The Call On Lord of the Rings Online

The Beta has been going on for some time now, and for all intents and purposes Lord of the Rings Online has launched. Pre-order players will be able to move their characters to the live game when the title officially lights up on April 24th, and commentators on Massively Multiplayer games have weighed in. Their opinion, generally, is unanimous: buy it. Tobold contributes a full-on review, as does CVG. AFK Gamer doesn't go in for such long-form opinions, but he still has a lot to say. Specifically, Foton comments on the good, the okay, and the bad, as well as a few words on the game's (somewhat out of the ordinary) classes. "[The game is] deep and broad. An MMOG, any MMOG, with its premium box price and its premium subscription prices, needs to offer more activities than: you can kill stuff, and, umm, you can kill other players, and umm, you could check the auctions/trade channel. There's many ways to screw around in this MMOG: Deeds, accomplishments, exploration (easy to outrun higher level mobs), titles, player-made music, engaging quest text, a solid start to the crafting system, MONSTER PLAY!!! There's probably more, but that's all I've tried so far."

Comments

Re:Good, but not quite good enough yet

[Miniluv]

Yes, as a matter of fact it is. I read all the quest text in WoW when i first encouner a quest. I'm treating my main (level 46 atm) as exploring their universe and delving into their storytelling. And it works. The quest text is actually good for the majority of texts, with enough humor to make it not suck.

I found LOTRO to be a steaming pile of shit. Not just in comparison to WoW, but in comparison to say, watching paint dry. The quest text is difficult to follow, and makes you not care. Not just fails to make you care, but in many cases literally makes you NOT care. Then they have the audacity to bury important info in the middle of this rambling screed of crap, as if they know you're not going to want to read it so they'll trick you into having to.

I tried and tried and tried to like LOTRO and couldn't. The classes are unwieldy, the compromises to make it "Tolkienesque" reeked of trying too hard, and the heavy emphasis on RP style play may give hardcore rings geeks a chubby, but all it did was lead me to /ignore a LOT of people who tried to insist on RPing with me.

It is a damn beautiful game though, if you've got the rig to turn up all the effects.