Lord of the Rings Online goes F2P

[Kattze]

I might reinstall it. Got 3 L60ies with decent gear and gold stash (unless those got sliced by F2P), basically Moria raid-level stuff - Champion, Burglar, Warden. That SweetFX stuff does make the game look prettier, does it take a lot of extra resource to run? My somewhat aged PC might be a bit adverse to this kind of graffixwhoring if it does.

Overall, LotRO was a lot of fun, and I still very fondly remember the Rift raid. It's just too bad that they fucked it all up with MoM expac and then shat all over that with F2P.

Oh yeah, and if you like Rivendell, wait til you see Lorien at night, that place is seriously gorgeous.

Not really. There is a frame rate drop, but I believe if you could run the game vanilla smooth, you should have no problem. You can toggle SFX on/off in game by pressing scroll lock. If it is a problem just remove it. Just make sure to turn AA off because SFX is not compatible with AA (this helps performance too though)

Most people begin by formulating positive opinions, and it is for a good reason; Atmosphere, visuals, auditory input, community;

then they reach 40 or so, upon which point they experience what others call Asian style grind

the few that continue, realise that with no """end game""" and a dead PvP side, all they are left with is said grind plus a store that sells a good number of things that somehow we have no issue branding (and rightfully) P2W in other games. But not in Lotro. In Lotro they are there to "support"

the cherry on top may be tasted upon comprehension of the fact that, the state of the game being thus, what is left to one with some intellect and some taste, is a number of activities that can and are performed at low level areas, and that have no bearing whatsoever on all the shit they had had to endure. And pay for. For nothing.

But is there really an 'end game' in any MMO? In other MMOs when you finish leveling you do 'end game' dungeons and raids, which are basically tougher versions of what you already did. In LOTRO from what I can tell you do these things as you are still leveling.

I'm personally not a fan of MMOs, just wanted to stroll around in ME which I am enjoying. I plan to play till level 50 or so, then if I play again try another character class.

 

[Xenich]

Xenich read more friend, and type less. Honestly and no offense meant, read my post again, infer/grasp the implications, and then read your reply once more. In the off chance it is needed, not my intent to offend yeah?
Cheers

I think that is the problem. I am using a more modern definition of Casual. You took offense to it I think and I misunderstood your intent. I remember during the WoW days people saying "Those casuals, only play an hour a week and complain..." and I always would say "Umm... casual? I was an EQ casual player" (playing 3-5 hours a night, 8-10 on the weekend). Hardcore players were the ones who had no job, raided 24/7 and could do all the top end contested content (1% of the player base). Though what happend in WoW was that people like me all of a suddend became termed "hardcore" and the people who I would term "occasional player" and not really even a "gamer" were the ones now calling themselves "casuals".

Those were the ones that changed the games and turned them into what they are now. Those ones... I have a lot of disdain for.

Casual players, ie people who work, can only play a couple of hours a night or every other with the occasional spurt, those are casuals, not the guys that log in for 30 mins and expect to run a dungeon, accomplish a major goal and be rewarded greatly for it.

 

[Angthoron]

Snip - combat changes - snip

Holy shit, reading this makes me angry. I mean yeah, sure, I wasn't the biggest fan of the old system either, it was pretty clunky, but to make it work, the entire combat system would need to be reworked from ground up. Instead it looks like Turbine did what they always did with their fixes - go for the stupid and easy decision. Aggro system broken to the point you can have a dualwielding champ tank a raid boss while healers spam heal? Nerf champ instead of going over the whole branch of mechanics that allows this to happen to begin with. Players can skip 90% of an instance because designers fucked it up? Introduce diminishing returns. Upset with combat? Here, let us do something totally idiotic. Don't like LIs? We'll throw out the only good traits so you don't need to worry about rolling that perfect weapon. Oh, you threw out 200 platinum on that perfect axe? Lol. Subs falling thanks to our incompetence? Let's make it F2P with Premium.

Yup, sounds like typical post-MoM Turbine logic.

 

[King Crispy]

I got in before the massive changes to combat but unfortunately after the changes were made to Moria. So I enjoyed a relatively difficult game but missed out on the former glory the Mines held, before they turned on all the lights in there.

What turned me off in the end, though, was the ridiculous collecting of legendary weapons. It seemed so ludicrous to find new ones literally every other encounter, just to break them down and continue improving your best one. Lame.

 

[Aenra]

I'm personally not a fan of MMOs, just wanted to stroll around in ME which I am enjoying. I plan to play till level 50 or so, then if I play again try another character class.

then you are going to love it

Angthoron

agreed
one caveat though: i do not know what you mean by 'difficult', and as such cannot judge. For myself, RPGs, and MMORPGs to a lesser extent should give a different meaning to the word 'difficulty' than say FPS games or hack'em up games. Said difficulty, the kind employing your mental aquity, mnemonic capabilities and/or ability to organise has again nothing to do with casual or long-hour dedicated players.

We are so used to defining everything in the standards of the shit we are being sold today we forget even to stop, and define the principle

 

[Angthoron]

I got in before the massive changes to combat but unfortunately after the changes were made to Moria. So I enjoyed a relatively difficult game but missed out on the former glory the Mines held, before they turned on all the lights in there.

What turned me off in the end, though, was the ridiculous collecting of legendary weapons. It seemed so ludicrous to find new ones literally every other encounter, just to break them down and continue improving your best one. Lame.

Bah, don't get me started on LIs. It was such a great idea on paper, everyone was like WOW WHY DIDN'T ANYONE THINK OF THIS BEFORE and then they introduced them and everyone was immediately like OH I SEE WHY NOBODY ELSE DID THIS.

Bah. And then they removed 90% of the useful LI lines and made the selection process easy, really flipping the bird to the "hardcore" players, who dumped hundreds of plat into the perfectly rolled items on the AH.

Edit: Not to be completely negative to MoM, the environments were awesome, and the environmental sounds were fantastic.

 

[Xenich]

I got in before the massive changes to combat but unfortunately after the changes were made to Moria. So I enjoyed a relatively difficult game but missed out on the former glory the Mines held, before they turned on all the lights in there.

What turned me off in the end, though, was the ridiculous collecting of legendary weapons. It seemed so ludicrous to find new ones literally every other encounter, just to break them down and continue improving your best one. Lame.

Bah, don't get me started on LIs. It was such a great idea on paper, everyone was like WOW WHY DIDN'T ANYONE THINK OF THIS BEFORE and then they introduced them and everyone was immediately like OH I SEE WHY NOBODY ELSE DID THIS.

Bah. And then they removed 90% of the useful LI lines and made the selection process easy, really flipping the bird to the "hardcore" players, who dumped hundreds of plat into the perfectly rolled items on the AH.

Not sure if you can still see the dev diaries, but they changed to this new system within the last 2-3 months. The developer gave an obviously BS reason (you could tell he was told by management, change to a lotto system so we can roll out an RMT store), but the original legendary systems were going to be amazing. You would end up with an item that would level with you and the abilities you gained on them would be learned via encounters (killing orcs, or named, etc...) or quests, or the use of your own skills would imbue the item as such. I was excited and knew that a last minute change was purely politics.

It is sad, I played this game from early Alpha (I got in Alpha, right after friends and family) all the way up to just after the combat change and... the game just went downhill. When I say I have a lot of disgust for some of the mainstream, it is because I moved from game to game to escape the mainstream only to watch them swarm in and kill really cool concepts. To see a game change so drastically, it is just a damn shame.

 

[Xenich]

Snip - combat changes - snip

Holy shit, reading this makes me angry. I mean yeah, sure, I wasn't the biggest fan of the old system either, it was pretty clunky, but to make it work, the entire combat system would need to be reworked from ground up. Instead it looks like Turbine did what they always did with their fixes - go for the stupid and easy decision. Aggro system broken to the point you can have a dualwielding champ tank a raid boss while healers spam heal? Nerf champ instead of going over the whole branch of mechanics that allows this to happen to begin with. Players can skip 90% of an instance because designers fucked it up? Introduce diminishing returns. Upset with combat? Here, let us do something totally idiotic. Don't like LIs? We'll throw out the only good traits so you don't need to worry about rolling that perfect weapon. Oh, you threw out 200 platinum on that perfect axe? Lol. Subs falling thanks to our incompetence? Let's make it F2P with Premium.

Yup, sounds like typical post-MoM Turbine logic.

Yeah, they really are idiots. For instance, they killed DDO (its on maintenace mode now) because they thought they could attract the mainstream crowd. Problem is, the mainstream won't touch that style of game to save their lives. I mean, a game that requires the player to plan and lay out their characters development all the way to max before they even start to make the character in game? LoL Yeah, no... not going to work.

So, they start pushing away from the old systems (moving to 4th edition/boggle) which then dumbs down multiple systems and because even with the dumbed down changes, people can still mess up their toons, they make all the elite content easily solable. Seriously, they already had several levels for each dungeon anyway (casual->normal->Hard->Elite) and apparently they can't have elite being too hard, or expect people to play the lower difficulty settings, why... that might make them feel bad. So, now all elites are so retardedly easy that you don't even need class balances. Just go as you like, kill as you like, win... no difficulty.

Great change!! They lost all of their niche crowd which were able to pay the bills. Now the game will likely be shut down in the near future (like vanguard) all because of mainstream. /sigh

 

[Angthoron]

I got in before the massive changes to combat but unfortunately after the changes were made to Moria. So I enjoyed a relatively difficult game but missed out on the former glory the Mines held, before they turned on all the lights in there.

What turned me off in the end, though, was the ridiculous collecting of legendary weapons. It seemed so ludicrous to find new ones literally every other encounter, just to break them down and continue improving your best one. Lame.

Bah, don't get me started on LIs. It was such a great idea on paper, everyone was like WOW WHY DIDN'T ANYONE THINK OF THIS BEFORE and then they introduced them and everyone was immediately like OH I SEE WHY NOBODY ELSE DID THIS.

Bah. And then they removed 90% of the useful LI lines and made the selection process easy, really flipping the bird to the "hardcore" players, who dumped hundreds of plat into the perfectly rolled items on the AH.

Not sure if you can still see the dev diaries, but they changed to this new system within the last 2-3 months. The developer gave an obviously BS reason (you could tell he was told by management, change to a lotto system so we can roll out an RMT store), but the original legendary systems were going to be amazing. You would end up with an item that would level with you and the abilities you gained on them would be learned via encounters (killing orcs, or named, etc...) or quests, or the use of your own skills would imbue the item as such. I was excited and knew that a last minute change was purely politics.

Ah damn, you just had to remind me of this. Yeah, I knew about the original plans, and I was pretty excited about the system. When they changed it to XP grind + parts grind + lottery though, people didn't at first realize just how badly they were being had until the damned thing rolled out and people had a month to play it. Sure, it wasn't what we wanted, but until max level the grind didn't seem so bad, and the drops seemed pretty common and the lottery wasn't too bad, even with L59 LIs. Aaaaand then L60 LI realization hits you, especially once you get to 2nd Age LIs.

I don't know. They had some great designers on the team, and lots of great ideas, so it's just double sad that some high-powdered exec trumped all the great decisions in favor of I don't even know what, it's almost like someone intentionally sabotaged the company.

 

[Angthoron]

I'm personally not a fan of MMOs, just wanted to stroll around in ME which I am enjoying. I plan to play till level 50 or so, then if I play again try another character class.

then you are going to love it

Angthoron

agreed
one caveat though: i do not know what you mean by 'difficult', and as such cannot judge. For myself, RPGs, and MMORPGs to a lesser extent should give a different meaning to the word 'difficulty' than say FPS games or hack'em up games. Said difficulty, the kind employing your mental aquity, mnemonic capabilities and/or ability to organise has again nothing to do with casual or long-hour dedicated players.

We are so used to defining everything in the standards of the shit we are being sold today we forget even to stop, and define the principle

Ah, I missed your edit there.

Difficulty has plenty to do with time put into the game. Granted, there'll be people that have either learned all the necessary skills before, or are natural at adapting to the situations, but competence and eventual mastery come from being exposed to different challenges over and over, building connections, asking questions, looking into things - things that a modern MMO tries to do away with completely for the "casual" tier. Unfortunately, by doing so, they destroy what a "traditional" "themepark" MMO actually is - a social experience that's meant to suit different levels of skills, all of which you can improve upon either with simple things like theorycraft or, indeed, repetition. Instead, the MMOs are literal theme parks - a set of mostly disjointed rides without a common whole, where you really don't feel encouraged to make a social connection.

Difficulty in MMOs, to me, is simply not being served all content uniformly. There has to be a perceived space to grow for the "average user", a very different space from their regular experience, while having things of all kinds to do for said "average level". LotRO SoA did this very well - the player had a huge amount of options for doing things every time they logged in, hell, they could even do a (very grindy and mostly dull) 30-man raid, but the toughest content (Angmar dungeons, Rift) were kept away from them unless they were social enough to make friends with people that did this kind of content, through which these people would socialize and improve skill and gear-wise. Basically, I guess main difficulty in MMOs is actually the social aspect, and it's something that's been thrown out of the window and is unlikely to ever return, we're now locked into a "hub with minigames" kind of a mode.

 

[Aenra]

Angthoron
while your thoughts are well formed and logical, they are too context-specific.
You pre-suppose the existing format's conditions and analyse/extrapolate based on them. Even so, not a single factor of those you mention above has to do with any actual difficutly. They are tied to patience, or lack thereof .

so if we exclude the type of title that is self-consciously made and centered around "twitch"/"esports" juveniles (no patience, ADHD, keel and pwn), i still see no issue. Excluding pre-NGE SWG crafting, i have yet to come across a single mechanic that actually constitutes 'difficult'.
You could at best say people have been "trained" to expect to find everything just evident from day one, but that is just a misconception brought about by mainstreaming, ie dilluting the original format for the comfort of millions. Nothing to do with difficulty per se, and again, nothing to do with casuals. In the sense of time spent online daily.

i think your basis only has merrit when the concept of time = progression is entered. Persistent is not about progressing (l33t, numbers, parcings, spreadsheets), it is about being online, RPing with people. Persistently.

the rest is a misconception at best. Hence my saying in the beginning, you are too context-specific. For me anyway

i will remind you that we had MMOs where a level 3 could be of use to a level 60, where an armorsmith that could not even equip a rifle (literally could not even put it on), was essential to a fully trained Jedi. Games where dancers where the heart of a party of uber elite geared endgame players, games where the tag 'RP' let you in places where no gear would help you. These were MMORPGs. With all their faults... allow me to stick to the basic principle, than a priori accept the format of today and redefine the principle because of it

 

[Aenra]

oh, and good evening, lol..i sometimes forget the basics

 

[Norfleet]

i will remind you that we had MMOs where a level 3 could be of use to a level 60, where an armorsmith that could not even equip a rifle (literally could not even put it on), was essential to a fully trained Jedi. Games where dancers where the heart of a party of uber elite geared endgame players, games where the tag 'RP' let you in places where no gear would help you. These were MMORPGs. With all their faults... allow me to stick to the basic principle, than a priori accept the format of today and redefine the principle because of it

Yeah, that's a characteristic of games people seem to have entirely dropped, and now lower-level characters basically lack any real reason to exist and it's a race to the level cap where the actual game begins.

 

[Aenra]

Norfleet
Thank you, and yes, this is precisely the heart of the matter. Hence my post above, and the previous one directed to Xenich.
It is one thing for 'studios' to capitalise ( i hate this fucking word ) and inflate, and quite another when the audiences themselves not only neglect the potential originally present, but actually come around to thinking as said effin Jews expect them to. And mind you, said potential as seen 20 years back. Again, twenty years back. Fast forward it to today, and any comparison of what could have been with what is...

time = progression is a degradation. It is an outcome of greed, lack of creativity, imagination. Moar mobs, moar gearZZZZ, less everything else.
And sorry if this bears too close a resemblance to a ranting, lol, but the hopes i once had for this genre...


perhaps i should rename my avatar to Statler .. or Waldorf, lol

 

[Angthoron]

Angthoron
while your thoughts are well formed and logical, they are too context-specific.
You pre-suppose the existing format's conditions and analyse/extrapolate based on them. Even so, not a single factor of those you mention above has to do with any actual difficutly. They are tied to patience, or lack thereof .

Yes, and no. Current format's difficulty stems from two main aspects: encounter design and group dynamics. Encounter design grows ever more complex (see WoW's latest raid tier for reference), while group dynamics are left in the dust for "hardcore" raiders and PvP teams to pick up. Patience is important, but it's not the actual factor, the actual factor is investment, which is something that even the "filthy casual" players used to do before the dawn of LFG/R type of tools. Through removal of group dynamics and simplification of content access, the actual community has been killed off, and when community is dysfunctional, you can no longer create challenges meant for mid-investment groups - the bar is set lower than mid-level investment. I hope this makes sense - MMO difficulty levels are hard to define with just one comb.

you are too context-specific. For me anyway

This is a thread about LotRO, not about MMOs at large, hence my context is LotRO and the concepts it tried to ape that brought it down. If you'd like to discuss MMOs as a whole, it might be better to just make a new thread. LotRO isn't a sandbox, or even a sandbox-like, so I'm just approaching it with what's important for theme parks.

i will remind you that we had MMOs where a level 3 could be of use to a level 60, where an armorsmith that could not even equip a rifle (literally could not even put it on), was essential to a fully trained Jedi. Games where dancers where the heart of a party of uber elite geared endgame players, games where the tag 'RP' let you in places where no gear would help you. These were MMORPGs. With all their faults... allow me to stick to the basic principle, than a priori accept the format of today and redefine the principle because of it

Yep, and it's a crying shame that modern systems won't facilitate people like this. Crafting is usually gimped, buffs are negligible and homogenized, dancing is done by naked goat-women in Goldshire. I suppose they do raise some kind of morale though. Still, LotRO never had these systems - although the music stuff they patched in was pretty glorious and I don't think modern Turbine would ever implement something like that.

 

[Aenra]

when the audiences themselves not only neglect the potential originally present, but actually come around to thinking as ... expect them to

see WoW's latest raid tier for reference

 

[flabbyjack]

I'm still pissed that they axed orcs as a playable race.

LotRO was originally pitched as a gritty niche little MMO. Instead they turned it into a shitty cash-grab fufu MMO WoW lookalike.

 

[Angthoron]

when the audiences themselves not only neglect the potential originally present, but actually come around to thinking as ... expect them to

see WoW's latest raid tier for reference

Be it as it may, it's the largest influence of MMO design for well over a decade now, and undoing what was done by those influences is either very hard or impossible. Everyone expect their theme-park MMO to have the "convenience" features that WoW provides.

Mind you, it's not WoW that's the problem, or its conveniences, it's the blind idiotic designer/suit thinking that by aping WoW, they'll be able to ride the success or at least sheer the sheep a little. Games that don't blindly copy WoW systems usually enjoy a stable audience until either they try to ape, or commit a different major fuck-up.

 

[Norfleet]

Mind you, it's not WoW that's the problem, or its conveniences, it's the blind idiotic designer/suit thinking that by aping WoW, they'll be able to ride the success or at least sheer the sheep a little. Games that don't blindly copy WoW systems usually enjoy a stable audience until either they try to ape, or commit a different major fuck-up.

The catch is that the audience they enjoy will be SMALL, at least compared to WoW, and this tends to irritate publishers, who demand to know why the game isn't pulling WoW numbers. They then lean on the developers and force them to make the game WoW-like, which alienates their original audience while failing to attract the WoW crowd, who is, obviously, already invested in WoW.

 

[Angthoron]

Mind you, it's not WoW that's the problem, or its conveniences, it's the blind idiotic designer/suit thinking that by aping WoW, they'll be able to ride the success or at least sheer the sheep a little. Games that don't blindly copy WoW systems usually enjoy a stable audience until either they try to ape, or commit a different major fuck-up.

The catch is that the audience they enjoy will be SMALL, at least compared to WoW, and this tends to irritate publishers, who demand to know why the game isn't pulling WoW numbers. They then lean on the developers and force them to make the game WoW-like, which alienates their original audience while failing to attract the WoW crowd, who is, obviously, already invested in WoW.

Yup, that's pretty much it, in a nutshell. Publishers/investors simply don't get that there's already a WoW and nobody will want the same thing twice.

 

[Norfleet]

and nobody will want the same thing twice.

Well, that's not entirely true either: I've often wanted a "Like X, only not entirely played out". That, however, is also a niche, since it targets "people who wanted X, but missed the boat on X", and will thus fail to pull X's numbers unless X has completely ceased to be. So you could make a game targeting "People who wanted WoW, but missed the boat on WoW", but that's again, another niche market, as actual WoW players will take a look, see that it's just WoW again, and go back to where they already are invested.

 

[Angthoron]

and nobody will want the same thing twice.

Well, that's not entirely true either: I've often wanted a "Like X, only not entirely played out". That, however, is also a niche, since it targets "people who wanted X, but missed the boat on X", and will thus fail to pull X's numbers unless X has completely ceased to be. So you could make a game targeting "People who wanted WoW, but missed the boat on WoW", but that's again, another niche market, as actual WoW players will take a look, see that it's just WoW again, and go back to where they already are invested.

Yeah, what I meant is, as long as there's enough difference, it's going to have a niche, but when the order comes to "make it more like WoW", that niche immediately sees that the game is pretty much WoW, but with a smaller budget, so instead of endearing similarities and charming differences, it's perceived more like annoying cloning. It's all a really fine line to walk.

 

[Norfleet]

Well, sometimes "exactly like WoW, only without as much WoW" is exactly what people want, which is where those WoW private servers fit in: They're exactly like WoW, only without the baggage of everyone else already having won the game. But, obviously, those things are a niche: WoW private servers never achieve anything close to the population counts of WoW itself. People who are already winning WoW don't care to start over on a smaller WoW.

 

[Xenich]

Mind you, it's not WoW that's the problem, or its conveniences, it's the blind idiotic designer/suit thinking that by aping WoW, they'll be able to ride the success or at least sheer the sheep a little. Games that don't blindly copy WoW systems usually enjoy a stable audience until either they try to ape, or commit a different major fuck-up.

The catch is that the audience they enjoy will be SMALL, at least compared to WoW, and this tends to irritate publishers, who demand to know why the game isn't pulling WoW numbers. They then lean on the developers and force them to make the game WoW-like, which alienates their original audience while failing to attract the WoW crowd, who is, obviously, already invested in WoW.

Yup, that's pretty much it, in a nutshell. Publishers/investors simply don't get that there's already a WoW and nobody will want the same thing twice.

It is also a problem with the mentality of investors in general today. The idea of long term returns is alien to the younger generation. If they aren't turning over their investment in days or weeks and pulling in multiple times return, then it isn't "worth it" to them. It is the "gotta have it now" mentality that has really changed many ways that businesses run these days (and how individuals think). I remember investments into various products and technologies being a "long game", a process of building reputation and gaining interest to establish a solid market (look how long it took AMD to actually be taken seriously in the CPU market). These days none of those things matter to the investor, they really could give a shit about the company and product. It isn't a process of them investing because they think the company has vision, that the product is a true innovation, or that it will serve a much needed market, those days are gone. Now everything is a process of how to get rich instantly, even if it means tanking the business and customer base to make that quick buck.

That is why I get nervous when mainstream gets interested in a game. It brings a large crowd of people to the game, who then start demanding elements of mainstream game design. Investors see this large interest and then begin promising money to the developers with the catch being they have to appeal to those "mainstream" features. It is a vicious circle that always ends up leaving the game as a rotting half eaten carcass. The fact is, a niche game can be successful and profitable as long as they understand who their audience is and can live with the fact that they won't be making Hollywood level money. If they can live with being profitable, having money to continue development of expanding the game while being able to pay their workers/investors good and build respectable capital into the business, well... then they are a success. The problem is, as I said... investors think "good return" is only if you win the lotto with a short term turn around.

 

[toroid]

What an enormous soul-sucking grind this game is.

That's pretty much all I have to say..