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[Game] LOTRO now free to play

When will it be fun to play?

Lol, just kidding...

I'd try this out, but I'd like to see how much I'd spend to get the disc first.

http://www.lotro-europe.com/buy-now.php

However with the free trial you can download the game so I assume that you don't have to buy a boxed copy if you don't want one. Of course if you have the bandwith to handle it, when I updated from my DVD copy to the Siege of Mirkwood expansion it was about 10GB of data. :eek:


Photo Album of some shots when I played in 2007, and my Kinship at the time, House of Elentari.

http://s145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/psycho_Sam/LOTRO/
 
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When will it be fun to play?

Lol, just kidding...

I'd try this out, but I'd like to see how much I'd spend to get the disc first.

Somebody saw a silly at CTRL-ALT-DEL huh? :p

Anyways, i bought this for 10 bucks a pretty long time ago to play with a friend.
Few things i liked was the ability to hit multiple targets during combat, making my dwarf warrior pretty effective at taking on larger groups at a time.
The other was the storyline with some scripted sequences which were pretty fun.

But i'm not sure on if i should play it again.
Most quests are standard MMO fare with 'kill 10 of this, and 10 of that' which get boring fast. MMO's all feel like a grind in the end.
Right now my friend (same one) got my playing the free version of EverQuest 2 which i got along in fine during the double XP weekend. The only real reason why i keep playing it right now though is the housing aspect of the game, gathering **** to put in my house and decorate it.
The rest of the game, combat and gathering, are pretty standard as always.
 
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I don't believe its f2p yet in the EU servers, some delay for the f2p shop or somthing. But there is currently a welcome back period, so old subs will be able to get a last glimpse of the game before it goes f2p. No idea how long the welcome back period is though, but I had fun in the colds of Forochel yesterday.

http://www.lotro-europe.com/freetoplay/rewards/

If you keep active you get extra Turbine points and stuff.

You talking housing in LOTRO or EverQuest 2, Sic?
 
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i've seen loads of copies of LotRO in second hand shops - but figured they were un-usable as the account would be regestered. (likeyhood being that the account was still being played anyway.)
Even though it's free i take 2nd hand copies wouldn't work - but might pick up a new one and check it out.

Nah 2nd hand will work. There is no CD key because you need a Codemasters account to login and play, so your billing is done through there. I gave my brother my copy to install and try the free trial and it worked fine. Hes now a subscriber. ;)
 
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I think it's a shame though, these MMORPG's in general.
I can see what is fun about them, making your character better, getting better equipment, in EQ2 there's also gathering stuff for your house etc. The progress you can make your character make is cool.
But i have tried many MMO's by now, including Lineage 2, EQ2, Age of Conan, and some others i cant remember, and all of them usually come down to the same gameplay.
Now you could argue that this is the same with shooters obviously, but there is a difference and many of the things an MMORPG makes you do are just tedious affairs.
Leveling up is fast at the start, but the farther you get the more mobs you need to grind through to advance , and after you advance, it's usually with a few statistics and perhaps a new skill but in general the reward is not there.
The same thing goes for harvesting materials for crafting. I can appreciate you needing to get them yourself instead of buying out of a shop, but it's a very tedious business. For example Age of Conan had some area's which were specifically made for resource harvesting. You'd walk around for several hours pickaxing your way through endless rock formations, etc.

In the end, to put it more simply, MMO's in general feel like a second job after a while.
The things you are made to do are 9 times out of 10 very simple and basic, and has you standing in a field with mobs wandering around not doing anything untill you attack them.
There is a lot of work and, except for the start, very little reward. In most of these games i cant get to level 30 before uninstalling the game out of boredom.
And as i said, that's a shame because i can see the potential and the fun parts, but it takes a lot of work to get to those fun parts. And especially when a monthly fee is asked, you feel obligated to play to make it worth the money. In that sense, i am happy to see more MMO's going free to play, including EQ2 but it still isnt enough to keep me going.

The only exception i can think of to these rules is Guild Wars because it's area's and missions are instanced, and the quests dont require you to kill 10 of these, and 10 of those most of the time but give you an actual goal to work toward to, with a storyline to reward you for your efforts next to the character advancement. Other MMO's rely purely on the advancement of your character to make things fun.
I am eager to see what they can do with GW2.
Untill then i'll stick to the single player RPG's from now on. Playing Risen at the moment, which is absolutely excellent, i love every second of it.
 
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GW2 is gonna be the exception. The demo already proved true most of what they were saying.

The only way I'd be able to enjoy standard MMOs is them having sexy characters so I don't mind spending hours mesmerized staring at them like in "Lineage 2" or "Aion" but even then, I have my limit of acceptable grind, then I discard it as a complete waste of time.

:IS2:
 
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I'll have to check this one out. I played WoW for a few months and had a bit of fun before I realized there is no way in hell it's worth a monthly. The other problem is when you're paying for time in a game you sort of feel compelled to play it over other games just so you're not wasting money. So my question to anyone who has played both games is: Will a casual WoW player enjoy LotRO? Also, how is the PvP? That has always been the most important aspect to me; in WoW I was either in the battleground or walking around the world hunting enemy players.

SiC-Disaster said:
Now you could argue that this is the same with shooters obviously, but there is a difference and many of the things an MMORPG makes you do are just tedious affairs.
Leveling up is fast at the start, but the farther you get the more mobs you need to grind through to advance , and after you advance, it's usually with a few statistics and perhaps a new skill but in general the reward is not there.

When they come up with an persistent-world MMO with no grinding where the melee classes play it as a third person action game with technical moves like Ninja Gaiden, the casters and marksmen play it as a first person shooter, and a level 1 can kill a level 9999 if he is skilled and catches his victim off guard, I will pay a monthly. I have always believed that the skill of the player > some statistic that determines skill; I loathe dice rolls that make your axe which clearly just hit someone in the face *Miss*.

But I suppose such a game is impossible in the current MMO market, because people seem to love progress bars and all the dedicated RPG players with no reflexes to speak of would be stomped by people who play twitchier games.

Fedorov said:
The only way I'd be able to enjoy standard MMOs is them having sexy characters so I don't mind spending hours mesmerized staring at them like in "Lineage 2" or "Aion"

NCsoft is indeed the master of sexy player characters.
 
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I'll have to check this one out. I played WoW for a few months and had a bit of fun before I realized there is no way in hell it's worth a monthly. The other problem is when you're paying for time in a game you sort of feel compelled to play it over other games just so you're not wasting money. So my question to anyone who has played both games is: Will a casual WoW player enjoy LotRO? Also, how is the PvP? That has always been the most important aspect to me; in WoW I was either in the battleground or walking around the world hunting enemy players.

When they come up with an persistent-world MMO with no grinding where the melee classes play it as a third person action game with technical moves like Ninja Gaiden, the casters and marksmen play it as a first person shooter, and a level 1 can kill a level 9999 if he is skilled and catches his victim off guard, I will pay a monthly. I have always believed that the skill of the player > some statistic that determines skill; I loathe dice rolls that make your axe which clearly just hit someone in the face *Miss*.

But I suppose such a game is impossible in the current MMO market, because people seem to love progress bars and all the dedicated RPG players with no reflexes to speak of would be stomped by people who play twitchier games.


NCsoft is indeed the master of sexy player characters.

Few notable points;
LOTRO has player and Kinship (Guild) housing
Has a monster play mode (PvP) in which you can play as orcs and the like if you want.
It has a full player music system.

Comparisons to WoW and EQ2
 
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Well I downloaded this, installed, made an account and all that jazz. Logged into the launcher, and it won't let me connect to any of the servers.

It finds them fine, and there are firewall exceptions for every necessary program, but I get this every time I try to connect.

derpyderp.jpg


Doesn't really help that the support forums aren't really supported by anyone but other clueless people in similar situations.
 
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