Originally posted by Kurganxy

who cares. this game is never gonna come out. They dont even update their website anymore.

Have faith! Dragon Age came out, and it only took seven years!

I'm going to largely echo the other posters here. LotRO is what it is. Personally, I'd love to see an MMG with a combat system similar to Mount & Blade or Oblivion. LotRO is not that game. Once the game is out the door, you don't up and toss out the basic gameplay on the users. Insert obligatory NGE reference.

That being said, I would like to add:

Imagine being able to dodge some of the enemy arrows by doing a roll to the ground, or by simply turning your body to the side at the last moment.

Try playing a War Mage or archer in Asheron's Call (1999). Projectile have actual physics, and can be dodged by side-stepping. Bows use ammo, and arrows that fail to hit a mob stick where they hit and can be recovered later. PVP between mages largely consists of FPS-style circle-strafing.

I'll be the jerk who looks a gift horse in the mouth.

It's small, it's blurry, and it's muddy. The text is barely legible. The details in the art are lost.

You get what you pay for, I suppose. That is the whole principle behind Acclaim's business model...

Originally posted by Arato

So basically I think what you casuals should do is actually take a look at endgame rather than just make demands that it be made easier (or cry for more solo content).

I've looked at it. I've nibbled at the edges of it, and I didn't enjoy it. It's not my cup of tea.

You dig it and that's fine with me. You don't need to suggest that casual players speak from ignorance or call us "backwater hicks." Some people like strawberry ice cream more than chocolate, others prefer casual monster bashing with a couple of friends to organizing a strike team of 6-12 strangers. *shrug*

While I love LotRO, and agree with all the facts you presented, I disagree with your conclusions. We appear to define "casual play" differently. Your opening paragraph suggests you define casual as time invested. To me, casual means playing for enjoyment -- not doing the frustrating work required to get through quests designed for the hardcore. I play games to have fun with friends, not to herd cats, bang my head against the wall, grind for rare loot, or accrue e-peen.

I have a level 50, and I'm part of a small social kinship (~15 RL friends) that's uninterested in raiding. I made it to 50 mostly solo, with the remainder being fellowship quests with one or two kin. I don't do PUGs because I think People Are Broken - although I will say that the players of LotRO seem friendlier than the PUGs I encountered in CoX. Still, I agree with the Gaming Demotivational poster about raiding -- "When You Want Your Fun To Depend on Random Strangers."

In my situation, on paper at least, there's virtually nothing to do. Every instance you mentioned in the article is effectively closed to me and my small circle of gaming buddies. Heck, my 50 has only completed Books I and VI of the epic quests. But I still have plenty of areas I haven't seen, quests I haven't done, traits I haven't completed, and -- most importantly -- I can always hang out with my friends.

Originally posted by Bababooey

 

 

From what I've heard, EVE Online is more of a point-and-click, whereas you have more abundant time to strategize more, and JGE is more fast-paced twitch and reaction type jet game? 

JumpGate is FreeSpace /  TIE Fighter, EVE is Homeworld / Nexus: The Jupiter Incident (if you never had more than one ship).

I like the way this guy thinks about loot. Story-evoking "roleplaying" loot is always a nice touch.  It doesn't have to all be uber - a big pile of small stuff, so long as its stackable in inventory, is just as nice.

To put it in terms of what I'm playing now, I've gotten rich in LotRO off piles of crap mob trophies, and despite the fact that I can't use them (wrong crafter class), I've saved all the unique cooking recipes I got from quests in the Shire.

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Originally posted by nomadian

Not meant as a flame but thats the worst argument you could come up with. Uninspired!, AC2 is quoted as having the best combat system in all games, it was the rest of the game that let it down.

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I agree that the combat system was the most solid part of AC2. The concept was good. The execution was very meh. Consensus seems to be that in practice it didn't succeed in engaging the player's interest, requiring actual feedback, or providing enough differentiation between play style. I've seen many comments to the effect that mage, archer, and melee felt largely the same to play. I did like those Lugian engineers, though.

It was definitely on the right track. I believe CoH came closer to the sort of fast-paced reactive group combat they were shooting for. I'd argue that removing the "almost real physics" of AC1 projectiles was definitely a step back, though. In AC1, you could dodge arrows and projectile spells. PVP tended to FPS style circle-strafing and ducking behind cover.

The following is my personal opinion only.

One of the key lessons that we learned is the customer perception of sequels in the MMO space. They end up splitting your community more so than growing it. So they are counterproductive, unlike sequels in other game genres where they can be really successful.

That AC2 was a sequel had little - if anything - to do with its inability to attract players. There are a host of reasons it did not succeed, many of which have be touched on in this thread

The game was kicked out the door too soon, it was being continually rebalanced underneath the players, the combat design was uninspired, it was too easy to reach the "end" of the game, the critical early period of community development was destroyed by the inability to get the chat servers working, the console game style segregation of high level and low level players to specific continents further sabotaged community building, it took too long to get fresh content into the game, and the world felt "soulless."

I don't deny the AC1 players who expected "AC1+" negatively affected perception. It should have been possible to move beyond that and gain a fresh audience. AC1 was a hardcore Explorer game. AC2 was a lightweight Achiever game. The initial attempts to sell AC2 to the AC1 playerbase were doomed to fail.

Nevertheless, all of these design and operations issues I listed above would all remain true even if AC2 had been a fresh IP. No; AC2 failed not because AC1 fans rejected it, but because it couldn't create AC2 fans.

If this "sequels are counterproductive" is truly the best lesson Turbine has extracted from AC2, then it saddens me to say AC2 was ultimately an entirely fruitless endeavor. Not only did few enjoy the game, Turbine learned nothing from its failure.