Impressive...but I'd be more interested in finding out if they changed the awful interface from the first one. Just trying to save a game is chore.

What!?!? 9 comments so far, and nothing on Blue's epic Dad-humour-esque writeup? I will not stand for it.

Kudos Blue for starting my day with great bad jokes.

March 18th is 6 months away. That's a long time to remove a feature that Blizzard says "ultimately undermine Diablo’s core gameplay".

If anyone's willing to share a Starter Edition code, I'd be very grateful.

I find it annoying that the developers haven't released the Legendary or Chaos Editions as add-ons or expansions.

I bought the Dark Elves edition when it was on-sale, found it enjoyable, and wouldn't mind getting the other editions. But I'm not paying for a whole new edition of the game each time that costs more than what I originally paid.

The free trial is likely crippled in some way i.e. can't level past a certain point etc.

I think this is a step in the right direction - I wanted to try this game out a long time ago, but they were so reticent about letting people demo the game that I lost interest, and don't want to be forced to cram game time into a 10 day window. This might at last get me to try the thing out.

Probably the obvious reason - listing the total units sold would likely call into question how anyone could say this was a best-selling list, while still keeping a straight face.

It's pretty disingenuous since most of the titles sold on Impulse are from the same game company.

Maybe, but they'll definitely get a solid look from me. If they put together a half-decent MMOG, but manage to get the richness of the universe into the game, it'll be very cool. The last Vampire game showed a lot of potential.

Actually, it was. Huge, that is.

I know your post is sarcasm, but AoC, when it was released, hit a real sweet-spot in terms of timing. WoW players were bored to death with BC, and after nearly 4 years at that point the graphics engine was really long-in-the-tooth. Warhammer Online was delayed yet again. LOTRO's expansion wasn't due for a while either. They sold 700,000 copies at launch, IIRC. I'm guessing many of the players were like me - bored with the alternatives, and AoC looked very different.

Granted, they had a massive drop in the player base after the first month: the first 20 levels of gameplay were very polished, but after that things really began to suck.

I tried the game again, and remembered quickly why I left. There's just no compelling reason to play - it doesn't feel like fun. Graphically, if you're running a system on the low end of their requirements, the game looks horrid (while LOTRO on the same system is beautiful, and WoW is as good as it can be). Interface gets in the way of gameplay, and there's no real compelling story.

The Moria expansion is definitely worth a look - Turbine did a great job bringing it to life, giving you the constant sense of how massive the place is. Nearly all of the quests are heavily tied into the lore of LOTR; you actually are interested in reading quest texts rather than clicking through.

They've added a few tweaks that're nice: they've got a built-in quest guide system now, similar to the quest guide mod for WoW, and the quest tracker in AoC. A couple of new classes with very different mechanics, solo dungeons loaded with a particular resource so farming mats isn't quite so painful, and an XP reduction to help you get to 50 (and Moria) faster. I started playing again a few months ago, and it was still a little painful to get to 50 (felt like I was grinding at times), but after 50 it's been very interesting - Moria's worth exploring.

LOTRO still doesn't grab me the way WoW did when it first came out (or after each expansion), but I tend to leave WoW after each expansion and gravitate to it simply because of what it does differently.

I'd never heard that before about grass-fed beef; Wikipedia backs it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_fed_beef.

Thanks for that!

Really? The OC for NWN1 was awful, I thought NWN2's was a VAST improvement over it.

The soul devourer gimmick in the NWN2 expansion did get annoying at times, but it also forced you to play a bit more realistically. In NWN1 & 2, you basically could rest anywhere, and as much as you wanted, which made it much easier to play wizard/cleric/druid classes. The expansion highlighted why flexibility was good.

AI is always tricky, although it got substantially better in the Storm over Zehyr expansion. Ultimately though, you do have to accept that a mico-managing human will always do much better than the AI.

Dems the risks.

Personally - I've been waiting for a trial before playing this game. I applied for, but didn't get in the beta, and after AoC, I won't try an MMO without a free trial. So, while there might be risks of gold spammers, there's probably other potential players out there that just won't get into this unless we get a peek.

I'm actually a little cheesed it took them this long to put out a free trial client.

I bought this game last year, almost entirely because of all of these patches - I figured any game which enjoyed this much community support after it's release had to be something special. And it's really good - one of the better adult-themed, RPG/FPS games released, even years after its creation.

Too bad it was released almost at the same time as HL2 - that's a tough game to have to compete with. But it's an excellent game.

i highly doubt that. care to elaborate?

Another poster mentioned the deed/achievement system. LOTRO's quest management system is a significant improvement over WoW's - I think 6 or so months after LOTRO was out, WoW started to add ! and ? markers to the minimap for quest givers/enders rather then a generic yellow dot. LOTRO also had a very detailed minimap, with markers for various vendors, trainers etc. which WoW has only recently added as well.

Those are just a couple off the top of my head.


This comment was edited on Aug 31, 10:54.

Well, obviously enough people to keep the game viable after close to two years.

I actually quite enjoyed the game - it actually brought some innovations/improvements which WoW has later on copied, the developers do a great job envisioning Tolkein's world, and the graphics are very well done. I will likely return for the expansion, just to see how they do Moria.

The lotro.stratics.com page has links to a torrent for this, as well as direct download links. Here's the torrent:

http://download.level3.turbine.com/largecontent/lotro/book12/torrent/live/LOTRO-US-Updater-Book11-to-Book12.exe.torrent

The integrated voice-chat feature's definitely going to be handy for the smaller guilds and/or pick-up groups that can't really set up their own chat server.

I still fondly remember using GTalk with my brother when playing WoW early on. =)

As far as we know they haven't stolen engine code, level design, model design, gun balances, ai routines, huds, storyline etc etc. However a couple of tiny pictures...

You're right, but if they did in fact steal a few textures, that'd make me think (if I were id) I might want to take a closer look to see what else is in there that might be ripped off.

More then that - id has open-sourced their software for Doom/Quake1, 2, & 3 . . . but none of those licenses ever extended to the artwork and media files shipped with those games. Carmack commented on /. a while back that their open-source licenses have a provision that allow game developers to use their open-source code to develop a game, and if they want to release it commercially, can relicense it under a pretty cheap non GPL license.

The point being the id seems to be making great effort to allow other competitors to use their technology and source code to develop games - whether just for the community, or for consumers as well. But, that same permissiveness wasn't extended to their art assets. Stealing those things seems . . . well, frankly underhanded. They didn't give you enough?

The legal aspects are murky - I'd expect id has a strong case if it's true, but the developer's in Russia, so likely only the American distributer has liability. But I think you're trivializing a theft here from a company that has set a much higher example then many in sharing their intellectual property. For some reason, I think they just deserve better.

Edited - fixed spelling of "id"


This comment was edited on Apr 7, 02:18.

You've got a point, but keep in mind that a user-mod to update
the interface for PC's came out pretty fast. I'm sure Bethesda didn't think it was necessary anymore after that.