Quote:
Originally Posted by Ysharros
Interesting point, Vlawde, and one others have made. In respect to that I'd say, if you haven't got past the intro sections (and if they're as I remember them), it won't have the full flavour of the game because most of levels 1-6 are a weird game-within-the-game experience. You can skip that part once you've done it a few times (or could before).
Starting someone solo in a separate instance is a freaky system to my mind, but it does have pros and cons. In many ways it's rather similar to the newbie-island experience they have (had?) in EQ2.
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Its more like the EQ newbie experience I remember from about 4 years ago when we were in the Kobold mines for levels 1-5 with a single player instance to start (learn to move and fight without anybody watching you thrash around like an idiot).
---- (I got carried away here, but what the heck, it's only bits)
I am not particularly happy with the whole crafting/harvesting thing in LotRO. From what I read from the devs, crafting is definitely intended as a diversion from adventuring and not a full game of its own. The crafting itself seems to be press the button, make the piece with everything being slightly better than storebought; you have a chance of critting to make a much better piece and can improve your chances of a crit with higher skills (mastery) and, IIRC, rares.
At low levels at least, harvesting seems to be the gating factor in producing products (I was getting 1 - 3 pieces of ore per harvest and items needed up to 6). The nodes are few and far between (but you do have a tracking ability to find them). You can only harvest using 1 or 2 of the 3 harvesting skills (prospecting, foresting, and farming) depending on your crafting vocation (everyone can collect hides, but only a forester can refine them). Fortunately, you don't need to crank out a lot of product to level your production skills.
I am also not thrilled with the morale system, it seems artificial. But then, the whole die and be reborn bit that prevades the MMO genre seemed artificial when I started, it just has gotten comfortable with over-use.
All and all, I think they did a reasonable job at designing the adventure game given the constraints placed on them to stay within the spirit of the books. They have chosen to fill in the gaps in the story line so the first release tells the story of defeating the witch king (??), which is only mentioned as something that happened during the early part of the tale and there is an epic quest which pulls you through that story line as you develop and explore the world.
I could have used a few more classes. You need 4 characters to cover all the crafting professions and I haven't found 4 of the 7 adventure classes that I like:
- Guardian (defensive), Captain (buff and morale boost), and Champion (offensive) are the 3 in-your-face fighters, all plate classes.
- Minstral (buff and morale, offensive song) and Hunter (archer, traps, speed buff) are cloth->leather ranged fighters. Hunters can use bows at melee range which is strange in my book, but have melee skills.
- Burglars are your basic rogue, backstab and all and have a terrible time soloing.
- Lore-masters are your basic pet mage (no wizards as they are really demi-gods).
I really like the graphics (except for the character models) and they are aimed at PCs about a bit older than the ones for Vanguard (nvidia 6800).
I don't think this will steal me away from Vanguard, but it might if I was more into the LotR books (its been 35 years since I read them and I haven't been drawn back). A better harvesting/crafting game might do the trick as I find the story line compeling.