Originally posted by grandpagamer

What I like about the skirmishes is that its more to do. Questing and grinding deeds is fine but there are times I want to do something else and the skirmishes are fun.  There are plenty of quests to do and deeds to complete the way things were before Mirkwood. I see nothing wrong with more/different things to do.

  Very well put, The reason LoTRO keeps me as a fan is there seems to be endless things to do ingame and it has something for almost every play style.

As far as the skirmish system I cannot see where there is anything not to like about it, as Zobie columbus put it in his developer diary:

My favorite part of the entire system! No joke. Skirmishes can be scaled to the group size and level of the group playing them, as well as having a difficulty toggle which will increase the rewards from the Skirmish. If this sounds great, it's because it is! However, allow me to fill in some of the details.

First, each scaling axis (level, size, difficulty) is set only when the Skirmish is created. They will not change during playthrough. For groups, the leader of the fellowship will decide what values to select.

Second, in the interests of balance we have only implemented solo, small fellowship, fellowship, and 12 man raid sizes for Skirmishes. This means when you select size, you can only select 1, 3, 6 or 12. At launch, all skirmishes can be played as 1, 3 and 6 man versions. Roughly half of them can also be run as 12-man raids. We will be unlocking the remaining 12-man versions in the future.

Third, a combination of the two above limitations means that if you set up a small fellowship (3 player) Skirmish and try to invite a 4th member, they will be unable to join. Simply exit the Skirmish, and re-create a fellowship (6 player) Skirmish. Playing with less than the maximum number of players is possible, though a bit more difficult.

So there are some restrictions, but we allow a significant amount of customization to create the kind of experience you want. My favorite part of all this is the difficulty scale. If a particular Skirmish seems too easy, simply step up the difficulty and you will find yourself challenged again, and receive more rewards!

www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/505-developer-diary-som-skirmishes-randomization-and-scaling

curse you all, I just found myself over at Newegg checking out the 5850's. Still won't buy until next yer but the price is already pretty good

hehheh I decided to lvl my lvl 35 hunter instead of one of my maxxed toons. I might even start a newbie champ today. I doubt I will head to Mirkwood till the new wears off.

yep it will take me the better part of a month, but then I don't do a grind play style and have a real life. Several people had lvl 70's in WoW the same day as BC released, in EQ1 a team had a lvl 60 Froglok the same day the expansion released

Originally posted by Trollo

I honestly have not played LOTRO ina while and same goes for DAoC but i beleive you can turn the auto attack off in both if i am correct.

yep and I have always kept it turned off because it interfered with my qued skills timing. What grates on my nerves is when people confuse  the que system for auto attack. In my experience unless you are fighting a gray mob if you don't use the skills u will end up eating dirt.

Originally posted by solareus

Originally posted by Jackdog

nice but looks like the big difference is in the world textures. Gives a lot more depth and more polys to play with. I might buy a new card for it once LoTRO has it implemented and the bugs smoothed out

 

Ati 5870 :)

last ATI card I owned was a 9800 Pro LOL, it was a good card in it's day. Kinda well in love with nvidia cards from EVGA, got 3 of em in various configs in three computers now. Might swap back to ATI next time though. Just have to wait and see what is best bang for the buck this time next summer or fall depending on when Turbine upgrades the engine and gets the bugs worked out.

nice but looks like the big difference is in the world textures. Gives a lot more depth and more polys to play with. I might buy a new card for it once LoTRO has it implemented and the bugs smoothed out

Originally posted by Laughing-man

 

when you hit a button does your character instantly cast that spell and or use that ability?

No?

yes if you are not in the middle of another skill being fired off

that is because of what?

The auto attacking?

Yep.

What do you consider not auto attack, hitting 5 skills on a macro and having them all fire at once ?

I know what planning attacks out is like, and LOTOR isn't action packed enough to claim it doesn't have auto attack, the entire game is based around it.

pretty obvious you have not the slightest idea what auto attack is, or you have never played LoTRO, I have been playing online MMORPGs since UO's beta and would never consider LoTRO a autio attack game. If you don't use the right skills at that right time you will die a lot and that is a fact. Considering a lvl 60 + has 4 tiers of skills generally it can get fairly complicated. LoTRO requires you to think not just spam keys like a certain game ~cough cough~ wow

As others have pointed out LoTRO's combat is closer to DAOC's, except for the  Warden class which is like AOC except in LoTRO it does not lightup the next skill and gambits can go up to 5 keystrokes. The combo keys are pretty easy to memorize though, at least for me they are.

I played FFXI for 4 years, I know what Auto attack is

Now back to the changes, LoTROs combat has been speeded up quite a bit in the Expansion. Only played my hunter a couple of hours so far and the biggest change I noted when he dual wields daggers he kills almost as fast as he does ranged with his bow. Going to try some of my other toons tomorrow,. Looking forward to playing my warden, Minnie and RK.

Originally posted by Laughing-man

 

IM SO TIRED OF AUTO ATTACK!

 

to me auto attack is EVE style combat, or Dragon Age. LoTRO you have to plan the attacks out for different mobs and time your keystrokes to fire off  the various skills. Nothing auto attack about that in my mind.

Originally posted by eddieg50

    Its funny about  different computers, with AOC and EQ2 my comp runs like smooth like butter but some other games no, just weird

AOC and EQII both ran fine for me also, in fact even when I was running XP and 2 gig they ran fine. What I was referring to is the loading screens ever time you go through a door or travel to a different area

if by responsiveness you mean assigning your five most powerful  skills to a key and having them all execute at once then I think you will still not like it.

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by Jackdog

The final solution to my hitching was 6 gig of DDR2. I run with everything maxxed now except AA which I set at 2X or 4X. System specs are e8400 @3.0 on a el cheapo Gigabyte board, EVGA 260GTX, WD Raptor for my game drive and WIn 7 64 bit. Same system with 2 gig of ram and I had some very minor hitching but as soon as I added the extra 4 in there no hitch whatsoever.If you have a 64bit system drop as much ram as you can in, ram is cheap these days.

  I have 32 bit windows xp so 6 is out of qustion but what if  i went with ddr3?

I really could not say if it would be worth it or not as far as performance gained compared to money spent. I know switching to a Raptor drive for a my game files helped a bit but did not totally eliminate it, so I doubt that  DDR3 will make that much of a difference. In my overclocking experiments, memory tweaking never really gained me very  much compared CPU, front bus, and vid card clocking.

My hitching was so minor before Win 7 and 6 gig that  it was no big deal. Being a die hard geek and overclocker I was determined to fix it anyway.

My theory it was caused by all of the different  texture files  from PC's clothing and buildings in Bree loading and unloading from memory. It was only noticeable in one or two areas such as Bree and 21st hall. Of course I am only guessing about the textures being the issue here, but it makes sense.

Way I look at it is it could be worse than a hiccup or two running through Bree. Zone loading from games like AoC and EQII does  are much more annoying in my opinion.

As far as a complete cure goes if you can I would just save my money until I could switch to Win7 64 bit. That way you get the DX10 goodness and better performance in all your games. I was a XP fan and never even tried Vista, but Win 7 is the best op system I ever used (fanbois alert LOL) and I am a old timer from the 8 bit days so I cut my teeth on CPM and DOS systems so I can say I have tried darn near all of them. Until then just tweak your options  to get something you can live with, I don't think it can be completely eliminated by that but it can be minimized.

Just my 2 cents worth.

The final solution to my hitching was 6 gig of DDR2. I run with everything maxxed now except AA which I set at 2X or 4X. System specs are e8400 @3.0 on a el cheapo Gigabyte board, EVGA 260GTX, WD Raptor for my game drive and WIn 7 64 bit. Same system with 2 gig of ram and I had some very minor hitching but as soon as I added the extra 4 in there no hitch whatsoever.If you have a 64bit system drop as much ram as you can in, ram is cheap these days.

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by Zorvan01

If it was a "good game", it would have "enough players".

The question is is the game itself bad, is it lacking to much or is the lack of players due to the bad impressions made at launch. Good luck getting a straight answer on this from any group of players.

 

Free trials and vet comebacks have going on for over 6 months now. I doubt you can still blame a bad launch since anyone who had even the slightest desire to take a second look has had ample opportunity. the game simply has a flawed design and no staying power. People have been coming back for second looks, get bored or dissapointed then leave again.

The question is how many took advantage of this vet comeback and the last one? I really can't say, right now in game there doesn't seem to be many. Why people leave is something I really can't answer as only that person knows. Some I'm sure think it's a bad game, some probably feel it's lacking to much to be an MMO (worth 15 a month) Some probably didn't bother to go back because of what they experienced at launch.

Looks like this comeback campaign has moved AoC from the low 70's up to the high 50's on XFire. Last time they had the vet return it was at the same time 1.05 released and it moved AoC form mid 50's to the low 30's and high 20's on XFire. Even if no one I know uses XFire it seems real coincidental that when these promotions occur, more hours are logged, wild huh :)

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by Zorvan01

If it was a "good game", it would have "enough players".

The question is is the game itself bad, is it lacking to much or is the lack of players due to the bad impressions made at launch. Good luck getting a straight answer on this from any group of players.

Free trials and vet comebacks have going on for over 6 months now. I doubt you can still blame a bad launch since anyone who had even the slightest desire to take a second look has had ample opportunity. the game simply has a flawed design and no staying power. People have been coming back for second looks, get bored or dissapointed then leave again.

Originally posted by Rallycart

Originally posted by Jackdog

they put all this info in about  subscriptions but don't bother providing a link to the download. Same old Funcom LOL

 

It is right on your account page. When you reactivate, or even if you don't, you can log into your account at the website, and click the Age of Conan Download. It is right below the Subscription Details.

thanks :) Silly me I was looking for a download link on he main page.  I seriously doubt if I will be reactivating, but I am curious to see if he servers are "booming", and to see if they fixed the "no death penalty" bug that was the final straw for me lat time I tried it which was the 1.05 release

Never mind I just saw post 22. No way I am going to put in charge card info.....

they put all this info in about  subscriptions but don't bother providing a link to the download. Same old Funcom LOL

well if I could trust FC , which I don't, I would do a 3 month sub just for access to the TSW beta. Problem is I figure TSW will turn out to be just a big of a cluster farce as AoC. AoC can't even hold my interest long enough to make it through a free trial let alone through a 3 month sub.

I see they are offering double XP all month also, should be able to darn near hit 80 on a ten day free trial.

Originally posted by Thillian

Originally posted by Jackdog

yeah it is setting the world on fire...I am sure the fans and shills  of Vanguard say the same, but all either seem to do is go down steadily in population. For AoC 1.05 and the vet return campaign was their last big opportunity to get people back...from here on out it's just a  steady bleed out

 

Expansion will be a huge attempt to get people back.

 

 Sorry but it amuses me when someone uses the word potential in a product that is currently being charged for. Tell me about the potential for unreleased games sucj as Secret World and I wil pay attention all day, but for games that have have hit the market I am only interested in what is available for my money.

Anyway on the expansion , going by FC's present and past performance on releases, expansions, and patches don't expect much. So if the expansion ever makes it to market I will re evaluate AoC.