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Role Playing (Games) Lord of the Rings Media Movies

Lord of the Rings Online Impressions 99

Posted by Zonk from the get-your-ring-on dept.
The Non-Disclosure Agreement for the Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) beta test has been lifted, and with the game set for release soon it may be useful to you to peruse some hands-on previews of the title. Hexus.net offers A Day in the Life of a Hobbit, and Tobold's MMORPG blog has similar hobbit-related impressions. Tobold also has a comparison between LORTRO and World of Warcraft for those who might be thinking about making the jump. More hands-on info is available from Warcry, Kill Ten Rats, and Gamers With Jobs. Van Hemlock offers up a high level overview of the title, mentioning recent releases and pointing out the realities of Massive gaming: "How the Great Fantasy Epic Saga will stand the ravages thousands of petty powerlevelling smacktalkers all loitering about Rivendell bank, level one hobbit girls - dancing as naked as the game will allow, shouting ridiculous three-letter-acronyms and generally not getting into the spirit of the thing, remains to be seen. I expect Our People can crush even The Lord of the Rings beneath our metagaming heel without feeling too guilty."
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Lord of the Rings Online Impressions More

Lord of the Rings Online Impressions

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  • Wait a minute... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    These games are about role playing? I had no idea... why all the leveling-related crack, then? If you want to role play, there's always chatrooms.

    • Re:Wait a minute... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Barny ( 103770 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @10:46AM (#17997684) Journal
      Hehe, kinda got a point, but you have to have something to do while waiting to yell at peeps for breaking RP rules ^_^

      I normally refer to them as MMOG because apart from a few really great people in CoV I have seen remarkably little in the way of RP in games these days (and yes, I do make a point that if someone is RPing, I will attempt to RP back).

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Saxophonist ( 937341 )

      If you don't care about the graphics, you can role-play in a Middle-earth sort of environment at MUME [pvv.org] (telnet link [pvv.org]). Level-related stuff happens there too, but at least it's free-as-in-beer to play.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Boronx ( 228853 )
      I wonder if the better defined and more widely known characteristics of Middle Earth will lend themseleves to more Roleplay? Besides the legend of the minitaur and the labyrinth, who knows how a Tauran is supposed to act? Who doesn't know how a hobbit should act?
    • Role playing in MMO's is the worst thing you could possibly do. Video games are about the action and having fun, accomplishing tasks and goals that give you emotional highs and lows, it's not about ACTING. If you want to act, you can find way better avenues to do it in then a game with characters who have limited ability to emote, and can basically only shout text in channels or above their heads.

      It boggles the mind why people would even bother to roleplay in a game with such limited abilities in terms of
  • I think this is coming out too late, they should have had this ready to be released right after the third movie was out. At that time it was still fresh in people's minds and it would've been easier to gain mainstream attention. Now it is something which will probably only reach the true fans of LOTR. IMHO on the one hand this is better cause the people playing it will be more into it, but on the other hand if alot more people play it the creators will have more money to improve and add to the game. Anyway

  • I totally know what to name my character (Score:5, Funny)

    by jfodale ( 1032534 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @10:41AM (#17997624) Homepage
    Enter your character's name: Legolas
    Sorry, that name is taken.

    Enter your character's name: Leggolas
    Sorry, that name is taken.

    Enter your character's name: Legolass
    Sorry, that name is taken.

    Enter your character's name: Llegolus
    Sorry, that name is taken.

    Enter your character's name: Legggollass
    Sorry, that name is taken.

    Enter your character's name: Legoooooolas
    Sorry, that name is taken.

    • Hehehe! Thats pretty funny!

      I guess that there will be a huge raft of people all trying to find names similar to the originals...however, some of the original characters from the books actually appear in the game [quests, instances etc.]

      So that should make it interesting. I really can't wait for this to come out; I think it'll be great.

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Yeah, I hate that sort of thing. I was trying out the Star Wars Galaxies trial (yeah, I know I'm way way behind the times). And right there in the tutorial section you are rescued by Han Solo. Guy must be busy personally rescuing thousands of unimportant nobodies. I wish they didn't feel the need to toss the big names in so much, it just ruins the sense of immersion that these guys have nothing better to do.
    • Logon to WoW, go into Blood Elves starting areas and you will see all those names and several other variations as well.

    • Re:I totally know what to name my character (Score:5, Funny)

      by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @11:04AM (#17997978) Journal
      The funniest one in beta was: Legomyeggolas

    • It'll be just like FFXI, everyone there has the same name as any of the given characters. I think I've seen 30 or 40 variations of how to spell Sephiroth, as well as all the XxxSephirothxxx clones. At least their living the storyline, Sephiroth can pop up anywhere, out any of his 'kin' that are still roaming.

    • Enter your character's name: Dildo
      Sorry, that name is not allowed.

      Heh heh heh heh!
    • XxLegolasxX
    • So I guess I'm going to try 'Agburanar' and see how long it goes before somebody gets it....
    • Actually, what would be great?

      If the npcs focussed on players with similar names to the Big Names.

      <Leggolas> *prance* Still the prettiest! */prance*

      <Pack of Myopic Orcs> *squint* "Hey look fellas, it's Legolas! I've heard there's a bounty on his head!"

      *ZERG*

      *splut*

  • I beta tested, so I have a few things to say (Score:5, Informative)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @10:53AM (#17997808) Journal
    Good:
    The quest vs grind ratio is vastly in favor of questing opposed to WOW where grinding was generally better.
    It has excellent graphics.
    It's run by Turbine, so that means frequent updates to keep the content fresh.
    Player vs Monster is fun. I played as a Warg and got over 100 kills and only finally died when lag froze me in place for 30 s

    Bad:
    Money is more worthless in this game than any other MMORPG. Somehow no newer MMORPGS seem to care to make an economy.
    If you get the best lewt in the game, your character will only be about 5-10% better than a storebought character even though you have lots of flashy stats.
    Attributes mean about nothing. I won't even post an example of this. Lets just say your stat sheet is a total joke.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jfodale ( 1032534 )
      Out of curiosity, how is PvP? (is there PvP at all for that matter?)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 )
        You can duel another person by clicking duel. It works something like WOW's duel option.

        You may have misunderstood monster play though. Some people play as monsters. Some people play as characters. Then they try and take over castles, quest, or fight each other.

        • Playing as a monster sounds awesome, but even then do they have to agree to a duel? It sort of defeats the purpose of playing a monster.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by micsaund ( 12591 )
      As a very time-limited player who mostly solos or plays with a couple other friends, I find the fact that 00ber lewt d00dz who play 18 hours per day and run dungeons 100 times over will only be 5-10% better than me refreshing. In every other MMO, my lowly, non-l33t characters are considered worthless and ungroupable because of my "lame n00b equipment". It sounds as though LotRO will remedy that.

      Of course, I would expect the power-players and people who do enjoy being 00ber to not like this particular aspe
      • As a time limited player who likes to progress, I find it depressing that there's nothing for me to progress to. No harder content, no gear upgrades, nothing that will make me 2-3 times more powerful than where I started.

        I mean, what's the point. I'm on the trailing end of content, but I know that there's somewhere thats up from here. If there's No up, then why bother?
        • If you're anything like my friend who WOWs probably 16 hours a week, he knows he's not getting anywhere, infact there is nowhere to get no matter how much time you have. So you've made it to level 60 and the phatest l00t imaginable? Good, now start a new character and do it all over again. There's and up, but there's no top, what's the point?

          He considers this a plus because like unlike games with a recognizable end he can leave at any time without feeling like he left things unfinished. He's no closer to
          • Your friend finds he needs to "kill" 16 hours / week? That is beyond sad.
          • I play everquest, and I KNOW that I'll never consume all the content available, and that I'll never be "the best" But why would I play a game where there's nothing beyond the next hill? If someone who knew nothing of chess beyond basic movements had a 15% chance of beating one of the top Grandmasters, what would be the point of studying and learning and playing the game. If everyone is equal, just play solitare. I want a skill based time based improvement based game, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

            and if

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

      The quest vs grind ratio is vastly in favor of questing opposed to WOW where grinding was generally better.

      Interesting. I rarely 'grind' in WoW, I'm pretty much doing a quest 99% of the time when I'm killing monsters, more so now the X-pac is out. I would be interested to know how you're defining the term 'grind' in this case in the context of quests.

      My definition of 'grind' vs 'questing' would be... quest: "Kill 30 specific mobs and return to quest giver to get a large XP bonus and some loot until you

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by irix ( 22687 )

        My definition of 'grind' vs 'questing' would be... quest: "Kill 30 specific mobs and return to quest giver to get a large XP bonus and some loot until you level up and move on". Grind: "Sit in the same area and kill anything you come across and hope for loot drops until you level up and move on".

        I'd generally agree with this definition, and it has pretty much been proven that for most classes in WoW, questing is faster than grinding. Also, usually Bliz does a decent job of mixing up the kill X mobs quests with other quest types, with some notable exceptions (STV and Nagrand for example).

        The only time I've really grinded in WoW is for reputation. In the xpac I'd say things have improved to a certain extent. For some reputation (e.g. Honor Hold, Cenarion Refuge) you don't have to do very much if

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ProppaT ( 557551 )
          I think one of the problems, in the case of WoW, is that leveling is so absurdly easy going either route (quest vs. grind) that it doesn't really matter if one is faster than the other, they're both quick...which takes some of the pull away from questing. In a game where scoring the next level is actually a challenge and actually takes good chunk of time to achieve, even if it takes more time to level via questing, the game stays more interesting by questing instead of grinding. You'll also make use of th

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

            I think one of the problems, in the case of WoW, is that leveling is so absurdly easy going either route (quest vs. grind) that it doesn't really matter if one is faster than the other, they're both quick...which takes some of the pull away from questing.

            I can agree with what you're aiming for, however, I think in WoW (and most MMO's these days) quests and 'grinding' are practically one and the same. You have to go and kill tons of birds, snakes, bees, and bulls. You just pickup a quest on the side to d

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Incidence ( 923443 )
        The problem with questing in the core WOW game is not the XP gains but with the rewards. The rewards a person or guild is going to get from grinding, either for rare drops or instance bosses are far better then any rewards from quests.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )

          The rewards a person or guild is going to get from grinding, either for rare drops or instance bosses are far better then any rewards from quests.

          In general, that's true of WoW, but I attribute that to the success of WoW more than the developers intention. It's not hard to see the 'left by the roadside' intentions of the developers to give each class their own 'class specific' quests for items and abilities.

          Just look at the level 10-ish quests for some classes. The Druid has a cool quest series to gai

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Golias ( 176380 )
            The succubus quest was the single most fun thing I did the entire time I played that game.

            Pretty much all the other quests were kind of boring.

            IMHO, YMMV, yadda yadda yadda

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Fozzyuw ( 950608 )
              Ah, yes. I remember helping a Lock with their demon quest. Actually, I helped one Lock out with their quest (freeze trapped the demon so they could tame it) and apparently my name was given to others as I started receiving other random requests for help from other locks.

              This was some time ago, and when rarely any Hunter had the Freeze trap talent (before the first round of talent improvements). Those did look like fun quests.

              Cheers,
              Fozzy

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drsquare ( 530038 )

      Bad:
      Money is more worthless in this game than any other MMORPG. Somehow no newer MMORPGS seem to care to make an economy.
      If you get the best lewt in the game, your character will only be about 5-10% better than a storebought character even though you have lots of flashy stats.
      That's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. This 'grind all day and night for the best equipment' is a RPG meme that had to die.
    • Considering the 'gold seller' market, I'm not surprised in the slightest that they decided to kill the money and not have an economy. The economies in MMO's always gets horrendously abused by gil farmers and most companies (Well actually, ALL companies except for FF) ignore it.

      I also have to agree that as someone who only plays a few hours a day, a few nights a week (Sorry, I have a job AND a life), that I don't want to see all these uber players (basically 13 yo's without a life) running around pretty much

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by keyne9 ( 567528 )

      Somehow no newer MMORPGS seem to care to make an economy.


      You never played FFXI, did you. That's the closest thing I have found to a real thriving player-run economy, and it was leaps and bounds above any of the paper-money economies other games put in. Unfortunately, that was also one of it's biggest flaws--it made the game far too much like actual work. 'Still amazing to see in practice, though.
      • While I have no experience with FFXI, I'm playing EvE Online, which has an anacrchocorporatist economic system, with corporations being the traditional guilds. The games even allows a corporation to issue stocks which can be traded, and a corp can distribute dividends on the stocks. It even has historic price tracking for goods...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Hubbell ( 850646 )
      "It's run by Turbine, so that means frequent updates to keep the content fresh."
      You mean like the updates that eventually brought Asheron's Call to being a worthless pile of shit, when it was one of the greatest MMORPG's ever made. They bent the PVP balance over and raped it, literally, in their attempts to balance it via spreadsheets. They made the game so outlandishly easy that a retarded 5 year old could play and not have a single problem. Those are the kinds of things you can expect out of Turbine

    • Bad:
      Money is more worthless in this game than any other MMORPG. Somehow no newer MMORPGS seem to care to make an economy.
      If you get the best lewt in the game, your character will only be about 5-10% better than a storebought character even though you have lots of flashy stats.
      Attributes mean about nothing. I won't even post an example of this. Lets just say your stat sheet is a total joke.

      If "best lewt" defines the game, the economy will be fucked anyway.
      For a decent MMORPG economy, make player-crafted stuf

  • Just wait till someone (Score:3, Funny)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @10:57AM (#17997892) Homepage Journal
    figures out how to dupe the "one that will rule them all"

  • Different from WoW? (Score:3, Informative)

    by MeanderingMind ( 884641 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @11:05AM (#17998000) Homepage Journal
    I read a number of the articles, but despite claims that this isn't a WoW clone set in Middle Earth as opposed to Azeroth I couldn't find much substance to prove it.

    The blogger's argument simply seemed to consist of noting how everything in LotRO was new, while players of WoW would already be tiring of the Burning Crusade and seeking something new. Exactly what makes LotR different from WoW outside of the setting, the slightly different races and the classes?

    The screenshots certainly didn't help. The user interface looked as though it was lifted straight out of WoW in almost every regard. I looked at some EQ screenshots just to be sure WoW hadn't done the same thing. Aside from possibly preferring Middle Earth to Azeroth, I'm having difficulty finding a good reason for someone to pick LotRO over WoW.

    Is there something I'm missing?

    • Aside from possibly preferring Middle Earth to Azeroth, I'm having difficulty finding a good reason for someone to pick LotRO over WoW.

      Is there something I'm missing?
      Someone who has played neither now has two games to choose from. But keep in mind that while LOTRO isn't a WOW clone set in Middle Earth, WOW *is* a LOTR clone set in Azeroth. Some may want the original.
       
      • While I agree that World of Warcraft takes a lot of cues from Lord of the Rings in terms of lore, style, races, etc the actual gameplay in World of Warcraft is what makes it what it is. I'm pretty sure that Tolkien didn't lay out a UI in the preface of his books when he wrote them:

        World of Warcraft UI [hld.ca] Lord of the Rings Online UI [hexus.net]

        It's not just the UI. The quest-heavy gameplay (as opposed to the Everquest/FFXI grind), the way the classes are balanced, etc. All that stuff is lifted from WoW, and certainly

        • But don't try to tell me that the LoTRO is the "original". That only applies to the setting.
          You're right... cloning of the world/genre is the only aspect I meant to address in my comment. WOW certainly got the formula right for how you interact with the world.
           
        • Considering how much WoW lifted from the Tolkien-inspired fantasy genre, as well as all the other mmorpgs before it, I'd say that LOTR has every right to copy them.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Shihar ( 153932 )
            They certainly have the 'right' to copy them. That doesn't mean I will shell up money for a WoW clone though. Like it or not, WoW came first with its gameplay. Why bother playing a clone? Just for a graphics upgrade?

            MMORPGs need to do more. We have seen nothing but upgraded version of Everquest since... well, Everquest.
        • WoW's class/character balancing stinks. So I sure hope they didn't copy that! Yes WoW's UI is nice, and the terrain/graphics aren't too bad. But the game balance has always been the pits, that's why they keep having to tinker with it, and why all the uber gamers play Shamans.

          Balance was the one big thing WoW didn't understand.
          • Personally I find the balance to be fine, when fighting an evenly geared opponent.

            There are fights that are harder, but when I fight an opponent whose equipment matches mine, I only lose when I make mistakes or my foe is simply better than I am. There's the occaisional super lucky crit streak win, but those are abberations.

            And honestly, the whole Shaman/Rogue supremecy thing died ages ago. Watching bluetracker, there isn't a single class that hasn't had numerous nerf threads in the past months.

            Now, if LotRO
          • I'm so bad at all PvP that I don't really notice class balancing. Whenever I get jumped by a rogue I basically just panic and die. Occasionally I get a trap down and am able to run away, but that's the best I ever do. However, those people that I know who don't suck at PvP agree with you.

            I find it interesting that you only refer to the terrain/graphics as 'not too bad'. I think this is the big thing that WoW got right. I've run the game effectively on systems as low as a Celeron 800, all the way up to At
          • You misspelled Warlocks.

            Seriously, though... Blizzard's idea of balance is to make a single class good against 4 classes, bad against 4 classes, and (by definition) even with itself.

            The sad part is, they even fail at that.
    • Actually if you go back, the WOW interface is a rip of Asherons Call and especially Asherons Call 2's interfaces...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by snuf23 ( 182335 )
        Thanks for mentioning that. I hate that people think WoW invented what is the now practically the defacto style of MMO UI. In fact WoW's UI without plugins is much less flexible than a lot of MMO UIs out there (such as EQ2).
  • How much will this be a month? The standard $15? I don't know... I think the problem is this might ruin the LoTR name or story line. With WoW, the warcraft story was bore from a videogame, so the creators at Blizzard were able to make up a lot of lore and the story line, adding in what they needed to so the story would work. With LoTR, it's already build on a foundation by the books, so it should have to follow that,while attempting not to mess with the "Tolkin" Universe. I have yet to See any screen sho

    • How much will this be a month? The standard $15? I don't know...

      $9.99 if you sign up early.
      From the first article. [kotaku.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pla ( 258480 )
      I think the problem is this might ruin the LoTR name or story line.

      Oh, no worries there.

      For actual literate fans of the works of a great fantasy writer, neither this nor Peter Jackson nor even JRR's bastard(izing) offspring can spoil the original.
      • I've been reading the magazine Analog for a while and I can say with certainty that there are no TV shows or movies which are anything remotely like the good science fiction I can get in 20 page short stories.

        Does that mean that all science fiction movie directors are hacks? No. The problem is the medium.

        If you're not happy with the LOTR movies then there is absolutely no way that any movie could have ever been made of LOTR that would please you.
  • You hear that? That's the sound of John Tolkien rolling over in his grave.

  • Skip if not a die-hard, skip it if you are. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @11:14AM (#17998188) Homepage Journal
    Honestly, unless you just want to see the world of Middle Earth in graphics form I would suggest skipping this MMORPG interpetation of it.

    Highs:
    Landscapes and landscape features are nicely done.

    Water reflectivity encompasses all drawn items

    Quest system. The idea is to flood you with them. Some are new variations of FED-EX others are same old stuff, but its an alternative

    No Mages... uh

    Traits. The idea was good..

    Lows:
    ALL, and I mean ALL, indoor areas are INSTANCED. This means if you want to enter a building you instance to do so. Even if this means just going in to complete a quest with no more than a click of a dialog.

    NPCs use a different animation engine from PCs, hence they are lifeless and dull. Eyes that don't blink, no facial movement, etc. Some do some animated scripts, but only with other NPCs.

    Quest system. The idea is to flood you with them. Yet its really the same old stuff repackaged.

    Traits, think Talents from WOW but more random. This is where the grind is. Some examples, trying to gain one trait required me to kill literally hundereds of slugs, yes slugs. It seemed all traits were gained this way.

    Magic. They simply renamed it. Don't for a minute believe there are not mages and priests in this game. Loremasters are mages pure and simple. They throw fireballs.

    Animation system, combat system is boring. Animations don't even take into account parries and dodges so even though the game said you parried its not drawn. Combats can also take place with a sizable distance between combatants making it look silly.

    User Interface. Still Turbine's worst suit. They can't code a UI to save their lives. It looks like each part was done by a different team. Some look very "period" - meaning belonging to a fantasy game, while others look like a PDA from Half Life.

    Remember first and foremost that this is Turbine. They love to make promises, they just take forever to deliver them or they don't. They also are on record as being the first game company to permit Automated Combat Macros, they also released a major expansion to a game only to announce shutdown 3 months later, and they still haven't delivered half of what they promised for DDO.

    Oh, to top it off, those who pre-order get into beta. Nothing unusual there, except this time they can take their beta characters from that beta into release to get a jump on the rest of the people.

    Pass. Its LOTR in name only, more like AC2 with hobbits

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Raire ( 1063704 )
      Fellow beta tester... This post pretty much summed up my entire experience with LotRO. My only adds are that the character animations were not varied enough and pretty repetitive. Oh and the hobits all have a weight problem. I uninstalled after about 5 hours.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      pretty good summary

      I'll just add that grouping/socialization is not required except for some specific quests. You don't really build and keep friendships easily in this game as a result. Once a group is done with the task, it pretty much disappears. Also, if you like doing things with your guild, it's an annoyance when people are on different steps of a quest and you have to synchronize everybody to the same point.

      I can't stand grinding, and I thought there wasn't any in this game. Then I got to level 4
    • As another beta tester who dropped the game quickly and went back to WOW I'd like to expand on your animation comment...

      For those expecting flashy combat and spell graphics, forget it. Remember first and foremost that this is Middle-Earth and magic is not big here to begin with. Starting out I couldn't even be sure that a low level loremaster was actually doing anything when his fire spell shot out at the target.

      I'm not saying graphics make the game, but the lack of nice animations definitely hurts it, es

    • Magic. They simply renamed it. Don't for a minute believe there are not mages and priests in this game. Loremasters are mages pure and simple. They throw fireballs.
      I'm glad I'm not the only person who sees it this way. If it has the same mechanics as a fireball, it's a fireball. I don't care if the animation shows the loremaster pulling stuff out of his pocket with which to kindle a fire.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by jazzmodeus ( 692068 )
      I haves to echo everything Shivetya said. I'm in the beta and have been for several months playing both a dwarf and an elf. After playing for the first month after I got in, I stopped for about month and would check in from time to time after major updates. The game was repetitive, lifeless, and dull. The scenery is lovely and was quite interesting to see some of the popular places rendered out and explorable. That's about the only compelling part of the game. Combat felt detached, as though there was no vi
  • I understand folks like having backstory and a world to be set in, but doesn't that make the world extremely static? SWG had Jedi dancing with Darth Vader set in the middle of EMpire Strikes Back. Kind of made the world/universe and story a joke.

    Wouldn't KOTOR style have been much better, giving the developers free rein over what happens, while being able to use the vast story materials.

    We already know what happens here, and we aren't going to change it. Too much like real life ;P

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Reese268 ( 998177 )
      Originally, this game was to be set in the 4th age (after the books, the time period which they would have the MOST freedom to do what they wanted). This was when Sierra was developing the game, back when it was called Middle-earth online. I want to say this was like 1998/1999, somwhere around there, not totally sure, but it's been a long time. At any rate, the original game was going to be something quite different from anything that was available then, and even anything now. What it has turned out to
  • Middle Earth Online was the name of this game originally. It looked better and more unique in terms of graphics. I played the Beta and was not impressed. I would have liked to have played the half finshed version of MEO just to see how far they had gotten before they abandoned it. That game i would love to play also because it did not look like a WOW clone, this does.
  • I saw a screenshot of a hobbit fighting a bear. ...that is wrong in so many different ways.

    It may be a great game, but I'm not sure how it will work as "Lord of the Rings" material.

  • Asheron's Call was an awesome game, very inovative in a lot of ways ... until they killed it by catering to only power-gamers. It died soon after.
    AC2 was a dog.
    Online AD&D. See: AC2.

    Hopefully ... they've learned something. But I doubt it.

    - Roach
    • I loved AC2 until they nerfed tacticians... Maybe they were overpowered, but they were fun as hell to play. Sure turret farms were bad but if you didn't use it properly and it was destroyed, you had wait another hour of in game time to use it again. Without your turret you were basically useless.
  • For anyone who doesn't know, or who was looking forward to this game back then, this project was originally to be called MEO and was being done by Sierra. It's had a long road since then which put it in Turbine's hands and changed the name... as well as pretty much everything else about it. Here's a link to an old article about it. http://haven.theonering.net/gaming/middleearth.htm l [theonering.net] and here is some info involving the axing of the entire original dev team: http://thecan.org/in/me.html [thecan.org]
  • I want my Glamdring! Me big warrior! I'm gonna be a ranger and slaughter people like Aragorn!

    "Ok, sir. Here's your wiffle bat."

    WTF is this? WTF do you mean Frodo the thief outdamages Aragorn!??!?! Who the F*** DESIGNED THIS GOD D***** POS?!?!?

    (wiff wiff)

    "Oh, casters can outdamage you, too."

    What casters? The two greatest casters in the entire world, Gandalf and Saruman, could barely whip up a fireball or induce a small local avalanch.

    "And we won't even get into the bards."

    WTF is a bard?!?!? There are
  • I played the beta a bit about a month ago. Here are some of the high and low points for me. I'll try omit things that have already been said elsewhere (quests vs grind, graphics quality, similarity between mages and loremasters, etc...).

    Good:

    • The shire looks very nice, and is laid out in a realistic manner, as a collection of small villages sprawled out over a wide area. Hobbits act like hobbits.
    • It appears that you can grow crops, though I didn't try it.

    Bad (maybe I'm picking nits, but these thing

  • WoWitus. The scourge of new mmos. It started out as EQitus, but has since evolved to the newest mmo.

    This disease usually manifests itself in an inability to enjoy new MMOs - simply because you believe that its just a wow clone. No matter how new and unique the feature is, you'll throw it off as a simple variation of a mechanic in WoW - even if its a mechanic thats been in MOST mmos pre-wow. In fact, you'll start seeing wow in features that arent even part of wow!

    The only cure to this soul-destroying disease
    • "Gee, have to actually explore the game to improve your character!"

      Granted, the ruins traits were kind of interesting. But stats are fairly useless.

      The traits that actually increase your abilities take a focused effort on your part to use the ability the trait is based on. Over and over again. Then bam, all of a sudden, you get a new one. Woo!

      I think I got up to level 15 in the stress test and only got the exploration traits, and a couple of the mob-slaying traits (woo, okay, I'm a wolfslayer. awesome.)

      The
  • It has to be hard to get a piece of the market share, World of Warcraft has blown past every other North American MMO to date....and let's not ever talk about Lineage in Asia. I can't imagine that there are "that" many people into MMORPG games out there. We're probably getting to the point of market saturation, though only time will tell.
  • Because the only thing that has kept my interest in WOW is my guild.

    Here's my story, and it's a bit different.

    I had always felt hostile to Everquest and other MMORPGs for some reason, but a close friend who I admire and respected was playing WOW and loving it, so I thought I'd give it a go. To be honest I was a little ashamed because of the cruel comments that I had made about doing other stuff like "talking to girls" and "going outside" to some of my gamer friends in the past, so I played by myself for a w
    • Completely agree with your post, our guild has a requirement that to join you must know at least one of the founding members(of which there are 5) in real life, so the group becomes tight knit. I have actually met up with others as well, had lunch, and met some great new people. The game is so much more fun when you know who is on the other end of the player next to you!
  • i wrote one over at notaddicted.com, reviewing it from a current WoW junkie's standpoint, as well. enjoy: http://www.notaddicted.com/forums/showthread.php?t =886 [notaddicted.com]

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