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Solid, amzing graphics, fun filled, and deeply immersive

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing Lord of the Rings Online (referred to as "LOTRO") since June 2nd, 2008 (as of the writing of this article, a month and a half). I purchased a boxed, retail version of the game.

Summary
Lord of the Rings Online is a solid, graphically lush, immersive and fun experience. The developer Turbine has crafted a game that is not only stupendous to behold on technical merits alone, but faithfully recreates much of J.R.R. Tolkein's fictional realm of Middle Earth.

Application Stability and Requirements
Stability and availability: In the month and a half that I have been playing LOTRO I have not experienced a single client crash. I have not been disconnected from the game servers. The one patch that has been released did not cause any issues. There was only one scheduled maintenance, and it occurred on a Monday and lasted from 7 AM to 11 AM EST US. In short the game is thoroughly stable and playable.

Requirements: I play on a quad core AMD Phenom 9500 system, 4 GB of RAM, running Vista Premium SP1, with a MSI Nvidia 8800 GTS video card. I am able to play the game at full graphical settings with very little loss of frame rate. In fact, performance degradation only occurs within major cities, when there tnds to be 20 - 50 other players in the immediate vicinity.

Audio Visual
LOTRO has, by far, the best looking graphics and highest quality of sound of any MMORPG on the market (massively multi-player on-line role playing game). The effects from DirectX 10 are amazing. Plants, even down to the tiniest blade of grass, sway and dance in the wind. Every object produces realistic and sharp shadows - they dance about your character, passing convincingly over the contours of your figure, as you move through them. Visual lighting effects are dazzling and colorful.

The music and sound effects are top notched. Each area (and even smaller areas within some areas) have their own score. Some are cheerful, some melodic, and others fear inducing. As night closes in a symphony of sounds erupts, depending upon the area it can be a chorus of crickets, solemn songs of night birds, and more.

Game Play
Turbine has created the most immersive experience available for the MMO market, in my opinion. The world is beautiful and extremely well realized. You can lose yourself for hours just exploring The Shire, watching the believable hobbits frolic and engage one another in discussion and trade. The architecture and world design, inside and out, is nothing short of spectacular and intricate.

Since I can't find the words to accurately convey how immersive the game is, I'll give an example, from my own experience: You may find yourself trotting down the road through the Shire at noon, gazing out for miles up and down the hills, romping through realistic-looking streams and farms as other players and computer-characters alike convincingly act out in the world around you. You stop at an inn where other players have formed a small band, and like a session of Guitar Hero joke as they play familiar songs while on-lookers cheer and make requests (you are able to create and use your own sheet music in the game, or manually play a variety of instruments). Night may begin to fall as you pass over Brandywine Bridge and head into the land of men in Bree. You pass by Buckland and spy the Old Forest - its dark, menacing trees stretching into the sky. And that night sky is alive with moving clouds and twinkling stars. Shortly, the darkness closes around you, and where once you could see for miles, you now struggle to see but fifty yards away in the darkness - until the moon breaks the cloud coverage for a moment, and the eery landscape once again stretches out before you. Finally you see Bree, and the gates that the Hobbits passed through on their way to the Prancing Pony. The city is huge, with a thousand candle-lit windows sending dancing beams of light. This game is amazing in detail.

Combat is well realized, mature, intuitive, and fun.

Quests are fun and diverse. A story line known as The Books, which can be followed as an optional component to the game, runs parallel to the events of the Lord of the Rings and features cut-scenes and scripted, personal experiences for yourself or your fellowship (party of players). These quests make you an integral part of the story without injecting you into the core story seen in the movies or read in the books. You are able to easily avoid these quests and play solo all the way to level 50 (the current level cap).

The crafting system is very deep. Each crafting profession consists of two trade skills focused on gathering and resource refinement, and one trade skill that focuses on crafting. Nothing feels like a chore as far as crafting is concerned. The economy of the game is very strong and is heavily influenced by tangible market factors that the players themselves drive.

Player versus player combat in LOTRO is novel, and approached differently - you have the ability to create monster characters and play them in their own, huge, PvP zone, complete with quests for the monster players. High level player characters can enter the zone and attempt to capture objectives and engage in combat. You can create a variety of orc classes, giant spiders, wargs (the wolf-like creatures goblins ride in the movies), and more.

Player housing is implemented.

The "end game" consists of a series of small and medium sized raiding instances.

You can easily see that this game has been polished for the better part of a year in the game play department.

In short, I cannot recommend this game highly enough. I have zero complaints.

WoW lite

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 18
Date: April 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game, while fun, is basically WoW lite, the graphics are about on par with Everquest (the first one) controls are a little off, tap the left key and turn 45 degrees, the quests are fun and the tutorial was interesting but it reminds me of Horizons, a few mobs spread out and large areas of nothing, not to mention about 10 of a quest mob for 25+ players hunting them, so there is alot of running around and waiting, the gear is pretty lame tho the game is suppose to not be loot driven, but there isn't really much else to do other than build a rep for yourself by completing the little achievements you get for doing quests. All in all, there is potential here... I'd wait a year or so before buying it, too many bugs and not enough substance... another MMO rushed to the shelves before it was finished I am afraid.

Nothing new to see here- move along...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 18
Date: November 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm writing this review after having played the 7-day free trial offered by the developer of this game. First off, let's cover the good stuff:

The graphics are far and away the best ever offered in an MMORPG. While they aren't "Oblivion" quality, they come very close. From the reflections on the water, to the gently swaying flora, to the richness of the environments, this game is nice to look at.

Next, the sound is excellent. This definitely a "headphones" experience.

Now that the positive elements of this game have been covered, it's time to state the unfortunate truth: This game brings nothing new to the MMORPG arena.

Yes, there are new sounds- yes, it's easy on the eyes- but if sound and visuals were the criteria upon which modern media were to be judged masterpieces, Michael Bay would be considered the new Sergei Eisenstein...

What makes a game memorable, exciting, and worth playing, is the gameplay- nothing more, nothing less- and LOTRO provides nothing new, beyond superficialities.

I've played a lot of MMORPGs- just about every producer gives a free trial, and I've laboured through more than my fair share. The bane of the MMORPG genre has been the "generic quest":

"Please vanquish five enemies, and return to me for your reward."

"Please capture four items, and return to me, for your reward."

After a while, this becomes redundant to the extreme- and every last MMORPG out there relies upon this woefully generic formula.

Considering the overwhelming hype surrounding this game's development and release, one would expect that one would encounter something different, here...

Dream on...

The player is admonished, in the first 60 seconds of the game, to "pay attention to what NPCs tell you", because, supposedly, these interactions are part of a greater plotline.

Actually, they aren't...

You're introduced to NPCs with minor conflicts or alliances with this or that other NPC, and aside from their superficial and (overall) irrelevant "plot devices," their tasks for you are invariably:

"Please vanquish five enemies, and return to me for your reward."

"Please capture four items, and return to me, for your reward."

Once you've moved on from these initial bequeathers of quests, you meet new NPCs, with more superficial storylines, who tell you to:

"Please vanquish five enemies, and return to me for your reward."

"Please capture four items, and return to me, for your reward."

All well and good- but ya know: there are MMORPGs coming out of Korea which are free to play, and offer the same gameplay (and bigger worlds.)

So why pay for this game?

The developers obviously thought that the player would be so enamoured with the trappings of the LOTR franchise, that they'd forgive the utterly lame gameplay. After all, you get to be a hobbit!

A Hobbit who's main tasks in life have been reduced to:

"Please vanquish five enemies, and return to me for your reward."

"Please capture four items, and return to me, for your reward."

All of this would be forgiveable, if the creators of this game didn't continue to hype this as an extension of Tolkein's vision. To say that this game bears any resemblance to Tolkein's original vision is like saying that George W Bush is the executor of the vision of Thomas Jefferson.

Now- this isn't to say that this game isn't without merit. If your life's dream is to spend hundreds of your waking hours pursuing a classically pointless sysyphian task, then this is your game- get to it- But keep in mind that there are dozens of free MMORPGs out there which offer the same style of play.

Nothing new to see here- move along...

Great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: May 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I love this style of MMO. Unlike a couple other MMOs out there, you don't need to spend countless hours just to finish 1 thing in it. It's similar to WoW in a lot of ways, but more challenging and tradeskills are much better.

So pretty... So addictive.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 14
Date: April 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm not much of an MMO player, but LOTRO's newbie experience was very user-friendly. The game is gorgeous, the quests are quirky and interesting, and I'm glad I'm playing it.

Innovative, fun, great mmo

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: April 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

In this day and age, it is hard for an mmo to even get off the ground. With World of Warcraft dominating the industry, it would not surprise me if this game failed. I feel compelled by my experience with it, however, to try and prevent this, so I am reviewing wherever I can. I was in the beta, and enjoyed it quite a bit, and anticipated release fervently with my preorder. Now that I can play the final version, I can honestly say this is the best MMO I have ever played. It is simply incomparable to DDO, or at least what DDO was at release, I have heard it has gotten better. Lord of the Rings Online, though not incredibly new, is extremely fun, and has perfected most of the flaws of other mmos. Boredom is virtually absent, as even something as simply as using attacks improves your character, making them better at whatever attack you are doing. Unique means of advancement, clever design, and smooth, beautiful graphics that easily exceeded any of my expectations for my old computer and are simply spectacular on my new computer have all made this game a great experience thus far. I can't stress enough how much worthier a game this is than WoW, and how important it is to me that it succeed. I look forward to seeing the wiser of you online, and for the rest, enjoy your mmo. I know I'm enjoying mine.

never on-line gamed before

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: April 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

i love the lord of the rings and signed up for closed beta on this game. i started playing on the 1st stress test weekend and have been hooked ever since. i have a decent pc so i run on medium . the landscapes and towns are stunning . the gameplay feels right and having two sons who play world of warcraft i knew what mmo's were but wow never interested me. i can sum up what makes lotro better than wow in two words. story ,and community. It is a very cool thing to join a 6 person fellowship made up of people on different continents and time zones and go questing. the character classes are designed to need each other and a group that understands this will do well and have a great time. i will end with this. me my wife and my two sons all have played in the same group and have really had a blast (4 pcs and world tour access)

What a Great game!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: May 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is alot of fun and you are forced to work with others. The game has many interesting adventures and things to find. Also your character is multifaceted learning how to fight as well as learning trades.

What you want from a MMORPG

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: May 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is amazing. DOesnt have the community that SWG had, but it's pretty dang close. I can honestly say that I really enjoy questing and the lack of pvp till 50 really doesnt bother me. If you liked wow, you will love this game. LOTRO is the most complete MMORPG to ever launch in my honest opinion. Turbine has done a excellent job and I highly suggest this game to anyone.

Love it! Great way to destress

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: May 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My husband and I have a great time playing this game. The majority of people on the game have been incredibly helpful and more than willing to join into a fellowship with you. Lots of stuff to do, wide variety of personalization available for characters... something for everyone.

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