Incline The Lord of the Rings Online - Corsairs of Umbar expansion out now

[KörangarTheMighty]

What's the difference between official and Echoes of Angmar?

Echoes of Angmar is supposed to be like a classic server going back to how the game was vanilla when it launched in 2007. (Though I imagine still with all the fixes before the expansions started coming out.)

 

[ADL]

Echoes goes up to volume 1 book 11 a few patches before the Moria expansion released. The thing about LOTRO is unlike something like World of Warcraft, the expansions are more good than bad so you'd be giving up almost 15 years of content and some of the best character classes in exchange for a version of the game without a cash shop and less server lag. Also vanilla LOTRO was much slower than most people realize.

Before the Shadow was delayed until the 15th.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

When I replayed it last year or so the base game played nearly the same as I remembered it from when I played it at launch.

 

[Reinhardt]

btw what you do when you reach level cap here? is there something like reincarnation in ddo?

 

[Reinhardt]

btw which class and race are easiest to play in melee with my shitty connection and have best and comfiest starting area?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

btw which class and race are easiest to play in melee with my shitty connection and have best and comfiest starting area?

hobbit

 

[Bigg Boss]

My Hobbit Hunter can do ranged and melee fairly well.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

btw which class and race are easiest to play in melee with my shitty connection and have best and comfiest starting area?

Bjorning

 

[ADL]

Before the Shadow mini-expansion out now
First impressions are good.

 

[RapineDel]

Having played some of the Echoes stress tests, it is different.

The first thing you'll notice is how uncluttered everything is. The interface is much simpler and the Live game also over designed things probably to help with the lag but that also didn't help immersion.

For instance in Live you don't loot anything, it all goes into a big pot/button on your screen so you can bulk loot at anytime. It sounds good in theory but it does start to break your interactions with the world.

Echoes quests are also all meaningful and have some sort of story attached. Live still has these but they bloated the areas with heaps of filler quests as well. Given this it's hard to pay attention in live as there's more bad then good and you'll likely start ignoring the quests.

Lone Lands is quite guilty of this, the original version is one of my favourite zones but the revamp gameified it and added in so much filler that it's a chore to play through.

The fact that combat is slower and you can't take on multiple enemies for the most part makes the world feel a bit more dangerous like it does in WoW classic.

I wouldn't go in expecting a drastically different experience, but basically everything live added for commercial reasons is gone, all quests have meaning and group content is much better. The community is likely to be only hardcore Tolkien fans so it'll likely be the best LOTR gaming experience on the market.

 

[Alphard]

how good is this game for a person which likes fluid combat ?
Does its age affects a lot the smoothness if gameplay?
what i would miss by playing F2p?

 

[The Great Deceiver]

how good is this game for a person which likes fluid combat ?
Does its age affects a lot the smoothness if gameplay?
what i would miss by playing F2p?

It's terrible for that, excellent for everything else.

 

[Reever]

how good is this game for a person which likes fluid combat ?
Does its age affects a lot the smoothness if gameplay?

It's the worst part of the game for me. Even when it released I felt like the animations were below standard compared to other MMOs at the time.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Fluid combat is not the words I think of when I play this.

 

[Alphard]

it's a pass then . sadly i'm a combatfag , cant stand bad combat and clunky animations

 

[Bigg Boss]

it's a pass then . sadly i'm a combatfag , cant stand bad combat and clunky animations

Age of Conan had the best combat in games of this type.

 

[Alphard]

it's a pass then . sadly i'm a combatfag , cant stand bad combat and clunky animations

Age of Conan had the best combat in games of this type.

i have never tried AOC, but i basically played all known f2p mmorpgs plus buy to play ones like GW, GW2 and others. the best combat was in korean mmos. Tera, Vindictus and especially Dragon nest. Dragon nest has the best combat animations and combat feel of any games. that's why there are some people playing it years after release and despite its chibi art style and garbage p2w mechanics

 

[Rahdulan]

Sadly, guys above are correct about LotRO's combat and it's not even a latency thing because Americans apparently have the same issues and servers are hosted in New Jersey.

 

[Alphard]

i just don't get why some western devs and easyern ones couldnt collaborate to create a game with western made lore, wordbuilding ,story and mobetization, and eastern made combat and skills. because it seems each lack in the other field

 

[rusty_shackleford]

despite being the same engine and the same developer, DDO has pretty good combat if you're looking for a good game. Unlike LotRO, the combat is responsive and not stiff at all.

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Oh wow DDO is still around. Maybe that's still fun.
I remember quitting that when drow came in and you'd see them everywhere since as P2W race they seemed arguably better at everything.
Maybe I'm remembering that wrong. Loved playing rogue since dealing with traps was very interesting and fun.

 

[Theodora]

Do the developers actually know their shit when it comes to Tolkien's work, or what? A "LOTR" game that isn't tied to the Peter Jackson movies is honestly the most intriguing thing about LOTRO, but a old school WoW clone with F2P monetisation isn't exactly appealing unless they really make up for it in the writing and expression of Tolkien's world.

And assuming it's actually well executed in that regard, what's the RP community like? I'm not super into that stuff myself, but lore-friendly naming conventions sure beats spending time around Sneed McFeed and Le'mème du-jour.

 

[Sonic Titan]

LotRO is arguably the best way to immerse yourself into Tolkien lore.

 

[gurugeorge]

LotRO is arguably the best way to immerse yourself into Tolkien lore.

I would say it would have been, like 10 years ago, but as a sad, raddled old graphics whore, I have to say that the graphics are getting a bit long in the tooth for that now - it's hard to sustain the illusion when, relatively speaking, they're so primitive. The art design is still superb (pitching the art design around the English "Arts & Crafts" movement was a stroke of genius, as it was contemporaneous with Tolkien's life), but the graphics quality is just too old now. It's one of those cases where one wishes they'd at least fill out more polygons (is such a thing possible?) and do some texture upscaling

As to the RP community Theodora , there is a dedicated server and it's always been fairly solid in LOTRO, at least it still was the last time I was there a couple of years ago - it's a natural home for serious and semi-serious "hail fellow, well met"-type roleplayers after all. It feels right and natural in that setting. There's a lot of stuff around the music too, because the music system was pretty well developed in the game.

 

[Sonic Titan]

I think the graphics looks great and hold up well, personally. But, that's more me not being a big graphics slut. Art design is definitely amazing.