TASSY P2P FORUMS

For those playing LOTRO: http://www.arda-online.com/map/
It's an ongoing project announced here: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=47684 - excellent work!

What self respecting SWG fan would have a go at LOTRO?

*ducks back out thread*

i only lasted a day tho....

Pretty cool. I just wish it was a lot less WoW like.

mehq.net is best location map

Ooh thanks for this one *adds it to favourites*

There's also a wiki here: http://lotro.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
One of many but seems to be packed full of information that I didn't find elsewhere.

Anach wrote:Pretty cool. I just wish it was a lot less WoW like.

One can almost think of it as a LOTRO mod of WoW -- only better, and much less cartoonish.

A big milestone I am waiting for with this game is the addition of player housing, which is coming, Soon (TM). That will, for me at least, make the game feel a LOT less like a good game, and a LOT more like a virtual Middle Earth, which is what I have longed for ever since I first read the books.

At any rate, these map projects are awesome pieces of work. I'm not sure which I like best: the Google-style maps -- looks like they were painstakingly compiled by cutting and stitching together the radar displays from a jillion screenshots or something -- or the link showing Frodo's route to Rivendell.

There's also one of these: http://lotro.mmodb.com

On the subject of LOTRO and WoW.... I don't find LOTRO cartoonish at all whereas I can't stand the art in WoW. So far, LOTRO is like exploring Tolkien's books and John Howe's paintings. WoW is like a pink migraine Of course that's just mho.

It will be interesting to see if LOTRO will feel like a virtual Middle Earth. Although I haven't played it much (SWG and RL come first) I feel the balance is biased more toward gameplay than world-building. Then again, that's an easy assumption to reach for as the world areas are divided into maps, and by levels and instances. I prefer mixing the content in the same area so there are level 1-50 on the same map so there is a healthy amount of running away screaming

gelfling wrote:...It will be interesting to see if LOTRO will feel like a virtual Middle Earth. Although I haven't played it much (SWG and RL come first) I feel the balance is biased more toward gameplay than world-building. Then again, that's an easy assumption to reach for as the world areas are divided into maps, and by levels and instances. I prefer mixing the content in the same area so there are level 1-50 on the same map so there is a healthy amount of running away screaming

I agree. I got to where I really hated level-segregated gameplay while I was playing WoW. I started noticing it when I was playing post-CU SWG (with the way planets like Dantooine became all but worthless after the levels were implemented), but it became a pet peeve when I was doing the level grind in WoW. I pretty much played solo on my Hunter all the way up to level-60 -- and again, when the expansion came out, to level-70. While LOTRO seems to have a fairly mature player base, it still tends to segregage players by level. Which to me is Not Good.

Unfortunately, with WoW sitting on some 9 million active subscribers, it looks like levels are going to be the de facto standard for game design. Unless someone like Raph Koster pulls a rabbit out of his hat over at areae or something.

dav4flynn wrote:What self respecting SWG fan would have a go at LOTRO?

I paid for a lifetime mebership in LOTRO, only to get bored when I got to level 46..
Oh well, I guess I can sell my lotro account if I can figure out WHERE to sell it, as ebay no longer allow sales of that kind
An MMO account of a pay per month game but no monthly charge due to lifetime membership...wonder what it'd sell for???

There's another major update coming so you might want to hang onto it for a bit longer.

I ended up getting the Aus/NA version of the game to avoid the French but I haven't plumped for a lifetime subscription as SWG is still my main game and LOTRO is a pleasant diversion.

gelfling wrote:There's another major update coming so you might want to hang onto it for a bit longer.

I ended up getting the Aus/NA version of the game to avoid the French but I haven't plumped for a lifetime subscription as SWG is still my main game and LOTRO is a pleasant diversion.

Yeah I got that version too, I play on the meneldor server with the other DN guys who play ( Zazo, Caddaric etc)
I haven't actually logged in for about a month though
Imaginatively my character name in LOTRO is... Asharin
Good thing about the lifetime thing is, I paid $199 ( £99) once and never pay again, figured I'd get at least a years life out of it over time so it works out cheaper
That and I figured, if I get bored of it, an account that never needs to be paid for monthly would sell well as you can't get the founder accounts anymore

Heh.. I'd say the best is definitely yet to come with LOTRO. That opinion is strengthened by what I'm seeing in the works:

1. Expanded crafting!
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php? ... +revamp%22

2. Improvements to the Ettenmoors and PvMP
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=82703

3. Raids: Feei the footsteps...
http://lotro.turbine.com/article/130

4. Player housing: Now with a hint of an ETA...

Annuvin - Book 11 is coming out somewhere in the October/November timeframe. In general, we pack a, well @#$%-ton of content into all of our updates, and book 11 has more. Housing is a large portion of it, but you can expect a large number of quests as well.

(From the Stratics HOC Dev Chat, 8/13/07)

http://lotro.stratics.com/content/hoclog/hoc10.php

Not to mention the fact that the devs have only published maybe one-fifth of the land area of Middle-Earth. And Turbine has a long history of steady, frequent FREE expansions to their games' content. And don't forget, Critter Play is also coming!
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=83420

Played WoW with my wife (level 60 warlock here, she was a level 60 druid), and left about two months before the expansion.

We were in a hardcore end-game raiding guild...it got to be just a BIT too much of the "same thing, different day"...to the point where we cancelled our BC pre-orders.

We drifted to different games, and then re-converged in LOTRO with some friends of mine from a guild I formed in the beta of City of Heroes. Had a blast for a while, and then literally lost the will to play in the mid-thirties. Neither of us has logged in for quite a while (since June, I believe). I'm sure we'll give it another whirl at some point, but it just wasn't able to hold either of our interest for much past that...again, the "same thing, different day" syndrome. (I mean, how many damn pigs am I supposed to KILL, for cryin' out loud?!?)

After that, she's "MMO-less" atm, and futzing around with online crap like Neopets, etc. I, of course returned....well, home, god help me.

Sooner or later, I'm going to convince her to give SWG a try; I've almost got her to the "burn a free trial and see if you like it" stage, but so far, no dice.

Having said that, those are good LOTRO reference sites...like'em a lot, and bookmarked them for when/if we ever return to Middle Earth.

And on one final side-note: Yes, I married a woman I managed to convert into a gamer, and I AM the luckiest bastard ever to slap foot to earth.

asharin wrote:

gelfling wrote:There's another major update coming so you might want to hang onto it for a bit longer.

I ended up getting the Aus/NA version of the game to avoid the French but I haven't plumped for a lifetime subscription as SWG is still my main game and LOTRO is a pleasant diversion.

Yeah I got that version too, I play on the meneldor server with the other DN guys who play ( Zazo, Caddaric etc)
I haven't actually logged in for about a month though
Imaginatively my character name in LOTRO is... Asharin
Good thing about the lifetime thing is, I paid $199 ( £99) once and never pay again, figured I'd get at least a years life out of it over time so it works out cheaper
That and I figured, if I get bored of it, an account that never needs to be paid for monthly would sell well as you can't get the founder accounts anymore

I've been playing on Elendilmir and Nimrodel with a couple of MOBsters past and present. I have an LM, a Minstrel, a Hunter and a Captain on both servers. LM is a blast so far though it took a while to get used to playing such a squishy character! I can't help but associate the Captain with Monty Python so it makes me laugh every time I play it Minstrel is fab although I do find it a little bit bemusing to see my character whip out her guitar and play a few notes to smite the enemy Hunter has been enjoyable so far too. I rolled a Hunter simply because I love the bow

Derrykk wrote:And on one final side-note: Yes, I married a woman I managed to convert into a gamer, and I AM the luckiest bastard ever to slap foot to earth.

Congratulations to you for having won her over We've got quite a few women-gamers in MOB and I think most of us female MOBsters are lucky enough to have an S.O. who loves to game as much as we do; so she should feel right at home in MOB