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LOTRO from the perspective of a WoW player

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: May 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I am a long time gamer (I started on an Atari 800) but this is only the second MMORPG I have played. The first, that got me really hooked was World of Warcraft. While many people object to the comparisons between the two it is inevitable. More people have played WoW than probably any other game out there. It is a good point of reference. With that said.. let's get on with the review.

GRAPHICS - The graphics are stellar. It is a very good looking game. The textures are realistic. The models are all very accurate. The environments are lush. It is a stunning game to look at. A+

COMMUNITY - The Fellowship (group/raid) is similar to WoW in it's raw function, but the LOTRO version of the LFG tool is much better and is actually usable. Kinships are LOTRO's version of guilds. It has all of the things you would normally expect. One nice feature is while at the auction house you can search for items listed by your kinship if you want to 'keep it in the family' so to speak. The server that I have played on is pretty weak from an RP perspective. But so is the WoW community. I play on a PVPRP server on WoW and can only think of two guilds that really RP. ... B-

GAMEPLAY - This is going to be a hard section to rate. There are things I like about LOTRO a lot better than WoW, but inherently the game doesn't FEEL right. The physics of my characters feel awkward. Controlling them feels disconnected, again, in comparison to WoW. With that said, most group (fellowship) quests are instance based. You and your fellowship port to an instance that is many times a recreation of a normally playable world location. This has the advantage that you never have to wait for respawns or have some jackass ninja your objective. Another thing that I really like about LOTRO is how the equivalent of WoW's Talents and Abilities are managed. In order to gain a higher rank of a spell or ability, you have to use it.. a LOT. One thing I don't like about WoW is that if you want to spend the gold you can respec on a whim. LOTRO forces you to use a spell and therefore learn how it should be used in order to advance. ... A-

TOOLS / SUPPORT - There are official forums which are quite active. There is an 'in game' issue reporting tool, but it really just spawns a web page that you have to log in to again to report your issue. Not cool. There is no add-on support. You can create skins and rearrange most items, but you can't really enhance the features or functionality of the interface. WoW rocks for this. I run around 50+ add-ons with WoW and depend upon them. The idea of not being able to do this is a big drawback to me. There is a built in voice chat tool that allows you you chat with Fellowship members without having to load up Ventrillo or TeamSpeak. As with most built-in tools it is not as feature rich, but it works. ... B-

OVERALL - I would say that if you have grown bored with WoW and are in need of something different then you should check LOTRO out. If you are a LOTR fan and enjoy the lore associated with it, then you should definitely check it out. The initial release is quite impressive and I am sure that with content updates and patches some of the nagging little things will be ironed out. ... B+

good mmo

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: April 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Well after participating in the open beta I am pretty happy with how this game is looking. Sure the animations could use some polish as could the general UI. There is no UI scale button so it is almost painfuil to run the game with the native resolution for a 24 inch flat panel. I guess once I get totally used to all the abilities it will be fine as they all will be second nature and hotkeyed.

But as a whole there are similar traits to wow through out but seriously why was wow successful? I would say ease of use so in a way it is admiriable to take the good and implement it and leave some of the bad.

As for pvp in this game I hadn't gotten to it yet as the lvl cap in beta was kind of promoting doing the opening quests into completion rather than speeding along which imho is a good thing. If people want a totally pvp based game it looks like either warhammer or conan so it is nice to have a pve game.

with all that being said I have been a raider in wow since the beginning having raided all zones to completion pre tbc and only just starting 25 mans like ssc and the raid game in wow is dead and I am leaving it for this It looks like a better game from my perspective and to be quite honest it is fun being a noob again

Fun game, but still a bit buggy

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: May 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I make a point to at least try out the major MMORPGs that come out. I started playing Everquest in the end of 1999, and since then, I have played consistently or at least tried out AO, Horizons, DAoC, SWG, WoW, EQII, Final Fantasy XI, Maple Story, and a few others. Most of my time playing them has been on EQ, EQII, and WoW.

I started hearing a lot of hype for this game, but I was turned off by the fact that it is confined in the LotR universe, which would limit the ability to do expansions and make new content. But I figured I would try it out. I bought the pre-order, which got me into the last couple weeks of the open beta. I was actually pleasantly surprised.

The playability of this game, and it's interface, would look very familiar to someone who has played World of Warcraft, plus a few things that would be great additions to WoW's UI. You are able to queue your next action, while you are currently using an action. Voice chat is built into the UI, so anyone who is able to plug in a microphone, can chat, and a little icon will pop up by their picture. The game play can get a little repetative, but overall, it's great. The fact that they have a ton of titles you can obtain, helps in making your character unique, and give you a feeling of accomplishment, even at low levels.

On the other side of the house, the game balancing leaves much to be desired. Some classes can do massive amounts of damage (champions, especially) and can easily hold their own, or pwn in groups, others (such as burglars) are so group dependent, that it makes it very difficult to solo. After the first week of the game going live...i would estimate that a largest portions of the server populations were either hunters, champions, or guardians. I had some difficulty finding healers for groups.

Overall...the game looks great, and is a lot of fun to play, but still needs work before you get more hardcore gamers into it.

You will love it or hate it.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: July 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

You will love this game if:
* You are a Tolkien fan, particularly a fan of the books, although attempts were made to draw from both movie and book traditions.
* You want something easy to learn, and have played WoW before.
* You hate not knowing what to do next, and like guided quest progression.
* You love storyline and social aspects such as the ability to play music. If you were an entertainer in Star Wars Galaxies, you may love the new music system, which can use ABC files.
*You are a hardcore role-player.Try the Landroval server or Elendilmir, the unofficial RP servers. I have seen more RP on Landroval than I have ever seen in any mainstream game. On most servers, the dwarf and hobbit areas are RP gathering centers. Smoke the pipeweed that makes smoke rings shaped like ships! Grow veggies. Enjoy the sandbox aspects and "living" there rather than leveling.
*You are an older player. LOTRO has an unusually high average player age. You will meet many married couples and families.
*You hate buying things. Lucky you, quest rewards are actually quite powerful at the recommended quest levels. Most players wear mainly quest items, and they will take you to the next level of quests before you need to upgrade.
*You need new content. New content is added every month, for free.

You will hate this game if:
*Your primary interest is PVP. The PVP system is nice in that even a level 10 can opt to visit a special pool and play a monster alt that is high level any time. However, you cannot play a PVP hero/good guy until at least level 40, and PVP has really not caught on. LOTRO is rather carebear. There are no PVP servers. Few people spar. This may change as the playerbase gets to higher average level. Give it at least 6 months. As a monster, you will find few people to battle at present.
*You are a soloer. That will take you to mid-20s and early 30s, but the best quest rewards are from group(fellowship) quests. These cannot be soloed or duo-ed until you are far above the recommended level. You will love the first half of the game as a soloer. After that you will have a hard time leveling at all, and grinding monsters does not give much experience. Be forewarned, you will probably need to group a lot.
*You prefer to buy your items. The auction house on all servers is fairly dead. Quest rewards are better than dropped items, by far. NPC vendor items are inferior and useless.
*You are primarily a crafter. Craft quests for progression quickly require you to get high level assistance. Without that help, often the best items you can craft are far below your level. The craft system is nice, and quite enjoyable, but recipes are expensive, and it is currently nearly impossible to make much money at the auction house. People aren't using it, and you are competing with excellent quest rewards. Crafting is VERY expensive and only pays off at very high levels of expertise. On most servers, that means Grand Master already.
* Quests bore you. Progression is almost impossible without doing quests. This game is almost entirely quest based, far more so than WoW.
*You want a house. Houses are in development, but not expected to arrive for some time.
* You want to get married or have social clothes. No wedding dresses, no formalwear, no official way to marry, although you can adopt another character as your child. If your character gets married, the best you can do is cloth armor as a wedding outfit.

Average, Average, Average

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: November 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

If you're a long time Tolkein fan, this is your chance to explore Middle Earth. As an exploration of Middle Earth, LOTRO is excellent -- Stunning visuals, a beautiful soundtrack that captures the feel of each area, being able to participate actively in the storyline, etc.

However, as an MMORPG, LOTRO doesn't do anything innovative. Character classes, while original, are pretty mundane. Stat points are completely autodistributed with no customization whatsoever. Your character can spend hours grinding out various 'deeds' in each zone to get some slight bonuses to their stats, but you are extremely limited in how many deeds you can equip at any one time. The result? Two characters of the same level and the same class are basically identical clones of each other, and your equipment doesn't make that big of a difference. LOTRO has the usual assortment of storyline quests and fetch quests, but being kinda heavy on the fetch quests. Monster XP is really insubstancial so you're forced to go fetch water from the well and kill 6 boars and 8 bears over and over again as you move from zone to zone. And after you reach a certain point, you -will- have to look for a group to get any of the 'worth doing' content done. The community is a mix of mature, older gamers/LOTR fans and WoW-exile kids who just want to 'kill stuff' and don't give a crap about the story.

Despite the need for grouping and XP being weak, you can still hit the level cap and become very bored in just a few weeks. So as an MMORPG? Average. Its about the same as everything else out there. However, if you're a roleplayer or just an extreme fan of middle earth, it is worth picking this up for that immersion and to meet others who feel the same. Just turn off the global channels. Trust me, turn em off.

This is NOT a PvP game!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 31
Date: April 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I love how people review a game based on what "they" wanted it to be and not for what it is. Although this game has a PvP "Monster" area the main game is PvE or Player vs Environment.

So if you want to run around killing other players this is not the game for you. It was never supposed to be this type of game. To review a game because it was not made the way you wanted it to be made is just silly at best.

So in closing if you like WoW but want a change, if you like WoW but wanted better graphics, if you like the lower levels of EQ1 or EQ2 (when you could solo) and if you like to be placing "in" a world that seems alive and real then give LOTRO a try.

If you want to blow things up real good, if you want to "own" other players and brag how uber you are then move on or keep playing the other PvP games. The internal moster place battlefield are a blast but the main part of this game is overcoming quests and computer controlled AI either solo or in fellowships (groups) and not to beat the other side.

This is a game for mature people who are looking to avoid the randon "duel requests" from the pre-teens who snuck on their parents computer *smiles*

So what is LOTRO?

1. Perhaps the best graphics of any MMORPG out today. Graphics, while not making a game, do help get you into the game as long as they do not do so at the expense of fun. Since this game looks good on a 4 year old computer and great on a newer computer it is "you" who decide how important graphics are.

2. Nearly bug free which is more than I can say for a certain other game that was just released because they ran out of funds and needed people to pay to beta-test the game.

3. Rich history and storyline that is without question better than anything past, present and most likely future. This hitory was gathered over years and years of thought and not fudged together in months in order to fit features of a game. This game was made around the lore, not the lore around the game.

4. Quests are nearly as good as those in WoW and in some respects better. This is a game about questings and not about rinse and repeat massive MOB kills.

5. Solo Play as good as in WoW. Try soloing to high levels in most of the other games. You a hard core massive raider... well this is not that type of game. While there is raiding it is more down to earth than some of the other massive "required" raiding games.

Whenever you see reviews that are either 1's or 5's it falls into the...

"Whatever game I play rules, whatever game I do not play stinks"

I discount all 1's for the most part because 90+% of those reviews are just trash talk. Show me the 3 star reviews backed up with some reason why they like this feature or why they do not like that feature.

I only give this game 4 stars overall because I do not feel that any game is perfect. As they add to LOTRO this will go higher but days before release after playing for a few months it's clearly a 4-star game right now.

Same game, new wallpaper

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 15
Date: May 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I broke down and bought LOTRO, despite the fact that I usually tire of MMO's pretty quickly. One review I read made a point of the use of instancing, and I hoped that this might have been leveraged to present more complex content that a small party or solo'er could enjoy. But in fact, LOTR is worse than WoW ever was in terms of throwing the MMO mechanics in your face. Repeatedly I find myself standing around in rooms full of players waiting for some alledgedly unique enemy to spawn - sometimes with two or three of that same enemy's corpses lying around in plain view! Umm... suspension of disbelief, anyone? This is exactly the kind of MMO silliness that could/should be worked around via instancing, but LOTR's content just isn't sufficiently refined.

What I'd like to see is a good LAN-based multiplayer game that is not MMO, but more like a cooperative play through an intelligent single-player RPG. This could be realized as a standalone game, or as an episodic online game with better instanced content. I didn't like Guild Wars right off, but maybe I need to revisit that. Or maybe D&D Online is closer to what I'm imagining.

LOTRO is very pretty, and the writing is a step up from WoW's, but it's essentially the same old treadmill all over again. I've been playing for hours and I don't think I've made a single decision to impact my success one way or the other. Like most recent MMO's, it's more a toy than a game. This is the cost of "game balancing" as is so hyped by the gaming press - there are a million options, but since they are all finely tuned to be equally playable, your decisions are essentially irrelevant. Fun!

I nearly gave this game a 4 overall because it is a good technical achievement with reasonable hardware requirements. But come on, the lack of originality in this genre is just appalling. In order to make these GAMES again, developers need to start thinking up ways to incorporate skill or deduction into their content... be they puzzles, mini-games, or for the hardcore RPG'ers, stats management that can be legitimately botched up if played poorly... something to convince me I'm not just grinding away.

5 STARS for LOTRO!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: May 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm having a terrific time in the game, because the graphics are amazingly stunning and i'm on the Landroval server which has lots and lots of RP players to bring live to the community there. I truely enjoy the in-game story contents the most and have always taken the time to read through each and every quest texts as the storyline was beautifully writtened and besides it was the story behind LOTR that draw me to this game, and not the raids that kinda stuff. But still this game has shown me much of what exceeded my expectation, and now i'm expecting even more fun content updates for the future. The only downside to this game are some system like item linking systems, some interface not as user friendly as some other games, but those are not really big issues.

So far i'm still on my hunter still trying to build up my toon, strength and RP wise. This game really made me glued to the screen for hours and if its not because of my work, i might've became a total LOTRO addict!! 5 STARS for this game!! MUST BUY MUST TRY!!

Good game with potential to be a whole lot better

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: August 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I've played a number of MMOs, and LotRO has the usual time sinks, quests, and crafting as other MMOs. There's only a few things that makes LotRO unique, Monster Play and the fact that it's based on Tolkien's work. The graphical environment is pretty spectacular too, but the characters and the gear they equip fail to blend with the beautiful environment the game has, as the characters aren't modeled very well and the gear looks laughable. Seriously, 90% of the items look boring, re-used, and the boots that they all wear look hauntingly close to those 80's "moon boots."

The music is also very well done. I also like the fact that there's ways for people in a party to create powerful combination attacks via an event called a "conjunction." Depending on each party member's conjunction selection attacks can do massive burst damage, heal all members of the party, do damage over time to the monster, or increase the power of all members in the party (power is the stat that skills consume.) There are even special combinations that will summon aid to assist in killing.

Questing is the typical "gather X resource", "kill X number of Y mobs", "find X location", and "deliver X item." I doubt any MMO will ever break free of these types of quests, although one can dream.

The game is obviously for the casual gamer, as the leveling process is geared to allow people to advance at breakneck speed. Within a month and a half I hit the current level cap of 50. This is both a blessing and a curse, since the onus is on Turbine to churn out tons of content to keep level-capped players interested and playing. Bored players is a sure-fire way to lose subscriptions rapidly. Not coincidentally, there seems to be less people playing than at release time. This doesn't really come as a surprise since there were probably plenty of people just window shopping for a new MMO, but I can't help but wonder if a significant number of those who left hit the cap and had nothing else to do and so cancelled their account.

On to Monster Play. A novel concept, this gives players the opportunity to play as one of a select few monsters in the game to combat normal players in a special area isolated from the rest of the game. The main reason for isolating the Monster Play area is Turbine doesn't want the Player vs. Enemy side of the game mingled with the Player vs. Monster Player side, which could be frustrating since all monster players start out as a level 50 monster. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the level of frustration a new player would experience spawning in the new world and getting ganked by a level 50 monster again and again. But I digress... Monster Play is exciting because it's a way for an MMO to balance pseudo-PVP without having any impact on the PvE side of the game (just look at WoW and the juggling act they have to do to try to maintain balance between all the factions and classes.) It's fun to jump into an enemy character and join in fights with normal players, and it's equally refreshing as a normal player to fight against a human-controlled monster, as the fights with NPC monsters can't match tactics humans will leverage. This is also where LotRO fails to deliver, however.

The problem is Turbine's slow response to fixing bugs. The monster side of monster play has suffered since pre-launch days with a lack of desperately needed healing support, crowd control, and plenty of near game-breaking bugs. Other areas of concern that have major issues are the economy, crafting, and the Champion class (Champions lack any sort of skills that define the class as a desirable party member, and their "legendary" skills, which take a fairly large amount of time and effort to obtain, fail to live up to their name and are either borderline useless or there's a lower level skill that's actually *better* than the legendary!)

Other nice touches are built in voice chat, intuitive UI, and a fantastic story line. Epic quests are very engaging and well worth completing, not just for the experience and gear, but for finding out what happens to the NPCs involved and getting more insight into Turbine's vision of Tolkien's world, which is surprisingly very *very* well done (speaking from the perspective of a rabid Tolkien fan.)

To sum up...

The good:
- Beautiful environment
- Excellent music
- Storyline is incredibly compelling
- Several innovations present in this game

The bad:
- Bugs that have existed for months are still present, and Turbine has elected to release new content instead of address bugs as of this review
- Characters look very bad in contrast to the environment they're placed in
- Certain classes need borderline re-vamping
- Crafting is almost pointless
- Rapid leveling can be a potential problem, leaving players with nothing to do

I'd recommend this game for Tolkien fans especially, and also with the hope that Turbine can fix the bugs and continue to release compelling content. At this point I would highly suggest *not* getting a lifetime subscription, simply because I feel that Turbine is out of touch with their customer's needs based on months of reading posts in the LotRO forums and lack of response from Turbine. Granted there aren't many MMO companies who communicate very well or respond with customer complaints, but that's no excuse to perpetuate the stigma, and MMO companies shouldn't be rewarded with lifetime members who are stuck forever with a game. Lifetime membership pretty much equates to not being able to vote with what counts the most: your dollars.

Edited on 4/9/2008 to add the following:

I quit a while ago, but remembered writing this review. After re-reading it, there are a couple of things I wanted to add. Turbine's LotRO message boards are moderated by overzealous personnel who wantonly lock topics with no explanation as to why they were locked. This creates a serious level of frustration for people looking for answers, and finding their topics locked for seemingly no reason. BAD customer service. Also, after your account has been made inactive, the message boards are completely off-limits, and there's no way to keep in contact via them with people you'd been playing with for months. This also makes it next to impossible to get a feel for how the game is aging, since you can't see any of the forums. Talk about a stupid thing to do, this takes the cake.

After it's all said and done, if I could re-rate the game overall, I would give it 2 stars out of 5 for the horrific customer service.

I will be playing this game for a long time to come!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

If you are a fan of the Lord of the Rings, this is a game for you. In my time playing this game I have found it to be a pleasant alternative to other mmorpg's that have been released in the last 3 or 4 years who's social make up seem to be rude for the most part.

Along with the Lord of the Rings story running through this game, it also has the attraction power of pulling Lord of the Rings fans, who bring with them polite, family friendly attitudes. (this game is FAMILY FRIENDLY.)

This game is geared for both the hard core grinder as well as the part time gamer. With plenty of stuff for both types of players, this game will be around for some time to come. For those who have never played this kind of game before, this would be a great one to start with.

Like other mmo's this game can be played solo or by grouping with others in temporary groups or banning together to form a guild or Kinship.

Battles & fighting in this game has suggested violance but do not display graphics unsuitable for children and unlike other mmo's of this type Lord of the Rings Online does not have sexually charged characters barely dress.

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