Category: LotRO

Katherine has suddenly decided over the last few days that LotRO is an incredibly fun game that she wants to F2P.  With Margie as a partner, if available.

Which led to her watching the first to LotR movies today (since she was off for MLK Day). And also to opine that she really doesn’t want to play a dwarf because they’re all boys.

I’ll be curious to see how long this impulse lasts for her, but I think it’s kind of cool.  Not that it makes me want to play LotRO again, but it’s still cool.

Watching Margie play LotRO last night during the stress test reminded me of everything I loved and didn’t love about the game. (The comment above was hers, by the way, playing her “hot elf ranger chick with a bow” Frellian as I headed upstairs for bed.)

Big plus: the setting is still stunning, a beautiful and thoughtful rendering of Middle Earth. If you were going to make a LotRO MMO, it would be hard to craft it better than this.

Biggest minus: a lot of running around; still a lot of mining (harvesting, pruning, digging, skinning) resources; a lot of wild animals killed to get “a scrap of dirty hide,” “a tongue,” “a claw,” etc. Grand and epic, not so much.

Margie did show me some of the new mapping functions that make it a lot easier to find where your quest is located.  I’m sure there are other QoL improvements, from what Doyce has written. But as I watched Margie, after hours of playing, still stopping by each bush, struggled to make sure she had her axe active vs. her hoe, and harvest off some wood for this and that, it still felt more like Starcraft than LotRO.

Not feeling any great compulsion to re-up. I dinged Molly Morningstar up to 24 on CoH and had a blast with it (literally, as I grabbed a pretty nasty Mental cone power to go with all of her Fire AoE attacks). We had a very good team, led by an excellent tank, which is just what Molly needs (keep the aggro off of me and gather all the baddies in one spot).

The LotRO stress test, btw, appears to have been pretty stressful, as both Margie and Avocet complained of major lag, especially earlier in the evening. That’s what they were trying to test for, of course, so I guess it was successful. No fabulous prize awarded to Margie, alas.

Margie’s downloaded the trial for LotRO for the Stress Test contest going on tonight (whilst I’m out karatifying). 

I’ve asked her to let me know (or comment here, for that matter) how the gameplay feels after being gone from LotRO so long.

Doyce comments on hitting 50 on CoX, vs WOW and LotRO.

The difference between WoW and CoH is that, since then, I’ve more than doubled my /played time on Grezzk. That is to say that I’ve spent more time playing Grez AT 70 than I spent getting Grezzk TO 70. And it’s fair to say that I’m nowhere near ‘done’ with everything I could do with him in the end-game of WoW as it exists today (though perhaps I’m done with everything I can do on the server I’m on). I’m getting close, but I’m not done. (And an expansion is coming out in a few months to give me even more to do.)

I had thought that maybe WoW had the corner on this end-game thing. I enjoyed playing Lord of the Rings Online with Kate, but I was struggling with the leveling grind in the mid-40s.

Then we hit 50.

I’ve been on LotRO for a least a couple minutes (almost) every day since then, I think. There are 7 “epic” storylines to get through, and a bunch of dungeons to explore…

Certainly (as he points out) CoX doesn’t have a big amount of post-50 content. Are there things to do at the highest levels? Sure — a number of mission arcs run to 50 or beyond. There are police band missions on PI. There are things you can do.

But … yeah. People generally don’t. I’ve pulled out my two 50s on only a couple of occasions since they dinged. The content (esp. for solo/duo characters) isn’t terribly compelling.

But beyond that, what CoX has is a rich environment for alts. With all the different power combinations (and different costume options as icing on the cake), replay of content is rarely a strict replay, but something new. The game not only encourages altitis, it practically demands it.

That’s not to say that there aren’t other approaches that are perfectly legit. As Doyce notes, there’s a cubic ton of content at the top levels in LotRO (and more coming all the time). I mean, there are plenty of level 50s who haven’t even gotten into Moria yet. The very nature of the game and the Ring narrative requires a rich set of content for the top-level crowd. Indeed, it seems that, like karate, it’s only once you become a black belt that you really become a student.

And that’s pretty keen, too. To each their own, indeed.

A few notes about this and that in my online gaming life:

1. Health check: left elbow (and compensating for it) make it painful for me to use the standard QWE movement keys and power numbers for any great length of time — meaning that Margie and I don’t play more than an hour or two tops at any given sitting. Which should be helping our sleep, but not our gaming. It’s annoying.
2. CoX: We’ve spent most of our time playing a Fire/Fire scrapper (fun, but a bit squishy) and a Mind/Mind blaster. The latter is a delicate trick — I’m still trying to get a good set of attacks and tactics to use with her. At 15 or so, of course, things are limited, and I also foresee a lot of secondary pool setups for her. But at the moment, balancing a bit of attack, a bit of knockback, a sleep and an immobilize is proving challenging. 
   I’m seriously looking at shifting to a couple of other alts for a bit. We did do a bit of play with a new scrapper duo, a couple of Jaegermonsters, but I didn’t feel any buzz.
3. LotRO: Haven’t touched it in a couple. Not feeling any great desire to. Not sure what’s going on there with me.

Because of my recent playing of CoX, and chit-chat with Margie, I found this set of lists slowly growing, so I thought I’d toss them out there. Your mileate will almost cetainly vary.

Comparison caveats:

• I’ve played a lot less LotRO than CoX. I’ve only gotten up to the mid-20s with my highest on the former, vs. running two toons to 50 on the latter. So my full experience with LotRO is a bit limited in comparison, and CoX is the “baseline” against which I judge.
• I am a huge LotR/Tolkien fan — not quite as fanatical as I was back in high school or college, but still madly in love with the Rings Trilogy.
• I play LotRO mostly duoing with Margie.

Things I like about LotRO (particularly in comparison to CoX).

1. The scenery. The exteriors are just incredibly gorgeous, imaginatively but effectively evocative of Tolkien’s books, but further fleshed out. The interiors aren’t shabby, either. The world and environment have been lovingly crafted, and is the real star of the game.
2. The epic, heroic story line. Part of that is the books, but the game has done a lot to incorporate that without getting players too on-stage for the books’ tale. When LotRO is being heroic, it’s great. 
3. Mission variety. Margie disagrees (or, rather, seems to think it’s a wash), but I feel like CoX has a much more limited number of sets (interior/exterior) and mission types than LotRO. Maybe it’s the ability to take multiple missions at the same time, or the lush scenery that they take place in.
4. More shops. You can sell stuff practically anywhere to anyone, rather than spending a lot of time jumping around town to get to the one Nat Store when you’re in Indepndence Port.
5. I love time-not-logged-in credit on experience for characters. 
6. I think I prefer the “Defeated, a Bit Worse for the Wear” mechanic of LotRO to the “Back to the Hospital, gaining experience more slowly” mechanic of CoX. 
7. The PUG/LFF/general chat environment seems a bit more positive than CoX.
8. The crafting ingredients, so to speak — the stuff you pick up to do things — tend to be more controllable and makes more sense than the crafting system grafted onto CoX. Heck, the whole Inspiration bit always seemed a bit lame (“Wait, are these actually little pills, or concepts, or karma points, or what?”). And the who-remembers-their-names origin-specific DO/SO stuff is either underplayed (no actual game effect) or too complicated (trying to pick things out from the stores) for CoX’s own good.
9. The general mechanisms around buying/selling/crafting — recipes and loot and auction houses and crafting halls and sellers — and the interfaces to them are, by and large, quite a bit easier to use in LotRO than in CoX. While I feel like it’s still a huge time sink in LotRO, it’s a lot easier to figure out what something is worth, and a tad easier to figure out if you should sell it or auction it, in LotRO.   And while I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time running around in Bree between Craft and Auction Houses, it’s trivial compared to even the most convenient of setups in CoX (i.e., Steel Canyon, where the University (crafting), Wentworths (auction), two stores and a variety of contacts, plus the Vault, are all within a relatively easy distance (except you need a travel power to make it such), and I still end up spending several orders of inordinate time making it work. 
10. I like that you can take a large number of missions in LotRO, and that world tends to send you to clusters of missions — rather than the Steel/Skyway or Talos/IP shuffle, for example.
11. I like that you can see what level you are at all times.
12. I like that there’s no kill-stealing in LotRO.
13. It may be because of the preponderance of outside zones, but the distribution of bad guys (plus their “wandering”) feels more organic and natural than, say, CoX’s standard spawn points within each interior map and standard spawn groups for each type of foe. Plus it’s believable that there’s hostile wildlife all over the place, except for pockets of habitation (towns, camps, lairs, etc.) — while it’s not believable that the whole of Paragon City is actually overrun by street thugs and crime gangs.
14. I love that auction results are mailed to you, rather than having to revisit the auction house.
15. I love that you can send stuff (money, items, raw materials) to your other alts.

Things I dislike about LotRO (particularly in comparison to CoX).

1. The teeny-tiny freaking radar/map. It’s smaller than it should be by an order of magnitude. The amount of time one has to spend popping back and forth to the “big map” is proof of that. I don’t expect an entire CoX zone map, but something bigger would be very nice.
2. Too many missions that, well, aren’t heroic. “Can you go run back and tell Fred that I have the money I owe him?” Dammit, Jim, I’m an immortal elf huntress from Lothlorien, not an errand boy!
3. Too many suicidal NPCs, esp. of the type where you go and rescue them and they wander around, blundering into every bad guy in the immediate area. Granted, CoX had a few of these with the more recent issues (waves at Fusionette), but not to this frustrating extent. Too many cases where I just throw up my hands and say, “Screw it — let the orcs have him.” On the other hand, CoX has a lot more static NPCs (never-ending purse tug-o-war, police perma-cringing from gang members), and more mute NPCs (the perma-cringing cops are more vocally thankful for help than the AI cops you help against the AI villains in the newer zones).
4. Running around. Yes, the game compensates for it some (clustered missions, compressed distances, horses/stables), but CoX travel powers just simply rock. (I’m not sure how LotRO could get around this given the setting, though.)
5. Limited character options. I’ve only gotten into the mid-twenties with one set, and into the teens with another couple of toons, but I feel I’ve now “done” half the archetypes and most of the races. One elf hunter is a lot like another, it seems (heck, two hunters are pretty close, once you’re in the same territory). Yes, there can be subtle differences depending on traits, professions. etc., but those differences are trivial compared to what you can do in CoX with its plethora (and growing) of primary and secondary powers, a larger set of archetypes (if you consider CoV), and much more interesting cosmetic effects (character design). 
6. Limited storyline options. Within the caveats of the limited experience above, it feels in LotRO that “journey” for any given character is going to have much less variation than CoX, limiting replayability.
7. More logistical busy-work. I loathe encumbrance rules in any game. And between profession “hunting” and looting and selling and auctioning and crafting, it seems fairly easy to spend at least a third of your time or more doing stuff other than thwomping orcs. And, as far as I can tell, it’s really pretty much necessary to do so in LotRO (vs. CoX, where the crafting stuff was grafted on relatively recently, and theoritically is still fully optional).
8. Squishy characters. LotRO characters may be heroic, but they are easily overcome by numbers (or, rather, more easily than CoX characters).
9. What level am I? I know what level it says — but did I level since I last visited a trainer?  I know there must be an easy way to determine whether you’ve gone and leveled, but I haven’t found it.
10. I think I prefer the instanced mission arrangement of CoX to the common zones of LotRO, where other heroes might be running past picking up your treasure, making you wait for re-spawns (or letting you slip past without opposition), etc. It’s a bit of a toss-up, though.
11. Tell me again why I’m collecting Neeker-Breeker Wing Slime? And why someone will pay for it? And why I care
12. I miss @names. I like being able to globally hook up with a friend (esp. when it’s my wife).
13. I don’t like looting bodies. It’s realistic (using the term lightly), but it’s an annoyance. Even with auto-loot turned on. (This was one of the greatest reliefs when I played CoX this past weekend.). 
14. I dislike that if I want to give something to someone, I have to open up (and wait for) a trading window. I really like the CoX drag-and-drop (optional) interface.
15. Facing is a wash. It’s, um, realistic. It can also be a pain in the neck.
16. Having to trudge back to the mission contact is a pain. I don’t know how to mitigate that, given the setting — though a number of missions could be handled, for example, by just mailing a postcard back to the mission sender. And, yes, some missions don’t require returning.
17. I dislike that there’s no incentive (aside from being a nice guy) to help someone who’s in over their heads. That’s the flip side to the no-kill-stealing mechanism. (Perhaps a “the encounter owner / first damager gets full credit, while other damagers get a lesser credit” rule might be the best.)

None of this means I plan to not play LotRO, or that one game is the clear winner over the other. And, as I noted above, a lot of the above is my own play style and preferences. But, then, it’s my blog, and I’ll whine if I want to.