G
go-after
Guest
Just to give a little info on myself for reference points. My system is a Core 2 duo T5200, 2gigs of ram and Nvidia Geforce go 7600 with 256mb of dedicated ram. I've been playing MMOs for ten+ years both hardcore and casual. I was only able to play the game up to level 15, so there is a large part of the game I did not get to see.
**Graphics:
WOW is all I can say. The world is breath taking. With a very large view range you will see mountains and towns far off in the distance which really helps with immersion. The landscape is very very realistic looking with nice structures also. Trees don't look like multi layered textures placed together to save polygon counts. They look like real trees with individual branches and leaves, etc. You will often see flocks of birds fly out of a tree as you approach, small animals run afoot, etc. Overall this is perhaps the best looking world I have ever played in. Keep in mind that LOTRO is shooting for realism and not anime overexagerated everything.
Player models look to be very well done. They are the strongest point of the game and could use some work, but they do the job just nicely. Animations are pretty well done, but there does not seem to be enough or I suspect they are tied to using special abilities which you have few of in the early levels. It would not be hard to expect more at higher levels, but it may not happen. I think the best way I can compare them it to compare them to games like battlefield 2 without the sharp edges? They are not the highpoint of the game however.
Also NPCs are finally done right. Find a ranger in the woods and he is actually laying down on his side lounging at the campefire. People are chopping wood, cooking dinner or eating it and just in general doing things you would expect people to being doing. Most NPCs don't just stand around like statues waiting to dispense quests for players. It adds an unexpected amount of realism to the game that makes you feel that the world is actually alive.
**Sound
While not my strong suit I did take special notice to the ambient sounds and how nicely they were done. Again adding more to the feeling that your gameworld is alive. Music I admit I didn't pay attention to with the exception of players with instruments. What a cool concept to have instruments that you can play by individual notes. Outside an offhanded way to be annoying I'm sure there will be groups who put on nice concerts adding a great touch to player interactions. I hope to see more things like this in more games.
**Performance
I played the game with all the settings on max or as high as they could go at 1440x900 resolution. My friend played it as close to minimum due to only having 512mb of ram (his other specs were similar to mine). The game looks terrible at low settings, so get some ram! That aside, the gameplay was pretty smooth. Things would get a little choppy in towns with a good number of players running around. Zone times were fast enough to not be a problem (for the record I only saw zones in instances and housing, everything else looked to be seemless). I never crashed to desktop or had noticable bugs of any sort. The game looks to be really solid and polished for a beta. At this rate I suspect a very clean launch unless the servers get flooded with players which I think they will. (expect the gameworld to feel a little cramped for the first month+)
**Gameplay
The game looks to be primarily quest based and the quests are done right. They use the same method of kill X, talk to someone, find something or deliver something. They are still done very nice. The stories in the quest are for the most part extremly well written. They weave a story and try to explain much of what is happening in the world bringing even more life to everything around you. The quests give enough meaning to the environment around that you will pay attention to exploring and what is happening in the world. Really the quests are done very nicely with additonal cutscenes here and there to give game lore and tell a serious tale of the world.
There are also storyline arch quests called Chapters. They are pretty short and easy with small groups. They look to tell a story of your characters involvement in the ring wars as you do sub story quests along with some of the greater known faces in the story. All that said, the chapters seem to be very short in terms of gameplay time. By short I mean anywhere from 2-15 minutes each.
PvP looks to have much more potential in that you can play either your character or a monster from the dark side. Great concept, but it looks a little small. I am very interested to hear how this works out after launch. PvP doesn't start until around level 40+ so I could only tour around as a whitehand orc in the PvP zone which looks to be a capture the control point type of game. Don't expect any freeform pvp in the low level zones, but there are quests in the pvp zone.
The classes break the normal D&D sterotype and IMHO not soon enough. Archers and duelwielding warriors are the high dps classes. There is also a standard tank class and everyone else is a combination of support, healing, buffs, debuffs and meaningful dps. While small on number of classes at 7, they all look to mesh well in concept. Just don't expect a lot of abilities until you get around 30+. It does look like every class has something(s) they can add to a group above DPS with the exception of the two serious DPS classes. They just kill things really well so don't look for a lot of gameplay variety from them.
Speaking of combat I must admit that there is something lacking. While looking good in animations it just was not challenging. The fact that you can get a special title to display if you reach 20 levels without dieing shows how easy the game can be. There are alot of people with no-death titles... I will come right out and say group play is a mess. Nothing every presented any danger, tactics consisted of rushing targets and there was no real need for healing, buffs, debuffs or crowd control. I don't recall reading anyone from closed beta saying that there was tactics of any sorts so I don't expect much more while leveling up until maybe raids or something. Yes it is still low levels, but I would have expected the tutorial portion of the game to be long over with and some challenges issued.
Crafting looks to be the typical gather resources/recipes, click combine enough to gain skill and get new recipes/resources, repeat. Nothing special except that your crafting/resource gathering vocations are preselected. By that I mean you can pick a career so to speak and it will give you three predetermined professions. This is done to promote interdependancies among all the crafters. I don't think it will make a robust trade system like turbine thinks, but maybe it works. Just don't expect any spectacular gameplay from crafting. I am also told that it doesn't serve much purpose until level 40+. I didn't spend much time crafting nor do I have any crafted items as the quest rewards were always better for me.
There is also a slight twist on gaining skills. There is still the standard skill rewards for gaining a level or two, but you can also get small upgrades by completing quests or using abilities a certain number of times. It is a nice twist to avoid the 'faction grind' in most games. There are special racial and class traits. Some commonplace and all the way to legendary. It looks to be a really nice way to advance a character. I don't really know how to put it to words.
**Concerns
While I really want to love the game I have my concerns. The quests are great and engrossing, that seems to be where the game stops. While I consider DDO to be the extreme single dimension of just running dungeons all day, LOTRO looks like it might just be the opposite end of the spectrum with questing. Outside of quests there doesn't seem to be much to do. Crafting isn't engaging enough to be a real diversion. There doesn't seem to be any standalone content that isn't related to questing. No real areas of interest to explore ( I guestimate the world to be a little smaller than say warcraft). With not much but questing and the linear style of progressing through them I forsee some troubles. It will be hard to play with friends as you will typically be at different stages of certain quest lines. That pretty much leaves people just being "strangers in the night" as they form a pickup fellowship to complete a quest and typically disband when it is done a few moments later. The social aspect of playing is really lacking. To me the game seemed like a very very well written single player game with some group play sprinkled around.
Now PvP may be entertaining enough to give players something to do. I also have seen a 4 group raid window in the user interface that at least suggests there will be raiding of some sorts. There may be dungeons so to speak, but I can't say for certain.
Also the game looks to really lack any form of replay value. Your second character will do the exact same things in mostly the exact same order as your first. How much some will enjoy or be enraged will depend on the person.
Conclusion
For now I am going to wait a few months and see what the general word is like. While I enjoyed the game and the questing, I personally want more from a game than quest lines. The game looks like it will be very succesful and what it does it does very well. This is one game I will follow closely as it looks like it could be the next great thing or one that just missed by a little bit.
[Removed the Gold Farming ad]
**Graphics:
WOW is all I can say. The world is breath taking. With a very large view range you will see mountains and towns far off in the distance which really helps with immersion. The landscape is very very realistic looking with nice structures also. Trees don't look like multi layered textures placed together to save polygon counts. They look like real trees with individual branches and leaves, etc. You will often see flocks of birds fly out of a tree as you approach, small animals run afoot, etc. Overall this is perhaps the best looking world I have ever played in. Keep in mind that LOTRO is shooting for realism and not anime overexagerated everything.
Player models look to be very well done. They are the strongest point of the game and could use some work, but they do the job just nicely. Animations are pretty well done, but there does not seem to be enough or I suspect they are tied to using special abilities which you have few of in the early levels. It would not be hard to expect more at higher levels, but it may not happen. I think the best way I can compare them it to compare them to games like battlefield 2 without the sharp edges? They are not the highpoint of the game however.
Also NPCs are finally done right. Find a ranger in the woods and he is actually laying down on his side lounging at the campefire. People are chopping wood, cooking dinner or eating it and just in general doing things you would expect people to being doing. Most NPCs don't just stand around like statues waiting to dispense quests for players. It adds an unexpected amount of realism to the game that makes you feel that the world is actually alive.
**Sound
While not my strong suit I did take special notice to the ambient sounds and how nicely they were done. Again adding more to the feeling that your gameworld is alive. Music I admit I didn't pay attention to with the exception of players with instruments. What a cool concept to have instruments that you can play by individual notes. Outside an offhanded way to be annoying I'm sure there will be groups who put on nice concerts adding a great touch to player interactions. I hope to see more things like this in more games.
**Performance
I played the game with all the settings on max or as high as they could go at 1440x900 resolution. My friend played it as close to minimum due to only having 512mb of ram (his other specs were similar to mine). The game looks terrible at low settings, so get some ram! That aside, the gameplay was pretty smooth. Things would get a little choppy in towns with a good number of players running around. Zone times were fast enough to not be a problem (for the record I only saw zones in instances and housing, everything else looked to be seemless). I never crashed to desktop or had noticable bugs of any sort. The game looks to be really solid and polished for a beta. At this rate I suspect a very clean launch unless the servers get flooded with players which I think they will. (expect the gameworld to feel a little cramped for the first month+)
**Gameplay
The game looks to be primarily quest based and the quests are done right. They use the same method of kill X, talk to someone, find something or deliver something. They are still done very nice. The stories in the quest are for the most part extremly well written. They weave a story and try to explain much of what is happening in the world bringing even more life to everything around you. The quests give enough meaning to the environment around that you will pay attention to exploring and what is happening in the world. Really the quests are done very nicely with additonal cutscenes here and there to give game lore and tell a serious tale of the world.
There are also storyline arch quests called Chapters. They are pretty short and easy with small groups. They look to tell a story of your characters involvement in the ring wars as you do sub story quests along with some of the greater known faces in the story. All that said, the chapters seem to be very short in terms of gameplay time. By short I mean anywhere from 2-15 minutes each.
PvP looks to have much more potential in that you can play either your character or a monster from the dark side. Great concept, but it looks a little small. I am very interested to hear how this works out after launch. PvP doesn't start until around level 40+ so I could only tour around as a whitehand orc in the PvP zone which looks to be a capture the control point type of game. Don't expect any freeform pvp in the low level zones, but there are quests in the pvp zone.
The classes break the normal D&D sterotype and IMHO not soon enough. Archers and duelwielding warriors are the high dps classes. There is also a standard tank class and everyone else is a combination of support, healing, buffs, debuffs and meaningful dps. While small on number of classes at 7, they all look to mesh well in concept. Just don't expect a lot of abilities until you get around 30+. It does look like every class has something(s) they can add to a group above DPS with the exception of the two serious DPS classes. They just kill things really well so don't look for a lot of gameplay variety from them.
Speaking of combat I must admit that there is something lacking. While looking good in animations it just was not challenging. The fact that you can get a special title to display if you reach 20 levels without dieing shows how easy the game can be. There are alot of people with no-death titles... I will come right out and say group play is a mess. Nothing every presented any danger, tactics consisted of rushing targets and there was no real need for healing, buffs, debuffs or crowd control. I don't recall reading anyone from closed beta saying that there was tactics of any sorts so I don't expect much more while leveling up until maybe raids or something. Yes it is still low levels, but I would have expected the tutorial portion of the game to be long over with and some challenges issued.
Crafting looks to be the typical gather resources/recipes, click combine enough to gain skill and get new recipes/resources, repeat. Nothing special except that your crafting/resource gathering vocations are preselected. By that I mean you can pick a career so to speak and it will give you three predetermined professions. This is done to promote interdependancies among all the crafters. I don't think it will make a robust trade system like turbine thinks, but maybe it works. Just don't expect any spectacular gameplay from crafting. I am also told that it doesn't serve much purpose until level 40+. I didn't spend much time crafting nor do I have any crafted items as the quest rewards were always better for me.
There is also a slight twist on gaining skills. There is still the standard skill rewards for gaining a level or two, but you can also get small upgrades by completing quests or using abilities a certain number of times. It is a nice twist to avoid the 'faction grind' in most games. There are special racial and class traits. Some commonplace and all the way to legendary. It looks to be a really nice way to advance a character. I don't really know how to put it to words.
**Concerns
While I really want to love the game I have my concerns. The quests are great and engrossing, that seems to be where the game stops. While I consider DDO to be the extreme single dimension of just running dungeons all day, LOTRO looks like it might just be the opposite end of the spectrum with questing. Outside of quests there doesn't seem to be much to do. Crafting isn't engaging enough to be a real diversion. There doesn't seem to be any standalone content that isn't related to questing. No real areas of interest to explore ( I guestimate the world to be a little smaller than say warcraft). With not much but questing and the linear style of progressing through them I forsee some troubles. It will be hard to play with friends as you will typically be at different stages of certain quest lines. That pretty much leaves people just being "strangers in the night" as they form a pickup fellowship to complete a quest and typically disband when it is done a few moments later. The social aspect of playing is really lacking. To me the game seemed like a very very well written single player game with some group play sprinkled around.
Now PvP may be entertaining enough to give players something to do. I also have seen a 4 group raid window in the user interface that at least suggests there will be raiding of some sorts. There may be dungeons so to speak, but I can't say for certain.
Also the game looks to really lack any form of replay value. Your second character will do the exact same things in mostly the exact same order as your first. How much some will enjoy or be enraged will depend on the person.
Conclusion
For now I am going to wait a few months and see what the general word is like. While I enjoyed the game and the questing, I personally want more from a game than quest lines. The game looks like it will be very succesful and what it does it does very well. This is one game I will follow closely as it looks like it could be the next great thing or one that just missed by a little bit.
[Removed the Gold Farming ad]
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