Originally posted by Mrbloodworth  

 

I find it absolutely hilarious all of you saying that LOTRO is no longer casual.

You sit there, and look at all the OPTIONAL "HARDCORE" CONTENT and say there is nothing for you left. What a load.

 

QFE. The article mentioned adding a single 12-man, and adding a metric ton of solo, 6-man and even 3-man (?) content in addition to it. And that's on top of this Skirmish system that really should increase the longevity of the game. There are problems with LoTRO, the least of which is it becoming too Hardcore Raid centered. Go play EQ2 if you want to see a raiding community.

LoTRO never feels like a grind for me, I sit back and enjoy the content with my friends. It's literally the only game where I've read most of the quest text, enjoyed the story of the Book quests and not wanted to be at the cap right away. Taking time with alts is one thing, but wanting to read quest text is what makes LoTRO not a grind IMO.

Of course, I could be cynical and look at the $20 download as a cash grab before a large chunk of the user base leaves for Bioware's Star Wars MMO.  Still, as I have a lifetime sub, $20 a year isn't much to shell out for everything I get out of the game.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

 

I find it absolutely hilarious all of you saying that LOTRO is no longer casual.

You sit there, and look at all the OPTIONAL "HARDCORE" CONTENT and say there is nothing for you left. What a load.

Pro tip: Radiance gear is only useful for one thing. you guessed it, RAIDS. There is alike a grand total of 5-6 raids in the entire game. Everything else is for solo, small groups, or 6 mans, including skirmishes and the rest of the new content in this expansion.

You do not need to do anything, or have any of the radiance gear, EVER unless you are raiding.

For fucks sake, it even says right in the article you will now be able to see where a legendary items is going in its progression before investing time in it AND you will be able to craft 3ed and second age items. Not to mention the horse, and bank changes, zone revamps, recent crafting changes and bag stacking.

Clearly most of you do not know what casual means, or what hardcore is, OR how good you have it with this game. Your just re spouting out the same dribble you read on a forum somewhere.

 

 

 

All stuff that should be in a free book release.

Originally posted by Valdartak

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

 

I find it absolutely hilarious all of you saying that LOTRO is no longer casual.

You sit there, and look at all the OPTIONAL "HARDCORE" CONTENT and say there is nothing for you left. What a load.

Pro tip: Radiance gear is only useful for one thing. you guessed it, RAIDS. There is alike a grand total of 5-6 raids in the entire game. Everything else is for solo, small groups, or 6 mans, including skirmishes and the rest of the new content in this expansion.

You do not need to do anything, or have any of the radiance gear, EVER unless you are raiding.

For fucks sake, it even says right in the article you will now be able to see where a legendary items is going in its progression before investing time in it AND you will be able to craft 3ed and second age items. Not to mention the horse, and bank changes, zone revamps, recent crafting changes and bag stacking.

Clearly most of you do not know what casual means, or what hardcore is, OR how good you have it with this game. Your just re spouting out the same dribble you read on a forum somewhere.

 

 

 

All stuff that should be in a free book release.

Most that I listed was. I listed very little of whats coming in the expansion, apparently, you have no idea what is what, thus your comments are moot. I listed all the recent and expansion changes that continue to make LOTRO a game very respectful of its player-bases time.

Problem is, most of you do not realize how much work most of the changes coming in the expansion is. The skirmish system is not something someone made in an evening.

Scope, and perceptive, look it up. The expansion is also 20$. Many in this player base have been spoiled, Turbine still releases more free content and new feature more frequently, and with more quality and quantity than any other development house.

Originally posted by teuchy

Of course, I could be cynical and look at the $20 download as a cash grab before a large chunk of the user base leaves for Bioware's Star Wars MMO.  Still, as I have a lifetime sub, $20 a year isn't much to shell out for everything I get out of the game.

Eh why would people leave a MMO for a game that is far from release which we know almost nothing about and what we know isnt very promising?

How could they give a huge content update like this for free? Other companies would charge full price for this amount of content but SoM is only $20...

The mods here need to stop breaking threads. The last page button, and the number of the last page is now broken, this has happened in about 15 threads on the site so far. To the point where a rely boots you to the general discussion forums.

Originally posted by teuchy

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

The expansion  sounds ok but I'm not really looking forward to the "Take on the Nazgul and his Fell Beast and beat him down"

We've already done too many of these....beat up the super high level villian things. There should be SOME things in a game (arch-villians) that the characters are NEVER able to take on DIRECTLY.

Otherwise it just starts to become.... Another Nazgul (yawn) beat up one of those in Volume One.... Balrog (yawn)... farmed it a dozen times.

Storytelling 101.... Leave direct confrontations with the biggest, baddest enemies in the world OUT.... otherwise they loose thier entire sense of dread,  mystery, suspense and awe...and become old hat. Not to mention it doesn't leave much you can throw at the characters later on in the story.

Things like Nazgul should inspire a sense of fear and dread in the PLAYER.....cause you KNOW no matter how powerfull or high level your character is.....you've got NO CHANCE to survive a direct confrontation with one. Just seeing the hint of one should give you a chill.

There really is a virtue to under-stated. Unfortunately Turbines story-arcs (which were very good in the beggining of the game) more and more start to seem like something written by a marketing guy then an author.

 

And yet Aragorn and the hobbits were able to temporarily keep the 9 at bay.  Something as simple as a flash flood (although magically created) was all it needed to take them out of the equation for a bit.  And Eowyn was able to take out the chief Nazgul.

I agree that, if such events are too common, then they lose their impact.  However, I definitely want to have such events and don't want to wait until the final battle for that to happen.  I've enjoyed the way Turbine has implemented those events and they've been rare enough that the chance of another shot at a Nazgul does not seem passe to me.  Sure, if you farmed the Rift a lot, then it could get old - but that's optional for any player.  If a raid stops being fun, stop playing it.  For instance, I've only been into Helegrod about 5 or so times - the last time probably about a year ago.  If I ever find the time to go in again with my guild (they still run it every now and then), I think I'd have a blast doing it again.

Last night, I ran 2.8.3 for the first time (which is also the Hall of Mirrors instance).  I found myself picking up "lesser rings" from the mobs.  It was a geniune lore "wow" moment for me - right down to the quest hand-in text.

If I never got a chance to fight those battles, I think that would be a huge disappointment.

Well, I guess we'll just agree to disagree on that. I'll just mention that Tolkien draws heavily on the old concepts of Fate and Doom.  The reason Eowyn COULD take down the Witch King was because she was the one fated to do so. No swordsman, no matter how brave, strong or skilled could achieve that because the Witch King was doomed to never fall to the hand of any man.... and he didn't it.

Furthermore, there are many things that Aragorn does in the books because only HE can do them. Remember, not only is he not just any old wanderer in the wild... he's not even just any Dunedain either. He is Isildurs heir.... that blood-line means something special in Tolkiens World.

As far as our characters go.... we're just supposed to be the Ordinary sort of hero's that you might see get a passing mention in the book (e.g Hama) .... At least that was Turbines origional concept (as they described it) when they first released the game.... and one I REALLY LIKED. That's why we are not allowed to play Dunedain or Elf Lords.  There is something far richer (IMO) to being forced to play those ordinary sorts of hero's with all thier flaws, failings and short-comings.

Playing the guy with the cape and the big S on his chest.... gets very one dimensional and frankly cartoonish very quickly. It seems to me that Turbine keeps upping the ante with how powerfull our characters are supposed to be in the world.... I guess they are going for the "Iconic" or "Epic" or whatever the marketing-speak buzzword of the day is. I just wish they had stuck with thier origional guns and kept things on a more subtle/low key level. Honestly I think they are letting thier marketing guys drive thier content and tone.....and frankly marketing guys stink as story-tellers, GM's, and world designers.

The game had pretty much the perfect feel for me right around when our characters were 15-20th level or so. The more we advance the more Monty Haulish/Monty Pythonish it starts to feel..... and frankly the further away (for me) it feels from the essence of Tolkiens creation.

This is really simple.

The preponderance of long-time LotRO players are very unhappy with the direction the new development team is taking with the game.    We'd like to see them stop worshipping at the old-style fantasy MMO god, reverse direction and move forward and never look back. 

The profound dislike with the old-style stuff is all over the official forum and a focal point of many threads on all thewell-known fan sties, as well.  Impossible to ignore or dismiss, even if you're a LotRO/Turbine fanboi and/or a lover of the now-tiresome old, outdated standbys of fantasy MMO game play.

We'd like to see more polish to what we have (mounts are a joke, for example) and more forward thinking (like skirmishes).  We need even more improvements to crafting; lets not forget how silly the half-ass housing has remained the same, unchanged since it was hastily thrown in).  Polish.   LotRO is screaming "Polish me!."

Unfortunately the current dev regime made it clear that they will remain stubbornly fixated on many of the tired old-school WoW-like (use EQ2 here and the like) systems, foolishly justifying this in their mistaken impression that it will bring more people to the game. 

Sad.

While I agree there is plenty they could and should be working on, it's not like none of what you want is there.

The new skirmish system IS there. They are taking the first steps towards making mounts usable in combat. They are making crafting more important to end game legendaries. 

All three of those are things you say they need to do and well they are doing them. Look on the bright side for once?

Originally posted by Lizante

This is really simple.

The preponderance of long-time LotRO players are very unhappy with the direction the new development team is taking with the game.    We'd like to see them stop worshipping at the old-style fantasy MMO god, reverse direction and move forward and never look back. 

The profound dislike with the old-style stuff is all over the official forum and a focal point of many threads on all thewell-known fan sties, as well.  Impossible to ignore or dismiss, even if you're a LotRO/Turbine fanboi and/or a lover of the now-tiresome old, outdated standbys of fantasy MMO game play.

We'd like to see more polish to what we have (mounts are a joke, for example) and more forward thinking (like skirmishes).  We need even more improvements to crafting; lets not forget how silly the half-ass housing has remained the same, unchanged since it was hastily thrown in).  Polish.   LotRO is screaming "Polish me!."

Unfortunately the current dev regime made it clear that they will remain stubbornly fixated on many of the tired old-school WoW-like (use EQ2 here and the like) systems, foolishly justifying this in their mistaken impression that it will bring more people to the game. 

Sad.

While it is true a lot of folks are unhappy. All you have to do is log into game and see the numbers.  Saturday night I went to each region and did a /who to see what all I cam up with. A total of around 2900 folks playing, durring prime time hours.  Saturday morning less than 100 total server wide.

I think a lot of folks are playing other things while waiting for the dev team to give us details.  Things we do know about the relase. We getting level cap increase, were getting some kind of tune up to LI system, and a skrimage system.  Were also getting more radiance gating something that has been an issue for a year, instead of fixing it now there just splitting it off. 

Only time will tell, moria was a bad publish. I would bet that were going to have months worth of fixes after this thing goes live. All in all the game has departed from something special the token world back to just another game with a token skin on it.

"All in all the game has departed from something special the token world back to just another game with a token skin on it."

Freudian slip, eh Eric?  Still on point, though.

I'm a lifetime founder so I'll be checking to see how long it takes for Turbine to get back on course with this game.  If they do manage to listen like they used to and get away from their current bent on old style, outdated MMO "features," great.  I'd love to return to logging in and playing LotRO regularly.  If not, I'll just continue beta testing Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Originally posted by Lizante

"All in all the game has departed from something special the token world back to just another game with a token skin on it."

Freudian slip, eh Eric?  Still on point, though.

I'm a lifetime founder so I'll be checking to see how long it takes for Turbine to get back on course with this game.  If they do manage to listen like they used to and get away from their current bent on old style, outdated MMO "features," great.  I'd love to return to logging in and playing LotRO regularly.  If not, I'll just continue beta testing Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Well you dont speak for all of us... I have played LotrO since beta and think MoM have been alot better than SoA was and that Turbine have been improving the game alot since what it was like back the.

The only thing I dont like is that they are catering to much to the solo grinders.... and guess what? The majority of the people complaining are the solo grinders for some wierd reason.. But if you are looking for a solo game SWTOR will probably be great for you ;)

Well I have to say, even as a supporter, I am a bit baffled and vaguely annoyed now that they have announced some more details.

On the one hand, it's cool that I might be getting Mirkwood for free....on the other, it's annoying that I cannot really tell for sure from the way they worded their "special offer".

Also, this new "adventurers pack" thing for the 2 extra character slots and some perqs is a massive let down and the start of the slide down into the abyss of microtransaction hell - which *will* make me quit the game faster than anything.