I hope Conan kicks all your asses.

@MindTrigger

Well comparing LOTRO (which is beta) to WOW (which has been out for 2-years and has an expansion) is a little unfair.

But in terms of fundamental gameplay your statement is accurate but not the same as WOW. Turbine is overly emphasizing PVE, and merely adding PVP because it's a requirement in today's MMO's. Additionally Turbine is introducing really long chain quests called story quests with chapters and sub-chapters. These quests run concurrent to the novels. So while Frodo, Sam, and the fellowship are off adventuring you can aid their mission and journey to the same places they did; even being able to participate in an important step the Fellowship needs to complete their journey.

LOTRO's one gleaming aspect is that it's casual oriented. There's lots of content and quests... more than enough to solo. Or if you wish you can create a fellowship. LOTRO system benefits both solo and fellowships. For example fellowships have something called conjunctions that let all members jointly cast spells or summon creatures. Burglars are mainly the trigger points for these. When a conjunction is initiated you'll see big red, green, blue, and yellow buttons. As you might expect a combination of colors achieves different spells and summons. The most popular choice I've seen is an all-red conjunction that summons a ghostly Ent.

From the books and expanded universe LOTRO has a wealth of information to tap into. Because of this Turbine has made an interesting decision to center the launch game in the region of Eriador. This region covers the western mountains east to the Misty Mountains, and from Angmar in the North to the Southern Downs. It's a huge area broken up into WOW-like zones: The Shire, Bree-land, North Downs, and Lonely Lands, Ettenmores, Angmar and so forth. Here's a map I map for my guildmates which shows most of the POI in Bree-land.

http://www.kxmode.com/lotro/Bree-map-with-POIs.jpg

All of that sounds like praise, and it is, but I recently bought WOWBC. It has stolen me away from LOTRO. BC adds so much new content that WOW is addictive again; more addictive than LOTRO. The biggest downside with LOTRO is that it has this "yeah it's cool" aura but it never seems to get to the "damn this is freaking awesome" plateau. The game seems too much by-the-numbers to me. Other than fellowship conjunctions nothing really new has been introduced. I have guildmates who swear its way better than WOW evening claiming it's the greatest MMO ever made. At this point I'm a little skeptical. All I know is trying to overthrow WOW will be about as difficult as Sam and Frodo's journey to Mount Doom.



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http://music.download.com/kxmode
This comment was edited on Jan 26, 16:20.

I have been in the LotR Online beta for the past two cycles. Though I'll admit I went back to WoW with the release of the BC expansion no other game I have personally played looked as good as LotR Online. I have a good system and had everything video max'd and the game looks amazing. Even so I read the high-res textures were supposedly not even in the game yet. I wish I could share some screen shots since my Hobbit at the waters edge in the Bog is my current desktop. The Shire and a few other areas are just amazing. Yeah they are working on the tree trunks because trees sway with the winds. No biggie who spends more than a second or two looking at a tree when the view from a mountain side or Weathertop in the distance is so much more appealing?

Let me just say I have yet to play Conan and I know that looks great. But I have played UO, EQ, AC, DAoC, AC2, SWG, WoW, EQ2, D&DO, and a few others not worth mentioning. LotR Online looks the best and if you are tired of the cartoon candy-land of other MMOGs LotR will be right up you alley.

Yes being able to play an Orc, Troll, or any of the other evil races would have been cool. Most likely that will be in the add-on.

If I had to predict. I would say next year this time. WoW will still be number one with LotR running a distant second. Just my two cents and I could be wrong but from what I have seen the game is second most polished MMOG I have beta tested to this date.

As a beta tester of both games let me say this, the LOTR beta totally pwns the Vanguard beta. LOTR graphics may look dated and lack all the fancy shader effects but the game runs a hell lot better, even before the servers went down for the game's release Vanguard still ran like crap with tons of bugs all over the place.

Despite its limited scope its safe to say that upon release LOTRO will be a much more playable and focused game than Vanguard.

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This comment was deleted on Jan 26, 09:08.

DarkCntry, you are aware that the last six months ( probably more )of AC2's existance were entirely under Turbine's control right?

A lot more... more like the last year and a half of AC 2's existence.

They purchased back the rights to the game from MS ( who wanted nothing to do with it ). Now I'm not hating on Turbine, I totally loved AC1, and enjoyed AC2, but to say they weren't responsible for screwing AC2 is rediculous. One may argue that the plane was already falling far too fast for them to pull it up in time, but clearly they didn't feel that way, or they wouldn't have purchased back the rights.

You're right... it's absolutely ridiculous, because many of DDO's launch bugs were previous existing AC 2 bugs.... and MS had nothing to do with DDO. Turbine had 3 years of AC2 to iron out those bugs, and didn't.

Their MMO engine sucks... always has... always will. Turbine can't code their way out of a paper bag. They're a bunch of amateurs... and anyone that had any good / solid design ideas, have left the company long ago.

Now, with all that said... I hope they've pulled their heads out of their @sses (as a company) for this game.... it will be sad to see another "hack job" on something as precious as a Tolkien world.

DarkCntry, you are aware that the last six months ( probably more )of AC2's existance were entirely under Turbine's control right? They purchased back the rights to the game from MS ( who wanted nothing to do with it ). Now I'm not hating on Turbine, I totally loved AC1, and enjoyed AC2, but to say they weren't responsible for screwing AC2 is rediculous. One may argue that the plane was already falling far too fast for them to pull it up in time, but clearly they didn't feel that way, or they wouldn't have purchased back the rights.

I played Asherons Call 2 under tuRdbines control and I got to warn you they were the worst business people you could imagine they were the most short sited nerf kings ever and didn’t want to listen to there customers and eventually ran them all off and shut the game down there sadistic and suicidal. I would never invest my time or money with anything this company has to do with you’ve been warned.

Then I am sure you'd know that AC2's success was out of Turbine's hands, right? I mean considering every little change about it came from MS's office...but hey, that could never be..

kxmode

I assume you have played WoW. Do you think they are hitting the nail on the head, for the most part, with gameplay in LOTRO?

WoW is so damned polished. It will take a lot to steal people away.

I played Asherons Call 2 under tuRdbines control and I got to warn you they were the worst business people you could imagine they were the most short sited nerf kings ever and didn’t want to listen to there customers and eventually ran them all off and shut the game down there sadistic and suicidal. I would never invest my time or money with anything this company has to do with you’ve been warned.

Screenshots remind me a lot of D&D...so I'm going to wait for a free beta or just pass.

As someone in the closed beta I can tell you that LOTRO is so not D&DO. Its takes the best parts of WOW and runs with it. Unfortunately there are a few items that could harm LOTRO's success.

First, the server lag is unbearable. Perhaps this because the entire beta subscriber base plays on one server and there are about 250k beta testers. As a result many zones like Bree are crazy lagged; even becoming slideshows even for high-end gaming rigs. Second, LOTRO also has something called Monster Play, which, as the name suggests, allows players to control monsters (orcs, spiders, so forth) in a Battleground's like PVP arena. The problem is this is the only area "PVP" is allowed. PVP is not allowed outside of this area. Third, if you had your heart set on playing a Troll, Orc, or Uruk-Hai, you're out of luck. There's only one faction and four races: humans, hobbits, dwarves and Elves... take it or leave it.


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http://www.gamemusicjukebox.com/
http://music.download.com/kxmode
This comment was edited on Jan 25, 15:30.

So if you preorder, you can move your beta character to live?

Wow...thats quite the feature.

I've been involved with the beta since beta 1. This game is pretty good. The graphics, which I note that some here don't think are up to par, are very nice despite what some may think. Yes, the tree trunks look a little UT-ish, but honestly, I don't play a game for what it's foliage looks like. I have a garden outside for that. I'm sure that WoW is a great game, but in my opinion, the graphics suck. The main reason I stopped playing EQ2 is that everything looked cartoonish (so does WoW btw). I don't want to play a cartoon let alone pay for one. Having kids, I get to see plenty of that on my T.V., enough to fill a lifetime. LOTRO actually has good player models, etc. The dwarves look like dwarves. The elves actually look like elves! (Unlike WoW's bastardization of what an elf is supposed to look like).

They really have taken notice of what other successful MMOs have done and combined them all into one place. Now, I don't necessarily like all of that (combo skills and such are not on the top of my 'like' list), but it is nice that they are trying to cater to many different types of player.

Besides the fact of being the only MMO out there to provide you a way to never have to pay a monthly subscription whilst they get revenue to provide you with updated content/server maint, they offer the lowest monthly subscription rate out there for a mainstream MMO. That's a huge difference that might be worth checking out.

Just my 2 cp.

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WARNING!!! DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS...
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Well, I can't say if Lord of the Rings MMO will be any good as I have not played it. BUT, I have played Turbines other two MMO's (Dungeons & Dragon's Online and Asheron's Call 2) and neither was very good. I hope for the sake of this development house staying in business that they have turned a corner with this one.

So erm hands up who around here would be a game based on a film/TV show?

Anyone?

Anyone at all?

So why in gods name do people think a MMO will be any different. Look at the evidence from SWG/MxO. Now factor in the huge crapiness of recent Turbine releases - D&DO I'm looking at you.

Next add the enormous turdalicious tendencys of codemasters mmos - RF Online, D&DO, Archlord.

Now subtract 50 points for Dizzy - yes codemasters some of remember that was you.

Subtract a further 10 for not including a how far can you kick the hobbit minigame.

Then finally remove any faint glimmer of hope by making it entirely one sided - you can't be bad.

And yet if you truly believe that despite all these omens you will be playing this game in 21 months you can save money by putting up $199 now (sidenote do they even promise the game will be up in October 2008 - the earliest people would save money?)

Vegetarian Logic: We'll save animals by eating their food

Graphics do not make a game thats for sure, but at least this one looks better than Vanguard

Actually got in last night, downloaded, and hopefully will give this a spin this evening

And now they are trying to get ppl to pay for the game before the beta even arrives and offer them a deal on the monthly subscription!

If you'd applied to the alpha the first beta or the (current) second beta you might have been playing it.

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"Oh how awful. Did he at least die peacefully? To shreds you say. Well, how's his wife holding up? To shreds you say."

Blame Tolkien Enterprises for tying up the licensing on this one. That being said, sorry, I'll take a rain check on this one. Graphics look more dated than Guild Wars when it first came out.

To the sarcastic asshole making a crack about EQ2, no, graphics don't make a game, but it sure as hell doesn't hurt it.

Shouldn't this have come out 3 or 4 years ago?