This is starting to sound like its traveling down the same tired road and other MMO expansions  more levels and more raiding

well what if you dont like raiding?

I was really looking foward to moria  but I was dissapointed because all it turned out to be was more track at the end of the rail

same mobs, same AI  just "bigger rats" to kill  what happened to creativity and innovation?  moria could have been so much more than just a cave filled with mobs  not all of us like WOW style game play

Im more for depth and immersion  where players actions can make a difference

slippery ice has allways been on my list

moria water slides or  ore cart (roller coaster) taxi 

animal pets  

much better forragables  

I play a hunter  and my level 60 hunter has been in cold storage because  all there is to do Is raid,  I left WOW for the same reason when my paladin maxed out

I dont want to do something that is just gonna reset every 5 minutes  you dont have to make lotro static

where are the boats? (evendim is NOT a boat)   siege weapons? 

LOTRO is going down hill in its quality content  and I think it started with that insult to players, fishing

dont get me wrong  moris wasnt a bad expansion  it just left me bleh 

im also hoping that mirk will add bag space to deal with all the rep items and craft items and legend items ect ect ect

and also revamp the player housing so there more usefull than just another vault  especially the stiff item hooks

you need to  sign up for a  micro transaction service to make a beta account.

Originally posted by twhint

Right......could you be a little more  specific? I'd love to hear your rationale.

FE is a less than bare bones  indi game  with a AAA price tag

its litrally missing  many support physic engines  like vehicle grenades and water

its so generic you could reskin it as a zombie shooter and not miss a beat

the PVP is very 1 dimentional  basicly a gun and knife brawl 

the content gets very sparce the higher you level  not to menton the "slam into the wall" endgame

the graphics engine and animations are still quite poor

they dont even have things like the damage and bore of shotguns correct! let alone  no shotgun physics engine (shotgun is a slow rifle)

what other specifics did you need?

if games were fine dining,, fallen earth    wouldnt be quite  McDonnald's (yet they still want the  wine and lobster price tag)

if I was sugesting a price set for FE   I would say  20-30$ for the game  and 10$ a month would be  a fair price after having seen and played the game

its not worth 50$ and 15$ a month   especially to veteran mmo players  its too striped down and generic.

yes you can scroll from first person into   3rd person   similar to most any respectable MMO  this is not fallout or halo

the only problem i had is that you now cant turn off the localized grass  which can make you slightly queesy   which also makes certin mobs  nearly unattackable   like snakes and ants

combat

first wear armor  jump out of the tutorial  spend points to 15 in armor and melee and possibly rifle

get a duster and chaps

get a ax handle  and dump that crappy stick  I select the ax handle because it hits prety hard but is also a reasonable speed  the sledge handle is next in line

remap your weapons  to some quick keys  none of that ctrol +3 crap also  your mode key and your reload key

arm your xbow  gat back to near full range  fire at  body  or  aim for the head (crit) shoot 2-3 shots till near melee  try for about 20ft away   swap to your  ax handle  this delay is like 2-3 seconds

then you can wither hold down the mouse attack key and it will "fire" the handle  about 1 per second  or you can  "click fire"   I prefer the click fire because sometimes you will miss with the auto fire because your aimpoint wont be on target  when the autofire triggers  I prefer to sweep the aim point through the target  clicking as i pass my  point of aim 

also if you goto first aid and pick up "extended care" about 45 skill?  have this on you at all times  its like a 1 hour regen buff skill (useable on others)  later you can pick up recussatate (rez)  rez is good for all charactors to have and there are several methods.

food and drink are buffs and reduce tyour down time

for example the level 2 rats south of south burb at the farm  if you head shot them with the ax handle  you can oneshot them most of the time

there is a quest to fight a guy in the south burb junkyard  and he is hard if not nearly impossible to beat unless you gear up.

hope these pointers help you out. 

the noob area is done very well  content gets much more sparce the higher you level

crafting you have to think ahead when crafting  especially when the NUMBER ONE requested change whs to be able to reorder the crafting que  which hasnt been fixed yet,  that means if you are half way through an item thats gonna take 2 hours  and you need to make some ammo,, your screwed till the 2 hour item finishes   or cancel the 2 hour item and LOOSE the materials

(alts are good to havefor crafting mules)

if you are a veteran  id hold off  as you will be dissapointed  in the content  it is very generic as far as MMOs go

if you are fairly new to MMOs and can deal with the standard release  problems  then ya  id say go ahead.

some pointers for starting players:...

first i sugest south burb  its  kind of a farming community with lots of resources and  excelent crafting quests  to get you up to speed  even the combat players should consider starting here. also it has excelent zone position  just north of mumford to the south,, and there is a very nice sweep northward through many of the major  towns and their flavor of quest and skills   there is no facton worries in S1  you can goto all of the towns on the whole map  you cannot "screw up"

next upon exiting the pod  you got some points to spend..  get your  armor  melee   and rifle  (and/or pistol) skill to 15 

15 30 45 60 ect are "sweetspots"  its better to push 1 score to  30  than 3 scores to 25 as 25 dont get you nothing

learn at least the basic (11$) skills in all the crafts even if your a combat type  at least get the crafts in your log

there are 3 harvest skills (mining harvest ore and minerals) (scavanging harvest refuse materials and junk tech) (nature harvest  plants and animals)

at skill level 15 you can wear your first armor  torso:duster  and legs: chaps

at melee 15 next tier weapons  i prefer the 2h ax handle  but some prefer to duel weild  knives you can hotkey ax handle easily

at rifle skill 15 you can equip next level in crossbow  (crossbows become obsolete at level 60  when you can equip the scoped magnum rifle (non scoped is expensive and inaccurite) 

endever to get your horse as soon as possible  you can buy one our craft one (the books are on the nature vender) it effectivly doubles your travel speed and adds some cargo   feed/fuel  completely refills the endurance bar 

in S2 map sone (at about 20)   factons become important  if you want to pick up all the mutant powers or facton gear  you must "spin the wheel" and it becomes harder the higher facton you get  so pick your prefered  faction... (factons are very watery so most pick enforcer since guns are important to the game and they got the best skills and trainers) then pick the facton beside it to work twords  kill their enemy till you become "nonagro" gain 1000 facton which is like 1-2 quests  then you can get acces to the mutation quests and basic facton gear (travelers got a +12 scavange tool,, enforcers got regen item ect)  then once you complete the 1-2-3 mutation quests move to the next around the wheel gaining just enough facton to get whet you need,, finishing the wheel back at your prefered facton now you have the trinkets and like all 11 mutations.  (it takes ALOT of work later in the game as for every 1 point you gain with 1 faction you loose 2-3 with their enemy meaning you have to kill massive more to change the factons.

and lastly..  combat exp and crafting exp go into the SAME POOL  so you really want to be crafting all the time for best advancement. (oh gun ammo becomes really important later in the game  so mine copper lead,,  science for gunpowder and  gunmaking?  for the ammo types.)

fallen earth and fallout are about as different as rice and bread.

fallen earth is muc more of a generic MMO  that you could reskin to nearly any genera 

while  fallout is a post nuclear world  which is a bit harsher world for the most part   much more diverse weapons food and drink are more important  but you are also quite alone

both worlds are static and never changing  you will never make any part of your world a better place for having worked or fought somewhere.

well its quite different from SWG   "find the highest concentration of new resource and plant a harvester"

it is a nugget type system  but there not evenly distributed  they are much more organic  which is to say you cant  veins  or  sweetspots   for instance  if I want to find grain  there is globally areas i can expect to encounter it    but there is a sweetspot  in a place called needleeye  which is kind of a farming community   I can gather 10-20 times as much as other encounter places.  the thing is that you either have to do alot of web research  or  exploring  charting  to discover these sweetspots   i really think they did  prety fare job of resource placement  there are even ore nuggets in the mines  eggs in nests   even vegetables in the gardens   there are even medicinal plants  that you have to discover what resource they drop  like blood cactus, mend fern, weaping cactus,, magenta bloom..

FALLEN EARTH  is a large dissapointment at least to veteran players

saying that is generic and run of the mill is an understatement

and thats not to mention many major  core device engines

first off its based on a virus  so the world is sleeply boring    sure there were a few nukes but this is effectivly ignored for the most part

the world is FAR too easy   like many arcade MMOs  al you have to deal with is  killing this spawn or that spawn  so apocoliypse= ignore

it seems to use an old "unreal?" engine  which for me would have satisfactory graphics level  but performance was quite poor for this level of graphics engine  hovering at a playable 11-14fps   when with my machine it should have been 30-40fps

yes they have vehicles but they are NOOB BAIT,, no customization AT ALL  and no vehicle physics engine  these are ground huggers folks (they have a quad runner quest  but since its a ground hugger  its really boring didnt even bother with the quest after a charactor wipe as horses are much funner and far more effecient and can jump. I loved my black race horse.

there is no grenade (throwable) physics engine  you aim at a mob  with a slowball pitch  and if you miss (90% of the time as the aiming is NOT there)  you miss entirly as no splash damage at least from misses. (grenades acids toxins = useless

NO WATER PHYSICS  it looks like water but you cannot interact with it or wade through it,, as a matter of fact there were places where you could get stuck between the sides of a ditch and the water.

the clothing they have  baseball caps  jackets  shoes  most pants most shirts  are all OBSOLETE at level 5ish  because they use a STAT CLOTHING SYSTEM and have NO costume clothing option or even any clothing toggles!!!  what this means that for the first few levels you can get by wearing most any cool clothing  but even as low as 1st level  (15 armor skill)  you start to shift to the stat clothing  in this case  a duster and chap armor,,, later you wear a gasmask and helmit 24/7  as there are NO toggles to remove these item graphics.. to me this  takes alot away from the expirence. oh lets not forget all that charactor design you did on the face and hair  is allways hidden unless you choose to not wear the protective clothing there.

my pet peeve  they dont even have the shotgun damage in the corect order!

oh travel times are  overly long  you spend about 1/3 of your time traveling to get anywhere I recomended a steam train, but I expect within a year FE will prob patch in some form of lame teleport (pod porting) this makes even short medium and long range grouping inprobable   if your not in the same town  or maby the next town over,, forget it and if there in another ZONE...  lol

some say "its apocolypse  its supose to be hard and long" but then I counter with then why is food and drink so trivial?"  and generally NOBODY wants insta travel   nobody ever traded a stack of stew  for a stack of ammo not unless it was a joke.

and of course  never enough inventory  as far as MMOs go its in the upper end of the small catagory   they need to double or even tripple this  they even have  multiple types of the same ammo!   as in  light rifle ammo,, effecient light rifle ammo,,economic light rifle ammo   so for this 1 gun type there are 3 different stacks for the exact same gun so thats like 21 stacks instead of 7(oh just to be clear the only difference is the amount produced when crafting  not the actual weight or damage   basic ammo is purchassed off venders and found as loot drops  effecient produces ummm 160 of the base ammo  just with the lable "effecient"  and economic produces 240? basic ammo  but with the lable "economic"  so when your level 35 and your crafting you craft the economic (because it makes the most per craft time) and you loot the common type so at minimum you have 2 stacks per weapon type unless you leave the loot ammo rot  prety stupid eh? 

********

this is not to say tht everything is bad  they have very nice rifle scope graphics.

the night sky and the day/night cycle is the best ive seen

and the crafting system and resource gathering  is  mostly TOP NOTCH  the resources are  dispersed in a prety much organic feeling way as there are the ocassional   "sweetspots"   with good skill management you are able to craft for yourself

food and drink while usefull is relegated to a nearly optional catagory  (wouldnt want the need for finding food and drink in an apocolypse world to get in the way of the bloodthursty warmonger arcade players) oh the manu tends to be kinda yuppy  and they are precaned recipies no player creativity here  (makes me sad as food and drink can be such major plot devices)

final

id hold off on fallen earth for at least a few months till they install the missing engines  and finish the performance  polish at the very least  it seems like they had one team with awesome ideas  make the first part of the game  then they switched out teams  to toss together the rest  why else would they have  costume clothing  that is all but useless  (makes for prety diceptive screen shots though dont it?)  quality vs quantity

FE had several events where they were giving away hypo sprays  every half hour you were logged in during the evet.

I believe these hypose were  exp buffs? that like 3 hours each?  and each of the (2) events you could get up to like 7 of them.

whoever is going like  my opinion the best place to start is south burb,,  good resources  mucho  craft books  and an excelent starting location to  hit  other cities

mine north of town

wood  and chickens SE

farm south

garage just south past the farm

south of that,, just north of the tunnel is a great copper place

then to the north is  north burb that has quests for the lightbringer  martial artists skills

then oilville is a nexus spot at level 5-6

ENE of there  is depot 66   with some nice traveler type  thief/assassin quests

and on to zanesville   with its military style assaults.

as you emerge from the life pod  I sugest you spend your starting points into leveling your skills  armor,melee,range, to 15

15,30,45 ect are the games sweet spots  its better to "push" 1 skill to 30  than to nudge 3 skills to 28-29 as 28-29 doesnt get you anything (there are some exceptions to this rule of thumb)

on first aid there is a skill "extended care" endever to get it and wear it constantly its a regen buff lasts like an hour later there is "recussatation"  which every charactor should have the ability to do.

as you start  I sugest  picking up at least all the basic 11$  recipies even if you dont plan to craft at all  you will get the crafts into your charactor log and at least have somethin to work with if you decide later  you  might not have to ride all the way back to noob zones.

there are 3 harvest trades 

scavange is gathering  junk and spair parts  

mining  is gathering nuggets  of ore and minerals

nature nature is harvesting animals and plants

you really should try to keep these 3 leveled when you can  as some quests require items to be gathered

most of the  cool clothing is obsolete aafter level 5-6  so focus your purchasses on the "armors" in armorcraft

like torso  legs   are your first armors at 15  a duster and chaps   then later is helmit and arm and leg pads

in FE it is possible with managing both skill points  AND atribute points  to be able to level things like your crafting and combat skills so you are able to craft gear for yourself!  you can also be an uber crafter OR an uber combat  at the sacrafice of the other.

you will use a cross bow till range skill 60 at which time they become obsolete when you can use the scoped magnium rifle

I say 60 because  the non-scoped is effectivly useless   you will want all rifles scoped

last thing to say  is that combat and crafting expirence go into the SAME pool !!!    so for best leveling speed  be crafting while you adventure!

the highest some ( S-3)  is chaotic  and sparce  and the end game is as solid as a brick wall at 45

the factions are very wattery with no real identity  the enforcers or tech are popular because of their central location and the major use of guns (enforcers got the gun skills)  when you first start into S-2  factions become important  and it is at this time  if you want to get all the advantages from all the factions you can easily "SPIN THE FACTION WHEEL"  this is where you  pick a faction beside your final preference and you kill their enemy till you gain 1000 faction with them usually 0-1000 is 1-2 quests

at 1000 you are ble to access the mutation quests for that given faction and also that factions specialty item (travelers got a +12 scavange tool) (tech have killer faction swords) (enforcers have a regen necklace ect) 

then on to the next facton around the wheel  kill till you get non-agro get the stuff,, move to the next, untill your finally at your  chosen faction    to be non agro with 3 (your prime and 2 sides  you really have to spike your prefered like 5 times as much facton to pull the other two up,, if you do to too many in a sister facton  you can sacrafice the 3rd faction.

HORSES are THE way to travel currently  I prefer the race horse,, but all horses have excelent endurance and feed is common I have never run out of endurance on a race horse so you basicly never need to refuel it  the common horse maby every 4 hours of hard riding

(feed or gasoline fully refules a ride)

there is an ATV quest in S-1  its about equil to a horse speed   but it is a ground hugger (lame)  and uses fuel much quicker than feed

motercycles are faster but not marketly faster (like 12-15%?) and they use alot of fuel about 1 per hour  and they dont handle rough terraign  like trees or boulders well they are also lame ground huggers  and NO CUSTOMIZATION!!!

I hope this helps some of you get a better start   ,, id still sugest waiting 6 months to a year then check FE status  see if they  installed  things like  vehicle physics grenade physics  and water physics engines.

LUCK

oh!  avoid the  radiation walls  there maped very porrly  and taking shortcuts often results in  instant death

store: severly limited inventory when it comes to gear there is maby one choice in any given field for weapons or armor designs

world: is better than its first release  but it is still far smaller than a D&D universe should be  its wilderness areas are instances and less than 1/4 the size of similar games and these wilderness areas are lacking in aly charm or interesting content, more so they are  links to other instances with a few spawn generators added.

the use of the eberron world is questionable at best,  feels like they could get access to it for the cheapest price over other much more prefered worlds like forgotten realms.

there is no costume clothing  or  armor choices so 3 dwarven clerics are going to wear the exact same armor  same for weapons

there are no animal henchmen like wolf or bear or hawk 

the world if functional but not very immersive  and you have to instance grind the dungeons to level   and if you get into a group they usually fly through a dungeon at a full run  crushing any enjoyment of what is actually there.

they do use  some puzzles and trabs and doors  boxes barrels ect  which is good  and Id love to see much more as there was none of this in the wilderness.

I want to play the ranger  but so far im dissapointed in the wilderness areas  where I thought I might come into my own so far its another dungeon it just looks like a forrest but without the content of traps or puzzles or other interesting content.

I thought after all this time it might actually be a game that i might play 30-40% of the time but from what ive seen  its more looking like a 10% game  and I even had money to spend in the store  just nothing to spend money on

no sexy clothes or armor  no cool cloaks or taberds  no  cool weapon looks

no specialty arrows like fire or ice  

in short they need to add about 500 items to the store

and they need more immersive and global world content,, feels like all the content wouldnt even be as big as manhattan island let alone a whole world.

one of the big problems is that games are mostly set in stone by the time they get to beta and only tweeks can ultimatly happen.

the thing thats hard about community managers is that they can and are bias  and if they are a hard core PVP/ raider  and your a casual/quester  your effectivly filtered out.

90% of issues that players contend with come from developers "controling" the charactors and not the players.. the old  block 3 paths so there is only 1 option,,  either do the quest or dont play the game.

*******

I once played a PnP champions game  where we spend 6 hard hours trying to recover an antimater gun only to have it litrally torn from our hands at the last minute and lost .. you know what the GM said? "it was too good of a plot device to let us keep it"

what that did is make the last 6 hours a pointless waste of time.  and he had taken the "freedom" out of our hands  because nothing we did mattered to the plot.

the next time he wanted to play and started in with rumors of  villans  destroying half the city with an antimater gun  we all had other things to do.

you cant really do that with a game you invested 50$  players usually just have to suck up their fustration untill they reach their boiling point ,, things like SWG  new player expirence (NGE) happens and drives off 2 million players.

current games only tend to cater to the warmonger or the achiever  leaving out the other 5-6 player types with "token" content  or half assed content  like a combat  based economy    or a cooking menu that looks more like a menu from some fancy resteraunt instead of trail food for explorers

I just betaed  FALLEN EARTH  and to me as a veteran player it had the foundation but everything else was bland and lacking  cars for example  had no physics engine (they were ground huggers) and no customization   there was also alot of "been there done that"  as there were no innovations their trailers are missleading  they show cool clothing but in game that is not practical after level 4-5  because they use a stat clothing system and have no costume clothing system so at level 10 and 20 your are wearing level 10 and 20 stat armor (oh and not even clothing toggles).

developers are allways saying their game is uber and next gen  but I have yet to see any game that isnt in the same generation as everquest 1     same  quest line,  same  stand toe to toe and exchange blows,,  and EVEN the same  simplton AI that is tricked by the same 15 year old tactics   and yes even the same vending machine quest givers  and lastly the same STATIC worlds and charactors.

the most EXTREEM of this was when I betaed SEED  all the testers were posting about its impending doom of being released far too early (it went live about 10% complete  most games try to sneek out the door at 70-80%)   excelent  premice for a game  but an abisimal  construction of the basic workings of the game code (in my opinion this primice is worthy of resurection with totally different engine and controls.) (coliny ship crashes on an alien world)

I love betas  because it does give me access to a game  and developers  so i can be part of making a game the best it can be. its also nice to get the inside rail  and lay of the land before a game is released live.

FALLEN EARTH needs month not days

no vehicle physics engine

no grenade physics engine

no water physics engine

poor proformance for this type of game engine

marginal quality control    for instance they got the shotgun sizes wrong  oh and no shotgun physics engine.

boring 1 dimentional PVP  (basicly a  sword and gun gang fight) 

LONG boring  rides through empty terrain

much less content as you raise in level and zones 

I will say this... they have the start of a great harvest and crafting system  and an excelent day night cycle.

recomend puting this game on hold for at least 6 months or a year  till they  get the game up to speed and install the needed physics engines            oh the vehicles are not much more than NOOB BAIT  as there is no sustomization

oh all those cool clothes and looks in the trailers?  OBSOLETE after the first 5 levels  and they use a STAT based clothing system  and have no costume clothing option  so dont expect to be level 20 and be looking all punkish or roadwarrior,,  it will only happen if you dissreguard  being practical  your gonna be wearing the level required armor.

I got an idea for  a story for you  why not   do a feature on a "dream game"   set up some postings  about building  player dream games.

have 2 foundations  1  casual  and 1 PVP (try to set up votes so they can be double or cross voted)

ask players to sugest different thems then  vote/decide  which will be used

then  have discussions/ sugestions  about what features should be left in or out

ending up with a 2-3 page description  of this player dream game

when I say dream game  im not talking  impossible content or nonexistant interfaces  just if players had the ability  what would their  game look like.

CHAMPIONS:  I was very dissapointed with champions (what little I saw of it)  It had very little in common with the champions PnP game  using  pre caned powers (like COH) instead of the option to be able to roll your own powers

yes it did have a complex charactor creation  but suprisingly I found it lacking in the several charactors I tried to make (they never came out the way I imagined them)  it remains to be seen if this title  will become something some day  but it was just another  skin job  in my mind  that has been produced for 15-20 years  even the   generic spawn generators from at least as far back as EQ era  was a yawn  for me  but like I said I have very limited exposure only a few hours in the "open,open beta"  (and oposed to the "open,closed beta"

cant anyone come up with a game that does not follow this  tired  arcade  kill grind  idiot AI  theme?  if i didnt know any better  its like theres this construction machine  that  developers bought 20 years ago  they everyone uses to produce slightly different versions of the same crap.  as a veteran player   its  alot of "been there done that"

dont get me wrong there is alot of room in these games for improvement  without throwing the entire book out the window.

some suglobal sugestions:

more drama

more player bonding with the game and other players to build loyalty

smarter AI  its out there..  percieve, advance, attack  just is boring for the defacto brain

more diverse quests   instead of vending machine quest givers  have them more organic,, have more than a single path to the goal besides brute force.

definatly more player choice freedom,,  lord of the rings put in  costume clothing  so that players could "choose" how they wanted to appear  this addition alone gave them  +2 in my book   though they still cant seem to have resizeable UI windows  and their fishing addition was an insult!  overall  lotro is one of the few games I would fully recomend for the casual player

now if they can only get slippery ice!  its odd to have whole zones of snow and ice and none of it slippery!  its like white dirt.

they also have a terrible aversion to boats and water  they finally put a taxi boat on their lake zone  but its a simple teleport :(

still better than FALLEN EARTH  which is  prety much a run of the mill  SWG era  generic construct    (quite a decent harvest and crafting system)  actually quite a boring and bland world  especially at the upper levels   I recomend avoiding this title for 6 months to a year  then see  if they added   (vehicle physics engine,, grenade physics engine,, water physics engine, and lastly a method of long distance fast travel  better than horses or vehicles)  they dont even have  things like the shotgun guages in the corect order  so much for quality control.

These people havent a clue about  real games or the people that play them..the themes are so far from plausable as to be in the rediculous.

if I was making a movie for gamers  this might be the direction I would sugest.....

first would start with an average player  either a collage student  or  mid income  person,  they would have a  nice fancy setup like what you might see 5-10 years from now   they would either goto the store  or  recieve the "package"  then head in to  install it (an alt to this is that its allready auto installed and waiting for them when they turn their computer on.

they would go through a charactor creation and short tutorial: (charactor creationwould show the player shifting through different cloths maby a bit of nudity ) (oh I had it that this game was large enough to have genre selectable packages like fantacy, football, military)

now at this point  the back story kicks in...  some little known game designers have been killed to steal their work  but before this happened  they discovered the plot and planted clues and easter eggs throughout the game  and the AI is smart enough to assist but has no will of its own.

this movie goal would be to discover the secret and expose the people responcible  the view is both inside and outside the game as the easter eggs are both inside and outside the game.  I also expect there would be several other players involved  like 3 guys and 2 girls.

my second idea is more standard   the gaming machine is much more scifi and your mind actually "jacks in" to your avatar (its still kind of mechanical like wearing a suit of armor maby with a 3rd person ghost behnd the charactors)  and everything is going fine till the gamer(s) reach a certain milestone   and the gamers are drawn litrally into their avatar in the immersive world (which to them is a decitedly different than the normal level of immersion)   so the players are traped in the game  and must discover a way out.  everything is real to them but from a games perspective  they have both avatar "powers"  and certain gamer powers     they might find that for example  a developer's mind has gotten traped in the game and shows itself in different mobs and charactors,, his comatose body is in a hospital somewhere  waiting to be reunited  throw in a little romance  and the drama/comedy of noobs thrown into fantacy combat with 8 foot smelly orcs  and you have an interesting recipie.

needs a bit of tuning but you get the general idea

THE only way SOE is gonna get out from under the reputation they have for totally trashing their games especially star wars galaxies  is to BREAK the mold  and develop a  next generation  game  not the "next generation rutt clones"  that have been shoveled out one after another.

they need a new AI  and a new way to approach content and quests  and get away  from robot like  vending machines

make the game a bit more complex  (rebels and empire should not have been fighting  like even matched  armies  their tactics should have been based on their relative size   bombings,  hacking,  arms theft,  smuggling  ect...

when the space expansion came out and it was little more than an x-wing arcade shoot em up  I knew  SOE had 

"JUMPED THE SHARK"

there are all sorts of new methods for developing games   but these game makers keep doing the ol cut and paste,, change the skin  they have been doing for 20 years

just look at fallen earth  it is an obvious example of  a cut and paste.. actually the graphic level is adaquite for me to enjoy the game  but the content..  very generic and sparce and allot of "been there done that"

and aftermath is right up my ally  that gave it +2 right out of the gate  but it still didnt measure up. 

SAD.

Originally posted by Liltawen

Remember that on the maps Mirkwood goes from level with Lorien in the south clear up to Angmar in the north and consists of at least 3 zones:

1.Southern-the area around Dol Guldur

2. Central-the area around the Mountains of Mirkwood where Bilbo ran into spiders and where Beorn and the proto Riders of Rohan lived (originally before moving to Rohan)

3.Northern-where the Elf kingdom of Thranduil is- where Legolas came from.

 

your very close but i believe the central part where the road crossed E-W trough mirkwood was avoided by bilbo's crew as it was being wasched (by goblins?)

they went via a trail throught the northern part of mirkwood where they encountered the spiders and the elves actually  only a poisoned jog from escaping the spiders to the elf circle?    then they barrel rode eastward into the lake

but your right though it is a very long and large woods