Massively

wow on that pic the grapics look really really bad!

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O_o I though CGA monitors stopped being used sometime in the mid-1980's!

Way to make people actually *want* to avoid Forochel!

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Yea, that screenie doesnt look that great. Forochel actually looks really nice. And is a good in-game money maker, as well as great for farming hides and ore. :D

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Really looking into this game right now! Hope to start playing after the client stop downloading!

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I enjoyed my stint there, except for the fact that all the locations are called "Fripikikijippi" and "Frijkipippijik" which made pre-quest guide questing harder than normal...

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If I never see Foroflop again I would be happy as a clam in the sand where no one is digging.

It's a decent looking map and yes, there are some money making possibilities there, but it takes way to long to travel around that zone because of the lake. Rep grinding gets you very little beyond swift travel which only decreases the PAINFUL traveling options. Etc. I hope for LOTRO global warming.

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My favourite non-moria zone, hands down. The night sky is breathtaking.

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Screen shots never do this game justice. The game is so beautiful at times that it fooled me into playing for a good few months now, while I waited in empty zones for enough players to turn up to form a viable group. I really wanted to love this game, but looks alone can't carry you for long.

The looks of the game start to wear thin about the time you realize that the hardest fight in the game is actually getting anywhere. The roads are too winding, occassionally non existent and may well have a higher ratio of fights and mobs populating them than the surrounding area. It's simply not pleasant when all you want to do is ride to that group you been waiting for all week to start a quest and yet another bear infested ridge blocks your way.

Sadly, and this is in my 'noob' experience of the game, it only really has looks, oh and a lot of great law, but does that make a great game experience?

The economy is dead, with too few players to make the AH worthwhile and on the server I played at least .. lets just say I don't see much trace of this great community that you read about. At least back in the day when I started WoW when we wiped there was a flurry of painful insults but at least you got advice on the right tactics and learn something, and occassion even the odd laugh. Here one wipe and the few people who where boasting about there full radiance mains have mysteriously g2g. That's not uncommon on this game.

Of course you can try the Monster play PVP, roll a monster and off you go as a break from the leveling. GREAT idea but terribly executed with a pvp zone that has little more than the Freeps (Elves, Hobbits and so on) doing nothing more than camping the graveyards in gank squads. Not unsual in RvR but it's the only action in this game, that and a few skirmishes on the bridges. Oh, and virtually all combat is now ranged, forget anything in a real fight that doesn't do ranged. Plus in a recent patch apparently the rewards for grouping have now been lowered, so the experienced fully powered monsters don't group anymore, leaving every man for himself and a slaughter of the 'noobs' What sort of developers actually give an incentive not to team up in an online game?

Turbine, the makers of this, have a few other online games out there I think, equally under subscribed I suspect. I say this with real sadness but maybe there is only one game to rule them all, and it sure isn't this one.

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I think the problem is if you've played WoW before playing LOTRO, you'll be expecting it to behave the same as WoW. LOTRO is a very different beast though - splitting camps is harder, getting from A to B IS a challenge and it's not supposed to be cozy outside of places like the Shire or the safety of a town.

(I'm not saying Wow is "teh eazy modelol" but I read one review of Lich King that pointed out you could walk from one side of the continent to the other following the roads and not be attacked. To me, that defeats part of the point of games of this ilk - "random" encounters are a big part of the experience.)

Remember: "One does not simply walk into Mordor." :)

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Thanks Mr A. That was a measured calm response and I realize that a lot of people out there do love that game so I feared what I'd wrote would of been taken for a flame, which it most certainly isn't, or at least not meant to be. But if anyone out there is on a limited budget but wanting a new game to play I thought they should hear a few different sides to the story and maybe even point out a few weak spots should any bored devs be taking a brief net break :)

But for the record I'm not a big WoW fan, not at all Especially now it's dumbed down to the point of it all being pointless in the name of getting 'the casual gamer' into raiding - god knows what that means, you either play these games too much or not at all but WoW for me went some time ago. Pre the Wrath expasion tbh. When I said i was sad about it not being the one game to rule them all trust me, I meant it.

But re LOTR: Maybe it's an issue of the location I play (EU) or maybe just the server, but we are not talking about the same game experience at all and defintly so regarding the AH, that much can be measured objectivly and that aspect of things can be declared if not clinically dead, it's on life support. It's a bare shop in there and the trade channel is just a total ghost town, as are most of them to be honest, apart from the odd call of a fellowship permanently stuck on '3/6 need healer and tank' I took one character as high as 46 and another to 28, should be high enough to get a taste of the game at least.

You might of been right about the kinship/guild thing though and I never tried many so maybe it was just all bad luck on my part.

And yes, right about the updates though, can't be too down on any company that dishes out such a vast amount of new content on quiet a regular basis.

Each to their own :)

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One last thing, no epic length posts this time :)

I don't base my experiences on WoW as that's not what I started playing on, but it's what most new players will do. You're right, they are and SHOULD be totally different, the more the better for me. WoW was never really that good, just did everything pretty well.

For me the main problem that kills LOTR game is lack of players and would it really hurt to make a few of the roads a little easier to travel? Getting around the high moors in Troll shades is a farce and do we really need another olympic swimming even that is Evendim. Tolkien wrote some great books but when he drew those maps he wasn't thinking of games

But glad you all enjoy this game but I'll just keep looking. They should fix monster play though, that's could be the perfect cure to tiredness from grinding levels :)

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