Wednesday, June 11, 2008

LotRO - An Experiment In Middle-Earth

Gasp! Bildo's talking about LotRO! He must assuredly be sick of Age of Conan and we should quickly harpoon him!

Just getting your thoughts out of the way before I go into this. Recently, Hudson's having a bit of a confusing time with MMOGs. He's in the Warhammer beta, apparently really loving it, but like any beta tester he of course wants to be experiencing games where his progress is a bit more permanent.

Over the course of the summer and up until Warhammer's release, he plans on revisiting some previous MMOGs to see how they're shaping up. LotRO is one of those he plans to check out again. Now, I'm not about to pay $15 for an experiment I'm not sure I'll even really enjoy, but over the next some odd Thursday nights I'll be using my father in law's lifetime account (hooray for free play!) to venture anew into Middle-earth as a Dwarven Minstrel on Meneldor with Hudson and his brother in our little static group to see just how much fun is still to be had in Turbine's game.

I doubt I'll see the end-game before I either quit on it again or Warhammer comes out and Conan plus WAR demand all of my attention, but at least with a static group won't have much trouble doing group quests and we'll for sure always have someone to party with.

Should prove to be a good time, regardless of how much progress we make. The only kink I see in the cogs is that I might very well feel like playing Age of Conan the entire time... if only Hudson would get his ass out of Tortage already!

8 comments:

Gamer Hudson said...

I bow my head in shame.

Werit said...

LoTRO is a quality game, take your time, enjoy the lore :) I have a hobbit burglar. The hobbit starting area is very well done.

Thallian said...

a group of friends can make all the difference :) Maybe you should start your own kin just for kicks. I think Meneldor is the unofficial pvmp server btw (whatever the heck that mean) Personally I like Windfola, I have made chars on a few servers and got them to 10 to check out the Moors and Windfola is VERY active. Meneldor is slightly less so but still active.

Bildo said...

@Werit: Oh, I've played it before. I used to work for the LotRO Vault at IGN and managed to make it to 38 before I got... discouraged by the sheer lack of quest options that were solo-able at that level.

@Thallian: Yeah, I think we're going with Meneldor because that's where Hud's brother's higher level character is housed. Glad to see it's active.

Unknown said...

As a lore-whore who tasted LOTRO upon release then recently went back I have nothing but praise. The world is still small but has been built upon quite heavily since I left, but also feels like a properly connected world and for me the important thing is it has a heavy lore aspect. I was also pleased to find I could run the game on mouth-watering settings on a machine that now struggles to play any modern MMO on anything other than 'adequate' settings.

I'd suggest exploring too, I wasn't enjoying the Dwarf homelands so I migrated my Dwarf to Bree and haven't looked back. Bree has to be the Stormwind of LOTRO, active and a superb jump off point that'll have you questing well into the twenties.

Elementalistly said...

As a lover of Lord of the rings, I am the exact opposite of everyone on this game, and have garnered this hate/hate relationship with this MMO..
Many decisions for game interface design, to character visuals, to performance of various locations, the copycat gameplay really just killed me..
Ugly icons to funny looking run animations (like the Hobbit Dirty Diaper jaunt..), various animation issues, music that is less than satisfactory in some zones..
OMG...I could go on and on..

But, I won't...it's your blog, and your time.
But, I think you are doing the right thing splitting your time up in the MMO's, as AoC is starting to make some mistakes that are not adding up to a lot of fun..
The death res spots are not well placed at times, crafting is still borked coming on the end of my free time...itemization is for the birds right now..
But, I am willing to give them a month of scrip time to rectify..

I gave LOTRO multiple tries (Played for 6 months, returned after every book, and then the 1 year free return), and they just have not made satisfactory changes that are compelling enough to keep me...
Here is hoping Funcom does not do the same...

Bildo said...

Oddly, I actually don't care too much about the problems you listed with Conan. I know they'll be fixed, and likely very quickly if Erling's words can be taken seriously (trust me they CAN).

The only thing that I care about right now in AoC is that leveling content for 60-80 gets put in and before I hit that level gap. :)

As for LotRO, it's going to be interesting, but more importantly, I think it will be fun to hang with Hudson and his brother and just take our time sight-seeing.

Elementalistly said...

PS: Follow up

Seems my issues of ill tiding were blown away by that large update in the community newsletter..

I am going to think about changing my scrip to 90 days now for AoC...hooray!