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View Full Version : Anyone else try out Lord of the Rings Online?



SandDemon
2007-01-29, 01:38 PM
Got into the stress test event this last weekend and I was quite disappointed. When is someone going to make something revolutionary and not just tweaks on the same "bring me apples, the fate of this city rests in your hands!" They had maaaybe 5-6 major differences between any major MMO out there with the same bad sides of them all (tedious quests, long leveling times, boring or non-existent end-game, lack of serious pvp, etc).

I honestly don't see how serious companies can look at games like this and think they're going to make dents in the current genres. The only people playing LOTRO will be cult followers and LOTR fanatics because from a game standpoint, there's nothing in it drawing people to play it.

I played it for about a solid 4-5 hours for 2 days, hit level 15 and had done over 50 quests of "kill this", "bring me this", "talk to this guy" and other boring tasks. No thanks.

Inigo_Carmine
2007-01-30, 08:17 PM
I didn't play it, but I saw the trailers for it and was floored by how underwhelming it looked.


When is someone going to make something revolutionary and not just tweaks on the same "bring me apples, the fate of this city rests in your hands!" They had maaaybe 5-6 major differences between any major MMO out there with the same bad sides of them all (tedious quests, long leveling times, boring or non-existent end-game, lack of serious pvp, etc).

I wouldn't hold my breath. MMOs are, in essence, a huge cash crop. They are very addicting, and hence don't need to really have positive aspects like innovation or anything resembling quality; They try to attract as many people as possible, and therefore try go in 80 different (and often contradictory) directions at once, ending up ultimately, nowhere. The only thing that seems to get better between each generation of them is the graphics. It's like the mindless summer action movie: they know people are going to see it, they just have to have more explosions in it than the one from last year.

But that's to be expected. There's only really a handful of serious MMOs out there, and so there's really little drive or competition to create something good. Microsoft wouldn't put Money into developing Halo if 15 million people were willing to plonk down $70 +$15/month to play Barbie Horse Adventures either. But since there are 100s of other current gen videogames out there, the game generally has to be good (or an annual sports game) to get noticed. Over-hyped games aside.

A day may come when a company actually takes a risk and puts some effort into it and decides to put some effort and innovation into an MMO. I don't expect that day for quite a few years though.

Beleriphon
2007-02-02, 10:05 AM
I honestly don't see how serious companies can look at games like this and think they're going to make dents in the current genres. The only people playing LOTRO will be cult followers and LOTR fanatics because from a game standpoint, there's nothing in it drawing people to play it.

I played it for about a solid 4-5 hours for 2 days, hit level 15 and had done over 50 quests of "kill this", "bring me this", "talk to this guy" and other boring tasks. No thanks.


I played, no big deal. It didn't look or feel like Lord of the Rings, I had no idea what time period it was set in, and couldn't make heads or tails of what I was doing. Craft skills suck, combat was okay, but otherwise not terribly impressed.

Arlanthe
2007-02-07, 07:06 AM
I didn't play it, but I saw the trailers for it and was floored by how underwhelming it looked.

A day may come when a company actually takes a risk and puts some effort into it and decides to put some effort and innovation into an MMO. I don't expect that day for quite a few years though.

I loved Ultima Online, the first official MMO, but back then it was a big risk.

I think Vanguard is de-focusing on graphics and "litheness", and heading back toward immersive content types. This has been very intriguing so far.

Indon
2007-02-07, 10:20 AM
I've played it, and I liked it. There were some minor novel features and the feel is pretty tolkien-esque.

I'd be hard-pressed to actually pay for the game when it comes out, however.

Arlanthe
2007-02-09, 04:53 AM
I've played it, and I liked it. There were some minor novel features and the feel is pretty tolkien-esque.

I'd be hard-pressed to actually pay for the game when it comes out, however.

Look at LotR Online:

Races are Dwarf, Elf, Human, and Halfling. Replace Halfling with Gnome and you have... a factionthat sounds familiar.
A class called a “hunter” that has an AoE arrow effect and “rapid shot”…
A fighter class that builds up a kind of rage used to execute combat maneuvers…
An armor wearing shield bearing tanking class that can taunt… oooh….
A burglar that can sneak, sneak attack, and expose enemies…
3 gathering and 7 crafting professions…
Instanced dungeons…

So yeah, it is a single faction WoW clone set in Middle Earth. Very little original material here. It's obvious selling point is the franchise, not novel content.

Rumda
2007-02-09, 05:05 AM
Well in order for any mmo to achieve popularity it would have to steal shamelessly from WoW

Arlanthe
2007-02-09, 05:51 AM
Well in order for any mmo to achieve popularity it would have to steal shamelessly from WoW

Interesting point.

I don't know about that- WoW has aadded a lot of new ideas to the MMO pool, but they also have fundamentally built on what has come before. So will it be with the next gen.

I have the perfect MMO built up in my head, and it pulls 15% WoW concepts, 45% concepts from other MMOS and whatever has come before, and 40% new ideas.