Recommendations, please!

Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild are not well done IMO. Both have small areas with not much to do in them. In between the few story quests you have to do repeatable quests to get to the next story. Its pretty meh. Now, The other DLC about the Orcs is a well fleshed out area that is very nice. Just get the base game for now. Theres TONS of stuff to do in it and you can get other areas later on if you decide to.

Isn't LOTRO free to play up to the first expansion? I can't remember.

Originally Posted by Elel
Why can't I be truly evil and fight alongside the Lich King?

I guess the story is at fault. It can't branch off in two different directions…

There is actually plenty of lore surrounding why this is. The undead are not your typical undead; they're the Forsaken! They broke free from the Lich Kings control and took over Lorderon. They're ruled by a fallen Elf ranger called Silvanas who Arthas raised as a Banshee. This all happened in Warcraft3 days.

As for whether you should play it… Probably not? Too expensive. If you're paying $15 a month, even when you can afford it easily, it still sort of feels like you should be playing the game you're renting at the moment.

Then you pretty much HAVE to buy the expansion and it's going to make all your old work obsolete as new "green" quality items from the expansion will be more powerful than your "oh god I raided for 8 hours for this epic" quality items.

Blizzard got it right at some point, BC days, Lichking days, but they didn't stop there because they want to make more money! Its just like Hearthstone. Just when you think you have it all a new expansion comes out and you have to pay again. Plus you really are just playing the new expansion every time

Blizzard sort of sucks now.

I'd probably say ESO is your best bet for the fully voice acted quest dialogue. Don't even worry about getting the gold version. I did and never hit any of the DLC content before I was max level. Get the plain version and have a friend buy you a mount!

That said, I convinced a friend to play ESO with me for the freeplay weekend and he hated it and said it was nothing like elderscrolls. He was so disappointed.

And I guess while I'm on an epic rant I might as well mention I bought LOTRO at release and thought it was rubbish compared to WoW. Similar story to Everquest2 where I went straight back to WoW.

Guildwars 2 is free, isnt it? That one was alright for a bit. Same with Age of Conan, also free2play now. They're both still "straight back to wow", but maybe worth a look.

Originally Posted by Toff
Isn't LOTRO free to play up to the first expansion? I can't remember.

Not if you want to play a mage-like character.

Is Diablo 3 considered an MMORPG? If so, I recommend it. It has more story bits than the older ones did and also optional topics you can discuss with NPCs to expand the lore and what not. That said, it's definitely a Diablo game. Tons of looting, extremely satisfying combat and character building are the main attractions. If you're into that then I'd give it a go as it's really, really good at those things.

Edit - I played LOTRO for awhile without paying anything. I think you can get to level 20, aka complete the Bree zone before having to pay anything. There are ways to earn Turbine points by in-game means but it likely still requires a lot of grinding. That said, a monthly sub gives you access to everything and it's not that expensive. You can prepay 3 months in advance for a flat charge and play as much as you want. 3 months worth of LOTRO is a lot of quality game for the money.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Not if you want to play a mage-like character.

I'm curious - why a "mage-like character" ?

Originally Posted by Fluent
Edit - I played LOTRO for awhile without paying anything. I think you can get to level 20, aka complete the Bree zone before having to pay anything. There are ways to earn Turbine points by in-game means but it likely still requires a lot of grinding. That said, a monthly sub gives you access to everything and it's not that expensive. You can prepay 3 months in advance for a flat charge and play as much as you want. 3 months worth of LOTRO is a lot of quality game for the money.

Agreed, although I am a LOTRO lifer, I do believe $30 CDN will get you 3 months of VIP access which is a very good deal these days. I do believe that is the price. Sure beats a heckuva lot of TP grinding for quest packs.

Originally Posted by beldurax
I'm curious - why a "mage-like character" ?

Rune-Keeper costs Turbine points. But apparently you get it with the Mines of Moria expansion, in some form. All I know is that I had to spend more money just to try it out from the get go.

Considering that and how slow and buggy the initial install was, I gave up on it.

Originally Posted by Thrasher

Rune-Keeper costs Turbine points. But apparently you get it with the Mines of Mroia expansion, in some form. All I know is that I had to spend more money just to try it out from the get go.

Considering that and how slow and buggy the initial install was, I gave up on it.

If you are on the Premium plan, the Warden and RK both cost extra, as well, I think, does the Beorning. I have never found the install mechanism for LOTRO to be either slow or buggy. <shrug> Outdated ? Yes.

It took a day to download and then the install failed. So that was it for me.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
It took a day to download and then the install failed. So that was it for me.

Thats to bad. Its a great game. Better than ESO which is what I am playing now.

Yeah, I hate buggy and laggy games, and ESO is bad enough.

With LOTRO is looked even worse, with installation issues and slowness, plus having to pay more to play a spellcaster, really struck me as a big ripoff. First impressions were extremely poor.

Thrasher, I bet whoever made this, had you in mind:

Dear Thread,

The web-and-cam hero just arrived. May God have mercy on our souls!