All Posts by Gaylen

I'll jump on the 'housing kinda sucks' bandwagon. I played SWG and after that DAoC. DAoC had some hook points, but only for specific features, like crafting tables and vendors. Players were free to decorate at will.

My primary frustration is that it's a trend with Turbine to put something in, even if it isn't really great, just so they can check it off of a list of features to slap on the marketing. They were warned, loudly and almost unanimously, by the participants on the testing server that housing was going to land with a dull thud and it did.

As far as I am concerned, housing in LOTRO is just a slightly larger but much more difficult to access bank vault. Housing has a lot more functionality and appeal in other MMOs.

Originally posted by JK-Kanosi

I think this is hilarious. I am watching the History channel, which is talking about Nazism in the United States through out the past century and then I read this hate related thread. The OP hates AoC because it is different and is "watering" down the pure genre or "race."

Godwin in play. Thread over.

Originally posted by SaibotKang

 

Originally posted by Gaylen

Good lord, you want to split hairs about what to call them?

The entity/ies which control/s the copyrights and liscensing for multi-media projects and products in relation to the written works of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien were consulted and had final approval, as reported in the New York Times.

Or is that not quite specific enough for you?

 

Its not splitting hairs at all son, Tolkien Enterprises is an independent company that bought the rights to LOTR and The Hobbit a long time ago, Tolkien Estate are the authors immediate family members, the latter is suing the former, its hard to get much seperate than that, hard to say that is "splitting hairs". Just because the name is similiar doesnt mean anything, especialy if you want to be correct, as I was, after the other dude told me I was completely wrong. Im right, and I like being right, specifically. It happens a lot so get used to it.

Does it change the reality that there is an entity which has the power to veto aspects of the game which violate the lore of Tolkien's writings, and entity which would not and did not give the approval for full PvP servers?

The name of that entity is besides the point. Everyone here understood the point. Your 'rightness' on the name of the entity is about as important to the discussion as if you had taken issue with my punctuation choices. So yea, you are just splitting hairs to be a nit-picky smart ass. You're kind of 'right' is very small and petty, so please do suck what little enjoyment there is in being that kind of right.

Originally posted by markaedw

there is also Habbo Hotel and OZ, both are in the games list.

Habbo is more of a party/chatroom.  The graphics are shockwave and look like legos, but it is specifically geared to 13-18 crowd.  Since it uses micro payments she can play with her babysitting money

Find a game that has some kind of moderation or supervision so she can report any harassment. Most pay-to-play MMOs are going to be more reliable and safe in that respect.

LOTRO is a good option. It isn't graphic, there isn't much in the way of gore or skin. She can choose to sit around and chit chat while she crafts, fishes, plays music, or dresses up her character with the outfit system. When I babysit for my 11 year old niece, she sits at the Auction House and buys clothes to put on my characters.  I have a guildie that spent the entire first year of the game sitting in the Shire just chatting with people, never broke L20 until just recently. Most of the starter areas have mostly non-aggressive mobs and safe roads, so she would be able to get around without being forced to fight. They also keep the PvP in a seperate zone, so she wouldn't be harassed by gankers. The community is also mostly friendly and polite.

Whatever game she plays, make sure someone will be able to check in on who she's talking to and what they are saying. The are a lot of freaks and pervs out there.

Originally posted by salvaje

I play EVE.

Any SWG vet who found a new game that isn't EVE...  Is playing a version of the NGE.  Seriously.

 

The difference is they know that going in before they purchase the game and fork over months worth of subscription fees. They are playing the game they paid for, which wasn't the case with the NGE.

Good lord, you want to split hairs about what to call them?

The entity/ies which control/s the copyrights and liscensing for multi-media projects and products in relation to the written works of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien were consulted and had final approval, as reported in the New York Times.

Or is that not quite specific enough for you?

Why do you make the assumption that no other SWG vet has found another game to play? Why do NGE fans always assert this narrative that SWG vets do nothing but sit in their basements and blog about SWG?

Of course vets are doing other things. Of course we are finding other games. We are just still unhappy our game went to hell. (People still bitch about TPM after 10 years, this is what the SW fandom does.)

We got screwed by a company. Every consumer warns others away from companies that treat their customers like crap. Anytime it comes up, even with complete strangers, I encourage people who can to avoid Comcast at all costs. I have a story about Davids Bridal that I tell every bride-to-be I meet.

When a company is confronted with their terrible treatment of their customers and they refuse to  acknowledge the offenses occurred, let alone offer compensation, then their future potential customers ought to hear about it. The gaming industry doesn't have a Better Business Bureau, so spreading the word on the internet is the next best thing.

So your assumption that the presence of a vet on message boards to talk about SWG inherently means they aren't playing anything else is flawed. I could make the same assumption about you. No matter how many times you tell us you're a vet and you've totally moved on ('The lady doth protest too much, methinks.), that you really must have an empty life if you felt compelled to rant about people who rant about SWG.

And your comment about women holding grudges just confirms you're an asshole. You want to make a tired, unoriginal "on the rag" joke while you're at it? If you can't find a way to express yourself without taking a crack at chicks, then you can shut your own huge mouth.

He asked about combat pets, specifically (and with extra CAPS). Didn't seem like he wanted info on cosmetic pets.  /shrug

Yes, there is a Legendary trait for an eagle. They also added a lynx pet which can, amongst other things, stealth.

To be honest, I was very disappointed they used rigid classes, and so few, from the beginning. I've been waiting for a new game to use something more like the old SWG skill-based advancment, but I'm smart enough to know that's a long shot. The genre is moving in this direction because it's easier to develop+balance and easier for players new to MMOs to pick up.

Despite that, skill-based advancement would have been such a great fit for LotR. Some of the characters in the Fellowship can be easy classified as a Guardian or Hunter, but not all. Sam, for instance, was part Guardian, part Minstrel, part Burglar. Aragorn was part Champion and Captain. There's so much room in the story for characters to play more than one role, I really think Turbine missed an opportunity and went with the path of least resistance. I understand the reasons why, but it's still disappointing.

Originally posted by jarish

They can't make every quest too involved or complicated otherwise these updates that they give us every couple of months would take alot longer thane that to make. So you get some that they were able to put more time in and make them ones that people enjoy more and others are just filler. It takes alot of work to make these quests besides writing the dialog. I would rather have these filler quests than only 1 update a year or something like that. I think it is pretty amazing that they have been pretty faithful to give us the updates they have in only a couple of months each time. I mean other games you don't see anything for a couple of years and we already have had 5 updates + one more in a couple of months and the 1st expansion within a year and 6 mo.

Again, I refer to Tal Bruinen. It was a large area they added to the existing TrollShaws. It didn't get a lot of attention. There are several filler kill quests, but they aren't all for the same mob. You kill lots of different things, not lots of the same thing. I understand the need for filler, most of the time people don't read the quest story anyway.

What they do see is the objective and when it's the same objective over and over, it's a grind. There is enough grinding with titles, traits, pages, reputation, and crafting mats.

Sent

Masta22's post was in response to the OPs suggestion of having a dedicated PvP server where orcs could perpetually raid the Shire at all times. That does, in fact, violate the lore. There was a specific point in the timeline when Saruman came to the Shire and corrupted it, leading to the Battle of Bywater when Frodo et all return. Prior to, there's no room in the lore for open battle in the Shire.

The OP's suggestion that there be a PvP server where all regions, including the Shire, are in open conflict has been answered that it's not appropriate for the IP. It has nothing to do with RPing, it's the integrity of the story. I don't care how amusing anyone finds griefing and ganking.

If Turbine ever reaches the point in the game where Sauron has been destroyed, Aragorn crowned, and Frodo returns home, I'm sure they will adapt the Shire accordingly. Probably with some kind of instancing like the fire in Archet. I doubt they would turn a starter area into a PvP zone. And I definitely don't think the Tolkien Estate would ever approve of PvP servers.

The OP also advocated adding an evil faction, which would require a massive overhaul of the game. As it is, they shoehorned PvMP into the game late in it's development and look how massively unbalanced it turned out. They can't just flip a switch and let monsters roam Eriador at large. Given Turbine's attention is pulled in other directions, namely expanding the world itself to Moria, Rohan, Gondor, and beyond, plus telling the story of the passage of the Ring, I can't imagine a scenario where they would devote the manpower and budget to develop a new server and try to flesh out full-fledged Monster races and classes to the extent necessary for PvP to expand across the entire map.

Plus, there are too many other PvP-centric games that are just launched or approaching release that would be direct competition. Going to the expense would have to be justified by new players it brings in. I don't foresee a sizable number of PvPers coming to LotRO for MP in the Shire rather than gore+nudity+PvP in AoC or RvR in WAR. LotRO benefits from appealing to a different demographic than those games.  Spending money to compete with PvP-focused games for players when LotRO's PvP is not one of it's strong suits doesn't make any sense.

Originally posted by BiggusRiggus

Originally posted by Masta22

Having open pvp would completely ruin the lore of the game.  A band of orc's attacking the Shire... yeh right.

Did you read the Books? or maybe you just watched the movies... the Shire was invaded by Men and Half-ocs.

A big ditto from me on #1. I don't like the chargen. Now that I've played the trial of DDO and seen the exact same artwork there, I know the chargen is slapped together and recycled. The biggest part of an RPG for me is customizing my character and they are still a long ways away from convincing me that I'm not just FemaleElfHunter#20953.

Your #4 was something that bothered me a lot in beta. The ruins in the Shire, Bree, North Downs, Lone Lands, and Trollshaws were all identical in aesthetic and architecture. I appreciate the argument that the ruins must all be from the same race, that Eriador is only a small portion of the world so of course all of the ancient structures in such a small area would look similar. I get that, I understand the lore reasoning, makes perfect sense.

But that doesn't make it any less disappointing to explore the world looking for exciting secret places only to discover its more of the same. And you are quite right, it's been really encouraging to see the art of the new areas. Gives one encouragement that the regions outside of Eriador will be more varied and interesting. So good on Turbine for that.

But I'll disagree with you on crafting. I still find it very limiting and unsatisfying. Crafting hasn't changed much. They've changed the art, added more recipes, and changed the names of crit items... but that's all superficial. You still craft the same thing over and over, you still farm spawns for hours or pay out the nose on the Auction House... you just collect "beryl shards" from named elites/sigs now rather than unique drops from those same named elites/sigs. Whoop-de-do. I'm a SWG vet, though, so I have very high standards for crafting.

To end on a positive note, I love the outfit system. I haven't seen anything like it in an MMO before (which isn't to say it's never been done, I just haven't seen it myself). It's great to finally see them (possibly) innovating. They acknowledged the players had an issue and they created a new way to address it. So they get cheers for that.

There are plenty of arguments to be had about how that isn't the game they wanted to make.

But ultimately, they are licensing the rights to the IP. The Tolkien Estate would never agree to having Sauron's forces roaming the whole of Eriador.

As much as I love SW, it's frustrating how GL has let the canon get thrown out the window so he can sell more games, books, and toys. So I appreciate that the Tolkien Estate prefers to keep the LOTR lore intact.

I'm playing LotRO. I've got a lot of great friends there. The game is friendly to casual solo play. It has it's flaws, but I haven't seen any other MMOs that look like they will be any better.

Originally posted by Yeebo

Originally posted by erandur

Level 28, and I already HAD to take a break from it. Really pathetic way of filling the game up, just I noticed I have 3 identical quests at the moment.. just from a different npc, all kill 12 wargs....

You do realize that means you can get triple the XP you normally would by doing three quests at once?  I'm usually pretty happy when my quests line up that nicely. 

Every 2-3 months since the launch last April, there have been large, free content patches. We just saw the 5th one fo live in April. I much prefer free addons rather than getting a game home and realizing I need to go back to the store to buy 2 or 3 expansion packs for $10-$20 a pop. 

And to be honest, it's really boggling that anyone would complain about free content. Even more so if you've played MMOs before. It's pretty standard fare to spend hours patching during the first install. 

In defense of the guy upthread, you did pretty much acknowledge your gripe is petty. You have to know it comes off as whiny. You have the wherewithal to point out there's a justified reason for it and that other games are as bad or worse, but you went on and whined anyway. As far as flames on the interwebnets go, his was pretty tame.

If you're looking for a "bigger more involved community," I don't think SWG can offer that.

I haven't played since the CU-NGE, but the gist of reports I've seen on the boards is that the worlds are pretty empty with little to no conversation in any of the chat channels.