with the exception of siege engines. It's definitely not the best PVP experience out there, but it's there and it works. Also, it's helluva fun sneaking around as a warg and take out random strangers as a pack with other noob wargs. sure, you start weak and pityful, but with wargs it's all about team work. simply love it!

One thing that I really wish Turbine did is take an Asheron's Call approach and give us an endless game with no end-game content and progressive develelopment instead. I really dislike this whole raiding/endgame business

LOTRO was a well done game until they hit Moria. Moria was dark and bleak, which made sense, but just wasn't much fun.

But the big problem was the legendary items. Basically they were meant to be weapons that "grew" with you. But they don't - you have to level them up, but when you gain new levels, you have to throw them away and start the leveling process for the items all over again. (and that doesn't even taken into account the randomness of the legacies of the lis)

Now it seems like they are going to add to the grindiness of the game by making the horses work the same way. Ugh. I have a lifetime sub to this, yet cannot bear to play a character over 50 just because of the LIs. The least fun I've had in 35 years of gaming

double post please remove

if this game had orcs and stuff as playble races i be a glad hobbit.

Originally posted by VicDonnegan

I bet THOSE servers are overpopulated...

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by precious328

LoTRO could've been so much more. This game would've done much better had it been created as a faction game: Hobbits, Men, Elves, Dwarves  VS  Men, Orcs, and Goblins.

A deep world with realistic World PvP.

 

Oh man...

 

Except it couldn't be a faction game as the dark forces, for the most part lack free will. It's very specific as to when they lose. But of course I'm sure we've discussed this before.

Hopefully the new expansion and these mini updates will revitalize the game for me.

oh that silly excuse again and its not true, read the books.

Originally posted by trancejeremy

LOTRO was a well done game until they hit Moria. Moria was dark and bleak, which made sense, but just wasn't much fun.

But the big problem was the legendary items. Basically they were meant to be weapons that "grew" with you. But they don't - you have to level them up, but when you gain new levels, you have to throw them away and start the leveling process for the items all over again. (and that doesn't even taken into account the randomness of the legacies of the lis)

Now it seems like they are going to add to the grindiness of the game by making the horses work the same way. Ugh. I have a lifetime sub to this, yet cannot bear to play a character over 50 just because of the LIs. The least fun I've had in 35 years of gaming

Moria was excellent, IMO. It was an epic expansion. I loved it when it released, and I still love taking alts through Moria. Mirkwood and RoI have been disappointing, by comparison. I'm really hoping Rohan will be an epic expansion on par with Moria, but I'm really concerned it will just be another "mini" expansion.

LIs... I have to agree. They are just another grind, trash, repeat. I won't bother grinding for relics, and I just use any decent 3rd age lvl 75 I can find and equip it with the regular T6 or T7 relics. Horse combat... I don't want to see another grind, trash, repeat advancement system, please.

The is is shit now .. cba to even think this can be any good. anything they made since original title is just destroying the game. learn to make games turbine...

me and lotro get along just fun best game i've played ty turbine

I guess im the only one who likes the legendary weapons. As for Moria, it was one of the best xpacs ive seen in any game. The book quests alone were worth the price. I play the game for the environment and the lore. I agree Mirkwood wasnt much of an xpac and I just bought Isengard so cant comment on it much but for $30 and no sub fee it seems like a good value to me. As for ROR, the way things look it will most likely be my only MMO related purchase this year.

Originally posted by Rusty715

I guess im the only one who likes the legendary weapons. As for Moria, it was one of the best xpacs ive seen in any game. The book quests alone were worth the price. I play the game for the environment and the lore. I agree Mirkwood wasnt much of an xpac and I just bought Isengard so cant comment on it much but for $30 and no sub fee it seems like a good value to me. As for ROR, the way things look it will most likely be my only MMO related purchase this year.

I like them, but as others said, the issue with having to vendor trash the thing every 4-5 levels wrecks the whole point of LI's, to me.

BW gave TOR a system that ends the obsoletion factor, seems like Turbine could do the same.

They should have held off and made RoI and RoR one combined expansion. Instead we got the most watered down expansion in the history of MMO's when RoI came out.

Being a lifer with this game i guess i,m lucky,or unlucky.depends on your point of view.the first 50 lvls of this game are a dream,the books,everything done right.then they went off track imo..dont get me wrong i dont mind f2p but now its just become a dungeon or skirmish crawl...you either have the choice of 3-6-or raid dungeons which is fine.my problem is that i didnt buy a lifetime sub to spend it in a friggin dungeon.

You need so many medallions per pce of armor..but if you cant or dont want to go in these grps you are left with skirmishes where you get medallions for gear..trouble is for 1 pce of gear you need a minimum of 725 of them for the wrist armour i beleive and when you only get max of about 20 if you do a T3 skirm ....well you guys do the math..that would mean about 35 skirmishes for the wrist aremour..then the better parts i,e chest you need over 1000..i mean c'mon this is a joke.this game has changed so much and not for the better..our kin have real trouble logging in now and we have been going since release..they really need to get back to basics instead of this stupid lvl increase crap..whats the friggin point of makin peeps dungeon crawl then add a damn expansion within 12 months of release of another to make them do the same again..omg i need a couple of paracetomol

I hope but very much doubt they'll look into doing something to extend pvp and improve housing . I have a life time/vip sub and only play lotro on a very casual basis so its always nice to see new content added . I always seem to be two expansions behind everyone else . I've only just got to Mirkwood .

Once upon a time the announcement of the Riders Of Rohan expansion would have brought tears of joy to my eyes, and all the game forums would be crowded with posts and applauses and lists of things that would be welcomed in the game.

Now, the same announcement just makes me raise an eye a little, perhaps will make me log after a year of absence of this grinding excuse of a game that uses its gamers as guinea pigs for WBs microtransaction experiments, and the forums just have a few posts mostly talking about Evil and Good in the proffessor's work...

Oh, well, it was good while it lasted :)