Still amazed

Lord.Bachus · October 2019

After realising that many of my best mmo memmories come from this game, i decided to jump back in..
played some years ago for the last time, when the max level was 90..

i started a new minstrell, and what surprised me most is that the lands around Bree still looked amazingly fresh for an old game like this...

allways been playing this game for stories and lore... wondering if the great community is still alive..

TheDarkrayne · October 2019

They updated Bree a while back, which is probably why it looks so fresh to you.

Mendel · October 2019

That Bree revamp, plus the DX11 upgrade, really improved the graphics. Thing is, LotRO still runs on my 1999 vintage machine sitting next to me. It's worth a look, @Arterius. There's a lot worse out there.

Lord.Bachus · October 2019

Mendel said:

That Bree revamp, plus the DX11 upgrade, really improved the graphics. Thing is, LotRO still runs on my 1999 vintage machine sitting next to me. It's worth a look, @Arterius. There's a lot worse out there.

Everyone that likes tolkien and mmorpg’s should play trough the mainstory of this game atleast once

Lord.Bachus · October 2019

As usuall i ended up with a Warden, thats now making his way to Mordor, slowly just to live all those stories once more..

most of the time, i have XP disabled, by using a stone in the pocket slot, that does just this..

This will probably my last go with this game..
there are man things to look forward to..
firstthing is Forochel, haven’t traveled there much..
so i am looking forward to experiencing it

in the end, my goal is Mordor and beyound..

sp far my experience is stellar

goboygo · October 2019

Really really good game.

Po_gg · October 2019

Lord.Bachus said:

firstthing is Forochel, haven’t traveled there much..
so i am looking forward to experiencing it

Forochel is cool. Ok, that's an understatement, it's cold with epic snowstorms.

Lovely skybox too, with the arctic lights - probably something magical since Middle-earth's sun is just a Maiar lass in a chariot...

A good leveling place if you prefer to journey alone, unlike its group quests filled counterpart Angmar Forochel is mainly solo. Not to mention it has the best winter-themed gear pieces if you like to collect the cosmetics.

Mendel · October 2019

Po_gg said:

Lord.Bachus said:

firstthing is Forochel, haven’t traveled there much..
so i am looking forward to experiencing it

Forochel is cool. Ok, that's an understatement, it's cold with epic snowstorms.
Lovely skybox too, with the arctic lights - probably something magical since Middle-earth's sun is just a Maiar lass in a chariot...

A good leveling place if you prefer to journey alone, unlike its group quests filled counterpart Angmar Forochel is mainly solo. Not to mention it has the best winter-themed gear pieces if you like to collect the cosmetics.

Forochel also has one of my favorite places in the game -- the shipwreck. It's serene. It's picturesque. It's incredibly too far out of the way for other players to be there by accident.

It's a nice zone to do all the quests. There are piles of all-but-one of the hunted creatures, and Ice Giants that aren't hunted, but should be. (One of the dangers of gigantism, I'm afraid).

Po_gg · October 2019

Mendel said:

Forochel also has one of my favorite places in the game -- the shipwreck. It's serene. It's picturesque. It's incredibly too far out of the way for other players to be there by accident.

Yep, love that piece of lore there. Turbine's loremasters were really good at the time they've built Forochel, the language and words, the everyday life of the Lossoth, the geography, the killing cold (and not just in the water), all of that is amazing.

Actually there are players popping up at the wrecked ship by accident, when they drink (or their mischievous kinmates make them drink

) from the sinister keg... they pass out and wake up there, without pants and a massive hangover.

Not that we've ever done that, at least not with newbies below level 20 - stealing someone's chance for the Undying title is an evil thing to do.

Lord.Bachus · October 2019

This game is just one epic journey.
much more then any other mmorpg.
it Plays much more like a book..
where you are the hero, and the world unfolds at Your feet

Maybe thats because we travel along the most epic journey
trough a slowly dieing world that is clearly in decline..

I just finished helping the good people of North downs.
they are fighting the orcs to save their land, witouth realizing it literally is allready in ruins
once this must have been a rich kingdom.. now its slowly returning to wilderness..

i have to make up my mind,,
do i travel to oatbarton first..
or do i go to the east and find Elronds last homely mansion first?

Sovrath · October 2019

Lord.Bachus said:

most of the time, i have XP disabled, by using a stone in the pocket slot, that does just this..

I never really understood the whole "stopping xp" thing.

What's the difference between "stopping xp" and outleveling the xp and receiving next to nothing if not "nothing?"

TEKK3N · October 2019

Sovrath said:

Lord.Bachus said:

most of the time, i have XP disabled, by using a stone in the pocket slot, that does just this..

I never really understood the whole "stopping xp" thing.

What's the difference between "stopping xp" and outleveling the xp and receiving next to nothing if not "nothing?"

The challenge I guess

Lord.Bachus · October 2019

Sovrath said:

Lord.Bachus said:

most of the time, i have XP disabled, by using a stone in the pocket slot, that does just this..

I never really understood the whole "stopping xp" thing.

What's the difference between "stopping xp" and outleveling the xp and receiving next to nothing if not "nothing?"

The difference is fun.. and challenge..
to keep things interesting and challenge myself, i play my content orange and sometimes red conned.

there is way to much content in this game..
i progress trough content..
levels is a mere hindrance..

VicusEQ · October 2019

Honestly only thing that killed this game was the be slowdown where they stopped pushing out content and the fact they decided to aviod raiding for a few expansions. You need a mix of elite and casual players for MMO's to survive. Elite players give new players something to strive for...casual players make the experience getting to that point enjoyable or make casual players want to stick around. When you take the challenge out of a game elite players leave to find a challenge. Anyhow, the lack of raids were the reason I left LOTRO and only casually came back from time to time. If there were legit raids that were released in realistic timeframes I would of stuck around. Great game thou.

Sovrath · October 2019

Lord.Bachus said:

Sovrath said:

Lord.Bachus said:

most of the time, i have XP disabled, by using a stone in the pocket slot, that does just this..

I never really understood the whole "stopping xp" thing.

What's the difference between "stopping xp" and outleveling the xp and receiving next to nothing if not "nothing?"

The difference is fun.. and challenge..
to keep things interesting and challenge myself, i play my content orange and sometimes red conned.

there is way to much content in this game..
i progress trough content..
levels is a mere hindrance..

I see, so it's not the xp but the challenge. That makes sense.

Po_gg · October 2019

Sovrath said:

I never really understood the whole "stopping xp" thing.

What's the difference between "stopping xp" and outleveling the xp and receiving next to nothing if not "nothing?"

Challenge and fun are the short answers, the bit longer is (where games with forced scaling fails) is to play the game how you want to play it.

LotRO has so much xp available that without any real effort, just by doing the quests, you can quickly outlevel the current content. The turtle stone puts the control of the xp flow into your hands, that's why was it requested by the community for years.

(a different topic could be the implementation, the fact Turbine provided it not as a game feature but a store item...)

So, on one end of the spectrum you can play just for the story and the world, picking up all the quests when the are grey (outleveled), wade through them with ease while reading / exploring everything. You can skip the challenge and just enjoy the content.

On the other end you can play the Slowtro/Eclaire way and keep yourself always in the red (5 levels below the content), where even a simple fetch quest can be a dangerous task which is better faced with your turtle stone using Slowtro friends.

And of course you can position yourself anywhere on that scale too, according to where your fun is (Personally I used to keep myself around 1-2 levels below content), you can skip questlines or entire zones you don't find fun enough, etc.

Point is, you set your own fun, not the game or the devs, since everyone's tastes are different, some want the hardcore challenge, some just the vistas, and neither sides are superior or "the way it should played".

(maybe obvious from the above, but just for record I put it here too: I'm a fan of the turtle stone

)

Po_gg · October 2019

Lord.Bachus said:
i have to make up my mind,,
do i travel to oatbarton first..
or do i go to the east and find Elronds last homely mansion first?

I'd say visit Elrond, that way you can spare an extra trip for yourself... the story takes you to the Trollshaws after ND anyway, but if you prefer Evendim next, still good to check in with Elrond, and then talk to Aragorn about Narsil - unless you did that already during the ND Council assembling.

It's better to start Evendim when you already have the letter...

JeroKane · October 2019

I absolutely loved LOTRO and tried getting back into it many times.

The game is absolutely fantastic, with excellent story up and including Mines of Moria.

But the moment you get out of Moria, the game just falls apart and becomes a boring linear quest hub grind, with terrible to no story writing...except for the Book quests itself.
Content quality really went downhill ever since, with more focus on the Cash Shop then actually quality of content ingame itself.

Not talking about the landscapes. Those have always been top notch, but it just became lipstick on a pig. I.e. that you can have the prettiest landscapes to travel in, but if the content itself sucks, the experience becomes just disappointing. Just turning into a chore.

Rise of Isengard is considering to be one of the worst expansion packs, followed by Helmsdeep.
It was at that point in time, that I finally threw the towel in the ring and gave up.
I briefly came back for Riders of Rohan and it had it's moment, but then Helmsdeep expansion hit, which was so terrible that I just couldn't take it anymore and quit indefinitely.

Lithuanian · October 2019

For me, there are two quality expansions: Rohan and Mordor.
Rohan: just because evil is everywhere, you must expose bad folks, you can make decisions (even if those does not change much...Lotro, do take this from Swtor!) and it is there that you ride to Gondor.
Mordor (for me) is just superb. So many stories, even animated scenes, locations...One can really like it.
Some regions, on the other hand, are just failure. Most Gondor. Ithilien. Wastelands. All are grumpy and boring.Nothern Mirkwood is half-baked: Dwarf part is good, even if has some political motifs in quests. Elf part is dark item in a black forest under zero light and with black river nearby. Map of no use.

So, I would encourage to re-live Rohan and try Mordor. At least Mordor should be fun and take lots of time to finish.

Rhiow-Darkstep · October 2019

Have they fixed the 4k resolution scaling yet?

Lord.Bachus · October 2019

Lithuanian said:

For me, there are two quality expansions: Rohan and Mordor.
Rohan: just because evil is everywhere, you must expose bad folks, you can make decisions (even if those does not change much...Lotro, do take this from Swtor!) and it is there that you ride to Gondor.
Mordor (for me) is just superb. So many stories, even animated scenes, locations...One can really like it.
Some regions, on the other hand, are just failure. Most Gondor. Ithilien. Wastelands. All are grumpy and boring.Nothern Mirkwood is half-baked: Dwarf part is good, even if has some political motifs in quests. Elf part is dark item in a black forest under zero light and with black river nearby. Map of no use.

So, I would encourage to re-live Rohan and try Mordor. At least Mordor should be fun and take lots of time to finish.

Definately going to do that..
Never been to Mordor..
so that is a good goal for me..

Just traveled from North downs to the Trollshaws,
doing this made me realise again the sheer size of this world..

Sovrath · May 2020

JeroKane said:

Rise of Isengard is considering to be one of the worst expansion packs, followed by Helmsdeep.
It was at that point in time, that I finally threw the towel in the ring and gave up.
I briefly came back for Riders of Rohan and it had it's moment, but then Helmsdeep expansion hit, which was so terrible that I just couldn't take it anymore and quit indefinitely.

I think Helm's Deep is worse than Rise of Isengard.

I was soooo sad when I was actually in the middle of Helms Deep and playing it. It was frustrating and dull and when it was done I never went back.

The entire experience needs a revamp.

Scorchien · May 2020

Great Game .. really great journey ..

End Game is the worst shit the genre has to offer ,. they need to change it desperately..

There has been talk of removing the horrid essensce system that has plagued the game for far to long ..

breygon · May 2020

LOTRO was my first MMORPG. I managed to get on board during the early "stress Test" and was kept on through the closed and open beta. I played casually for a while afterwards but sort of drifted away before Mines of Moria. Even though I bought every expansion up to Riders of Rohan and tested them on the PTS, I just never got back to the game. My original Minstrel only made it to something like level 52 and the kin I belonged to has essentially withered away.

Sovrath · May 2020

what are you amazed about? I think there was more to what you wanted to say?

Akulas · May 2020

Always meant to play this at some stage. Don't know why I never got around to it.

Edit: DX 9 win 10 issue.

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