Unfortunately for LOTRO, they’ve taken this attitude. Exploration is key, and they’re not even going to tell you HOW to get there, or provide methods for you to find this out yourself. Thusly, it’s quite possible to get lost, confused, and frustrated as all hell with this situation, and just want to throw in the towel. If I hadn’t just purchased the game, I probably would have done that yesterday, given the countless deaths that I’ve encountered when trying to ‘explore’ something.

That’s not saying LOTRO DOESN’T provide transportation, because, well, they do. If you’ve been to a town before, you can visit the ’stable’ of the town you’re in and go there. Unfortunately, this typically costs 1-5s and that’s not something that’s a cheap price, as it takes time to build up a ‘bank’. Till then, well, you’re just walking wherever you want to go. Uggh.

Speaking of how do I get there, how DO I get there? I mean, LOTRO has absolutely zero interface for me to input coordinates and draw some kind of a path (like both WoW AND eq2 do). LOTRO also doesn’t let me view co-ordinates at all, in a reasonable fashion. Again, the major competition? Easily done, just change the map interface and boom, it’s there. LOTRO doesn’t even grant it’s individuals a compass, SERIOUSLY! Take a look at these shots, and tell me where you see a compasss? Anyone? Anyone?

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So, we’re just supposed to assume that up is north, down is south, right is east, left is west? Well, again, assuming things in an MMO means almost certain death.

While I like LOTRO (kind of) so far, this area needs some pretty vast improvements, quite seriously. It’s a shame that such an innovative game has such a poor map and travel interface to it. Hell, I spent a good 2 hours walking to Bree-Town from some town the other day, and the reward? merely 1k exp. Not bad, but come on now, that’s just ridiculous! Players should NEVER have to spend that much time travelling from place to place.

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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Now take a look at those (in full screen mode) and tell me they don’t just scream sweet! They do, really!

Next, we have the obvious build on the Lord of the Rings trillogy. Duuh. I’m not a huge fanboi of LOTR, but I’ll say the game looks sweet!

Next, we have the actual implementation of the game itself. This one is where it’s actually 50/50. Of course, I rate it so low because I’m not used to the system yet. There are good things, there are bad things about it.

Good
Houses!
I miss my house in EQ2 from time to time, and WoW, well, no intention (so far) of adding them. Houses are more of a ’status symbol’ thing, someplace to store things, say “hey, I’m me”

Storyline!
You’re following a (somewhat) well known storyline. They don’t follow it to the letter, and in fact, they expand upon it, which is GOOD! If it followed it to the letter, it’d be boring as shit, we’ve all seen the movies about a ziillion times, and SOME of us have even read the books (heaven forbid we READ in this day and age)

Quests / etc
We’re not just talking QUESTS here, we’re talking DEEDS, which are side quests, such as kill x number of creatures with X skill, or get to level 5 without dying (easily done thank you!). Each deed has it’s own rewards, some with custom ‘titles’, some with ability enhancements, some other stuff

Abilities
We’re not just talking the standard str/dex/wis/int stuff here, we’re adding things like patience, and more. Of course these have to take different approaches for each race/class

Races
NOT your standard (orc, human, etc), here, we follow the book very very well

Classes
Again, following the series very well, not your standard

Sub-Classes
kind of standard, haven’t played too much there though

Hi-Def!
Having a ‘high def’ monitor, I want video that can play ‘high def’ quality. Thank you Turbine!

DX-10 (No, not talking about D-Generation X!)
Turbine puts in DirectX 10 which is the new(er) version of DX. Thankfully they don’t REQUIRE it to be used, but if your hardware supports it, the option is there. Mine does, so I’m happy there.

FREE TRIAL!
Seriously, you can NOT go wrong with 7 days free trial. That’s how I got hooked in EQ2, in WoW, and apparently what’s going to hook me into LOTRO!

Bad
Poor (read choppy) really high res settings.
I would prefer to be able to run this @ my default rate, but it’s just seemingly impossible without lag, lag, lag. Of course, drop it down to 1280×1024 and it’s just dandy. Seems that things need to catch up there.

Disk Usage
I get that hi-def takes up more (about 1.5 gig more),but WITHOUT an expansion, LOTRO right now takes up almost 8g of space. Figure 6.5 for low-def version. EGAD. Wow, at its BASE (no expansion) doesn’t take up but just over 4!

Free Roaming Camera
EEK! This is one of the things I HATED about EQ2. it’s entirely possible to get yourself utterly confused and lost here, and even better, the camera can (easily) cause someone to stumble say off of a bridge, due to the poor allignment. OOPS, happened a couple times!

Documentation sucks!
Hey, it’s a MMORPG, but the documentation really does suck. I mean where to I find how I’m progressing with my deeds, a simple question, but I’m LOST! Should be simple and easy.

In case you haven’t already tried it, do yourself a favor and check it out. Yes, you can signup for a ‘trial’ without paying anything. You can even download the game for this trial, without (again) paying a dime. So far, I’ve gotten Oxeab up to 7, and that’s in < 24 hours of really ‘playing’.

Check the game and site out at http://www.lotro.com . There’s a REASON it became Gamespy’s MMO of the year this year! Check it out, what have you got to lose, beside a lot of diskspace (which can be recovered) and some time (sorry, can’t get that back for ya )

Oxeab is a character, my main, in fact, on Sony’s Everquest 2 system. The adventures, or stories, or even advice posted in here will be through his eyes, IE: IC (in character). This will be the only OOC (Out Of Character) post here.

Freaked out? Wondering what the hell I’m on? Well, I’m not on anything, I’m just a rather large RPG (role playing game) nut. I’m not married to my character, or anything silly like that, I just have a good time with this type of game.

Anyways, on to the fun and games. If you want to post some ridiculous comment, remember, I WILL ban on site, done so before. If you’re after helpful comments, by all means, post away.

Have fun, and enjoy the topic