LotRO one of the best MMORPGs out there.

How is a PVE game pay to win?

Originally posted by Scottgun
I played this off and on since open beta. It has the strength that the storyline is taken from the books and not the movies. But in the end I never really get the sense of any danger or that I am in Middle Earth.

You must have a different version of LOTRO than I do if you do not feel like you are in ME.

Originally posted by MMOGamer71

Originally posted by Scottgun
I played this off and on since open beta. It has the strength that the storyline is taken from the books and not the movies. But in the end I never really get the sense of any danger or that I am in Middle Earth.

You must have a different version of LOTRO than I do if you do not feel like you are in ME.

It's a subjective feeling of course. All the names are there-- Gandalf, Aragorn, Frodo. All the places are there--Bag End, The Prancing Pony, Weathertop. Much of the Lore is there if you can look past the Runekeeper blasting the hills with lightning bolts like "Tim" in Monty Python's Holy Grail-- but after the upteenth gopher quest, I'm just not sold and feel like I'm in yet another boar grinder.

The game had a chance when it was released.  There was a solid foundation.  There were multiple paths of loot to be taken.  You could get lucky and get a crafting drop and get that loot, or you could get lucky in one of the group instances.  You could do the raid in Angmar that took forever, you could go the PVP route and get that armor, or you could use decent quest rewards.

Your character never felt gimp.  Then they changed everything with the Legendary item system and ever since every single piece of loot you get from a quest is sold right back to a vendor...usually standing right next to the quest giver, mocking him.

They shrunk the world with F2P, divided up their little zones into quest hubs.  They never once tried to hide the fact that the quests in this game were basic Kill X number or Orc quests, but in the beginning it did not matter because you had multiple ways of getting to the end.

LOTRO had about a year and a half where is was truly a fun game to play.  Technology passed it by.  The main complaint I have is that LOTRO does not feel epic like the books.  Their engine cannot handle big armys, so when Helms Deep comes (and you know it will) your character will be off defending a hallway where three Orcs invade at a time....while the real heroes are battling tens of thousands.

Originally posted by MMOGamer71

LotRO one of the best MMORPGs out there.

 

How is a PVE game pay to win?

1) in your opinion, lotro is one of the best mmorpgs out there. Gotz to fix that buddy

2) Suppose i raid, i been raiding and dying/wiping just to get good loot, money, jewlery, etc.. then comes along some dude with $$ and buys the items from the store instead of earning it through the game, that my friend is a pve pay2win. You are knocking off a player who really wants to raid to a person with $$

P.S - PVP lotro is fully pay2win.

Originally posted by xalvi

Originally posted by MMOGamer71

LotRO one of the best MMORPGs out there.

 

How is a PVE game pay to win?

 

[mod edit]

[mod edit]

Originally posted by xalvi

Originally posted by MMOGamer71

LotRO one of the best MMORPGs out there.

 

How is a PVE game pay to win?

 

1) in your opinion, lotro is one of the best mmorpgs out there. Gotz to fix that buddy

2) Suppose i raid, i been raiding and dying/wiping just to get good loot, money, jewlery, etc.. then comes along some dude with $$ and buys the items from the store instead of earning it through the game, that my friend is a pve pay2win. You are knocking off a player who really wants to raid to a person with $$

 

P.S - PVP lotro is fully pay2win.

Thanks for making it clear that my opinion (just like yours) is in fact an opinion.  Ironically this site and others are opinion based.  A quick check of MMORPG.coms top Rated released games puts LOTRO tied for 6th place with a 7.68 rating.  Not too shabby.   Seems that my opinion of LOTRO is in fact inline with most others here on MMORPG.com.

Congrats on coining a new phrase "PvE pay2win", also please check what the "real" definition of pay to win really is, and one that most sane players agree on.

On a side note if you play LOTRO for the PvP experience your doing something wrong.  The developers have stated that the intent of LOTRO was the PvE side.  I find it ironic in making your P2W arguement you add the part I highlighted in yellow.  If LOTRO is P2W why did you need to state that PvP is "fully pay2win".

Eh, it's got some flaws.  The store is everywhere (I mean there are buttons everywhere to bring you to the store), much more so than when it transitioned.  I think they shouldn't be charging for game mechanics like xp disablers. It should be an account unlock and something you could adjust (ala the xp slider in EQ2) and always open to subscribers.  Really they should take a que from GW2 and implement dynamic mentoring.  That is by far the coolest mentoring system I've ever used.

Subscribers should have the whole game unlocked while they're subbed.  If they would rethink the way they monetize I think they would come across less as greedy bastages and more like devs that are pricing their services fairly and competively.

The addition of open tapping and remote looting is huge.  GW2, TSW and other games should take a que from Turbine (I can't believe I'm actually writing that) and implement an option for remote looting.

The game looks dated in some places, mostly Moria and some parts of Eregion.  And yes, the character models are painful.  Not quite Vanguard painful, but about like EQ2 where they look plastic.  The animations are also clunky.

Still, when you actually own a bunch of the content, you can play and roll alts and do whatever the hell you want all day long and not have to buy any of the boosts or items from the store.  I think the game is "pay to win", but then again I consider pretty much every game "pay to win" (what an asinine jargon term - it drives me crazy).  If you sell advantage, gate content through cash, or sell exclusive items in the cash shop, then I consider that "pay to win".  The thing is, like I said, once you own the content, you don't have to visit the store unless you want to.

The lore-master is one of the best classes ever and one of my favorite pet classes.  Turbine doesn't get enough credit for their design with this particular class.

At this age, it also has a lot of content available probably surpassed by EQ2 and rivaled by WoW.  So while not a perfect game, it's still fun and will live on my hard drive for the time being.

Gonna just take a swing at a few comments that caught my attention and since I'm a Lifetime founder aka been playing the game since closed beta I'd like to shed some actual light some of the fanboys tried to stomp into the dust.

First, LOTRO was once a wonderful game with beautiful zones and combat/instance mechanics. Since F2P launched Turbine, and now WB, have done nothing but try to make as much money from the store as possible. Is the game still being played by an active community? Of course, plenty of people still like it and I still log in to play my hobbit burg every now and then.

Now for the P2Win comments. I saw a few fan boys freak out about that comment and I hate to tell you fellas but it's true. Maybe you don't visit the Moors, I wouldn't after 6 years of the same PvP zone, but the monster players can buy everything via the online store. That's the perfect definition of pay 2 win.

Mounted Combat, for the person who had no idea of other MMOs with it please check out Age of Conan as it had mounted combat at launch I believe. Does it stick with the lore? Of course it does but they could have at least added it to all the Rohan zones, or better any zone containing Rohirrim camps.

Turbine's inability to code proper dungeons, and the addition of challenge mode, pretty much killed the end game for LOTRO as well. I mean, you get an expansion pack and then wait months for the instances to be released? In 2 parts? Maybe next time you should hold off on scrambling for the cash and release the expansion as one full set. Don't troll me about the instance packs being free, I'm aware that you essentially pre-ordered an xpac.

They continue to make changes to that game, along with making promises they'll never keep, for the worse. If they actually cared about it at this point you'd at least have a new pvp map to, you know maybe fit with all the evil places we've gone to at this point. No, because it's a PvE game that they want to keep that way even though they can't even get PvE content out in time.

I mean, it's on Wayback Wednesday after DAoC, so that should tell you something about what even the people here at MMORPG think about it.

Originally posted by Nyrujo

Mounted Combat, for the person who had no idea of other MMOs with it please check out Age of Conan as it had mounted combat at launch I believe. Does it stick with the lore? Of course it does but they could have at least added it to all the Rohan zones, or better any zone containing Rohirrim camps.

I mostly agree with your comments, I said too that LotRO is slowly sliding towards pay2win... and the split-released Isengard, and Rohan expansions indeed seem a bit weird.

I just want to address the mounted combat part, since I still thinks it's good as it is. Of course I don't need to check on AoC (I play it since launch and my cimmerian alts never leave the village without their trusty mammoth :) ), and it's definitely not mounted combat, in a sense Turbine made war-steeds.

True, if you take it by the letter, you get in-combat state, and you're mounted :) but it's only like those browser games I mentioned, your mount has 2 skills (or 1 in later with Godslayer mounts), with those skills your mount does some damage. It's not even close to the war-steed system in Rohan...

Originally posted by Nyrujo

Gonna just take a swing at a few comments that caught my attention and since I'm a Lifetime founder aka been playing the game since closed beta I'd like to shed some actual light some of the fanboys tried to stomp into the dust.

First, LOTRO was once a wonderful game with beautiful zones and combat/instance mechanics. Since F2P launched Turbine, and now WB, have done nothing but try to make as much money from the store as possible. Is the game still being played by an active community? Of course, plenty of people still like it and I still log in to play my hobbit burg every now and then.

Now for the P2Win comments. I saw a few fan boys freak out about that comment and I hate to tell you fellas but it's true. Maybe you don't visit the Moors, I wouldn't after 6 years of the same PvP zone, but the monster players can buy everything via the online store. That's the perfect definition of pay 2 win.

Mounted Combat, for the person who had no idea of other MMOs with it please check out Age of Conan as it had mounted combat at launch I believe. Does it stick with the lore? Of course it does but they could have at least added it to all the Rohan zones, or better any zone containing Rohirrim camps.

Turbine's inability to code proper dungeons, and the addition of challenge mode, pretty much killed the end game for LOTRO as well. I mean, you get an expansion pack and then wait months for the instances to be released? In 2 parts? Maybe next time you should hold off on scrambling for the cash and release the expansion as one full set. Don't troll me about the instance packs being free, I'm aware that you essentially pre-ordered an xpac.

They continue to make changes to that game, along with making promises they'll never keep, for the worse. If they actually cared about it at this point you'd at least have a new pvp map to, you know maybe fit with all the evil places we've gone to at this point. No, because it's a PvE game that they want to keep that way even though they can't even get PvE content out in time.

I mean, it's on Wayback Wednesday after DAoC, so that should tell you something about what even the people here at MMORPG think about it.

Ho hum, so you don't like the game, fine you have not figured it out yet that Lotro is not about pvp, if you want to pvp there are far better games to do it in.  Every time I see someone whining about pay to win in Lotro, I see another poster who has no clue what they are talking about. 

Originally posted by Nyrujo

I mean, it's on Wayback Wednesday after DAoC, so that should tell you something about what even the people here at MMORPG think about it.

I've done Wayback Wednesdays on EQ, EQII, PlanetSide, Vanguard, DDO, LotRO, DAoC, Anarchy Online, Age of Conan....

I don't understand the point of that comment. 

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by Nyrujo

Now for the P2Win comments. I saw a few fan boys freak out about that comment and I hate to tell you fellas but it's true. Maybe you don't visit the Moors, I wouldn't after 6 years of the same PvP zone, but the monster players can buy everything via the online store. That's the perfect definition of pay 2 win.

Ho hum, so you don't like the game, fine you have not figured it out yet that Lotro is not about pvp, if you want to pvp there are far better games to do it in.  Every time I see someone whining about pay to win in Lotro, I see another poster who has no clue what they are talking about. 

Far from me to jump in the middle of a nice conversation :)

but I 'whined' earlier about "LotRO indeed took some steps towards pay-to-win in the last two years, but still is very far from it. (although it was enough for Turbine to erase the "convenience, not advantage" post from everywhere :) )"  and I still hold myself to it. If it's more comfortable to you we can call it 'pay to advantage' instead of pay to win, but the direction is pretty clear... and it's not even a bashing or whining, I love LotRO, and I don't participate the fight in the 'Moors, but that change has nothing to do with pve or pvp. Just a few clues what I'm talking about:   (I know, you said we have no clue, let's call it a list then)

-skeleton horse ("it's only convenience, for those who don't had the luck to get it from the chest") then

-tomes ("again only convenience, the drop rate is so low, we let the players to buy it") then

-250/+68% horses ("convenience for those, who don't want to gather enough reputation") then

-store only mounts ("it's only cosmetics... oh, you're a horse collector? lol, bad for you") then

-LI change, backed up with store-only Relic removal scroll (around that time erased they Patience's "convenience not advantage" line from everywhere, it was hardly only a convenience, there was an uproar on the forums as well)

After that I don't even followed the store, so I'm not sure in the order, but there came the

Premium barter wallet (true, they fixed it later for vip's),

statted gear (I know, only low-level, but not that is the importance, it's the option - now they can put any gear in the Store),

purchase-able crafting (hardly only a convenience, and again it opens the option to more advancements in the Store like other factions)

universal pots (don't mean the creep version) with higher boost than it's athelas / celebrant counterparts, and with only 20sec cd instead of 2min

and the latest xp changes (in crafting and festival) to establish the arrival of the xp-disabler in Store...

Again, I love the game. But it doesn't mean I have to look away from changes I don't like. (almost forgot the Apparel dummies and the Store buttons spawning everywhere :) ) LotRO has one of the best freemium models in the market. There's absolutely no need to this push towards greed. They are doing it in a very sleazy, one step at a time method as well... Look it at this way: if they've put universal pots and statted gear in Store right after the f2p conversion, what would've the playerbase said?

Originally posted by Po_gg

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by Nyrujo

Now for the P2Win comments. I saw a few fan boys freak out about that comment and I hate to tell you fellas but it's true. Maybe you don't visit the Moors, I wouldn't after 6 years of the same PvP zone, but the monster players can buy everything via the online store. That's the perfect definition of pay 2 win.

Ho hum, so you don't like the game, fine you have not figured it out yet that Lotro is not about pvp, if you want to pvp there are far better games to do it in.  Every time I see someone whining about pay to win in Lotro, I see another poster who has no clue what they are talking about. 

Far from me to jump in the middle of a nice conversation :)

but I 'whined' earlier about "LotRO indeed took some steps towards pay-to-win in the last two years, but still is very far from it. (although it was enough for Turbine to erase the "convenience, not advantage" post from everywhere :) )"  and I still hold myself to it. If it's more comfortable to you we can call it 'pay to advantage' instead of pay to win, but the direction is pretty clear... and it's not even a bashing or whining, I love LotRO, and I don't participate the fight in the 'Moors, but that change has nothing to do with pve or pvp. Just a few clues what I'm talking about:   (I know, you said we have no clue, let's call it a list then)

-skeleton horse ("it's only convenience, for those who don't had the luck to get it from the chest") then

-tomes ("again only convenience, the drop rate is so low, we let the players to buy it") then

-250/+68% horses ("convenience for those, who don't want to gather enough reputation") then

-store only mounts ("it's only cosmetics... oh, you're a horse collector? lol, bad for you") then

-LI change, backed up with store-only Relic removal scroll (around that time erased they Patience's "convenience not advantage" line from everywhere, it was hardly only a convenience, there was an uproar on the forums as well)

After that I don't even followed the store, so I'm not sure in the order, but there came the

Premium barter wallet (true, they fixed it later for vip's),

statted gear (I know, only low-level, but not that is the importance, it's the option - now they can put any gear in the Store),

purchase-able crafting (hardly only a convenience, and again it opens the option to more advancements in the Store like other factions)

universal pots (don't mean the creep version) with higher boost than it's athelas / celebrant counterparts, and with only 20sec cd instead of 2min

and the latest xp changes (in crafting and festival) to establish the arrival of the xp-disabler in Store...

LOTRO is hardly pay to win game. You cannot buy raid gear, rare meta-deed titles or mounts in the shop.  Stat tomes are buyable on my server from AH for around 40 golds and relict removal scrolls for 100 gold- no big deal. Store only mounts have now only cosmetic value. War-steeds are far superior to normal mounts especially if you invest in agility or turn rate -then  they will behave like normal mounts.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by Czanrei

Mounted combat in Lotro is a joke and the devs should be embarrassed for releasing such lazy and shoddy work. There is not one single mmo out there that restricts mounted combat to only one region for one thing. Mounted combat being restricted to one area is a cash-grab pure and simple to get players to buy the new expansion.

Which goes back to Lotro evolving into a pay-to-win mmo over the past couple years. When a game allows the purchase of non-cosmetic gear, faster than normal mounts and XP and skill boosting potions/scrolls on Turbine's cash shop equals pay-to-win. Some gamers need to be smarter with their money and not waste money on pay-to-win garbage. 

Biggest load of nonsense I have seen in ages.  There is nothing that p2win in Lotro, the poster obviously does not understand what p2win is.  It is when you get a huge advantage from buying equipment from the item shop, or get matts that create such. 

You might want to look at what people can buy for themselves in PvMP.  It's P2W.

Originally posted by urbanos

Originally posted by Po_gg

"LotRO indeed took some steps towards pay-to-win in the last two years, but still is very far from it. (although it was enough for Turbine to erase the "convenience, not advantage" post from everywhere :) )" 

LOTRO is hardly pay to win game. You cannot buy raid gear, rare meta-deed titles or mounts in the shop.  Stat tomes are buyable on my server from AH for around 40 golds and relict removal scrolls for 100 gold- no big deal. Store only mounts have now only cosmetic value. War-steeds are far superior to normal mounts especially if you invest in agility or turn rate -then  they will behave like normal mounts.

 

Ok, then again: took some steps towards pay-to-win ..., but still is very far from it. I don't say it's p2w, I'm just saying it's on a wrong course and that course is heading towards p2w.

For the stuff in AH - you can call me old-fashioned, but buying gold for real money is just as negative as it was years ago, and if companies step into the places of the gold-sellers, it still remains the same negative. Maybe it's just me, a lot of games have now this "buy something then sell it for ingame money" method...

And as Frodo wrote, the Moors is much closer now to full-blown p2w. I don't pvp, but I have buddies who do, and I hear from them the same thing.