Lord of the Rings Online Impressions

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

Comments

I totally know what to name my character

[jfodale]

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

Enter your character's name: Leggolas
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Enter your character's name: Legolass
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Enter your character's name: Llegolus
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Enter your character's name: Legggollass
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Enter your character's name: Legoooooolas
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Re:I totally know what to name my character

[CrazyJim1]

The funniest one in beta was: Legomyeggolas

Re:Wait a minute...

[Barny]

Hehe, kinda got a point, but you have to have something to do while waiting to yell at peeps for breaking RP rules ^_^

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

I beta tested, so I have a few things to say

[CrazyJim1]

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

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

Skip if not a die-hard, skip it if you are.

[Shivetya]

Honestly, unless you just want to see the world of Middle Earth in graphics form I would suggest skipping this MMORPG interpetation of it.

Highs:
Landscapes and landscape features are nicely done.

Water reflectivity encompasses all drawn items

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

No Mages... uh

Traits. The idea was good..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re:Skip if not a die-hard, skip it if you are.

[jazzmodeus]

I haves to echo everything Shivetya said. I'm in the beta and have been for several months playing both a dwarf and an elf. After playing for the first month after I got in, I stopped for about month and would check in from time to time after major updates. The game was repetitive, lifeless, and dull. The scenery is lovely and was quite interesting to see some of the popular places rendered out and explorable. That's about the only compelling part of the game. Combat felt detached, as though there was no visible correlation between activating a skill and actually seeing it executed (mostly on my dwarf guardian, it was a bit better on my elf hunter). Armor seemed completely arbitrary, no matter how much I upgraded it never seemed like I became more resilient in battle. The crafting system was a joke. On my dwarf, my progress was completely halted because of a dependency on a particular product made and available only through another crafting tree. Despite all the minor complaints and compliments I could give the game, it really just came down to being uninspired, derivative, and lackluster. Remove the LoTR skin and there's just not much there to grip someone once the initial novelty wears off.

You're only considering the setting!

[Xocet_00]

While I agree that World of Warcraft takes a lot of cues from Lord of the Rings in terms of lore, style, races, etc the actual gameplay in World of Warcraft is what makes it what it is. I'm pretty sure that Tolkien didn't lay out a UI in the preface of his books when he wrote them:

World of Warcraft UI Lord of the Rings Online UI

It's not just the UI. The quest-heavy gameplay (as opposed to the Everquest/FFXI grind), the way the classes are balanced, etc. All that stuff is lifted from WoW, and certainly is not dictated by the "original" lore. I should also mention that it *should* have been lifted (although the UI is a bit much). World of Warcraft got it right - LoTRO absolutely should mimic a great deal of what makes World of Warcraft good if they want to appeal to the same large market.

But don't try to tell me that the LoTRO is the "original". That only applies to the setting.