wurm online or a tale in the desert seems to be a game for you guys that dosent enjoy the world in lotro becuse its to stif. please try them out. you will be coming back to lotro when wurm is done with you :P

Originally posted by observer

What went wrong?!  This is an easy question to answer.

They restricted us to the boring zones of Eriador.  We should have been able to start in Rohan, Gondor, and even Mordor.  Instead, we get a linear progression of zones following the story.

Oh I hope that they will make alternative start zones in rohan and gondor when the xpacs reaches that area. And that players with right level will beable to create some random high level toon (as the dk in wow).

Originally posted by Toquio3

The problem with Lotro is that Turbine chained the game to the fellowship. Theres just no way to escape that now. You're gonna follow this path and that is all there is to it.

But if they had stayed with the Middle Earth Online concept, you would just be whoever you wanted in middle earth. a more sandbox approach. you would have alot more freedom (and desire too) to fight and explore the world. As it is now, you kill some spiders, bears and boars in-between story missions and cutscenes.

I enjoyed the few months I played Lotro, but the game, or should I say, the world, feels stale.

Possibly.

Part of having the game follow the fellowship is that it provides the spine for the world. Take the fellowhip away and you have a very rich detailed world but there really isn't any lord of the rings.

It's like basing a game on the french revolution but not having any of the character's who are driving the french revolution.

Still, maybe in a sense you are right. Maybe, as long as news of the fellowship somehow made it to the player, being in the world and knowing what was going on but not necessarily having to be a direct part of it might have been sufficient.

Though I think many players would be miffed that they weren't part of the conflict in some way.

It's interesting to read this blurb on middle earth online and realize how different the game came out:'

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/middleearthonline/preview_6028194.html

Originally posted by Toquio3

The problem with Lotro is that Turbine chained the game to the fellowship. Theres just no way to escape that now. You're gonna follow this path and that is all there is to it.

But if they had stayed with the Middle Earth Online concept, you would just be whoever you wanted in middle earth. a more sandbox approach. you would have alot more freedom (and desire too) to fight and explore the world. As it is now, you kill some spiders, bears and boars in-between story missions and cutscenes.

I enjoyed the few months I played Lotro, but the game, or should I say, the world, feels stale.

This, i fint the problem with Lotro is that is has an END (or will do), mmorpg should not have an END

What went wrong for me is that the game is boring. The environments and some of the story is great, but the overall gameplay bores me. You run around, collecting quests, then you set out to complete the objectives using the same skill routine, and then you turn the quests in for rewards. Rince and repeat in different zones and add a new skill here and there. It's all rather boring, because I've already done all of this before in another game. It feels way too similar in gameplay to be fun again.

Then there's the character models. They look horrible. I'm one who didn't like EQ2's models really, because they looked like plastic, but I'd rather have EQ2's models than LoTRO. At least EQ2 gets body proportions right and they fit in the game world.

So that's how the game went wrong for me. I REALLY wanted to like it, but boring is boring. I understand it's a successful game and people love that kind of gameplay, so I'm not speaking for anyone but myself.

What went wrong is that Turbine aimed at the wow-folks. The lotro ip needs something way larger than that and if you want to make a game with that setting, don't start to plan any lower than sandbox and open world, one server for all and a world at least the size of Vanguard's.

This is sort of WoW with the Lotro-setting, which doesn't fit together. I've heard gamers complaining that it's not enough mmorpg for an mmorpg and heard Tolkien nerds complaining that it's not enough Lotro to do justice to that ip.

I don't give a crap about the fellowship, playing music infront of the pony, hobbits delivering cake or whatever... i want to roam and get lost in a dark and danger middle-earth dammit!

This is something the MMORPG.com community does well.

Give them any game and ask for opinion and they will shred it. (Insert name of game here)...what went wrong?

No pvp! It had too much pvp! The launch was bad! The launch went too smoothly and raised expectations! It didn't have level 50 content on day two..I didn't go to the bathroom for 48 hours for this!?! No ninja cats? What the hell?!

By most standards whether you enjoy LotRO or not it is a well produced game. You may enjoy the crayon drawing of a deranged chimp more than the works of Vincent van Gogh but there should be consideration in a comparative review for its relative merit.

Originally posted by MuffinStump

This is something the MMORPG.com community does well.

Give them any game and ask for opinion and they will shred it. (Insert name of game here)...what went wrong?

No pvp! It had too much pvp! The launch was bad! The launch went too smoothly and raised expectations! It didn't have level 50 content on day two..I didn't go to the bathroom for 48 hours for this!?! No ninja cats? What the hell?!

 

Oh yes. And the fun part is that its mostly disillusion and former wow players that are going strongest. And how do you see that? Mostly becuse they complain about [insert random game] is alike wow and having that game as the original of all mmo´s. Ive seen some memembers here complain about daoc copying wow :D Funny but sad. 

I hope that Muffinstum wont be kicked out from mmorpg like JonMichael becuse of the comment I quoted.

But once again, another individual doens't understand the idea of why monster play is the way it is and feels like the whole idea of evil players is lore breaking.

It's not exactly lore breaking to have evil players.

It does however present a variety of problems.

For one, Lord of the Rings is told from the point of view of the good side. You never see any scenes where it's Sauron and his minions planning their attack or anything from the point of view of mordors generals. There are no scenes that don't include one of the main protagonists.

Secondly, the evil side, with the exception of any higher ups, at are the direct beck and call of their superiors. You don't just leave ranks and go off to screw around.

Thirdly, the game is being developed from the standpoint of the fellowhip as it journeys east. I imagine it would have been quite a herculean task to create the entirety of middle earth, populate it and then have players meet up in the appropriate areas.

I do think some of this could have been done had they had evil players receive orders directly from npc superiors however, their role is so black and white that going off the path would present somewhat limited gameplay.

Also, one of the issues of creating an mmo (which the more I play them the more I realize that they just don't work well in their present incarnation to tell great stories in an immersive world)  based on an IP is that one really should respect the IP. In The Lord of the Rings, evil will lose. That is the whole point.

I think what many players wanted was to just have "the world of middle earth" and then be given permission to run amock.

It's not the lord of the rings if orcs are hanging around in the shire dancing in the middle of town with their hobbit friends.

I do think that once the world opens up you will get more monster play areas that make sense.

I actually don't like how Turbine did lotro. However, I have often wondered, if I was given the IP, what would I have done differently.

I think I would have had monster play but I would have added areas that were contested areas that affected each side. There are contested areas in the books. And though in the end good has to prevail, I would have made it so that there was a point system to either side. If evil was winning then the good side would actually receive a debuff of sorts, be it xp or some minus to fighting. Maybe even an increase in taxes (for the war effort of course)  and would make an incentive for good pvp players to fight their evil bretherin Also the opposite would be true for the bad side.

I do think having evil players is possible but it has to make sense within the IP. In addtion, having elves and dwarves making music at the gates of Mordor is "way out".

That was a good post. And mostly right.

- Lore-wise it would be impossible to make a 2-faction MMO in a Lord of the Rings setting. The Orcs/Wargs/Trolls had no free-will they where bound to the will of their masters and just couldn't run around alone and adventuring.

- Lore-wise you couldn't have batallions of orcs and packs of wargs running chaos in Bree or the Shire at this point in time. The story is well documented in that part.

- Lore-wise there's no writings about great "heroes" of Mordor and tolkien never wrote any view-point from the evil side. It's a very black and white world. Either you are evil and hence always evil. Or you are a good person, a free people, and you will do good things. In the end, the good beats the evil. Thats what Middle-Earth was in the time of the War of the Ring. Who would want to play on the faction that was bound to loose, no mather what?

Turbine did come up with PvMP. It's an excelent idea in Paper. it's probably the only game out there where the only way you can level up a toon and get new skills and perks is trough PvP and PvP only. The game as been out for 2+ years and there is no such thing as a maxed out creep toon. I think the max level a creep can have is 15, and the highest there is right now is 12. Thats kinda of unique, isn't? 2 years since the game launched and there's still not one maxed level character? And not even close to it by the way.

The problem is that PvMP is that it was abandoned by Turbine.

- It hasn't seen any improvements in 2 years.

- Its still the same scenario from two years ago.

- Freep Peoples (Good guys) have absolutely no meaningful perks from PvMP, besides a few titles. The only thing you'll win a hefty repair bill. The things that might be useful require you to go to a PvE dungeon inside a PvP area, so absolutely no perks from PvP alone, only PvE inside PvP.

- There's no population control. If there are 30 creeps and 10 freeps in the zone, you'll be zerged to death if you are on the wrong side.

- There's no arena type of combat. No way to create a controlled 1vs1, 3vs3 or 6vs6. Not even Creep vs Creep or Freep vs Freep.

The idea is good, but it lacks implementation and man-hours.

Lotro has a great IP and the game has a beautyfull world with nice good quests/storys and an avarage crafting.

But the chars look and move ugly and the classes are not well defined, the combat is not fun. This is absolute a gamekiller eventually...

I loved everything but the combat in LOTRO. The combat was made for window lickers. Push a hotkey and wait 2-3 seconds for it to fire off

Originally posted by Tyranix

I loved everything but the combat in LOTRO. The combat was made for window lickers. Push a hotkey and wait 2-3 seconds for it to fire off

Anyway, the combat system is gonna be completely revamp when SoM launches on Dec 1st. It's much faster with immediate responses. Look out for it.

Originally posted by wickedpt

But once again, another individual doens't understand the idea of why monster play is the way it is and feels like the whole idea of evil players is lore breaking.

It's not exactly lore breaking to have evil players.

It does however present a variety of problems.

For one, Lord of the Rings is told from the point of view of the good side. You never see any scenes where it's Sauron and his minions planning their attack or anything from the point of view of mordors generals. There are no scenes that don't include one of the main protagonists.

Secondly, the evil side, with the exception of any higher ups, at are the direct beck and call of their superiors. You don't just leave ranks and go off to screw around.

Thirdly, the game is being developed from the standpoint of the fellowhip as it journeys east. I imagine it would have been quite a herculean task to create the entirety of middle earth, populate it and then have players meet up in the appropriate areas.

I do think some of this could have been done had they had evil players receive orders directly from npc superiors however, their role is so black and white that going off the path would present somewhat limited gameplay.

Also, one of the issues of creating an mmo (which the more I play them the more I realize that they just don't work well in their present incarnation to tell great stories in an immersive world)  based on an IP is that one really should respect the IP. In The Lord of the Rings, evil will lose. That is the whole point.

I think what many players wanted was to just have "the world of middle earth" and then be given permission to run amock.

It's not the lord of the rings if orcs are hanging around in the shire dancing in the middle of town with their hobbit friends.

I do think that once the world opens up you will get more monster play areas that make sense.

I actually don't like how Turbine did lotro. However, I have often wondered, if I was given the IP, what would I have done differently.

I think I would have had monster play but I would have added areas that were contested areas that affected each side. There are contested areas in the books. And though in the end good has to prevail, I would have made it so that there was a point system to either side. If evil was winning then the good side would actually receive a debuff of sorts, be it xp or some minus to fighting. Maybe even an increase in taxes (for the war effort of course)  and would make an incentive for good pvp players to fight their evil bretherin Also the opposite would be true for the bad side.

I do think having evil players is possible but it has to make sense within the IP. In addtion, having elves and dwarves making music at the gates of Mordor is "way out".

 

That was a good post. And mostly right.

- Lore-wise it would be impossible to make a 2-faction MMO in a Lord of the Rings setting. The Orcs/Wargs/Trolls had no free-will they where bound to the will of their masters and just couldn't run around alone and adventuring.

- Lore-wise you couldn't have batallions of orcs and packs of wargs running chaos in Bree or the Shire at this point in time. The story is well documented in that part.

- Lore-wise there's no writings about great "heroes" of Mordor and tolkien never wrote any view-point from the evil side. It's a very black and white world. Either you are evil and hence always evil. Or you are a good person, a free people, and you will do good things. In the end, the good beats the evil. Thats what Middle-Earth was in the time of the War of the Ring. Who would want to play on the faction that was bound to loose, no mather what?

Turbine did come up with PvMP. It's an excelent idea in Paper. it's probably the only game out there where the only way you can level up a toon and get new skills and perks is trough PvP and PvP only. The game as been out for 2+ years and there is no such thing as a maxed out creep toon. I think the max level a creep can have is 15, and the highest there is right now is 12. Thats kinda of unique, isn't? 2 years since the game launched and there's still not one maxed level character? And not even close to it by the way.

The problem is that PvMP is that it was abandoned by Turbine.

- It hasn't seen any improvements in 2 years.

- Its still the same scenario from two years ago.

- Freep Peoples (Good guys) have absolutely no meaningful perks from PvMP, besides a few titles. The only thing you'll win a hefty repair bill. The things that might be useful require you to go to a PvE dungeon inside a PvP area, so absolutely no perks from PvP alone, only PvE inside PvP.

- There's no population control. If there are 30 creeps and 10 freeps in the zone, you'll be zerged to death if you are on the wrong side.

- There's no arena type of combat. No way to create a controlled 1vs1, 3vs3 or 6vs6. Not even Creep vs Creep or Freep vs Freep.

The idea is good, but it lacks implementation and man-hours.

Lore-wise it's already broken.  Since when do dwarves run around on fields and mine ores that magically disappear?

Originally posted by wickedpt

 

Turbine did come up with PvMP. It's an excelent idea in Paper. it's probably the only game out there where the only way you can level up a toon and get new skills and perks is trough PvP and PvP only. The game as been out for 2+ years and there is no such thing as a maxed out creep toon. I think the max level a creep can have is 15, and the highest there is right now is 12. Thats kinda of unique, isn't? 2 years since the game launched and there's still not one maxed level character? And not even close to it by the way.

The problem is that PvMP is that it was abandoned by Turbine.

- It hasn't seen any improvements in 2 years.

- Its still the same scenario from two years ago.

- Freep Peoples (Good guys) have absolutely no meaningful perks from PvMP, besides a few titles. The only thing you'll win a hefty repair bill. The things that might be useful require you to go to a PvE dungeon inside a PvP area, so absolutely no perks from PvP alone, only PvE inside PvP.

- There's no population control. If there are 30 creeps and 10 freeps in the zone, you'll be zerged to death if you are on the wrong side.

- There's no arena type of combat. No way to create a controlled 1vs1, 3vs3 or 6vs6. Not even Creep vs Creep or Freep vs Freep.

The idea is good, but it lacks implementation and man-hours.

That is not entirely true.

Back in the beginning, PvMP in Ettenmoors was nothing more then just go kill eachother and build up ranks.

Later on they added Capturable Fortresses and camps and largely expanded the features of creeps and gave more reward options (like complete class specific PVP oriented armor sets, wich look awesome btw).

The only problem right now is, that Turbine indeed didn't gave any love to PvMP since Mines of Moria expansion. Wich is annoying as MoM with the raise of level cap, created some balance issues in PvMP. They did some minor fixes here and there. But not enough.

But saying that they haven't done anything with PvMP since launch is not true. They greatly improved it over the last 2 years.

And capturing and defending the Fortresses is actually really fun and requires a lot of coordinated teamwork!

In fact, and most hilarious, I think the Fortresses in Ettenmoors are much better designed then the boring Keeps in WAR.

Cheers

Originally posted by Guillermo197 

That is not entirely true.

Back in the beginning, PvMP in Ettenmoors was nothing more then just go kill eachother and build up ranks.

Later on they added Capturable Fortresses and camps and largely expanded the features of creeps and gave more reward options (like complete class specific PVP oriented armor sets, wich look awesome btw).

The only problem right now is, that Turbine indeed didn't gave any love to PvMP since Mines of Moria expansion. Wich is annoying as MoM with the raise of level cap, created some balance issues in PvMP. They did some minor fixes here and there. But not enough.

But saying that they haven't done anything with PvMP since launch is not true. They greatly improved it over the last 2 years.

And capturing and defending the Fortresses is actually really fun and requires a lot of coordinated teamwork!

In fact, and most hilarious, I think the Fortresses in Ettenmoors are much better designed then the boring Keeps in WAR.

Cheers

Yes, they added keeps. That only served as a gateway for the DoF, which was a PvE dungeon inside a PvP zone. There was no reason for freeps to take keeps (creeps got DP), so the map was mostly red all the time.

The armour in SoA was nice, but only way to get it was via PvE, from barter drops in DoF. How silly was that?

In MoM, they "upgraded" the sets, and increase the bartering costs. With barter items that only dropped from the 24-man PvE raid. And the armour, cosmetically equal to the radiance armour, is worst than most quest rewards. How silly is that?

They've done a few patches here and there (removed HS's for OP's) but its not enough. PvMP is one hell of a good idea that is being thrown to waste.

Originally posted by Yohanu




Lore-wise it's already broken.  Since when do dwarves run around on fields and mine ores that magically disappear?

Please don't confuse Lore with gameplay. And btw, Dwarves run around everywhere.

Originally posted by TheHatter

Originally posted by RendRegen

Originally posted by Jester47

Originally posted by Yuberek

 Very true, when was the last time a game had such a nice clean release.   For those that will say WoW, please remember WoW had a terrible release.

 

At least WoW actually had finished content at release.

Obviously you didn't play it at release.

 

I see this all the freaking time, be it about content or bugs. Everyone who makes a reply like this OBVIOUSLY hasn't seen many games launch.

 

Comparatively speaking (like every other MMO ever), WoW was virtually finished and bug free at release. I was around in WoW beta, launch, and I just quit for the last time a couple months ago. I've also watched almost every single major and semi-major release in the past 10yrs. I've never seen a release go as well as WoW's did as far as releasing an almost finished product.

WoW at release is almost comparable to single player games that release in today's market. I've seen quite a few of those released with more bugs and less content than WoW did at release. That's saying alot, a 2D MMO is a much much bigger project than the biggest most advanced single player game in the world

So? That's not what he said. He said it had finished content, which is a flat-out lie. Who cares if some other statement he didn't make is true? Whenever someone lies on the Internet, are you supposed to pretend the person said some true statement rather than what he actually said? Is that really the point you are trying to make?

Also, it wasn't even close to being comparable to single player games. Better than most other MMOs, though? Sure. Although I'd say LotRO was the more polished game. And while you ran out of PvE content earlier quicker than you did in WoW, LotRO actually had PvP content at release - something WoW didn't introduce until long after launch.

Bottom line: Don't want us to call your BS? Stop posting BS. Whining about us pointing out your lies isn't going to make the rest of us believe them.

All PvMP needs right now to give it a good kick in the arse is some decent gear rewards, especially in the Delving. That would send Freeps flocking back in, especially if some of the rewards had some radiance on them. After playing for two years, I think LOTRO's itemization is its biggest problem right now across the board: it needs more and better crafted gear, and more armor alternatives than just the current radiance sets. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the game, but things could definitely be better.

God forbid there be one game that is primarily PvE.

And although I can't stand LotRO, I'm pretty sure that they're definitely in the top 3 or 5 in terms of subscriptions. That's not a failure, so I don't think you can seriously ask "What Went Wrong?"

Originally posted by RendRegen

Originally posted by TheHatter

Originally posted by RendRegen

Originally posted by Jester47

Originally posted by Yuberek

 Very true, when was the last time a game had such a nice clean release.   For those that will say WoW, please remember WoW had a terrible release.

 

At least WoW actually had finished content at release.

Obviously you didn't play it at release.

 

I see this all the freaking time, be it about content or bugs. Everyone who makes a reply like this OBVIOUSLY hasn't seen many games launch.

 

Comparatively speaking (like every other MMO ever), WoW was virtually finished and bug free at release. I was around in WoW beta, launch, and I just quit for the last time a couple months ago. I've also watched almost every single major and semi-major release in the past 10yrs. I've never seen a release go as well as WoW's did as far as releasing an almost finished product.

WoW at release is almost comparable to single player games that release in today's market. I've seen quite a few of those released with more bugs and less content than WoW did at release. That's saying alot, a 2D MMO is a much much bigger project than the biggest most advanced single player game in the world

So? That's not what he said. He said it had finished content, which is a flat-out lie. Who cares if some other statement he didn't make is true? Whenever someone lies on the Internet, are you supposed to pretend the person said some true statement rather than what he actually said? Is that really the point you are trying to make?

Also, it wasn't even close to being comparable to single player games. Better than most other MMOs, though? Sure. Although I'd say LotRO was the more polished game. And while you ran out of PvE content earlier quicker than you did in WoW, LotRO actually had PvP content at release - something WoW didn't introduce until long after launch.

Bottom line: Don't want us to call your BS? Stop posting BS. Whining about us pointing out your lies isn't going to make the rest of us believe them.

 I was PvPing with anyone anywhere, anytime on day 1.  Actually it was probably a week or 2 later =)    There were groups of  30+ Alliance waltzing through the Barrens every night on their way to OG and we'd have fun brawls.  Sure, the BGs didn't show up for a couple of months but we didn't need them at all, since there was plenty of fighting everywhere you went.  If you were there on a PvP server, you'd obviously know.   Fighting just to be able to level past 20 is the same as PvPing for the sake of it in UO or AC.

Of course there was  finished content.  1000s of quests on day 1.  Unique ridable mounts on day 1.  Plenty of dungeons that were better off then some dungeons in otrher MMOs that have been out for years.   Compare WOW at release with every MMO released before it and it BLOWS them away.    Was EVERYTHING finished?  Hell no.  No one has ever said that.