Profile: Jenuviel
Send PM  Forum Posts  Forum Topics 

Recent Forum Posts [more...]

• • Questions of a Potential Explorer

  • Originally posted by solareus
    

    Originally posted by Thillian
    

    I am comparing lotro world to VG. And seriously, lotro is simply not exploration game. I am as well subscribing to lotro and I enjoy to play it from time to time. I think lotro's main point is the overall atmosphere, but surely not exploration. Just the fact you have linear instanced zones for epic books means it goes against free-exploration in the terms I understand it.

     

    Dude lol, you are describing beta 1 ... LotrO open world is just that open, I can run all over the place. I cut through the lone lands into the back end of chetwoods to get into North Downs, the world is very much explorable. There is no chunking either when going from zone to zone it is smooth and seamless. LotrO does use instancing but it is an additive, and it doesn't over take the game world like in AoC. LotrO is the best balance of Instancing and open world to date.

    Vanguard is a completely different game design and theory all together. Comparing the 2 games is simply unrealistic. It would be impossible to have the Lord of the Rings story in a game design like Vanguards, simply because the story is bigger then the game.

     

    I think it's fair to mention Vanguard when the OP stated that he was looking for an exploration game. I tried Vanguard and left it after a few months, I'm a lifetime subscriber to LotRO. Of the two, Vanguard has significantly more land. LotRO is certainly more seamless, given the "chunk" system in Vanguard, but Vanguard definitely has much, much, much more territory to explore; you can travel to anything you see, and you can see an awful lot. There are all sorts of caves and dungeons in the old AC tradition, some group-oriented, some not, some with great rewards, some not. Pretty much every cave or dungeon in LotRO is specifically tied to a quest from a major quest hub.

    LotRO is a fantastic game, but it's very driven by the narrative. It's also built on the principle that "everything has a purpose." They specifically set out to make zones small, but densely packed with content. Vanguard, on the other hand, has much more land, many more points of interest, but a lot less density over all. You can travel for 30 minutes in Vanguard and not see anything particularly spectacular, then run across three dungeons.  In LotRO, you'd be hard-pressed to go 10 minutes without running into a quest NPC.

    The best way I can think of to sum up the difference would be this:

    LotRO is a one-gallon jug of water with 50 marbles in it, each marble is a point of interest. Vanguard is a 50-gallon barrel of water with 100 marbles in it, each marble is a point of interest. There's more to see in Vanguard, but it's harder to find and more spread out.  LotRO makes maximum use of your time by having little "pointless" terrain, whereas Vanguard is largely pointless terrain with interesting bits here and there. Whether that's good or bad depends on your motivation.

    As far as AC-like character customization, you won't find that in either game- or any currently available game that isn't AC. Both LotRO and Vanguard have classes and "ideal" group structure. Both games have tried to make it so you can still accomplish most things if you don't have that "ideal" group assembled, but the holy trinity still exists. I think that's just the reality of modern MMOs.

    When it comes to combat, it's pretty subjective. It's certainly slower in LotRO and Vanguard than in AC or City of Heroes. You won't be taking on 40 olthoi soldiers by yourself and wiping the floor with them; you won't be herding 17 Hellions around a corner and lighting them all on fire. You'll largely be fighting 1-3 things at a time when you're on your own, as many as 10 in your average team. Still, despite the slower, smaller-scale combat in LotRO and Vanguard, both games give you plenty of tools to use to keep it from getting boring.

    I think Vanguard's a very real possibility for the OP, certainly worth considering. I found its crafting system to be infinitely more interesting that LotRO's, and the diplomacy system, while not quite my cup of tea, was still a nice change of pace. That said, however, LotRO does have several things going for it that make it a better choice (as far as I'm concerned):

    1) A much larger development team that consistently adds content, fixes bugs, communicates with players on the forums, tweaks classes, holds big events, and generally works to keep the game moving. Vanguard's development team is very small, the updates don't happen as frequently as LotRO's, and they're much smaller when they do arrive.

    2) See point 1.

    3) See point 2.

  • Posted: 6/21/08 9:56 AM
    Lord of the Rings Online
• • In-game screenshots of LOTRO

  • Great stuff, Vendayn. I'll add a link to my gallery, too. It'd be great to get a bunch of people posting. Different people tend to notice different things, and it'd be fun to see things from perspectives I hadn't thought of, or maybe even see things I'd missed entirely.

    www.mmorpg.com/galleries/Jenuviel/627_Lord-of-the-Rings-Online

    
    

    Edit: 56k warning. The screenshots were taken at native resolution (1680 x 1050) and ultra high quality, so they're pretty large when you click them for the full-size versions.

  • Posted: 6/15/08 8:48 PM
    Lord of the Rings Online
• • MMO's prices!

  • Frankly, I think even the $14.99/month rate is living on borrowed time. It's been at that level for four or five years now. I doubt that currently released games would have rate increases, but I'd definitely expect to see $17.99 or even $19.99 monthly fees for new releases in the next couple of years. The main impediment right now is the fact that the U.S. economy is faltering, and luxuries are the first things people give up when money is tight. It may take years for the market to equalize due to the housing issues, but I'd certainly expect a price increase for subscriptions when it does.

  • Posted: 6/11/08 2:13 PM
    Lord of the Rings Online
• • Anyone of the Lotro players tried Aoc?

  • AoC wasn't made with me in mind. The game uses gore/blood splatter, gratuitous female nudity and unregulated, interpersonal aggression as selling points. As a female gamer in her 30s, none of that's what I'm looking for. In fact, those are all things I actively avoid. Even if I could look past those things, the type of community that would be attracted to the game by all those elements is almost certainly not a group of people I'd have much, if anything, in common with. I don't have any problem with the game being designed largely for teenage males, though; there's room for all kinds of MMOs on the market. Given the number of box sales they've achieved, I'd be stunned if they missed my demographic at all, anyway.

  • Posted: 6/10/08 7:17 PM
    Lord of the Rings Online
• • Urgently Need Help, Game Keeps Crashing!

  • I'm not a computer expert, but restarts that only occur when running 3D applications sounds like a driver issue, possibly a conflict. I'd suggest downloading some freeware like Driver Cleaner Pro and following the instructions in the read-me file. Maybe you installed new drivers directly over your old ones at some point (without uninstalling the old ones first), or maybe there were just some fragments left after uninstalling. Either issue could cause crashes, especially if the crashes occur in areas of a game that use specific particle effects, shaders, or other such tech.

    There's no guarantee that'll fix your issue, but it's definitely the first place I'd start. Also, be sure to download the latest WHQL drivers for whatever audio and video cards you're using so you'll have them on hand after you've cleaned the old ones out.

    As far as hardware goes, while it's true a lot of the stuff you listed is on the low end for modern games, none of that should cause a crash and restart. The fact that you have programs suggesting you update your drivers is a good indication that the issue is driver-related.

  • Posted: 6/07/08 12:42 PM
    Everquest II