I got a short amount of time to play LotRO and made it to level 7 on my new Human Minstrel. I decided that the humans look better, and I also switched servers to play with friends. I am coming in with extremely low expectations and I must say, I’m pretty impressed overall. Some things I’m really enjoying so far:
-Lore. I’ve honestly never read the Tolkien books although I do intend to at some point. The storyline is REALLY engaging though. I am finding myself wanting to continue on not because of the leveling, but because I want to see the next cutscene and hear the story. I’m really enjoying that aspect so far.
-Graphics. The world is downright stellar. I’m liking the looks of the armor too. Once I bumped up the AA and the draw distance…*gasp* Wow. I was standing in the field outside Archet just watching the grass blow in the breeze and almost had chills. In addition, when the sun went down it was absolutely beautiful watching the sunset. The areas really flow from one place to the next and the art style is very immersive. Definitely an A in this category.
-Instances. I’m liking the mini instances that the game throws you into as part of the story. I really *feel* part of the story line which is different than any other MMORPG that I’ve played to date. I also enjoy how after you complete a certain chapter, you go back to where you were but it looks different. It’s very neat to see the changing environments…they did an incredible job with that in my opinion.
-Deeds. I think these little extra optional things are a lot of fun. They can be done solo (so you can do them when you don’t have a group, or if you don’t have much time to play.) I think they’re a fun little “fluff” touch to the game.
Things that need improvement that I’ve noticed thus far:
-Interface. The UI definitely needs more customizability. I want to change the windows and the size of the buttons and organize things differently. I sense this will come in the future as it has been the topic of a lot of negative discussion about the game.
-Combat. So far I’m thinking the combat feels a little clunky. I do like how the Minstrel has different ‘tiers’ of ballads that ‘unlock’ each other for use, but I just feel awkward with the spell queuing and the button mashing. This may improve, like I said I am only level 7.
-Guild features. EQ2 spoiled me in this regard. This game just feels like it should tell you when a guildie dings, and have a better guild leveling system.
Things I’m still excited to try are the Monster PvP, more of the deeds, grouping/instancing, and crafting. I haven’t gotten much time in game yet, but what I’ve experienced has gotten me clamoring for more – which is a feeling I haven’t had in a long time. To those who say its just a “WoW clone” – I have yet to see that except in polish. Which is fine by me – I’m the biggest supporter of polish there is.
On a non-gaming related note – I’ve received word that a certain set of individuals from a message board have ‘targetted’ my site for a sort of internet war. They’re insistant upon sending me rude, derogatory comments daily. I just want to say – thanks guys for the hits to my site, and your comments go automatically into spam so I don’t even view them. =) Have a great day!
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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I’m with you on the UI. I’m doing ok with the arrangement of the hotbars — being able to use alt, ctrl, or shift to get to a bar isn’t a big leap for me.
But, I’ve been a little spoiled by WoW. I still have the old Telo infobar there, so I’m used to being able to glance up to the top of the screen to see how much cash I have, what’s my inventory status, what’s my FPS, etc.
I do like that you can drag some of the pop-up windows around. That’s a big improvement over the AC2 UI.
My biggest and only gripe with LotRO so far is that crafting doesn’t seem as useful as they always said it would be. It seems more like WoW, a nice diversion but not like EQ2’s actually useful crafting.
The rest of the game, so far, has me hooked for sure.
I’d be interested to an updated review after you’ve put some more time in. After playing the beta for a while, the game didn’t exactly impress with it’s depth. One faction, no true PvP and limited crafting. For that and other reasons I can’t really put my finger on the game got boring quickly for me.
I’m gonna be putting down WoW for a while but I think I may go back to EQ2 rather than pick up LOTR. I haven’t played EQ2 since it’s first year and it sounds like things are much improved. Too bad I gave away all my plat when I quit.
Fish Bone – I definitely intend to do another review. I’ve heard that as you get higher in level the game loses depth, so its something I want to experience and tackle here on CuppyTalk throughout my time playing LotRO.
EQ2 is definitely a deep game that has changed so much for the better. Its my fave out of all games right now, I just don’t have time for more than one at a time right now and I want to try out LotRO.
Cuppy, I might have missed it, but what server do you play on?
I am on Firefoot but would be willing to switch to your server so we could hang out and quest together.
Let me know! james.laurel@yahoo.com
As cuppycake said in his revieuw, the monster killing UI isn’t that special. The really special thing in this game are the quests. The quests really give you that feeling to continue. But i don’t know if you get bored after a while because the quests aren’t so special anymore and you don’t have anything else worth playing for.