LotRO ? A Review
Did you ever wonder what made Turbine bring so many players to this site to win round after round? Did you wonder what made Old time escapists post that they hate the Wii but vote for Nintendo anyway? I will try to give you an insight what made ME vote for Turbine ? and what makes me stay here.
About me
I?m a male software consultant from Germany, nearly 40 years old, I have a wife and two loveable kids, a house, I wrote a book about programming and I have a 60 hour working week. I have time for anything but playing computer games.
About my gaming background
I was playing computer games for more than 20 years now. I started on a Commodore 64 and preferred adventures and round based strategy games. I spent many a night with my friends on a computer playing games like Football Manager or Empire (the ancient one
.
Then I moved to another city, got a job and a wife and suddenly had not chance to play with my friends anymore. So I settled on games like Civ (yes, Civ 1), Colonization, Alpha Centauri etc. Additionally I started playing PBMs (yes, I sent the moves by snail mail those days).
Internet came and I started playing PBeMs. Free form story writing games e.g. And then there was WoW.
About MMOs
When I first read about WoW I thought it would be fun. But I also knew that I wouldn?t have the time to play 20-30 hours a week, do a regular raiding etc. So I fought the WoW virus for more than a year. Then three months before the release of BC there was a CD with the client and a 2 week trial key. And I was hooked.
No, you won?t hear any story about losing wife and job here. I still was only able to play maybe 5-10 hours a week mostly no more than an hour a day. And I found out that even while I enjoyed chatting in the different channels about the game and everything else I missed a lot of the game due to the fact that I had no time to enter the instances, let alone raiding. When I added someone to my friend?s list I found out that after two weeks he was ten levels ahead of me. But still I enjoyed playing an MMO more than I enjoyed Civ 4 or other similar games.
About LotRO - The beginning
Early 2007 there was a lottery for LotRO Beta keys on a popular German gaming site. Being a fan of the books for more than 20 years it was clear that I had to participate. So I entered the contest and received a key. My computer was three years old these days and the hardware requirements were a step ahead from WoW but I tried it anyway. And I was completely overwhelmed. There was a very beautiful world, nicely written quest, and, most important, lots of nice people. The first chat line I read on WoW (on a German RP-server) contained more digits than letters and it got worse. I never read 1337speech on the German LotRO RP-server Belegaer.
So I preordered LotRO and bought a Collector?s edition. It cost 250,-? these days because it came with an LTA which meant I didn?t have to pay monthly fees. As I always had the problem in WoW to justify 12,-? per month for 6 hours of playing this was a fine concept for me.
LotRO - The Launch
LotRO had one of the smoothest launches ever. They opened the servers one day before the announcement and I think there were only one or two restarts the first days. I created an elven hunter the very first day and joined a kinship (the LotRO word for guild) I had contacted during the beta. And what began in the beta continued in the real game. Even if I didn?t play as much as the others and I quickly lagged in level there were always some helpful people. You always found groups to do some small quests. LotRO was about cooperation where WoW was about competition.
LotRO ? The books
Two months after release they added the first patch, or book as Turbine calls them. And again it was overwhelming. Where WoW added one raid after the other, Turbine added a whole new area for questing. Only two months after release. And it continued that way. Every two to three months there was a new book with both solo and group content, new features like housing, fishing etc. While there were some bugs I never experienced serious problem that the GM team wasn?t able to handle quickly. And then there came Moria.
Lots of small gaming sites I never heard before had talked a lot about Moria. There even was a website by Turbine with some mini games. It was announced the biggest underground area in a computer game and it probably is.
Moria added a ton of great features: The graphics were even better, the character development was streamlined and made more understandable, and there were legendary items that level as you do, a great concept for players like me who mostly play alone.
A detailed Review of LotRO
Graphics: The graphics in LotRO are mostly beautiful. I sometimes call it the best screenshot generator ever. But I admit that the pictures often look better than the real game because animation is often a bit slow and looks unnatural sometimes.
Sound: The sound is simply great. Whenever I enter a new area I often take some time to listen to the music. You also have the chance to learn different instruments where you can make music inside the game and the other players are able to hear it. Simply awesome.
World: The World is big and great. You don?t have any loading screens like you have between the different continents of WoW. When you start in Thorin?s Halls and make all your way to Lothlorien by foot you probably take half an hour or more of walking ? without a loading screen.
In addition you find that the world is coherent. There is no desert besides an icy plane just to make the areas look different. When you study the books you feel that Turbine?s creation could be the REAL middle earth. When you climb a mountain just to take a look from the top you know that there is something good about it.
Quests: There are lots of quests and they are mostly well written. Every quest helps support the feeling of the current area (in the Shire farmers are looking for their chicken, in Moria the freshly arrived dwarves seek help in securing the area). In WoW and many other games I had the feelings that most quests were more or less random, in LotRO the quests nearly always fit into the story. Plus there are epic quests where you follow a story line with the characters you know from the books. Shadows of Angmar Book 7 to 15 must be one of the longest quest lines in computer games history (about 100 quests that you need to do sequentially).
Combat system:
The LotRO combat and game system is very similar to WoW, just a bit slower. If you?re looking for a way to prove your skills with mouse and keyboard, LotRO is NOT the game for you. Every two levels you learn a new skill or two that you can put on an action bar. Using a skill costs power. When you hit an opponent you reduce its life (which is called Morale here) and when the mob runs out of morale you can loot him and get some more or less useful stuff. All in all it?s basic and simple.
There is one thing that LotRO introduced into mainstream MMO. Traits. When you kill x monsters of a special type or visit y places you receive a title or a trait. While a title is something to display over your head a trait is something that improves you character. And the good thing is that this improvement ? contrary to improvement by items ? survives a max level increase. So if your trait adds 20 to agility it doesn?t matter if you?re level 50 or 60. If your item adds 20 to agility you will probably replace it by another item when you level up 10 levels. This concept is now more or less copied and enhanced by WAR (Tome of Knowledge) and WoW (Achievements) but both MMOs turned it more or less into something to pose with.
PvP: There is no real PvP in LotRO, just PvMP (player vs. monster player). When you reach level 10 you can create a monster to battle the high level characters. It is more of a fun thing but I never tried it.
Disadvantages in LotRO
Lately there was more and more mourning in the LotRO community. Balancing was a bit out of line between the classes with Moria. Now they turned it back with book 7 but seemingly too much. Additionally instances were buggy and full of exploits, the legendary item system looks more like a lottery than a long term motivation and the 12 men raid that was announced for Moria was delayed the second time.
Turbine seems to have a quality problem with LotRO at the moment. To me it seems that the software design is a bit lacking somewhere so that fixing one bug opens another one. But I didn?t experience any one of those bugs so all in all it isn?t as bad as it sounds.
Summary
LotRO is the best MMO for players like me who don?t have enough time to play an MMO competitively. Combined with a mostly peaceful and nice community (on both sides of the Atlantic, I play on a European and a US-Server) it is the MMO for the casual. If you want to spend 20+ hours per week LotRO might not be enough for you. But combined with the lifetime payment which is still available for everyone, only at a higher price, you?ll find the perfect MMO you can enter to relax from the farming stress.
My recommendation: Buy it!
Did you ever wonder what made Turbine bring so many players to this site to win round after round? Did you wonder what made Old time escapists post that they hate the Wii but vote for Nintendo anyway? I will try to give you an insight what made ME vote for Turbine ? and what makes me stay here.
About me
I?m a male software consultant from Germany, nearly 40 years old, I have a wife and two loveable kids, a house, I wrote a book about programming and I have a 60 hour working week. I have time for anything but playing computer games.
About my gaming background
I was playing computer games for more than 20 years now. I started on a Commodore 64 and preferred adventures and round based strategy games. I spent many a night with my friends on a computer playing games like Football Manager or Empire (the ancient one
.Then I moved to another city, got a job and a wife and suddenly had not chance to play with my friends anymore. So I settled on games like Civ (yes, Civ 1), Colonization, Alpha Centauri etc. Additionally I started playing PBMs (yes, I sent the moves by snail mail those days).
Internet came and I started playing PBeMs. Free form story writing games e.g. And then there was WoW.
About MMOs
When I first read about WoW I thought it would be fun. But I also knew that I wouldn?t have the time to play 20-30 hours a week, do a regular raiding etc. So I fought the WoW virus for more than a year. Then three months before the release of BC there was a CD with the client and a 2 week trial key. And I was hooked.
No, you won?t hear any story about losing wife and job here. I still was only able to play maybe 5-10 hours a week mostly no more than an hour a day. And I found out that even while I enjoyed chatting in the different channels about the game and everything else I missed a lot of the game due to the fact that I had no time to enter the instances, let alone raiding. When I added someone to my friend?s list I found out that after two weeks he was ten levels ahead of me. But still I enjoyed playing an MMO more than I enjoyed Civ 4 or other similar games.
About LotRO - The beginning
Early 2007 there was a lottery for LotRO Beta keys on a popular German gaming site. Being a fan of the books for more than 20 years it was clear that I had to participate. So I entered the contest and received a key. My computer was three years old these days and the hardware requirements were a step ahead from WoW but I tried it anyway. And I was completely overwhelmed. There was a very beautiful world, nicely written quest, and, most important, lots of nice people. The first chat line I read on WoW (on a German RP-server) contained more digits than letters and it got worse. I never read 1337speech on the German LotRO RP-server Belegaer.
So I preordered LotRO and bought a Collector?s edition. It cost 250,-? these days because it came with an LTA which meant I didn?t have to pay monthly fees. As I always had the problem in WoW to justify 12,-? per month for 6 hours of playing this was a fine concept for me.
LotRO - The Launch
LotRO had one of the smoothest launches ever. They opened the servers one day before the announcement and I think there were only one or two restarts the first days. I created an elven hunter the very first day and joined a kinship (the LotRO word for guild) I had contacted during the beta. And what began in the beta continued in the real game. Even if I didn?t play as much as the others and I quickly lagged in level there were always some helpful people. You always found groups to do some small quests. LotRO was about cooperation where WoW was about competition.
LotRO ? The books
Two months after release they added the first patch, or book as Turbine calls them. And again it was overwhelming. Where WoW added one raid after the other, Turbine added a whole new area for questing. Only two months after release. And it continued that way. Every two to three months there was a new book with both solo and group content, new features like housing, fishing etc. While there were some bugs I never experienced serious problem that the GM team wasn?t able to handle quickly. And then there came Moria.
Lots of small gaming sites I never heard before had talked a lot about Moria. There even was a website by Turbine with some mini games. It was announced the biggest underground area in a computer game and it probably is.
Moria added a ton of great features: The graphics were even better, the character development was streamlined and made more understandable, and there were legendary items that level as you do, a great concept for players like me who mostly play alone.
A detailed Review of LotRO
Graphics: The graphics in LotRO are mostly beautiful. I sometimes call it the best screenshot generator ever. But I admit that the pictures often look better than the real game because animation is often a bit slow and looks unnatural sometimes.
Sound: The sound is simply great. Whenever I enter a new area I often take some time to listen to the music. You also have the chance to learn different instruments where you can make music inside the game and the other players are able to hear it. Simply awesome.
World: The World is big and great. You don?t have any loading screens like you have between the different continents of WoW. When you start in Thorin?s Halls and make all your way to Lothlorien by foot you probably take half an hour or more of walking ? without a loading screen.
In addition you find that the world is coherent. There is no desert besides an icy plane just to make the areas look different. When you study the books you feel that Turbine?s creation could be the REAL middle earth. When you climb a mountain just to take a look from the top you know that there is something good about it.
Quests: There are lots of quests and they are mostly well written. Every quest helps support the feeling of the current area (in the Shire farmers are looking for their chicken, in Moria the freshly arrived dwarves seek help in securing the area). In WoW and many other games I had the feelings that most quests were more or less random, in LotRO the quests nearly always fit into the story. Plus there are epic quests where you follow a story line with the characters you know from the books. Shadows of Angmar Book 7 to 15 must be one of the longest quest lines in computer games history (about 100 quests that you need to do sequentially).
Combat system:
The LotRO combat and game system is very similar to WoW, just a bit slower. If you?re looking for a way to prove your skills with mouse and keyboard, LotRO is NOT the game for you. Every two levels you learn a new skill or two that you can put on an action bar. Using a skill costs power. When you hit an opponent you reduce its life (which is called Morale here) and when the mob runs out of morale you can loot him and get some more or less useful stuff. All in all it?s basic and simple.
There is one thing that LotRO introduced into mainstream MMO. Traits. When you kill x monsters of a special type or visit y places you receive a title or a trait. While a title is something to display over your head a trait is something that improves you character. And the good thing is that this improvement ? contrary to improvement by items ? survives a max level increase. So if your trait adds 20 to agility it doesn?t matter if you?re level 50 or 60. If your item adds 20 to agility you will probably replace it by another item when you level up 10 levels. This concept is now more or less copied and enhanced by WAR (Tome of Knowledge) and WoW (Achievements) but both MMOs turned it more or less into something to pose with.
PvP: There is no real PvP in LotRO, just PvMP (player vs. monster player). When you reach level 10 you can create a monster to battle the high level characters. It is more of a fun thing but I never tried it.
Disadvantages in LotRO
Lately there was more and more mourning in the LotRO community. Balancing was a bit out of line between the classes with Moria. Now they turned it back with book 7 but seemingly too much. Additionally instances were buggy and full of exploits, the legendary item system looks more like a lottery than a long term motivation and the 12 men raid that was announced for Moria was delayed the second time.
Turbine seems to have a quality problem with LotRO at the moment. To me it seems that the software design is a bit lacking somewhere so that fixing one bug opens another one. But I didn?t experience any one of those bugs so all in all it isn?t as bad as it sounds.
Summary
LotRO is the best MMO for players like me who don?t have enough time to play an MMO competitively. Combined with a mostly peaceful and nice community (on both sides of the Atlantic, I play on a European and a US-Server) it is the MMO for the casual. If you want to spend 20+ hours per week LotRO might not be enough for you. But combined with the lifetime payment which is still available for everyone, only at a higher price, you?ll find the perfect MMO you can enter to relax from the farming stress.
My recommendation: Buy it!
