lotro photo album

[sammy]

Bored, I decided to give the Lord of the Rings Online a go since they're offering a free 7-day trial. I don't know how far in I can get, but I'll post pics during the week and give my thoughts on Lotro afterwards.

I created a Dwarven Champion--basically the 2-weapon wielding DPSer of LOTRO. I just want to plow through content and chop shit up.

Tanglebeard enters the hall of the dwarves...
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1410/1327356944_abb4fb9847_o.jpg

Tanglebeard pays his respects
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1394/1326462397_bffc4b1d45_o.jpg

the game may change, some things remain the same...
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1306/1326462603_1999cce219_o.jpg

[sammy]

Tanglebeard goes spelunking...and finds a goblin's head.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1355/1326563901_5c51af8f2a_o.jpg


Gandalf pwns a troll.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1100/1327459530_72e3bb7d91_o.jpg


Troll iz totally pwned lol. (nerf Gandalf plz)
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1190/1327459938_8cb992498d_o.jpg


This is my close personal pal Gandalf.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1183/1326565051_1fe459289c_o.jpg

[sammy]

Hmmm...guess this guy doesn't know how tight Gandalf and I are.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1033/1326565493_e822529cba_o.jpg

[RonK]

Sammy, I was debating DLing this this weekend....any good? Your thoughts vis-a-vis WoW?

[Better Days]

I never liked most of the games based off of movies/books...it seems they're so limited in the direction they can take the characters or plots. Brand new concepts are more challenging for the writers, but I think more rewarding.

[sammy]

First off, if you have experience, you should feel comfortable slipping into LotRO. The GUI and general usability of the interface is very-WoWesque.

Second off, if I slaughter any area names, just deal with it.

Quick thoughts: Char. generation was very nice, with little intro movies for races and classes if you need a little info on each. There's even a little "naming" guide to help you pick Tolkienesque names if you need it. Char model personalization is somewhere between WoW and Guild Wars, decent options but nothing CoH-esque.

Quest text, NPC interaction and the beginning areas are nicely designed. The music, so far, is great.

I'm a bit endeared to the WoW style of graphics (not realistic, but consistent cartoony with personality) so LotRO graphics don't knock me out. They do the job. You should have a pretty solid rig imho to play this.

Quests are varied: there's the usual fedex quests, the standard kill/gather quests and a couple of defend/follow quests. In a nice break, there seemed to be a 100% drop rate on mobs with quest items (i.e. no killing 20 mobs for 5 claws, etc.)

The things I REALLY like so far:

Titles--you can earn titles. For example, I started out as Tanglebeard of the Grey Moutains. I didn't die once on the way to level five and earned the title of Tanglebeard the Wary (if I wanted to display it). I died at 9.95th level (DAMMIT), but had I not died, I would have earned the title of Tanglebeard the Undefeated. Generally, you earn titles from completing various deeds, so if I completed a bunch of quests in Ered Dun, I might earn the title Defender of Ered Dun. If I slaughter 100 goblins, I might earn the title of Goblin Killer. Titles are something I really wished WoW had to complement PvP ranks.

Maturity? I'm working my way out of the beginner area, but so far, character names are very in-flavor, the chat channels are helpful/civil and other players wave, bow, etc. So it seems very mature so far. However, someone told me that Breeland is the LotRO equivalent of Barrens Chat.

Monster play. Well, I haven't qualified for this, but I'm close. At level 10, you can access monsters in the high level areas and kill PCs (who know they're entering a deadly area). Your monster characters can earn titles and skills.

Crafting: give me a couple days to get back to you on this.


Things I don't like so far:

If you've put any serious time into WoW, it will very familiar at first. I don't know if I'll be able to break deep enough into the game in my trial period to experience enough LotRO to give a fair assesment as something different than WoW.

[sammy]

who needs a hearth stone when you can "map" back to a city
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1183/1338149518_b502c69a4d_o.jpg



oh. hell. NO.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1356/1338149692_2594eaa99c_o.jpg

[Chip]

I read recently that WoW will be doing something more with titles in the future, though there's nothing specific as to what sort of titles they will add.

And they're adding some new way to get the old-style titles.

-Senior Sergeant Sorro

-Chip

[sammy]

WoW has a lot of ground to make up when it comes to titles (http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Titles)...

My favorite one so far:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1404/1338193072_d8a18d82d9_o.jpg

[Telfer]

Please tell me if the monster class thing is fun, it makes me salivate like crazy.

I'd even bust out my PC if it was really good.

[sammy]

Will do, Telfer. I dinged 10 (and 11), so I'll spend some time with monster play Friday night and report back. My last batch of pics until then:

TITLE SELECTION SCREEN
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1232/1337692131_b03802d8f0_o.jpg


CHARACTER SCREEN
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1040/1338578392_3276f55cfc_o.jpg


ORODOST IN THE DISTANCE
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1019/1337692975_4c2fde1e6c_o.jpg


You don't ride bats or griffins, you ride horses.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1282/1337693393_c3e6bb3ab4_o.jpg
(as far as I can tell, longer jaunts are "quick journeys" - you get a loading screen and you are near your location on horseback, shorter ones you see the entire journey--but you can dismount and get off along the way)

[sammy]

Relaxing at the fire in the Prancing Pony in Bree
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1266/1337693657_e32e560110_o.jpg

[RonK]

Well I DLed it last night.

Overall I like it...If it does not get too boring this weekend, I will probably take a break from WoW for a while and give this a whirl. As a huge Tolkien junkie I love the feel of the world. The graphics & sound are great, though the cinematics movies run chunkily if at all on my rig.

I especialy like the cutscenes that come up in play. Give the whole thing kind of a Baldurs Gate sort of feel to it, in that there is more going on in the world besides you little corner of it.

It crafting aspect just confuses the hell out of me right now though.

And I am not a fan yet of the UI (seems like it takes up to much screen space or is too tiny at 1024x768 res), just need to wean myself away from my WoW interface expectations I suppose.

[Telfer]

Ugh. I read a bunch of reviews and decided I want to play this. But I'm not sure my PC can run it, and I really don't want to go get a new PC. Fuck PCs.

Bleh.

Hopefully MMOs will start coming out for consoles more often, because I can't stand games on computers anymore. Too much upgrading and what have you.

[sammy]

you can unlock the ui and move things around, as well as change the scale of the UI.

[RonK]

I forgot to add one thing that was hilarious.

I accidentily slipped off a moderate sized cliff while running around...so I fell expecting to take some damage ala WoW.

Much to my suprise I hear this loud *crack* as I land. It seems I had broken my legs and could only limp around slowly for several minutes.

BTW Sammy et al. I am currently on the Brandywine server should you wish to run this weekend.

PS....how does Dread work? Does it just lower your Power (HP's) for x amount of time?

[Telfer]

That story/fact is hilarious, Ron.

You know how early on they talked about making this game use perma-death? Well, they did. Obviously not anymore. But wouldn't it be funny if you could perma-break-your-legs? Like you are dumb enough to fall off a LARGE cliff and you are confined to crawling around with your broken twisted legs dragging behind you until a healer fixes them. Even if you die and come back to life. Because you fell off a cliff.

[sammy]

http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Dread


I too am on Brandywine, but my sched is all over the place. Keep an out for Tanglebeard, a surly whirlwind of death that pauses randomly to take screenshots.

[sammy]

Here you go, Telfer.

I rolled up a Warg--basically a rogue. I specifically chose it since Telfer wants to play a wolf in the worst educational game ever.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1358/1344737500_349d0ce282_o.jpg


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1277/1344737644_c776ef7c22_o.jpg


I ran into a group of monsters pwning a camp. I believe if you earn enough points as a monster, you can unlock being a troll...like this player did.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1314/1343846927_de361c0587_o.jpg


Chilling with da orcs at a fort.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1286/1344737798_bc219b99b6_o.jpg


The zone is quite large with various forts. Looks like fun and there's tons of "monster quests" to do. I think monsterplay would be fun if you had a regular group of guildies to run with.

[Telfer]

Oh fuck, you can be a giant Troll?!

I hate you Microsoft.

[RonK]

For the record I went ahead and bought the game this past weekend.

So long WoW (for a while at least)

[cholley]

This is a fine Midway Games published product. Buy it!

[Inkling]

Have you guys settled on a server? I'm with some friends on Landroval. I'm busy with a couple other games right now, but I paid for the lifetime subscription, so I'll be back.

[RonK]

I finaly did settle on Landroval as my server. Ive got 3-4 characters on there.

Im so tempted to upgrade my rig so I can stop playing on 'Low' graphic settings. :(

[Inkling]

I installed and tried out the "extra high" graphics setting. For about 2 minutes.

I'm holding off on a rig upgrade until Age of Conan comes out. By that time, the DirectX 10 spec should be more solid.

[Inkling]

We take on the Old Forest (I'm wearing the pointy hat):

http://www.inklingproductions.com/misc/lotro/oldforest_party.jpg