Originally posted by harlokayne

Hi, I'm new to the forums. 

I was thinking about starting a Lotro account, as it is one of the only MMO's I have yet to try. I LOVED Lord of The Rings, and it would be something new for me. I understand that its free to play, and that there is also an option to subscribe...my question is how free to play is it? Does the cash shop break the game? and If I choose to subscribe, how much bang would I get for my buck? How much content?

Thanks!

-Harlo

Screw it, I'm going to play devils advocate for a moment and give a bit of a perspective from someone that didn't like the game, for the sake of a bit of balance.

As a essentially a pve game the cash shop shouldn't be a pay to win model and i believe it isn't.  But unless you are willing to grind a lot chances are you are going to need to spend some money on the game.  If you are sensible it van be less than it cost before going f2p, but there are some reports that it may end up being a lot more going to depend on how much of the content etc. you feel you need to buy.  Will say that if u do like the game could be worth searching for game time cards, atm in the uk i think it would cost me £3 a month or so to sub.

For me the game was much more world of warcraft than it was lord of the rings.  Although i think they used a pre wow game to make their wow clone, if that makes sense.  I'll mention it, archlord.  But wether or not a game(or film etc) matches the name is down to the individual, so'll you'll have to try it and decide for yourself.

I'll mention some of the things i didn't like about the 'game' side, from what i can remember.

Character customisation, basically there wasn't any.  Character creation was race, class, sex and haircut and that was it, putting it just a hair above those game that gender lock.  In skill terms there also wasn't any.  You level up and go buy a new skill that was pretty mush it.  You can costomise your numbers a bit(i think these were called traits but can't remember) but from what i can remember this was essentially a very long dull grind for a slight stat increase.  All this meant to me was that my elf ranger etc was exactltly the same as every other elf ranger etc.  And since they used the same models for npc's aswell as player it got a bit weird.

I won't mention the animations as i think someone else has already done that.

Some others I also think you can add as misnomers.  

The crafting.  Another very long very dull and quite frankly pointless grind.  I see this usually mentioned as a plus, but i'm not sure if that's just relative to wow or something.  Seeing as how I would usually end up with a reward item anyway If you want to craft i would suggest going for cooking or something with at least some use later on not as i did and go for the obvious

The community.  Despite what some people will tell you it can be just as bad as every other mmo out there, there's just less reason to interact with thi 'idiots',  and wether or not this is a godd thing is a matter or perspective.

I want to add that I don't describe lotro as a 'bad' game, it isn't.  It's just that it isn't good either(i suppose this part is quite obvious since almost no one was willing to pay the sub and hence f2p).  Lotro is usually described as meh, but since that isn't a term i like to use I'll say that it's(or was) very bland.  I don't mean bland as in vanilla, I mean balnd as in a cereal that tastes of cardboard bland.  You may not like it but you think you should.

Since the game is free(sort of) now and as long as it doesn't break and limits set by your isp, best bet is to try and decide for yourself

If you want more info on the 'bad' (and maybe even the 'good') i would suggest remaking this thread in either the lfg or general sections of these boards.  

Also if any of this need updating since the game went f2p please do so.

Originally posted by JRonnie1976

Ultimately if you want to play LOTRO casually, see the famous landmarks, play through the questlines, etc, then LOTRO will be fine for you.  The store doesn't really impact these aspects very much other than to unlock content for a reasonable price. 

If however your intention is to play it a little bit more seriously, ie PvMP (LOTRO's brand of PVP) and raiding, then you'll likely be gimping yourself if you don't use the store to some extent (there is store advantage to be bought, particularly with the demise of the old destiny buff system).  If this would be an issue for you, then I'd suggest to steer clear.

PVP is not much played, and the cash shop has little to no advantage for it.  Unless, of course, one means the advantage of less grinding.  But that is merely a matter of time, not edge.

That is the question

I don't typically do this, but this post is begging to be torn apart.

Originally posted by Karahandras

Screw it, I'm going to play devils advocate for a moment and give a bit of a perspective from someone that didn't like the game, for the sake of a bit of balance.

As a essentially a pve game the cash shop shouldn't be a pay to win model and i believe it isn't.  But unless you are willing to grind a lot chances are you are going to need to spend some money on the game.  If you are sensible it van be less than it cost before going f2p, but there are some reports that it may end up being a lot more going to depend on how much of the content etc. you feel you need to buy.  Will say that if u do like the game could be worth searching for game time cards, atm in the uk i think it would cost me £3 a month or so to sub.

First off, grinding is minimal in this game.  Unless you consider grinding raids for final gear, but that is irrelevant.  Also, with sales and good spending of points, you are spending about $80 dollars total on this game for the complete lot of content, which is cheaper in the long run than most all MMO's out there.

For me the game was much more world of warcraft than it was lord of the rings.  Although i think they used a pre wow game to make their wow clone, if that makes sense.  I'll mention it, archlord.  But wether or not a game(or film etc) matches the name is down to the individual, so'll you'll have to try it and decide for yourself.

It did share a lot of features with WoW, but at this point, it has grown up and come to its own with content and features that are distinctly different than WoW.

I'll mention some of the things i didn't like about the 'game' side, from what i can remember.

Character customisation, basically there wasn't any.  Character creation was race, class, sex and haircut and that was it, putting it just a hair above those game that gender lock.  In skill terms there also wasn't any.  You level up and go buy a new skill that was pretty mush it.  You can costomise your numbers a bit(i think these were called traits but can't remember) but from what i can remember this was essentially a very long dull grind for a slight stat increase.  All this meant to me was that my elf ranger etc was exactltly the same as every other elf ranger etc.  And since they used the same models for npc's aswell as player it got a bit weird

Class traits are where a lot of the differences lie, and it is as good as any MMO out there in the AAA category.  Aesthetic customization is also as good as it gets with the wardrobe system, which allows for some truly diverse characters.

I won't mention the animations as i think someone else has already done that.

Some others I also think you can add as misnomers.  

The crafting.  Another very long very dull and quite frankly pointless grind.  I see this usually mentioned as a plus, but i'm not sure if that's just relative to wow or something.  Seeing as how I would usually end up with a reward item anyway If you want to craft i would suggest going for cooking or something with at least some use later on not as i did and go for the obvious

If it was not for crafting, 2nd and 1st age LI's would not be possible.

The community.  Despite what some people will tell you it can be just as bad as every other mmo out there, there's just less reason to interact with thi 'idiots',  and wether or not this is a godd thing is a matter or perspective.

There are far less idiots in this game than others, global chats are typically filled with better banter and you find a crowd that is typically older than 25.  People are also helpful in game, and the ony real idiots tend to be restricted to their own guilds.

I want to add that I don't describe lotro as a 'bad' game, it isn't.  It's just that it isn't good either(i suppose this part is quite obvious since almost no one was willing to pay the sub and hence f2p).  Lotro is usually described as meh, but since that isn't a term i like to use I'll say that it's(or was) very bland.  I don't mean bland as in vanilla, I mean balnd as in a cereal that tastes of cardboard bland.  You may not like it but you think you should.

Since the game is free(sort of) now and as long as it doesn't break and limits set by your isp, best bet is to try and decide for yourself

If you want more info on the 'bad' (and maybe even the 'good') i would suggest remaking this thread in either the lfg or general sections of these boards.  

Also if any of this need updating since the game went f2p please do so.

Originally posted by lifesbrink

First off, grinding is minimal in this game.  

 

I just want to correct you on that point, since you are wrong. The grind in this game is horrendous to a Lot of people who arent used to it. And I dont mean the part where you grind mobs for levels, but that part where you grind mobs, instances and dailies to level up your weapons(and class items): LIs. 

Some spend months chasing after this proverbial carrot and still end up with less than optimum items for their class. If the fact that simply leveling up LIs doesnt take so much time, the real kicker is that crafting the LI you are happy with at level cap might take you more time than just getting to the level cap on your character. Take it from someone who spent around 2 months of casual play crafting a lvl 65 LI (back in mid 2011 when 65 was cap), getting that 5major 2minor halberd and then farming for the scrolls to up them all to tier 6 and then leveling it up and then grinding out all the runes and attachments for them (while there still were tier 9 stuff) made me quit LotrO for around half a year and ironically it was just after I had maxed out my LI and had become a top notch raid-support Captain.

Sad joke is that when I went back, the xpac was out and my awesome LI had become useless since 2nd ages from the next tier of lvl far outshined my current LI that I spent a good part of my time in LotRo on. So I played on a little bit longer but when I couldnt make do with my old LI any longer and had to get a new LI and redo the entire process of LI hunting all over again, is when I said "Fuck it, Im done with LotRO" and quit all my freeps without even hitting level 75 on my main.

So went over to the pvmp side of LotRO after another haitus of a few months. Ranked up to around rank7 on my low population server. Kept getting brutalized by freep zergs like nearly every other creep ever since the xpac removed the freep stat cap. Tried to stick around and convince myself that this game was still fun, but I just couldnt do it anymore. Left with the option to switch servers or bid my final adieu to LotRO, I went with the latter and Lotro was off my harddisk.

Long SOB story short, try the game OP. Its fun while it lasts, unless you arent a lore freak and want it down like how its in the books right down to the T. Roll your toon on a high population server like Brandywine or Landroval and you might enjoy both freeping and creeping, dont pick a near ghost town like server Dwarrowdelf or Crickhollow or whatever is deserted nowadays. Sub for a month or two, get all your characters to lvl 20, get them their riding traits and make a bunch of toons on other servers to check out populations on both creeps and freeps while your sub lasts so that they will have ALL their trait slots unlocked. You could buy the rest of the game with the bonus monthly TP if you choose to remained subbed or earn TPs by just playing the game. I might not like LotRO for some reasons and how it has become, but I will always consider Turbine's freemium model the best in the MMO market as of today. The game is decent, has a good bit of content but it can get repeatative at the level caps so be warned.

I think the issue is that you are talking about lvl 65 and the previous game.  They changed it now, grinding is nonexistent with LI's.  Just be leveling to 75, you have more than enough item experience to not only level your LI up to max, but extra for when expansions come out.  As it is, right now, I have a lvl 75 bow for my hunter, and when it was crafted, I used my runes and scrolls to achieve the perfect weapon and hit max all within about 5 minutes.  Hardly grinding.

Well the actual leveling of LIs was only in part what I was talking about. Ive still got millions of iXP runes sitting in the vault of my inactive account, some really big runes from decomposing lvl 65 1st ages (the higher rolls of xp) and some won from the lottos.

But the problem about grinding that I wanted to point out is that you can Never be sure about how your LI will turn out and might end up grinding for months at lvl cap trying to get the LI of your choice. Sure now  you can switch and swap skills using scrolls, but to get that you`ll need to level a LI and decompose it (or buy it off the shop yea?) and even then when you slot the new skill on the LI, it starts at tier2, so theres another huge grind to get enough upgrade scrolls (forgot the actual name) to max that tier out in order to save points.

And you`ll never know if a LI starts out with just 3 majors or more unless you level it up to 31 or something right? Theres another grind. 

And say, if the LI rolls out with some really horrible skills for your style of play then you are left with the option to dump it or suck it up and work on new skills/scrolls to make it game worthy (my main was a captain so there were a lot of skills that would slot on my LIs but only few were viable for my tanking/burst heal styled gameplay and even then I needed 5 individual LIs for solo, raid or pvmp conditions to be good at what my character can do, same thing would apply for a CC/DPS/healer LM or whatever class with whichever colour line).

Worse still if your first age LI comes out with junk skills, then you either need to rerun the entire raid and get lucky/wait in line to get that symbol drop or suck it up yet again and make do with your subpar 1st age until you find a new one/something better/change its skills and tiers. So there is more raid grinding or skill/scroll grinding in case you dont luck out. 

And then the runes, either grind instances to get them or grind marks to trade for them. And then shards, back then you needed to grind the delving to get the junk rune to decompose for shards, that must have changed as I read somewhere but Im guessing the new form of  accquiring shards might be another kind of grind as well.

I know I went off in a tangent bout grinding, but its the truth. If the LI system was different from the time sink-fun damper that it currently is, a Lot of people would be really happy and the game would just seem more fun, this is just my humble point of view. I still remember Turbine promising a Part II of the LI revamp but that has gone the way of the New-PvP-Map and has never been heard from again. But there you have it, as a hunter I guess you`d just need one or two strong DPS based LIs with skills to make do everywhere but Captains, LMs, RKs and even Guards (OP or tank / 1handed or 2 handed LIs) might have a harder time perfecting multiple LIs for different occasions and for such people (esp. the people who want to roll with >3majors ) the LI grind can be horrendous.

"To LOTR or not to LOTR - that's question"

NPC Hamlet

I wanted to ask same question: to go third time to LOTR or not?

First time I went was long ago, I had to kill some spiders/grulets and one mob just owned me. Left the game.

Second time was now. Chose F2P, race - Elf, class - Champion. (offtopic: Only later I realised Elves had less hp ("morale") than any other race and Champion class was something I did not like too much...)

I met some Elven trainer, he gave me rags, 2 weapons and I got to defend some gate (almost did it), then to kill some 5 evil dwarves (did it). Later my first troubles began when I was teleported to some snowy world.

Took quest to solve riddle (as for non-English speaking person it is hard), needed to ask 2 elves. Found 1, he told rubbish, did not find another. Noticed players with pets (ravens and alike), but did not find anyone who may give them. Could not loot any corpse, alothough I tried.Finally, reached gates that won't open and there was no way to get through them.

Other new players (I was lvl.2 Elf champion, they were mostly lvl.3-4) did not bother to answer my private tells, they were mostly busy with killing anything they met (grinding?). In the towns I saw NPCs called "Weaponsmith" and alike, but these were not trainers, only sold some stuff I had no idea if it suits me. I could get no coin from any kill etc.

I left game, unable to finish almost training quest, feeling a bit dissatisfied. Yes, graphic was excellent. Sounds were excellent. Surroundings were excellent, even immortality of my char was excellent (I do love falling from rocks and landing without injury). Character customization was none: I soon saw too many Elves like me running around - I was not unique. Yes, I could change robes from dark green to light green or even purchase yellow ones...but it is just dressing clones in different robes.

So, after such noobish introduction, the question is repeated: any sense to come back to Lotro? I would like to travel, especially - to craft and avoid any PvP...but is Lotro for me?

By all means you should try it out again.  I can remember when I first started the game (my first MMO) how frustrated I was in trying to get out of Edelhion, the elven starter city, and then tyring to find my class trainer.  The quest tracker is a big help.  You mention wanting pets, only 2 classes have pets, loremsters (the raven you saw) and captains (have heralds).  I don't recommened either one of those as a starter class until you have a bit of experience with the game's mechanics.  A class like guardian, hunter, or champion are very popular inital classes.    I have listed below some  links which should hopefully make your starter experience a little more fun. 

Good luck!

http://lotroimages.akamai.lotro.com/media/downloads/lotro_quickstart_lowres.pdf

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?335135-Answers-to-Your-Questions

http://lotro.mmorsel.com/2010/09/lotro-quick-start-guide.html

It's a decent game, and it's easy to get sucked into the world.  Turbine did a great job with creating the environments, even if it's nothing like the vast expanse that Middle Earth is supposed to be.

That said, the cash shop and all of it's associated "features" can really pull you out of the game.  It's hard to go 5 minutes without having some popup reminding you about it, which doesn't exactly help immersion any.  It also seems like each patch, they are pushing more cash shop stuff out into the game world.  For example, we now have sparkling clothing dummies grouped up everywhere, displaying full armor sets you can buy at the cash shop.  It wouldn't be so bad if they were just regulated to the major cities, but they seem to be at most of the remote outposts and stuff as well, which makes no sense.

Aside from the cash shop thing, the other main problem with the game is that the character models, animations, and combat are all very "dated."  Some of the newer armor has higher rez graphics, but the character models still have a low polygon count.  The UI is still as bad as ever, with skill icons designed with similar graphics.  Combat is more of a "queue" system, where you activate a skill, but it doesn't actually happen until the current animation is finished.  It feels kind of mushy at first, but you get used to it.

Anyway, it's worth downloading and giving it a try.  Unfortunately, it feels like a game that has all it's best days behind it.  Turbine is just trying to milk the cow before she finally dies.

I re-entered Lotro. Created Human account...and got lost with Human introduction quest number 3: to find some guards. I fail to find one last and map does not show any red dots. Is there any Wiki where all NPCs locations are shown?

Besides, what to do with stuff I do not longer need? can I just delete it?

Now to game: graphic does not matter for me. It is community and immersion that counts. However, there are so many unclear stuff. I advanced to lvl.2 -* what;'s next, where are my xp points, can I redsitribute them, increase morale or strenght? No suggestion from the game. My skills are still three, no new offered. And I do get lost with all "deeds", "traits" and other booma-yumba sounding things...

Hope you enjoy the game!!  My previous post had some very useful links for helping you get started.  Since you did not see it, here are the links again. 

http://lotroimages.akamai.lotro.com/media/downloads/lotro_quickstart_lowres.pdf

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?335135-Answers-to-Your-Questions

http://lotro.mmorsel.com/2010/09/lotro-quick-start-guide.htm

Also, for a great map listing npc's, locations, etc here is a link.  If you use one or all of this links, your experience will be much smoother. 

http://dynmap.ruslotro.com/