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The Lord of the Rings Online |OT| F2P lets everyone simply walk into Mordor

seldead

Member
Am giving this a try again after playing to level 20 when it first went FTP, kinda jumped the gun and went and bought $20 worth of turbine points and the regret is setting in as I realise the low level game is kinda dead now. Shame cause the massive nerd I try to keep at bay in me is really digging how faithfully tolkien the whole thing is.
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
HOW

THE

FUCK

DO I JOIN A KINSHIP?


I have been playing this for two days now and still have no clue. I even searched online and found about a dozen guides on kinships and none of them said how to do it. Isn't MMO about playing with each other? Why do they hide this information? Every other MMO I have played made it super obvious and accessible to find and ask to join clans.
 

Anton668

Member
pretty much ask around/get invited(ppl you group with, etc...)/keep an eye for regional chat announcements/hit the kinship forums of the server your on
 

Schrade

Member
Don't ever be desperate to try and join a kinship or guild immediately in any MMO. Learn the game first, make friends or acquaintances and then try to join.


Oh and I'm glad this was bumped.

I made some videos of me playing with my guardian in a level fifty 6 man dungeon named Urugarth. I pull everything in the area (can get up to 200ish mobs at once) and then kill it all at the end.

It's quite fun to do :)

Here's part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt0ugQL3Nao

And here's part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BBSpktAhmw

In part two the server lag was so bad that I couldn't damage any of the mobs and was just perpetually stunned. Heh.



Bonus: Here's me killing a "raid" classed Warband using Mounted Combat (The Riders of Rohan Expansion released in October)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWIi0ntDIoI



Awwww... who put this thread in the Community section :( No one's gonna see it.
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
That's crazy, man. Seems like mostly passive/reactive skills that come with the class at high levels, yeah? I play guardian. I do see that you have some potions but you don't seem to hit them often. Is that UI modded or can you do that with in-game settings?

I've come to understand the parts of the game that interest me right now. Since my brother plays, I may play this a long time. It'll be odd, though, since my habits have been "hammer at a game for 40 hours to beat it in a week" and that's just not how MMOs are made to work. I'd lose my life to it if I went hard like that, so it'll be more of a passive thing.

I will be crafting armor as my main thing, and that requires you play story to level up and travel to the areas with new ore types and all that so it's an active "profession" that should stay interesting.
 

Anton668

Member
That's crazy, man. Seems like mostly passive/reactive skills that come with the class at high levels, yeah? I play guardian. I do see that you have some potions but you don't seem to hit them often. Is that UI modded or can you do that with in-game settings?

I've come to understand the parts of the game that interest me right now. Since my brother plays, I may play this a long time. It'll be odd, though, since my habits have been "hammer at a game for 40 hours to beat it in a week" and that's just not how MMOs are made to work. I'd lose my life to it if I went hard like that, so it'll be more of a passive thing.

I will be crafting armor as my main thing, and that requires you play story to level up and travel to the areas with new ore types and all that so it's an active "profession" that should stay interesting.

A) the block and parry skills come into effect quite early.
B) dont need potions when youre a lvl 85 in a lvl 45-50ish instance.
C) its highly modded http://www.lotrointerface.com/index.php
D) you can easily outlvl your craft with the help of alts and kinmates. crafting doesnt require you to play through anything. I have a toon that is lvl25ish that just maxed tailor(downside being the shite crit rate being such a low lvl(but i hear there are tools you can buy for that))

what server you on and what lvl/race is your guard?
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Dwarrowdelf. Almost lvl20 dwarf. My brother wants me to join Massive Dynamics but despite what he says, I haven't seen anyone from that. I also have a level 9 elf hunter because I was messing around with that last night.
 

Anton668

Member
Dwarrowdelf. Almost lvl20 dwarf. My brother wants me to join Massive Dynamics but despite what he says, I haven't seen anyone from that. I also have a level 9 elf hunter because I was messing around with that last night.

Bah, screw MD! lol
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Yeah this hunter is pretty cool but I don't like being so fragile, especially knowing what's coming up later. Also the woodsman is weird. Make leather... for tailors. Grow food... for cooks. Uh, okay... Makes sense in a kinship but not solo other than making bank. Still, I think I'll get her up to 15 today before my gift horse time limit runs out.
 

Ken

Member
Hunter can protect himself pretty well once you start getting some traps, slow, and snare skills. Also being able to DPS most things down before they even reach you is helpful too.
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Not really what I was meaning, unless there are traps that grab multiple enemies at once.

Got her up to 16 now, got two horses because I was rich, lol.
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
So I took my life in my hands at level 16 and went to get yew wood. I traveled all the way to Tyl Annun (swimming because I had to escape something) and tried to enter Anuminas there only to get shot by like 50 arrows from purple-name guys. I thought it was going to be a friendly town...

Anyway, is there any agility penalty for medium armor or should I just wear it if I can? Also apparently you can't even begin to master journeyman if you haven't mastered apprentice? Because my journeyman woodworking is stopped for some reason. I had no use for a bunch of rowan stuff when even the missions in the game were giving me better stuff and I barely made money off making it.
 

Schrade

Member
That's crazy, man. Seems like mostly passive/reactive skills that come with the class at high levels, yeah? I play guardian. I do see that you have some potions but you don't seem to hit them often.

Yeah, it's partially the skills/traits but also the gear. Here's the gear I'm using to keep myself healed: https://sites.google.com/site/chromite/guardian/guardian-turtling-gear



Is that UI modded or can you do that with in-game settings?

Yes. I'm running the following:

Skin - Streamlined, with some custom modifications. Download Here

Plugin - TonicBars to create custom Quickslot bars. Download Here

Plugin - BuffBars to create Buff and Debuff bars along with that buff slider. Can also pop up potions for when your morale or power is low or are poisoned/feared/wounded/diseased. Download Here

Plugin - CombatAnalysis to analyze my Damage Per Second, Damage Taken Per Second, Heals Per Second, Heals Given Per Second, etc. Download Here

Plugin - BootStrap to load all of my plugins in whatever order I specify as well as give me a drop down menu (That power button in the upper left hand corner) to load plugins on the fly. You don't always need all your plugins loaded at the time so that feature alone is awesome. Download Here


So I took my life in my hands at level 16 and went to get yew wood. I traveled all the way to Tyl Annun (swimming because I had to escape something) and tried to enter Anuminas there only to get shot by like 50 arrows from purple-name guys. I thought it was going to be a friendly town...

The best times I've had in the game was when I was exploring areas I had never gone to before. The wonders and mysteries of entering a new zone are totally the best feelings to have in an MMO. There used to be a Fog of War on the map where you had to actually explore the map before you could see anything on it. I miss that so much :(


Anyway, is there any agility penalty for medium armor or should I just wear it if I can?

Since you're a hunter that's the only armor you want to wear. Don't go completely agility only though... good to balance things with vitality and morale.

Also apparently you can't even begin to master journeyman if you haven't mastered apprentice? Because my journeyman woodworking is stopped for some reason. I had no use for a bunch of rowan stuff when even the missions in the game were giving me better stuff and I barely made money off making it.

There's two "leveling bars" in each crafting tier. When you complete the first one, that opens up two things: the next leveling bar in that tier and also the next Tier of crafting. You cannot advance the next tier of crafting past the first leveling bar until you completely master the previous tier of crafting.
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
There's two "leveling bars" in each crafting tier. When you complete the first one, that opens up two things: the next leveling bar in that tier and also the next Tier of crafting. You cannot advance the next tier of crafting past the first leveling bar until you completely master the previous tier of crafting.
Yeah, so now I'm running around looking for rowan wood even though I'm in the woodcrafting guild... I think the shire was best pickins...
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
So looking at this and this it is clear that you can easily get all content for free.

Some may think it's not "easy" but really it is if you realize how that TP works out. You get it from completing missions, killing things (automatic from missions), and going places (also automatic from missions) and while doing so with one character wouldn't generate enough, you kind of naturally want to play the game with different classes because they play so differently and their crafting skills make them interdependent.

Between the two characters you get, it's 3220 TP. Spend 446 (current price) on a 3rd character slot and you can make a 1164 return. Get the mines of Moria expansion for 1495 and you can get 1535 more per character, and then you should have decent momentum going since the higher level play in Moria is more interesting.

However, it's even more open than this. You can repeat this on every single server but all the TP goes back to your one Turbine account. As the guy said, you may want to do that for the easily attained TP (i.e. not high-level reputation) to cover costs of something like gold cap removal (important to post-lvl30 play), universal storage (time saver for exchanging craft materials) and extra characters slots.

Obviously that gets to being grindy if you don't like playing again with different classes, but not nearly as grindy as other F2P MMOs I have seen since it all happens simply by playing through it. It's a lot of time, but taking your time, you'd easily get there. Paying merely gets you things immediately and allows you to disregard all but what interests you the most.

If I wanted to play it that much, I'd probably just go ahead and subscribe to make it a more laid-back experience. I'm not sure if I will get into this like that, but I just find it interesting that I can "evaluate" the entire game for free given enough time to do so. Too bad we didn't have something like this when I was a kid with endless free time and an adventurous attitude. It would have been really cool.
 

FYC

Banned

Schrade

Member
I was sorta. I was playing religiously every night... but as the beta for Helm's Deep came around I got to see what was coming up with the changes to classes. They've gone and fucked things up tremendously.

I play a hunter and they've made it just a boring high dps couple of button clicking class. They've basically made it so you have so few skills to use that there is no longer a large gap between a well-played hunter and a very casual one.

The landscape of the expansion will be awesome, as usual, but with no raids or new instances and just the "Epic Battles" (skirmishes/clicky games) the game is going downhill fast.

They've also made it so you can't swap gear during combat. So all the different armor/jewelry/weapon combos you're used to swapping around cannot be done when you need to.

The landscape mobs have been made tremendously easier as well. They're just dumbing the game down far too much.
 
I'm considering playing this, mainly for the story and the world. How closely does this hew to the source material? I'm hoping it'll help me get more familiar with M-E as well.
 

Schrade

Member
Anyone still playing this?

I do, but not as seriously as I used to. Turbine has stopped making group instance clusters and raids so basically the only thing to do for end game is run old instance content (that we've done hundreds, if not thousands of times already) or just do solo stuff that challenges you. (i.e. trying to solo 3 mans, 6 mans, raids, etc..) With the skill/trait system the implemented with Helm's Deep they basically ruined the balance of things and made it really stupid compared to what it used to be.

I'm considering playing this, mainly for the story and the world. How closely does this hew to the source material? I'm hoping it'll help me get more familiar with M-E as well.

It's great for getting yourself familiar with land masses/landscapes in relation to places you hear talked about in the book. There's lots of made up stuff though so if you're a lore nazi you will definitely have some issues.

The LOTRO landscapes are really nice and it's a lot of fun to immerse yourself in that universe. The only issue is that the game engine is very outdated and even high end systems today can't run it optimally. Lots of graphic and network lag on busy servers in the newer areas.

They just released The Paths of the Dead (Western Gondor) on Monday. A small quest pack that takes you through the Paths of the Dead and into Dol Amroth. You get to see Corsairs and their ships and stuff.


I'll be honest though, It isn't what it once was with a healthy game. The Community Manager Rick "Sapience" Heaton has been really segregating the community and wiping out lots of open discussions about issues with the game. The official forums are no longer a thriving community where you can feel free to ask just about any questions and get some very technical and helpful answers back. His actions have caused a lot of the hardcore and technical players to abandon the official forums and even, in some cases, quit playing the game itself.
 
Thanks Schrade for the information. Sounds like an interesting place to visit (for free, at least at first) but that is disappointing about the community issues. I guess I can just steer clear of that, I'd be playing very casually so it'd likely not impact my play at all. Thanks!
 

Lashley

Why does he wear the mask!?
Hate when devs etc ruin perfectly good games, I loved LOTRO when it first came out and was a sub
 
D

Deleted member 10571

Unconfirmed Member
Hate when devs etc ruin perfectly good games, I loved LOTRO when it first came out and was a sub

Me too. I loved the crap out of this game for the first few years, then they added dread, and the downward spiral started. At the point they removed dread again, my fellowship was dead and 90% of peeps I knew left the game, including me.

Playing GW2 now from time to time, but on my own and not on a regular basis anymore. Might change to the GAF server but it's so expensive -.-
 
I tried to come back a couple months ago. Found my burglar's skill set was extremely gimped. And I'm out for good. Breaks my heart, Turbine.
 

timkunedo

Member
Came back and started a dwarf guardian and hobbit minstrel on landroval. I was shocked that the community there is so huge. Seems like there's always an event going on somewhere. RPing is so fun.

Also the new update is coming soon with the new class the Beornling.Looks fantastic.
I officially resubbed and am having a blast so far.
 

Schrade

Member
Guardian = Warden + Captain + Champion.

Soloing machine.

Can do incredible damage with bleeds while healing themselves and debuffing mobs.

Things are looking a little better for the game. Sapience was either laid off or left on his own accord. The public story is that he was offered a job at a charity to be their community manager. I just wonder if there was really some pushing from internal people saying he should try to find a different job. He did a horrible job and segregated the community.

In comes Frelorn to manage the LOTRO community and everything has been running like it used to. People are allowed to voice their opinions without getting trigger-banned. It's slowly becoming healthy again on the forums. Frelorn has been handling things quite well with outage reports and communication.
 

Schrade

Member
All expansions 75% off - worth taking the plunge for that?

$9.99 for the quad pack (Moria, Mirkwood, Rise of Isengard, Riders of Rohan)
$9.99 for Helm's Deep

Buy them through steam if you do buy them. Start the download on LOTRO and then pause it. Then you can view the CD keys and get the codes. Can apply those codes to whatever account you want on myaccount.turbine.com.
 

SubtleTea

Member
Are there any games that have raiding like what lotro had up through Isengard? Would anyone be interested in getting a group together to play lotro's level 50 endgame with xp disablers?
 
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