Evidently when they switched over to Nexon (just this last week) they changed server hardware. But pretty clearly it wasn't to superior hardware, as the game has been beset by severe lagging in several areas (not just general gameplay, but like the item mall window).

And this is with far fewer people than the game had back when I used to play regularly.

It wouldn't make sense, I mean, why buy it? But to put the game on lesser hardware seems like they don't think much of its long term plans.

Maybe they bought the company for Atlantica II? (Which it really needs, they sort of lost focus in the time I had left, going more with the TBS stuff rather than the previous sort of gameplay).

Elendimir (sp?) is the unofficial Oceanic server if you are playing on the Turbine/NA version

And like almost every other game, healers (aka minstrels and especially Rune-Keepers, though you need to buy the latter) are what is most needed, along with a tank.

It's pay to win.  But you can play to level 95 or so without needing to spend money. Then it's really helpful to have a blessing license ($15 a month), becaues the difficulty and the experience needed to level up increaess dramatically.

Beyond that, mounts have a huge impact on character stats. The most recent ones are completely ridiculous. Further, you can't buy these mounts, you only buy a chance to get the mount. You have like a 1 in 20 (1 in 25?) chance of getting one out of a gamble box, and those boxes cost $10 each.

And then you need Atlas Ore for lots of different stuff. Including upgrading gear (which is also gambling based). This is mostly important at levels 113 and up, when gear is very hard to acquire (basically needs to be crafted, but it's slow to craft...)

And recently they've introduced Cash Shop mercenaries. These cost $50-70 and are a lot better than the ones you can get in game.

Now techincally, you can get everything in the game because you can buy item mall stuff from other players. But in theory, most the people who do this do it by buying gold from farmers...

Crafting is actually pretty decent - you can make almost everything in the game.  Essentially, you acquire ingedients, then pick the crafting skill and hit the "Craft" button. Then you need to earn workload, which is gained either by fighting, using crafting books (gained by fighting when you aren't crafting or from trading in dismantled gear shards) or autocraft, which is just letting your character sit down and craft.

You create a character by picking an appearance, a main weapon, and name. That's it. The D-class, C-class, etc stuff just applies to your mercenaries, characters that you can acquire to help fight battles with you.

It's a guild thing. Basically you get guild points for doing things as a guild, and you use these points to bid on a town (against other guilds). Once you have them, you can build it up, but mostly you just get the fees from the services that people use while in the town.

It's a little grindy, but pretty fun.

The turn based combat works like well, turns. You have 30 seconds to move 5 of your mercs. Then the AI had 30 seconds to move its mercs (more like 10, as it's an AI and doesn't need to think).

Whee, same old stuff we get every year...

Then again, considering their new Winter festival content consisted of hassling homeless people, this is probably a good thing.

It's arguably one of the worst MMORPGs out there. I have a lifetime sub to it and almost never play it because there is so little to do in it.

Chock full of great content? Where? It's literally got 1/3 or less the content compared to WoW or EQ2. Even the standard generic F2P games offer as much as LOTRO.

And what's worse, every update instead of adding new content, they just add more and more ads for the store. "Buy now!" "Buy now!" "Buy now!" is all over the place on the UI. And if you should accidently click a button that you don't "own" (like for the 3rd outfits), the store automatically pops up.

It's not a huge update. They added one raid cluster and re-vamped one area slightly, and added a handful of new story quests.

No new landscape at all. Turbine used to add that all the time when the game came out. Now we go literally a year between land mass additions.

While I know some players do get by without spending money, at the same time, in the 3 weeks I've been back I've seen a lot of players spending a lot.

Top people on my server selling Atlas Ore (which is likely not being resold, but straight from the item mall) and seeing their name pop-up in mount boxes.

I'm sure if you make a career of it, like some seem to do, maybe you can stay ahead. But I wouldn't bet on it.

And considering it's by far the most expensive item mall on the planet, I don't see how Nexon can make it any worse.

Well, they didn't even add skirmishes to the game until Mirkwood. So pretty much, yes. from 1-60.

That said, a few epic/story quests are skirmishes (in Mirkwood), so if you don't have a beefed up skirmish soldier, you will be at a disadvantage. But that's a long ways toward the end.

Anyway, in theory I like quests better. But so many of the quests in LOTRO are awful, I actually prefer skirmishes.

Hey, go kill X of Y.

Okay, now go kill X of Y for Z.

And okay, now go to the place where Y lives and do something or other (pick up or destroy or examine something).

Those three things, in varying order, describe almost all the quests in the game. And yet in some many cases, they are linear, rather than doing them at the same time. (There are some exceptions, Eregion is fairly well designed for instance, but Turbine pretty much phoned in half the game, if not more so).

Neither is really great these days.

Hunters have largely been supplanted by Rune-Keepers, who can do more damage and also heal.

They're still fairly fun to play solo, as you can at least port all over the place.

I haven't really played a Burglar, but you can read about complaints here:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?380207-Dev-Diary-Feedback-Update-2-Burglar-Dev-Diary

The next patch is supposed to fix them, but the fixes aren't too popular.

As to your other question, I dunno. I've never been in a guild in the game (nor have I had any offers) and without a guild, it's impossible to find anyone to group with, so I've never done any instance..

Guardians in their 2-handed weapon stance are actually pretty fun to play.  I'm enjoying Moria a lot more on my Guardian doing that, than my first time through on my Champion (as I'm not dying all the time).

They are sort of reactive. Something happens (like a block or a parry), which lets you activate another skill, and that skill will open up 2-3 other skills. So you chain them.

Captains are really support characters. Their survivability is about as bad as a Champion, but the DPS is much worse (until apparently you hit 56 and get an Archer instead of a Herald). You just don't have a lot of combat skills, and the ones you do have, rely on you shouting or getting a critical.

You do have some nice buffs and a pretty decent heal that you can spam almost constantly.  You probably can't heal in a raid, but you can in smaller groups. (But the catch is, you can't heal yourself. That's why it can be tough, you can only borrow from your herald)

Champs are extremely gear dependant. If you have really great gear and maxed out stats, they're pretty tough. If not, well, expect to die a lot. Your main stance gives you no blocking or defending, and your secondary stance gives just a small amount.  So fights are really a race to see who dies first. 

Only really nice thing once you get into Moria and beyond, is the Champ's clobber ability.

Basically once you get into Moria, every since creature you fight (at least an orc) has some sort of special skill that is irritating. Stunning you for a few seconds, or healing, or something.  Most classes have something to interupt this, but they all have long cooldowns, so you can only use them every 2-3 combats. But a Champ, you can constantly use yours.

Wardens are actually pretty fun to play as well. Rather than having a bunch of separate skills, they have really just 3. What you do is do those 3 in various orders, then hit I guess your 4th, which executes the gambit (the term for it) that you've set up by entering in the skills.

Some of these are to interupt, to heal, to boost your defense, and of course, to do more damage.

I enjoyed playing once up to the mid 30s, but then gambits become 4 slots long. That is, you enter 4 skills and then they get executed. To me, that got a little complicated. And it goes all the way up to 5.

There has also been a problem with the servers, where there was lag, so sometimes the skills would go in the wrong order.  This is apparently fixed, but I can't vouch for it, since I haven't played in a few weeks.

They cost money (either Moria or buy them in the item mall) and are probably a bit overpowered. Mine is 37th level and without trying, I've only died once (and that was in a skirmish were I accidently aggroed two groups of enemies, 8 all together. At the end cul-de-sac of Tuckborough). But they are probably worth it.

I've never really understood nerfs. If one class is too powerful, maybe just make the other classes better so it's equal?

And then there are nerfing of drop/loot rates. I don't those either - presumably it's so people don't get overgeared, but it just makes the disaprity between the people who did get the good gear pre-nerf, and the people who come after...

Originally posted by BarCrow

I haven't played this game since Christmas Eve but all the additions seem to be more of the same stuff that was already in the store...except for the legendary item packages. All of which seem to be customizations ..so you can have an item more fitting your class and style of play. They just don't seem like play-to-win additions. Maybe I'm missing something.

Do you have a LI?

They get special abilities, called legacies, which basically dramatically improve a classes skill (which are the main way of doing damage or things in combat in the game). These are generated completely at random, from two different pools.

The catch is, most of these are completely worthless. Like you might get a legacy that boosts your skill that lets you run faster.  So you have to constantly acquire new LIs over and over and over until you get one that doesn't suck (and you don't know this until you level it up to level 30)

Beyond that, since the level cap is fixed at 65 , your LIs basically are your character's power progression. Want to hit harder? The only way is maxing out a legacy for a skill that does more damage.

So in essence, the only way to max our your characters power is to max our your LIs. And how do you do that? Well, there is still always the grind (which is awful), but now you can spend your way at the Turbine cash shop. Ka-ching! Ka-ching! Ka-ching!

And beyond that, the grind is bad but basic LIs drop like water. But the good LIs, the second (and in the patch, first) age rlics are very hard to get and/or expensive. So only the richest of players can afford to grind through. Most people just have to make do, or give up and use a non-LI, or stick with a 3rd age that is vastly inferior.

So the only option for most people is the cash shop.

Had Turbine really wanted to address this problem (which is a big one), they would have done something like made the LIs work like Skirmish soldiers. With that, you can customize your solider the way you like. Sure, you need to grind a bit to get some of the options for it, but it's not bad at all.

Instead, Turbine went the item mall route.  Unless you pay, forget about having a decent LI (unless you spend your life in the game, which I guess is what most supporters do).

(And to the poster above me, there already are uber healing potions in the game...)

If you have ever suscribed before, then they shouldn't have been deleted.

Do you have the right server? Unfortunately, there isn't an obvious way to find which ones you played on.

I believe though if you go to My Lotro

http://my.lotro.com/

And log in, it should list all your characters. Some might say "Archived", but I think they still get shown and what server...

On the other hand, if you had only done a trial account, they might have been.

A musketeer class.

Which would be less lorebreaking than the RK. There is gunpowder and stuff like cannons (bombards anyway). While firearms are a stretch, they aren't by much. Unlike something there being magical runes on the gate into Moria allowing Sith Lords running around, zapping people with lightning.

Or even less, some sort of hand to hand fighter. Brawler? Not like a martial artist.

Still, I think we might see something when they get to Rohan. But in all honesty, I don't expect anything major to the game. Just small expansions with basically more quests and such until the license runs out. Turbine just either doesn't have, or doesn't want to allocate resources to the game.Hopefull we will make it to Mordor by then, but it should be close...

The trouble is, these days there is a hardcore vs casual mindset.

The hardcore will cry and bitch and moan about anything (like this) that helps casual players actually have fun in MMORPGs.

But at the same time, it's pretty much this same attitude that has forced things like this to become necessary. Hard core/elitists never want to group with anyone outside their friends list or guild.

LOTRO is a perfect example. It's got a lot of group content, but no one ever wants to group outside of their guild. Or talk even. You can be lined up to kill a boss for a quest, even but people just will not group to kill it together.

I remember when it was first being broadcast (in syndication), the local station that carried it ran it at 4 am in the morning because it got even worse ratings than informercials (and informercials paid them to run it).

It's a neat property, but no one is going to sink millions of dollars of development cost into it, when there is almost zero audience.

Do people really find this fun? Doing something over and over weekly for 9 months to finally get a full set of gear?

I guess at this point, the people who still play this game will play it no matter what Turbine does...

Good. That Smurf Village is terrible, targeting children. The worst thing I have ever seen in gaming.

Adults have a hard enough time resisting the lure of F2P. Children have no chance at all.

I got a email with a welcome back package (Blessing LIcense + 30 Day Hero thing for free) so I started playing again after an absense of probably a year...

Anyway, I had no idea the new mercs cost that much! Damn! And $70 for the package with their skill books and upgrade jewels...

Ugh.

1) We're still pretty much at the start of The Two Towers.

So who knows? I figure 1 mini-expansion a year for the next 15 years and the game will finally make it to Mordor. New content has been added at a glacial pace since Mines of Moria...

2) It's good from 1-35 or so. There is kind of drags until 46 or so. They revamped the Lonelands so it was solo friendly, but the rest of the game hasnt' been made solo friendly

3) There's only one game, so only one download

4) Yes. Maybe not cool, but the game definitely punishes soloers. Especially at high levels...

5) Yes, and it's instanced and pretty much pointless, as you can only decorate about a dozen places on your home.

6) Dunno, the last time I dowloaded it was 3 years ago when I started playing. But it's a fairly big game - 12 gigs? 15? Not sure...