Comments on: Frodo, One Year Later

By: On the Value of Crafting at Kill Ten Rats

On the Value of Crafting at Kill Ten Rats — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:03:10 +0000

[...] have previously characterised crafting in The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ as a low-value [...]

By: Oz

Oz — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:45:17 +0000

Due to work constraints, I have basically no time to play anymore, but I did take a few trips around LoTRO, in addition to the one I wrote up. The game as it is, if it had launched this way, would have hit WoW like a ton of bricks. The game has matured well, and has solid support that I really did not expect from Turbine. My only major gripe left with the game is the extremely linear leveling path, but I was spoiled by EQ and WoW. In EQ1, with some effort, you could level up characters without repeating locations pretty easily. WoW makes this even easier, however mid 30’s you’re all but forced to go to STV, which I’ve always despised (the new, fast, pre-50 leveling allows you to skip most of the zone though).

I leveled a minstrel up in a completely different area (Shire and Bree) than I did my Loremaster. Only at his currently level, 22 or something I forget, has he begun to repeat quests I’d previously done, forcing me to go into the Old Forest, which is a place I can’t stand. I know that going forward though, sadly, I will end up following the same leveling path, going next to Lone Lands, and then forward. Are there other options? That’s my worry for replay value.

By: Khan

Khan — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:24:14 +0000

I opted for the Founder pricing since Open Beta. I’m still enjoying the game and don’t regret having gone with the Founder option. It’s nice to be able to start / stop playing from time to time and not feel like I’m not getting my money’s worth. @Dave - I’m not sure why they’d bring it back periodically. Perhaps they use it as a way to get larger cash influxes from time to time - maybe as an immediate way to defray some of their expansion costs before MoM releases?

Crafting in LotRO is way better than WoW. I did like EQ2’s options more. EQ2’s simple mini-game approach was more interactive. Overall, LotRO crafting is alright. It’s probably more useful for soloing players that may not be into the Epic quests or players that like creating their own consumables.

I’m loving the constant free expansions from Turbine: entire new zones, level help and not just for 50s, new game items and armor-sets - very well done on the whole. Their review of the different classes have helped a lot too. As I commented recently on my blog, they added a stance (Warspeech) to the Minstrel class which effectively makes them a nuker - nice to see a dps option available for the solo player of a healing class. Guardians (LotRO’s tanks) also have a dps stance available for soloing or in cases where you have a number of Guardians in a group.

LotRO launched with a decent 1-15 game and a lot of promise. It’s nice to see Turbine fulfilling that promise as they go.

By: Dave Rickey

Dave Rickey — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:43:04 +0000

I would think the return of “Founder” lifetime pricing would be troubling. It doesn’t make a lot of business sense, the obvious buyers are people who have been paying the regular subscription fee and plan on continuing long term. As in, longer than the 12-16 months it would take to get the same money from them anyway. So, 16 months from now, those customers are a non-producing drag on the balance sheet, when there’s every reason to expect that they would otherwise have still been customers.

Why would any operator do this? Doing it originally made at least some sense, it provided up-front cash to defray launch expenses and avoid the usual first-month cash crunch. But now?

By: Zubon

Zubon — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:16:31 +0000

I understand the points about not having fun. I might not either if I had not had a 4+ year break from YAFMMORPG. If you have been playing essentially the same game for a decade, a marginal improvement may not be your thing. And if you have not played it at all, it may really not.

By: Julian

Julian — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:41:53 +0000

My own experience with it was that it just wasn’t fun. Can’t think of a better way to put it, really.

I must have played along with my wife for 3-4 months, and during the last month we had no desire whatsoever to log in most of the time. And we hadn’t even level capped any of our characters, so it wasn’t a matter of end game tedium.

We both quit at some point right after Evendim and right before the chickens. Zubon’s review is good, and those points do exist - I’m not disputing that at all. It’s a good game that some people, myself and my wife included, found utterly flat and boring. Un-fun.

To me, the good points are the sheer beauty of its environments, the sense of world is well made, it had an absolutely -terrific- launch (which is no small feat) and Turbine has been very good at updating it.

All the other elements, unfortunately, in my estimation range from just acceptable to mediocre, bad or bland depending. The bad was heavier than the good, in my eyes. Other people’s mileage may vary, as it should be.

By: Openedge1

Openedge1 — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:27:16 +0000

Over a year later, and I still do not see what people enjoy here.
I guess I have been already ruined by what I experienced in the beginning.
Bad UI, Ugly animations, still hitching on a system with 4 gigs and a ATI 4870 (yes, it is 64 bit) and X-Fi.
I went back for the return, and still felt empty.
About 2 months ago a friend asked me to come back and play, so i bought the 9.99 box and added the key to my old account.

Still nothing. I played 10 out of 30 days.
Lore is one thing, but a fun game needs to surround that lore, and I still could not find any here.
But, I will agree that Turbine has followed the right path for the game (compared to Funcom, a proud member of the Titanic)
Good patching schedules, content support.
Maybe MoM will alleviate some of my concerns.

By: Thallian

Thallian — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:44:48 +0000

@Syncaine you will still be able to see the 6 mans I’m sure but the raids… Well there’s gonna be new ones but the only way I see people running anything other than the rift much is if they raise the actual level of Helegrod and such. And if they raise it 10 more levels after no one will ever run the rift, even for fun, unless they upgrade the rift, which they easily could.. just change all the mob levels and the lewt you get from the trade ins.

@Zubon excellent write up. Thank you.