LOTRO - Part 2 Death happens!
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Loading ...Ask anyone who’s been involved in any sort of MMO, they’ll tell you, it’s inevitable, death happens. Why? Well, you’re (eventually) bound to get tied up dealing with 4-5 mobs your level, or even 1-2 levels higher than you, all at once. It’s just the way games happen. Don’t say it DOESN’T happen, because there is no real way (yet) to say it can’t. At least not the way most MMO’s are designed (and they’re designed properly). Take for example the typical epic mob in WoW
The typical Epic mob in WoW is protected by at least 3 or 4 mobs, usually many more. If you go after it, or if your party does, they ALL go after the tank, no matter what. Pulling agro off is possible, but you’re going to see them all go after the tank at first. That’s what a TANK is for, to charge in, take the aggro away. Your priest had better be ready to heal when it happens.
Anyways, Epics aren’t the only time you’ll see this. From time to time, you’ll have groups of mobs jump you all at once, or a mob will call it’s friends somehow, you get the idea. Death happens!
In EQ2, death is responded to like this:
Character dies
You get to do CR (Corpse Retrieval)
You then have EXP Debt which you must pay back. Exp debt is paid side by side with your exp gain, so if you gain 150 exp, a certain percentage goes to your debt, the rest to your next level. Talk about a completely wrecked system, but hey, some people like that.
In WoW, death is responded to like this:
Character dies
You get to do CR (or have priest res you)
Your EQ is damaged (as it should be)
You have a ’sickness’ time depending on the level you’re in. This ’sickness time’ cuts ALL your stats, including your health/mana/etc by a good chunk. Basically, you don’t want to get in a fight, there is a very, very strong chaance you’ll lose it.
IIRC the minimum ’sickness’ time for characters is 5 minutes.
In LOTRO, death is responded to like so
Character dies
Your EQ is damaged (after level 10)
You are affected by a ’sickness’ which adds 1 Dread to your character (at least for lower level chars) for 10 minutes.
The best explanation I can find online for dread and LOTRO is at http://lotro.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=913 . Essentially, what they’re saying is this, though
Both game systems concern three things (hope and dread): maximum morale, healing effectiveness and damage received. The latter two are self explanatory but the former may not be; it is LOTRO’s version of hit points or health bars. Obviously, if these stats are more in your favour then you will fair much better; that is why we need an understanding of what each [dread and hope] do to affect those stats.
Even better? You can get RID of dread, or ballance it out with it’s opponent, hope! (this one I didn’t know, remember I’m new too ;)):
There are some situations where dread will be on you at all times (more on this later in the guide) but if you acquire dread via a death then it can be ‘killed off’ so to speak. This kind of dread is put on a ten minute timer and is viewable as an active debuff beneath your character window; once the countdown has expired the dread will go away. Alternatively, if you acquire hope then those points will off-shoot the dread, effectively eliminating it.
So, essentially, in LOTRO, you die, you go to a graveyard (or wait 6 minutes to go automatically), and then that is it. Of course, EQ will suffer (again, expected), but you CAN still survive with dread in a combat situation (just take it easy), I’ve done it a few times.
The moral of the story? LOTRO wins this one hands down. Hey, I don’t LIKE fighting through the place where I have to go get my corpse, NOR do I LIKE penalties, but at least LOTRO makes these reasonable and introduces a waay around them!
All in all, I was influenced enough to actually go out and BUY the game today (2 days into the trial). Of course there were issues (took 2 hours from pay to delivery), and the game is not as mature as say WoW, or EQ2, but I’m willing to overlook that. Hopefully, the developers will start realizing that those of us that REALLY game out there want addons, or to be able to customize the game client how WE like it (I’ll post a screen of my WoW client eventually) and work with that, but till then, hey.
So far, 13 hours in LOTRO (probably 5 of that travelling, but more on THAT later), level 11. I’m about average where I would be for ‘experience’ and ‘levels’, so I’m happy. Will it replace WoW? Not decided yet. I’ve got some mid 30s-high 40s characters on WoW that I’m not 100% sure anything will replace right now, but we’ll see.
Some Screenshots for your viewing pleasure, as always
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Look at me, I’m an evil Wolf (apparently you CAN play an ‘evil’ character, you just can’t build it up at all, which is half the fun! C’mon, let us play an Orc race, or an evil Dwarf or Human! Stop the hatin!)
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