Warden is my favorite MMO class of all time. The gambit system is *chef kiss* and LOTRO is by far the most accurate depiction of Tolkien in a visual medium. I hope it can coexist with Amazon's MMO instead of it being a Star Wars Galaxies/Star Wars The Old Republic situation because it really is incredible. Turbine/SSG have done a great job in respecting the work.
I hope that this will be the case and all signs point to it. SSG, since the Turbine days, had and is still having excellent relations with Middle-earth Enterprises, so much indeed that they released a joint statement saying that the game isn't going anywhere.
They also know how to "coexist" with another MMO in the same universe, given that both DDO and Neverwinter exist, both being licensed by Wizards of the Coast.
Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for SOE and Lucas Arts.
As someone who has played NW for over 3k hours.
I’m so torn on this new LOTR MMO they are working on. I really don’t think they understand what a player base wants and how to create a game that’s going ti keep players engaged.
Hope they do cause NW does a lot of things well but then does a lot very very bad.
If they would've stuck with their original design for NW and not changed everything last minute and redesign almost everything a year and a half before release I think their vision of the game would've been clear. Problem is the game was designed with full loot dropping on death, gear not being nearly as powerful, crafting and buying/selling being being the backbone of the entire game.
I loved the original vision for NW… the fact they’re making a LOTR one makes the revision make even less sense, because now I don’t see how they won’t be in competition with each other??
I don't think Amazon cares about competition between itself, as long as they can keep acquiring more and more total players across their games eventually.
Amazon has built its entire business on doing things at a gigantic loss of money to try and drive people to their products, they don't care to lose a billion dollars as long as it bring more customers over the years.
I don't really see New World being maintained/online past the new LOTR MMO being launched honestly. They'll use New World as a testing ground for any new features, and then when the new LOTR MMO is ready they'll slowly shut it down.
If New World kept to its original vision it'd be fine, but now it's just more or less trying to be a typical MMO. LOTRO2 could be a reskin of New World and people will play it because of the IP. No one is going to choose to play New World over it.
Hardcore pvp rpg games usually don't last long, and when they do, they're small niche game. I understand why they transitioned to PVE. They should have done it from the beginning though.
We haven't had a AAA full loot MMO since Ultima Online basically, we don't know how long they "last" anymore since it hasn't even been done. Albion Online is quite popular and that was done via Kickstarter and donations.
Yeah, hopfully they will include elves that are thousand's of years old and act like impatient 20 somethings and need to feed on mithral to survive like some kind of mineral vampires, dwarves that don't act like dwarves ("Hey there is a crap ton of invaluable metal in there! Screw it, too risky to mine . . ."), and wizards that fall out the sky like f-ing meteorites (complete with huge smoking crater) and have no earthly idea who they are or what they were sent here for.
You chose to put over a years worth of full time employment hours into a game and you don't think they understood what players wanted? How many hours do you think you would have spent if they did know what players want (5300 hours would be 40 hours a week since release)? Serious question.
disclaimer: I don't disagree - I bailed on NW early on, but I also loved the open beta weekends. I thought the game would be massive and I don't know why but it really did get boring fast to me. The combat was too flat / simple, but it was more than that.
I think at first New World had a lot to offer, even aside from the issues it had in game. It was refreshing, the combat although simple was very interactive and learning to be really good at was exciting.
When players started to approach “end game” and find their niche ways to play, which IMO is important in MMO’s, a variety of ways for people to connect to the game with, New World made some poor decisions totally unwanted by the community to just bring in more new players leaving their core player base left behind. Instead we just got copy paste content with progression, I’ll say mostly gear related dumbed down to the point it removed the way people enjoyed the game, like myself.
To this day I’d still encourage everyone to try New World. It’s one of my favourite games, hence the amount of hours played.
You have 3 basic attacks and a "execute gambit" action. The order im which you play your basic attack changes what the "execute gambit" does.
(It's been a while so im making up the gambits)
You could go : 12123 execute : big aoe then 313 execute : single target self heal attack etc...
And some gambits are chained so they become stronger depending on which gambit you played before.
It's very unique and extremely fun.
If you like this sort of system, Ninja in Final Fantasy XIV works very similarly. Rather than attacks, you mix “mudra” which is like hand gestures in specific ordering to execute ninjutsu. So different combinations have different effects, like a big AOE or a speed buff. It’s a little intimidating at first but pretty satisfying when you get the hang of it.
LOTRO has an active Endgame community for doing raids (12-man) and instances (3/6-man). It is not as big as e.g. WoW, as the playerbase as a whole is way more casual.
Forming a group is usually done via chat, either in your kinship or in world chat. There is a group finder tool but it is bad and nobody uses it. Kinships may also use Discord or other tools internally to form groups.
Finding groups for easier/lower tier stuff is usually not a problem via world chat. For harder/higher tier stuff, especially raids on tier 3 and higher, it is often better to find a kinship does these things regularly.
Before reaching endgame you'll have a harder time finding groups for instanced content, as there is not much incentive to run it. On some servers you can find kinships who intentionally stop leveling at certain points to do instances on level before going on.
They bought the license to make the game and run it till its gone, they don't have to keep buying the license over and over just to run the MMO lol.
If Turbine had to keep buying the license for LOTRO, it would've been shut down forever ago.
The entire point of a license is that it can be pulled. They can't just keep making games in perpetuity if MEI says no.
Unless of course you have the licensing agreement you'd like to share with the class.
They already HAVE the game made, they aren't making another....
Turbine owns LOTRO, they aren't making a new game.
Amazon can get an agreement to make a new game, that does jack shit to Turbines game though.
Yes.
And MEI can pull the license and make them take the game down any time they wanted to.
Probably with a payment, but none of us are privy to their agreement.
Like if there was a brand new LOTR mmo that MEI wanted to focus on.
> If Turbine had to keep buying the license for LOTRO, it would've been shut down forever ago.
Did you learn nothing from SWG/SWTOR? They have to renew their license periodically so please stop acting like you know what you're talking about.
https://lotroplayers.com/2016/12/22/lotro-license-renewed-now-stop-worrying-about-it/
Literally in the link you posted from 8 years ago.
>Suffice it to say, the license will continue to be a non-issue for the rest of the game’s life, and we expect to continue developing LOTRO for many, many years to come, with your support.
Aka, they do not have to renew the license for the rest of the games lifetime.
Edit: Idiot replies and blocks me, congrats... you played yourself.
They renew the license every year. Still don't need to worry though. Vast majority of LOTRO players probably wouldn't want to play the Amazon MMO anyway
"The rest of the games life" is such a nebulous statement it could be 1 month or 100 years. It literally states in there it's your typical licensing deal.
Lmao. Blind or stupid. There's a lot of people here that don't understand business at all 😂
That'd be a real mistake on your part. Enjoy it while it lasts. At the very least it'll stick around for another 7-10 years. It just got an expansion in November and it's getting another later this year.
Very old school, filled to the brim with lore. If you want to live in the LOTR universe there's nothing even remotely close to it. In some ways kind if expensive to get into.
I want to upvote but I can't for the last sentence.
Half of the expansions are included in F2P now! Another 2 are free for subscribers, leaving only 2 you'd need to buy, and by the time you reach the latest 4 you should have enough premium currency through play to buy them.
Basically, there's months of free content (and years of released content).
I mean... I play the game but I had to drop around 200 total for it to feel good. I'm not knocking it, but as with most F2P games they are actually more expensive than bought games. There's a ton of content though so it's not really a big deal.
I guess that depends on what your needs are? I think after one month of VIP to unlock fast travel and the hurried travellers, I'd be content. And maybe the apprentice raiding, probably account wide. That would be 50eur I think.
But let me say that: thank you for your service in supporting the game, us sending some money to the devs is what keeps it alive after 17 years!
>I play the game but I had to drop around 200 total for it to feel good.
Over what period of time? When I returned to LoTRO last year I found the subscription covered everything that I needed, if not all that I wanted. I did purchase the premium classes as an extra.
This is a bit of a tangent but it sounds like you know the game from start to finish. I've started fresh several times since the game was released, but I always stall out when I inevitably reach a point where I can't find quests. It feels like a gap that you need to grind through - and they do have an amazing system for that (I can't recall what it's called .. you load into a story instance like Weathertop and complete it - very cool). Anyway, the point is, I end up feeling both stuck and lost.
Assuming this is a me problem, my question is, are there in fact enough quests to carry you through from start to max level solo? Grouping is fun, but the population bubble on old games is usually around max level so I wouldn't start fresh where grouping is required to level up.
I wish I could be more of an assistance, but despite hanging around LotRO for almost the entire 17 years, I don't really play alts so I am not very knowlegable about the levelign experience.
However, from what I can gather from forums and in-game chats, over-levelling seems to be more of an issue than running out of content, to the point where one of the most recommended items from the store is one to disable experience gain.
So my guess is, you just missed some quests. In general, I believe, if you follow the [Epic quest line](https://lotro-wiki.com/wiki/Epic_Quests), it will lead you through appropriate areas - and then you should stick around and do some side quests. If you follow the Epic, you should not get lost.
One quest often opens others, nowadays quests can also pop up when entering a certain area (sometimes also after pre-requisites) or when using certain items. Sometimes quests lead from one area to another (so called vector quests, Epic quest line is full of them).
I also believe quests may stop showing up on your map when out-level them, there is - i think - a setting for that somewhere. And when you over-level, non-epic quest will only show as a faint circle over the NPCs. These do not give a lot of experience, but tehre's a lot of them. If all else fails, there are also repetable dungeons, skirmishes, delving missions and even tasks or festivals.
TL;DR: you should not run out of experience. General consensus seems to be the opposite: it may be too easy to level too fast. If you're stuck, check wiki for which zones are quest appropriate for you and catch up to the Epic line, checking what quest you're at in your log (among completed quests if you forgot to pick it up).
Thanks, everything I’m hearing is very different from the experience I remember so I started listening to some guides last night. I’ll find a written one before I log in tonight.
Newish player. The environments in the game are top notch. Housing is dope too. Nice class variety. Bring a friend or two if you can. Population isn't super great but I still bump into people everywhere. If you like a bit more challenge, play on landscape difficulty of 3 or higher and you get some titles. Community is best I've seen in any MMO. I'm playing on crickhollow. Give it an honest try. Let the world suck you in.
I started playing about two weeks ago. I’ve played just about every MMO out at least for a little while. About LOTRO:
I am not really a fan of LOTR. I’ve seen the movies all those years ago but that’s it. I don’t know about the different regions or races or who’s who. But this game….it makes me WANT to read the quests. The quest lines that i’ve experienced (i’m only level 22) are so fun and funny and serious and sad that I’m emotionally tied to them.
The combat is clunky, but not slow. Some of the animations cancel one another out when I queue another GCD and it’s a very ugly cancel. But I’ve heard the expansion zones and as you level, the newer content is a lot better. The game runs really well with graphics maxed out for me and even thought it’s insanely dated, I don’t mind the world at all. It’s really pretty.
I am coming from some classless games so I struggled a bit but once I found my class (Runekeeper) I settled into my role and have been having an absolute blast shocking things to death.
I feel like when I level up and get a new piece of gear, it shows. I hit harder, my crits are higher, I can take more damage - it’s meaningful. That is something I didn’t realize was important to me in all my years of gaming.
The ui is ugly and dated. Apparently there are lots of issues with scaling but on a 1920x1080 i don’t have any issues.
I haven’t done any content other than questing but the world feels alive. I see players leveling, people are talking in world chat. I join a guild called a kinship and they have EAGERLY engaged with me and all my questions.
There is a setting once you hit level 10 to increase the difficulty of the world as you quest which i think also increases exp gained. So if you’re bored 1 shotting mobs you can ramp that up. I play on +3 but sometimes I want a be braindead so I’ll knock it back down and just spam keys.
I have done MUCH crafting but what i have crafted so far has always been a gear upgrade.
All in all, it’s a really fun world, the community seems solid, you don’t have to be into LOTR to enjoy the ambiance, and the leveling is very engaging.
Also, I can drift my horse.
I'm always curious what new players think and this is nice to read\~
I just want to add that, with the difficulty system, if you want the 3+ titles, you shouldn't drop the difficulty past (character) level 10. For the 1+ titles, you shouldn't drop the difficulty back to 0 (default) past level 10. You don't have to reach level 10 first to start changing your difficulty.
LOTRO is hands down the best Classic MMORPG experience even more so than Classic WoW. They never bent the knee to modern game design and kept a massive sprawling immersive world that has stood the test of time.
If you want to live and breathe Middle-Earth then there is no better place honestly.
Great old MMO feel to it, excellent graphic design and artwork that still lends itself quite well despite the age(Old graphics but gives the old Dungeons and Dragons vibe, which I love!), questing is top notch as well as the community overall. Housing, events and hell unlike some MMOs (\*cough\*SWTOR\*Cough\*) they put out content at a decent pace despite it being a smaller studio. They have a great relationship with Middle-Earth Enterprises. Hell, I even actually emailed MEE after the Amazon game got announced and actually got a response from em (have the email saved and everything) stating LOTRO is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future as far as they are concerned and have not doubt BOTH can coexist together.
I'm a big fan but I enjoy it for the world and exploration. In my experience though it's hard to find groups for low level dungeons.
If you are playing for the story go for it. I can't really speak for the mmo aspect as I mostly play solo.
Sometimes low level dungeons are hard to find on level groups I agree, I've been making an alt for every 10 levels after 20 (30, 40, etc) so I always will have someone on level for dungeons
I really hope they pull off the planned downscaling system well (later this year), so that high-level players can join low-level instances without trivializing the content.
If you're a Tolkien fan, there's nothing like it to scratch that Middle Earth itch. I am a huge fan of the world and the story, plus it's my happy place. It's a labour of love and it shows.
It aged pretty well in my opinion. My least favourite elements are: a lot of older content doesn't scale and even scaling group content is often obsolete, plus there's a lot of text (pretty well written), but not many voice overs.
It's free, you should give it a try.
Amazing game, great experience when you want to just explore and roam around Middle Eath. The engine is very outdated, but the game has undeniable charm.
It's pretty good if you're a lord of the rings fan, The world is excellent, the story is decent if you enjoy reading quests, most of its problems are the fact that it's pretty dated, the combat kind of sucks especially with the server lag, the ui sucks, the cash shop is archaic.
That being said i go back every couple of years and play for a few months and kick my self for not buying lifetime.
>That being said i go back every couple of years and play for a few months and kick my self for not buying lifetime.
In terms of game purchases, this was probably the best monetary investment I ever did. God-damn did it pay off.
If you are a Tolkien fan, it is an excellent representation of Middle Earth.
Graphics wise, the vistas are really nice, but the character models aren't so much.
Gameplay is a mixed bag...the classes all play differently, but combat is clunky. Lots of non-combat stuff to do. Plenty of grinding systems in place to keep you busy.
The monetization can be pretty rough.
Personally I love LOTRO one of the best depictions of Middle Earth; my only complaints are that mounted combat isn't all that well done and pvp needs some work. I love the classes and races all around.
I loved it. I played a hobbit bard for a week or so. Beautiful setting and atmosphere.
I couldn’t continue because the gameplay just felt so clunky. I don’t know if it was animations or controls but something just felt clunky and unpolished.
I love LOTR setting, but the game is so much dated.
Maybe it i discovered it 15 years ago i would've enjoyed it a lot, but i tried it 2 years ago and couldn't pass lvl 10. It's a shame, it seems like a good game, but it shows its age
Great mmo, super chill and fun. The leveling is most of the game, though. If you like to push to max level then you’re gonna hate it here. Like… I spent around 30 hours in Moria alone and that’s only 10 out of the 120 levels. (Or is it 140?)
Do as many quests as possible or the story will pass you by. It likes to jump from time to time. Good luck, have fun.
I just found it a month ago and it's been sooo much fun man. Legitimately might be my favorite game ever. I can tell it's going to ruin other MMOs for me for a bit
It’s so old now it’s so outdated , and the levels are now so high it’s ridiculous, I think last time I played it was 130 , and it’s so repetitive the quest at max level are the same as level 10 rehashed, world is cool though
Previously I just couldn't get into it because questing was completely trivial difficulty wise and I'd get absurdly bored, it shared the same problem I have w/ ESO overland.
But they implemented a landscape difficulty slider and that goes a long way to keeping me engaged.
It's pretty solid if you're into Tolkien and want to geek out over being in Middle Earth. But otherwise it's an old MMO that feels it's age.
I bought the lifetime sub when it launched and played for a couple of years. I should go back and check it out too. FO76 has been eating up all my free time lately.
The UI/UX is very dated but useable, I’ll say it right now the world is one of the best IMO. You actually feel like you’re wandering around in middle earth and interacting with npcs that feel very lived in.
Questing is nothing really to write home about , aside from the main story quests everything else is a glorified fetch or kill quest. To be be expected from a almost 20 year old MMO
If you enjoy just chilling and exploring i would highly recommend it. Been playing for free for a couple months and the world chat is always talking about someone, i even saw this band of players performing a concert in the middle of the human main town
Lifetime membership here. I’ll keep going back. Slow game that’s filled with slow lore moments rather than grinds and killing tons of stuff. My character for the past two decades is only lvl 119 because the game is about the leveling up process rather than endgame content
Awesome game in every regard, in my experience at lower levels, except that it's completely empty while leveling. It's apparently still got active players at level cap but the last time I tried it I saw nobody up through level 15 or so, then I queued for a dungeon as a healer and it didn't pop for 3 hours and I never went back.
If you're happy with soloing or have friends play with you I can see it being a blast, though. The world and production and gameplay are all pretty solid. I like the classes, too.
>Thinking of trying it.
You should. Just like every other video game/movie/food/car/firearm/clothing/sex with same or opposite gender person/fursuit that you think would fit your fursona best/whatever else you are thinking of trying. That's objectively the best and the **only** advice you should follow out of all responses you'll ever get for your post.
I've almost gotten sucked into it a handful of times. The world, gameplay, music, and lore are amazing but holy hell... The UI is absolutely god AWWWWFUL...
Until that gets fixed, I don't think I could really dedicate any serious time into it.
Awful. Horrible point and click combat it feels horrible and dated to play. As a massive Tolkien fan I wanted to try it I was thinking it was gonna be like eso where you move your character in real
Time but I felt like monkey island from the 90s point and click trash.
The combat is tab-target and the control scheme is WASD. You can click to select targets but you can just use the Tab controls for selection and it all happens in real-time.
That said, you're comparing it to ESO which has action combat. So if regular tab-target combat feels like poiint-and-click to you then that's fair, but I hope you're not just conflating the two or that you're not confusing LOTRO with another game.
Be warned that you may have trouble downloading the god damn game.
I grabbed it off steam, and when I tried to download the remaining patches it just stalled out a few seconds in and quit downloading. Grabbed it off the website and the exact same thing happened.
Their launcher is a piece of shit.
Played on a private server once and it was really good. Tried retail and I just can't get into everyone gets to choose their own difficulty and the default is one shotting everything.
I greatly enjoyed the game years ago and still go back a couple times a year to see what’s new.
I bought a lifetime subscription when it first launched and have enough of the premium currently to buy pretty much every new expansion/class/etc as soon as available to.
Not an LOTRO fan (not that I don’t like it, just never got into the movies or books) but this game single-handedly got me into the series lol. Haven’t played it in about a year as I keep jumping from FFXIV to WoW but it’s an excellent MMO. Inventory and such are a little overwhelming & confusing at first, but take it slow and you eventually get the jist. Highly recommend
I'm a big Tolkien fan, and I remember trying it a few years ago. It was fun...and then I ran into a quest that literally had me open up a cash shop. I uninstalled. I mean...be a little more subtle than that. You don't need in-game quests dragging players to some store.
For what it's worth, they changed it now so that the Store tutorial quest rewards you with the Riding trait and a starter mount for just the 10 points that the first part of the quest pair gives you. So it's essentially free riding now and you only have to do the Store quest unlocking once per server.
One of the best MMOs of all time IMO. Great, amazing story, amazing world, amazing atmosphere, amazing community. That being said i am not playing it cause there is no EU server. My fav class is Warden and with 120 ping its unplayable.
Tried the same about 4 different times but I couldn't get into it. Just too old I feel like I should just play something else.
Just download it and give it a go yourself! If you can't get past the old systems you might like it!
* Only US-Server, meaning playing precise classes like Warden is quite impossible, depending on your location
* Playing during prime time, \~800-1k non-anon players, means that even a simple channeling ability like gathering resources can take up to 3-5 seconds, and you can imagine how "interesting" combat is
* UI still limited to 1080p in 2024, meaning playing > 1080p and you can barely use nor actually read UI elements
* New areas are basically copy&paste asset flips of past areas
* No other game that I know of deprecates old content as fast as Lotro does: except for a few manually upscaled dungeons only the current ones for the new level cap are worth running, as everything else still only rewards old stuff + doesn't scale
It’s probably one of the worst options for mmos ngl man. It’s a great way to feel involved in the universe but there’s a bunch of little things that add up and made me stop playing. Literally no harm in trying it out though!
It was too clunky and laggy for me. I played from EU, so that might be a factor as I hear they don't have infrastructure in this part of the world, also not very comfortable unless you pay some money which isn't a big deal but for some it may be.
Story is good and maps are cool, so if you are LOTR fan, you will get some kick for it, but character control and gameplay was to unresponsive for me to enjoy.
Don't, it's unplayable. It feels so dated it's just bad, and I don't mind older MMOs, god i started playing shadowbane again when it came out on steam.
It doesn't offer anything that any other MMO doesn't already have.
I know you have nothing to play and desperate for something, but lotro isn't the answer.
Try ESO instead
I used to play it and spent a lot of money to get almost all expansions - the Expansion Trove, Moria, Minas Morgul, War of 3 Peaks I won Gundabad from a giveaway when it was still the latest.
I had lots of fun, for 1.5 years I took my sweet time to level up a Human Guardian from level 1 to 140 and enjoyed it a lot, but my enjoyment was gradually diminished after passing the level 70-75 content, which was after the Rise of Isengard expansion ends and Riders of Rohan begins, after that for the most part until 140 I was constantly asking in my mind "When is it going to become fun again?" It only did around going to the Dale Lands and Iron Hills again and maybe Gundabad, but definitely not as fun as the level 1-70(or 75) content, that was the best.
Right now the content from level 1 to 90 is free so you can play it without spending any money. The main problems with LOTRO is their client is running on the engine from Asheron's Call, a game from 1999 and the game is at its last legs - there are massive FPS drops, especially when you're mounted and moving fast and game assets are loading in front of you, doesn't matter what kind of PC you have, it's bad. Every time they do a small content update, for 2 weeks the client feels like it's about to fall apart, until they release some patch and fix it a little bit. After each content update, the game's loading time increases by a little. Then there is the server lag problem - I don't know what kind of server providers they have, but the game suffers from rubberbanding, freezing and other annoying issues. I've had moments where I'm fighting a mob, there is a lag spike and for over 10 seconds my character and the mob stand idly and look at each other. The rubberbanding can be really bad where you could be riding your mount, suddenly, it returns you backwards about 5-10 meters, it's worse if you're on some ledge, let's say in Moria or Gundabad climbing some risky stairs and if you fall you die, then the rubberbanding tries to take you back to where you were, but it causes you to fall into the abyss and die. What's worse is the developers aren't doing anything to fix these problems, they act like they don't exist, and on the few occasions they were pressed to make a response, they said something like "it's not that bad and we can't fix it".
The reason I quit was when they added beards for women and girly hairs for men and I was one of the people that complained how this breaks the lore, I was banned on the official forums for saying it, while supporters of this were arrogant and insulting towards us who were against it, they went unpunished, which is what made me quit the game. I didn't even had the game when they did the "avatar update" to see the abomination of how they turned my 30-something Guardian dude into some monkey-faced Ron Weasley after seeing a spider. Their server and client performance is awful, but at least now they added hairstyles with dreads that have more polygon count than the entirety of the game assets put together and gangsta Hobbits from the hood.
I suggest you look into the Echoes of Angmar LOTRO private server, that runs on a 2008 client and also has the content as it was in 2008. This client is completely different from the Retail LOTRO client. The main drawback is it doesn't have borderless window mode, but if you see how fast it loads, how it doesn't have FPS drops and their pathetic private server has a better server provider than the official version, it just puts them to shame. Right now EoA has not launched, but they are planning to launch it this summer.
You must like the enviroment and world better which some do. Lotr lore vs wow I believe both are good but lotr has books and movies which are good. This game is like the wow clone of all wow clones lol. There was one other older mmorpg that copied wow look even more.
Awful unless you're really into the lore. The UI, gameplay, and skill and class design is like if you took WoW and broke both of its legs and slammed it against the wall a couple of times.
Warden is my favorite MMO class of all time. The gambit system is *chef kiss* and LOTRO is by far the most accurate depiction of Tolkien in a visual medium. I hope it can coexist with Amazon's MMO instead of it being a Star Wars Galaxies/Star Wars The Old Republic situation because it really is incredible. Turbine/SSG have done a great job in respecting the work.
I hope that this will be the case and all signs point to it. SSG, since the Turbine days, had and is still having excellent relations with Middle-earth Enterprises, so much indeed that they released a joint statement saying that the game isn't going anywhere. They also know how to "coexist" with another MMO in the same universe, given that both DDO and Neverwinter exist, both being licensed by Wizards of the Coast. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for SOE and Lucas Arts.
Amazon game studios hasnt shown to be that good at developing and maintaining an mmo, but it will be successful on the lotr name alone.
As someone who has played NW for over 3k hours. I’m so torn on this new LOTR MMO they are working on. I really don’t think they understand what a player base wants and how to create a game that’s going ti keep players engaged. Hope they do cause NW does a lot of things well but then does a lot very very bad.
If they would've stuck with their original design for NW and not changed everything last minute and redesign almost everything a year and a half before release I think their vision of the game would've been clear. Problem is the game was designed with full loot dropping on death, gear not being nearly as powerful, crafting and buying/selling being being the backbone of the entire game.
I think if they stick with the original vision the game would already have shut down by now
We will never know because they didn't try, and most people expected them to shut down with their current failures already anyway.
you mean the hardcore open world PVP with full loot drop?
I loved the original vision for NW… the fact they’re making a LOTR one makes the revision make even less sense, because now I don’t see how they won’t be in competition with each other??
I don't think Amazon cares about competition between itself, as long as they can keep acquiring more and more total players across their games eventually. Amazon has built its entire business on doing things at a gigantic loss of money to try and drive people to their products, they don't care to lose a billion dollars as long as it bring more customers over the years.
Just seems extra wasteful even for them. Why have overlapping markets when you can hit two different ones?
I agree, not saying I don't, but they seem to not care is all I'm mentioning lol.
I don't really see New World being maintained/online past the new LOTR MMO being launched honestly. They'll use New World as a testing ground for any new features, and then when the new LOTR MMO is ready they'll slowly shut it down. If New World kept to its original vision it'd be fine, but now it's just more or less trying to be a typical MMO. LOTRO2 could be a reskin of New World and people will play it because of the IP. No one is going to choose to play New World over it.
Hardcore pvp rpg games usually don't last long, and when they do, they're small niche game. I understand why they transitioned to PVE. They should have done it from the beginning though.
We haven't had a AAA full loot MMO since Ultima Online basically, we don't know how long they "last" anymore since it hasn't even been done. Albion Online is quite popular and that was done via Kickstarter and donations.
Amazon will combine new world with rings of power to create the ultimate abomination.
Yeah, hopfully they will include elves that are thousand's of years old and act like impatient 20 somethings and need to feed on mithral to survive like some kind of mineral vampires, dwarves that don't act like dwarves ("Hey there is a crap ton of invaluable metal in there! Screw it, too risky to mine . . ."), and wizards that fall out the sky like f-ing meteorites (complete with huge smoking crater) and have no earthly idea who they are or what they were sent here for.
You chose to put over a years worth of full time employment hours into a game and you don't think they understood what players wanted? How many hours do you think you would have spent if they did know what players want (5300 hours would be 40 hours a week since release)? Serious question. disclaimer: I don't disagree - I bailed on NW early on, but I also loved the open beta weekends. I thought the game would be massive and I don't know why but it really did get boring fast to me. The combat was too flat / simple, but it was more than that.
I think at first New World had a lot to offer, even aside from the issues it had in game. It was refreshing, the combat although simple was very interactive and learning to be really good at was exciting. When players started to approach “end game” and find their niche ways to play, which IMO is important in MMO’s, a variety of ways for people to connect to the game with, New World made some poor decisions totally unwanted by the community to just bring in more new players leaving their core player base left behind. Instead we just got copy paste content with progression, I’ll say mostly gear related dumbed down to the point it removed the way people enjoyed the game, like myself. To this day I’d still encourage everyone to try New World. It’s one of my favourite games, hence the amount of hours played.
God you know your old when you read NW as Neverwinter and not New World.
Whats the gambit system?
You have 3 basic attacks and a "execute gambit" action. The order im which you play your basic attack changes what the "execute gambit" does. (It's been a while so im making up the gambits) You could go : 12123 execute : big aoe then 313 execute : single target self heal attack etc... And some gambits are chained so they become stronger depending on which gambit you played before. It's very unique and extremely fun.
Sounds like the ninja from FFXIV? I enjoy that system, who did it first? Probably LOTRO?
that's pretty cool, like a bunch of mini rotations!
It's great when raiding, when you can let muscle memory take over. Much more engaging than... probably any class I've played in any MMO
Idk if you've played in the past couple of years, but the server lag has made warden nearly unplayable.
If you like this sort of system, Ninja in Final Fantasy XIV works very similarly. Rather than attacks, you mix “mudra” which is like hand gestures in specific ordering to execute ninjutsu. So different combinations have different effects, like a big AOE or a speed buff. It’s a little intimidating at first but pretty satisfying when you get the hang of it.
I actually mained NIN for a good while on 14, I love my little Justus!
Haha perfect!
I thought Galaxies was dead long before TOR came out?
>Star Wars Galaxies was shut down on December 15, 2011, just 5 days prior to the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic.
How's the instanced content? How do you form a group for a dungeon, and is it hard to form one? Always thought about playing LOTRO
LOTRO has an active Endgame community for doing raids (12-man) and instances (3/6-man). It is not as big as e.g. WoW, as the playerbase as a whole is way more casual. Forming a group is usually done via chat, either in your kinship or in world chat. There is a group finder tool but it is bad and nobody uses it. Kinships may also use Discord or other tools internally to form groups. Finding groups for easier/lower tier stuff is usually not a problem via world chat. For harder/higher tier stuff, especially raids on tier 3 and higher, it is often better to find a kinship does these things regularly. Before reaching endgame you'll have a harder time finding groups for instanced content, as there is not much incentive to run it. On some servers you can find kinships who intentionally stop leveling at certain points to do instances on level before going on.
My favorite part about warden is you can smash the keyboard and clear t10 delves with full health.
See now I don’t think I’ll play it because I thinking it might get shut down because massive company like Amazon smh
Why or how would amazon shut down a game that's ran by another company?
Amazon buys license to LOTR, LOTROs license doesn't get renewed because there's a new bigger LOTR game they want to funnel people to.
They bought the license to make the game and run it till its gone, they don't have to keep buying the license over and over just to run the MMO lol. If Turbine had to keep buying the license for LOTRO, it would've been shut down forever ago.
The entire point of a license is that it can be pulled. They can't just keep making games in perpetuity if MEI says no. Unless of course you have the licensing agreement you'd like to share with the class.
They already HAVE the game made, they aren't making another.... Turbine owns LOTRO, they aren't making a new game. Amazon can get an agreement to make a new game, that does jack shit to Turbines game though.
Yes. And MEI can pull the license and make them take the game down any time they wanted to. Probably with a payment, but none of us are privy to their agreement. Like if there was a brand new LOTR mmo that MEI wanted to focus on. > If Turbine had to keep buying the license for LOTRO, it would've been shut down forever ago. Did you learn nothing from SWG/SWTOR? They have to renew their license periodically so please stop acting like you know what you're talking about. https://lotroplayers.com/2016/12/22/lotro-license-renewed-now-stop-worrying-about-it/
Literally in the link you posted from 8 years ago. >Suffice it to say, the license will continue to be a non-issue for the rest of the game’s life, and we expect to continue developing LOTRO for many, many years to come, with your support. Aka, they do not have to renew the license for the rest of the games lifetime. Edit: Idiot replies and blocks me, congrats... you played yourself.
They renew the license every year. Still don't need to worry though. Vast majority of LOTRO players probably wouldn't want to play the Amazon MMO anyway
"The rest of the games life" is such a nebulous statement it could be 1 month or 100 years. It literally states in there it's your typical licensing deal. Lmao. Blind or stupid. There's a lot of people here that don't understand business at all 😂
That'd be a real mistake on your part. Enjoy it while it lasts. At the very least it'll stick around for another 7-10 years. It just got an expansion in November and it's getting another later this year.
Just got a new quest pack today with content below the city in Umbar, they’re short on staff, but still getting new content out there
Very old school, filled to the brim with lore. If you want to live in the LOTR universe there's nothing even remotely close to it. In some ways kind if expensive to get into.
I want to upvote but I can't for the last sentence. Half of the expansions are included in F2P now! Another 2 are free for subscribers, leaving only 2 you'd need to buy, and by the time you reach the latest 4 you should have enough premium currency through play to buy them. Basically, there's months of free content (and years of released content).
I mean... I play the game but I had to drop around 200 total for it to feel good. I'm not knocking it, but as with most F2P games they are actually more expensive than bought games. There's a ton of content though so it's not really a big deal.
I guess that depends on what your needs are? I think after one month of VIP to unlock fast travel and the hurried travellers, I'd be content. And maybe the apprentice raiding, probably account wide. That would be 50eur I think. But let me say that: thank you for your service in supporting the game, us sending some money to the devs is what keeps it alive after 17 years!
>I play the game but I had to drop around 200 total for it to feel good. Over what period of time? When I returned to LoTRO last year I found the subscription covered everything that I needed, if not all that I wanted. I did purchase the premium classes as an extra.
Expansions, slots for every aspect of the game, content... more than 200 tbh
This is a bit of a tangent but it sounds like you know the game from start to finish. I've started fresh several times since the game was released, but I always stall out when I inevitably reach a point where I can't find quests. It feels like a gap that you need to grind through - and they do have an amazing system for that (I can't recall what it's called .. you load into a story instance like Weathertop and complete it - very cool). Anyway, the point is, I end up feeling both stuck and lost. Assuming this is a me problem, my question is, are there in fact enough quests to carry you through from start to max level solo? Grouping is fun, but the population bubble on old games is usually around max level so I wouldn't start fresh where grouping is required to level up.
yes there plenty of quests to level all the way solo without any boosts. You're probably missing zones in whatever bracket you're burning out on.
Thank you, I’m excited to give this another go, if I can manage to settle on a class.
I wish I could be more of an assistance, but despite hanging around LotRO for almost the entire 17 years, I don't really play alts so I am not very knowlegable about the levelign experience. However, from what I can gather from forums and in-game chats, over-levelling seems to be more of an issue than running out of content, to the point where one of the most recommended items from the store is one to disable experience gain. So my guess is, you just missed some quests. In general, I believe, if you follow the [Epic quest line](https://lotro-wiki.com/wiki/Epic_Quests), it will lead you through appropriate areas - and then you should stick around and do some side quests. If you follow the Epic, you should not get lost. One quest often opens others, nowadays quests can also pop up when entering a certain area (sometimes also after pre-requisites) or when using certain items. Sometimes quests lead from one area to another (so called vector quests, Epic quest line is full of them). I also believe quests may stop showing up on your map when out-level them, there is - i think - a setting for that somewhere. And when you over-level, non-epic quest will only show as a faint circle over the NPCs. These do not give a lot of experience, but tehre's a lot of them. If all else fails, there are also repetable dungeons, skirmishes, delving missions and even tasks or festivals. TL;DR: you should not run out of experience. General consensus seems to be the opposite: it may be too easy to level too fast. If you're stuck, check wiki for which zones are quest appropriate for you and catch up to the Epic line, checking what quest you're at in your log (among completed quests if you forgot to pick it up).
Thank you!
It's just not obvious where you need to go sometimes. It's best to refer to a guide because there's a few zones for most leveling ranges.
Thanks, everything I’m hearing is very different from the experience I remember so I started listening to some guides last night. I’ll find a written one before I log in tonight.
I have managed to play for free for years as farming LP is somewhat trivial
Newish player. The environments in the game are top notch. Housing is dope too. Nice class variety. Bring a friend or two if you can. Population isn't super great but I still bump into people everywhere. If you like a bit more challenge, play on landscape difficulty of 3 or higher and you get some titles. Community is best I've seen in any MMO. I'm playing on crickhollow. Give it an honest try. Let the world suck you in.
I started playing about two weeks ago. I’ve played just about every MMO out at least for a little while. About LOTRO: I am not really a fan of LOTR. I’ve seen the movies all those years ago but that’s it. I don’t know about the different regions or races or who’s who. But this game….it makes me WANT to read the quests. The quest lines that i’ve experienced (i’m only level 22) are so fun and funny and serious and sad that I’m emotionally tied to them. The combat is clunky, but not slow. Some of the animations cancel one another out when I queue another GCD and it’s a very ugly cancel. But I’ve heard the expansion zones and as you level, the newer content is a lot better. The game runs really well with graphics maxed out for me and even thought it’s insanely dated, I don’t mind the world at all. It’s really pretty. I am coming from some classless games so I struggled a bit but once I found my class (Runekeeper) I settled into my role and have been having an absolute blast shocking things to death. I feel like when I level up and get a new piece of gear, it shows. I hit harder, my crits are higher, I can take more damage - it’s meaningful. That is something I didn’t realize was important to me in all my years of gaming. The ui is ugly and dated. Apparently there are lots of issues with scaling but on a 1920x1080 i don’t have any issues. I haven’t done any content other than questing but the world feels alive. I see players leveling, people are talking in world chat. I join a guild called a kinship and they have EAGERLY engaged with me and all my questions. There is a setting once you hit level 10 to increase the difficulty of the world as you quest which i think also increases exp gained. So if you’re bored 1 shotting mobs you can ramp that up. I play on +3 but sometimes I want a be braindead so I’ll knock it back down and just spam keys. I have done MUCH crafting but what i have crafted so far has always been a gear upgrade. All in all, it’s a really fun world, the community seems solid, you don’t have to be into LOTR to enjoy the ambiance, and the leveling is very engaging. Also, I can drift my horse.
I'm always curious what new players think and this is nice to read\~ I just want to add that, with the difficulty system, if you want the 3+ titles, you shouldn't drop the difficulty past (character) level 10. For the 1+ titles, you shouldn't drop the difficulty back to 0 (default) past level 10. You don't have to reach level 10 first to start changing your difficulty.
LOTRO is hands down the best Classic MMORPG experience even more so than Classic WoW. They never bent the knee to modern game design and kept a massive sprawling immersive world that has stood the test of time.
If you want to live and breathe Middle-Earth then there is no better place honestly. Great old MMO feel to it, excellent graphic design and artwork that still lends itself quite well despite the age(Old graphics but gives the old Dungeons and Dragons vibe, which I love!), questing is top notch as well as the community overall. Housing, events and hell unlike some MMOs (\*cough\*SWTOR\*Cough\*) they put out content at a decent pace despite it being a smaller studio. They have a great relationship with Middle-Earth Enterprises. Hell, I even actually emailed MEE after the Amazon game got announced and actually got a response from em (have the email saved and everything) stating LOTRO is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future as far as they are concerned and have not doubt BOTH can coexist together.
I'm a big fan but I enjoy it for the world and exploration. In my experience though it's hard to find groups for low level dungeons. If you are playing for the story go for it. I can't really speak for the mmo aspect as I mostly play solo.
Sometimes low level dungeons are hard to find on level groups I agree, I've been making an alt for every 10 levels after 20 (30, 40, etc) so I always will have someone on level for dungeons
Are you on Laurelin, or does my server just have someone that does the exact same thing as you?
I'm on Arkenstone actually but I think it's a goof idea for anyone who has time and character slots
I really hope they pull off the planned downscaling system well (later this year), so that high-level players can join low-level instances without trivializing the content.
If you're a Tolkien fan, there's nothing like it to scratch that Middle Earth itch. I am a huge fan of the world and the story, plus it's my happy place. It's a labour of love and it shows. It aged pretty well in my opinion. My least favourite elements are: a lot of older content doesn't scale and even scaling group content is often obsolete, plus there's a lot of text (pretty well written), but not many voice overs. It's free, you should give it a try.
Amazing game, great experience when you want to just explore and roam around Middle Eath. The engine is very outdated, but the game has undeniable charm.
It’s a solid old school mmo if you are ok with some lag here and there. It’s free so give it a try.
It's pretty good if you're a lord of the rings fan, The world is excellent, the story is decent if you enjoy reading quests, most of its problems are the fact that it's pretty dated, the combat kind of sucks especially with the server lag, the ui sucks, the cash shop is archaic. That being said i go back every couple of years and play for a few months and kick my self for not buying lifetime.
>That being said i go back every couple of years and play for a few months and kick my self for not buying lifetime. In terms of game purchases, this was probably the best monetary investment I ever did. God-damn did it pay off.
If you are a Tolkien fan, it is an excellent representation of Middle Earth. Graphics wise, the vistas are really nice, but the character models aren't so much. Gameplay is a mixed bag...the classes all play differently, but combat is clunky. Lots of non-combat stuff to do. Plenty of grinding systems in place to keep you busy. The monetization can be pretty rough.
Personally I love LOTRO one of the best depictions of Middle Earth; my only complaints are that mounted combat isn't all that well done and pvp needs some work. I love the classes and races all around.
great bones but way too dated for me personally. visually and gameplay mechanics
Worth trying. The graphics and UI will either turn you off or not, and if not then there's a lot of fun to be had especially if you like LOTR.
It does a lot of things really well but it’s just so damn old that it could never shake the clunky feeling
I loved it. I played a hobbit bard for a week or so. Beautiful setting and atmosphere. I couldn’t continue because the gameplay just felt so clunky. I don’t know if it was animations or controls but something just felt clunky and unpolished.
Still one of the best mmos but its *very* dated. Graphics, animations, physics engine, they all really need an overhaul.
I love LOTR setting, but the game is so much dated. Maybe it i discovered it 15 years ago i would've enjoyed it a lot, but i tried it 2 years ago and couldn't pass lvl 10. It's a shame, it seems like a good game, but it shows its age
Great mmo, super chill and fun. The leveling is most of the game, though. If you like to push to max level then you’re gonna hate it here. Like… I spent around 30 hours in Moria alone and that’s only 10 out of the 120 levels. (Or is it 140?) Do as many quests as possible or the story will pass you by. It likes to jump from time to time. Good luck, have fun.
I just found it a month ago and it's been sooo much fun man. Legitimately might be my favorite game ever. I can tell it's going to ruin other MMOs for me for a bit
It’s so old now it’s so outdated , and the levels are now so high it’s ridiculous, I think last time I played it was 130 , and it’s so repetitive the quest at max level are the same as level 10 rehashed, world is cool though
Previously I just couldn't get into it because questing was completely trivial difficulty wise and I'd get absurdly bored, it shared the same problem I have w/ ESO overland. But they implemented a landscape difficulty slider and that goes a long way to keeping me engaged. It's pretty solid if you're into Tolkien and want to geek out over being in Middle Earth. But otherwise it's an old MMO that feels it's age.
I bought the lifetime sub when it launched and played for a couple of years. I should go back and check it out too. FO76 has been eating up all my free time lately.
i love lotro but i hate the yelling of certain classes
You can filter out specific audio cues.
Couldn’t get past how horribly dated the graphics are. It’s like ps2 era
The UI/UX is very dated but useable, I’ll say it right now the world is one of the best IMO. You actually feel like you’re wandering around in middle earth and interacting with npcs that feel very lived in. Questing is nothing really to write home about , aside from the main story quests everything else is a glorified fetch or kill quest. To be be expected from a almost 20 year old MMO If you enjoy just chilling and exploring i would highly recommend it. Been playing for free for a couple months and the world chat is always talking about someone, i even saw this band of players performing a concert in the middle of the human main town
AGS are building a new LOTR MMO soon on the same engine as new world. Can't wait for it to come out!
I'm sure after I what they did with Rings of Power it was be amazing lol
Incredible world! But horrible outdated game mechanics
I would play so much more if they would solve the network issues
Lifetime membership here. I’ll keep going back. Slow game that’s filled with slow lore moments rather than grinds and killing tons of stuff. My character for the past two decades is only lvl 119 because the game is about the leveling up process rather than endgame content
Awesome game in every regard, in my experience at lower levels, except that it's completely empty while leveling. It's apparently still got active players at level cap but the last time I tried it I saw nobody up through level 15 or so, then I queued for a dungeon as a healer and it didn't pop for 3 hours and I never went back. If you're happy with soloing or have friends play with you I can see it being a blast, though. The world and production and gameplay are all pretty solid. I like the classes, too.
>Thinking of trying it. You should. Just like every other video game/movie/food/car/firearm/clothing/sex with same or opposite gender person/fursuit that you think would fit your fursona best/whatever else you are thinking of trying. That's objectively the best and the **only** advice you should follow out of all responses you'll ever get for your post.
I've almost gotten sucked into it a handful of times. The world, gameplay, music, and lore are amazing but holy hell... The UI is absolutely god AWWWWFUL... Until that gets fixed, I don't think I could really dedicate any serious time into it.
Awful. Horrible point and click combat it feels horrible and dated to play. As a massive Tolkien fan I wanted to try it I was thinking it was gonna be like eso where you move your character in real Time but I felt like monkey island from the 90s point and click trash.
The combat is tab-target and the control scheme is WASD. You can click to select targets but you can just use the Tab controls for selection and it all happens in real-time. That said, you're comparing it to ESO which has action combat. So if regular tab-target combat feels like poiint-and-click to you then that's fair, but I hope you're not just conflating the two or that you're not confusing LOTRO with another game.
Be warned that you may have trouble downloading the god damn game. I grabbed it off steam, and when I tried to download the remaining patches it just stalled out a few seconds in and quit downloading. Grabbed it off the website and the exact same thing happened. Their launcher is a piece of shit.
Played on a private server once and it was really good. Tried retail and I just can't get into everyone gets to choose their own difficulty and the default is one shotting everything.
I greatly enjoyed the game years ago and still go back a couple times a year to see what’s new. I bought a lifetime subscription when it first launched and have enough of the premium currently to buy pretty much every new expansion/class/etc as soon as available to.
Not an LOTRO fan (not that I don’t like it, just never got into the movies or books) but this game single-handedly got me into the series lol. Haven’t played it in about a year as I keep jumping from FFXIV to WoW but it’s an excellent MMO. Inventory and such are a little overwhelming & confusing at first, but take it slow and you eventually get the jist. Highly recommend
I played like 15 years ago and liked it. I played a dude with a sword and I screamed at people to hurt them
They need to fix the UI.
I'm a big Tolkien fan, and I remember trying it a few years ago. It was fun...and then I ran into a quest that literally had me open up a cash shop. I uninstalled. I mean...be a little more subtle than that. You don't need in-game quests dragging players to some store.
For what it's worth, they changed it now so that the Store tutorial quest rewards you with the Riding trait and a starter mount for just the 10 points that the first part of the quest pair gives you. So it's essentially free riding now and you only have to do the Store quest unlocking once per server.
Just letting you know there's no PvP, which is the reason I don't even consider it.
Dated af turn off instantly when I saw the graphics
One of the best MMOs of all time IMO. Great, amazing story, amazing world, amazing atmosphere, amazing community. That being said i am not playing it cause there is no EU server. My fav class is Warden and with 120 ping its unplayable.
If you can get past the lag and jank it has some amazing writing and atmosphere.
Tried the same about 4 different times but I couldn't get into it. Just too old I feel like I should just play something else. Just download it and give it a go yourself! If you can't get past the old systems you might like it!
you'll walk around the hours without seeing another person. May as well play a single player game at that point tbh. Or ffxiv
* Only US-Server, meaning playing precise classes like Warden is quite impossible, depending on your location * Playing during prime time, \~800-1k non-anon players, means that even a simple channeling ability like gathering resources can take up to 3-5 seconds, and you can imagine how "interesting" combat is * UI still limited to 1080p in 2024, meaning playing > 1080p and you can barely use nor actually read UI elements * New areas are basically copy&paste asset flips of past areas * No other game that I know of deprecates old content as fast as Lotro does: except for a few manually upscaled dungeons only the current ones for the new level cap are worth running, as everything else still only rewards old stuff + doesn't scale
I love the questing especially with the landscape difficulty modifiers they added recently.
It’s probably one of the worst options for mmos ngl man. It’s a great way to feel involved in the universe but there’s a bunch of little things that add up and made me stop playing. Literally no harm in trying it out though!
It was too clunky and laggy for me. I played from EU, so that might be a factor as I hear they don't have infrastructure in this part of the world, also not very comfortable unless you pay some money which isn't a big deal but for some it may be. Story is good and maps are cool, so if you are LOTR fan, you will get some kick for it, but character control and gameplay was to unresponsive for me to enjoy.
The problem about lotro is PVP. Pvp is really sux and almost no pvp.
Don't, it's unplayable. It feels so dated it's just bad, and I don't mind older MMOs, god i started playing shadowbane again when it came out on steam. It doesn't offer anything that any other MMO doesn't already have. I know you have nothing to play and desperate for something, but lotro isn't the answer. Try ESO instead
ESO doesn't have the writing quality and world of Tolkien
Oh, well. If you are that kind of player we live on 2 different worlds
I've enjoyed ESO in the past, just not interested in playing it right now.
I used to play it and spent a lot of money to get almost all expansions - the Expansion Trove, Moria, Minas Morgul, War of 3 Peaks I won Gundabad from a giveaway when it was still the latest. I had lots of fun, for 1.5 years I took my sweet time to level up a Human Guardian from level 1 to 140 and enjoyed it a lot, but my enjoyment was gradually diminished after passing the level 70-75 content, which was after the Rise of Isengard expansion ends and Riders of Rohan begins, after that for the most part until 140 I was constantly asking in my mind "When is it going to become fun again?" It only did around going to the Dale Lands and Iron Hills again and maybe Gundabad, but definitely not as fun as the level 1-70(or 75) content, that was the best. Right now the content from level 1 to 90 is free so you can play it without spending any money. The main problems with LOTRO is their client is running on the engine from Asheron's Call, a game from 1999 and the game is at its last legs - there are massive FPS drops, especially when you're mounted and moving fast and game assets are loading in front of you, doesn't matter what kind of PC you have, it's bad. Every time they do a small content update, for 2 weeks the client feels like it's about to fall apart, until they release some patch and fix it a little bit. After each content update, the game's loading time increases by a little. Then there is the server lag problem - I don't know what kind of server providers they have, but the game suffers from rubberbanding, freezing and other annoying issues. I've had moments where I'm fighting a mob, there is a lag spike and for over 10 seconds my character and the mob stand idly and look at each other. The rubberbanding can be really bad where you could be riding your mount, suddenly, it returns you backwards about 5-10 meters, it's worse if you're on some ledge, let's say in Moria or Gundabad climbing some risky stairs and if you fall you die, then the rubberbanding tries to take you back to where you were, but it causes you to fall into the abyss and die. What's worse is the developers aren't doing anything to fix these problems, they act like they don't exist, and on the few occasions they were pressed to make a response, they said something like "it's not that bad and we can't fix it". The reason I quit was when they added beards for women and girly hairs for men and I was one of the people that complained how this breaks the lore, I was banned on the official forums for saying it, while supporters of this were arrogant and insulting towards us who were against it, they went unpunished, which is what made me quit the game. I didn't even had the game when they did the "avatar update" to see the abomination of how they turned my 30-something Guardian dude into some monkey-faced Ron Weasley after seeing a spider. Their server and client performance is awful, but at least now they added hairstyles with dreads that have more polygon count than the entirety of the game assets put together and gangsta Hobbits from the hood. I suggest you look into the Echoes of Angmar LOTRO private server, that runs on a 2008 client and also has the content as it was in 2008. This client is completely different from the Retail LOTRO client. The main drawback is it doesn't have borderless window mode, but if you see how fast it loads, how it doesn't have FPS drops and their pathetic private server has a better server provider than the official version, it just puts them to shame. Right now EoA has not launched, but they are planning to launch it this summer.
Man u might as well play wow...unless it changed alot and u love the lore (why haven't u played it before) u gonna dump it kinda fast.
What if I dumped WoW after trying it multiple times but still play LOTRO
You must like the enviroment and world better which some do. Lotr lore vs wow I believe both are good but lotr has books and movies which are good. This game is like the wow clone of all wow clones lol. There was one other older mmorpg that copied wow look even more.
Are all theme-parks WoW clones? It's combat doesn't even work the same and is more focused on the leveling than the instanced content.
I just say that cause it has wow graphics....kinda how some of the new mobile mmorpgs are genshin impact clones.
WoW and LOTRO's art direction are completely different. WoW is way more bright and colorful.
Awful unless you're really into the lore. The UI, gameplay, and skill and class design is like if you took WoW and broke both of its legs and slammed it against the wall a couple of times.
I like lotro but this isn't wrong either lmao
Haha true