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The Lord Of The Rings: Shadows Of Angmar Review (continued)
More User Submitted The Lord Of The Rings: Shadows Of Angmar Reviews
Date: 2007-09-26
Great game :D
I found both the graphics and the overall presentation to be one of the best mmo's I've played. People were constantly compairing it to WOW but to be honest I found that LOTRO was a much well rounded game with a more mature audience, of course not at weekends... But genrally in game atmousphere is really great. The missions are fun and you always seem to be learning something new. People in parties vary as other games do but it's great to get into a fellowship and play.
Great game over all.
Date: 2007-09-13
Lord of the Retread
Have you played World of Warcraft? If you have then this is a less impressive copy of that game. Virtually everything I tried was identical to WoW. However, what was missing was the impressive richness of WoW. Instead the world (at least what I saw of it) was dull and uninviting. Using the mouse to move was sporadic at best.
I was very disapointed. I had been lookiing forward to this game.
Date: 2007-09-11
Good if you've never played an MMO before.
This game is set in Middle Earth, and if you want to set foot in Middle Earth, this is probably the best way to do it.
However, I think this game has exactly the same flaw that Star Wars Galaxies had: it takes a great license, but fails to deliver what was probably the one key aspect most gamers were hoping for -- the war!
There is no War of the Ring in this game. You don't ever get a sense that the forces of Morder or her allies are coming for you. You don't feel as if the fate of the free peoples of middle earth hang in the balance because, of course, they don't. It is still, at its core, just another unchanging MMO where the enemies wander around but never attack and in the end you're basically just an axe murderer going around hacking up creatures that would have been perfectly content to stand there and mind their own business if you hadn't trod into their lair. You can hang out in town and be perfectly safe forever, which is definiately not the sense that should have been conveyed in a LOTR game.
I realize that a truely dynamic wargame is a lot to ask for, but comeon, LOTRO isn't offering us anything new. It's World of Warcraft with less content, but in a LOTR setting.
I rate it as 3 stars because although you'd probably be happy if you tried it out and you'd probably get a couple good months play out of it, this game is just so much less than it could have been or should have been. It's very uninspired and if not for the strength of the LOTR license, it probably wouldn't have sold at all. You'll notice that the people who talk this game up are talking up the LOTR license aspects -- the depictions of Bree and so forth. Nobody is talking up the day-to-day gameplay or combat mechanics, because those just aren't that good. It's pretty, but it's not that fun.
"Monster play", on the other hand, is fairly ingenious. This is the one place in the game where the War of the Ring comes to life, as groups of players fight against the forces of Mordor (also controlled by players). The problem, again, is simply lack of content to the Monster Play section. Monster Play is relegated to a very small section of the world. It's clearly an afterthought when it probably should have been the entire focus of the game.
I would suggest the LOTRO is going to hold lasting appeal to a small section of the audience that simply wants to play a hobbit or elf and hang out in Middle Earth and occasionally kill some stuff. It's going to fall short of expectations for anyone who was hoping to fight the War of the Ring and really get entrenched in the Battle for Middle Earth, because that battle simply isn't going on in this game.
Date: 2007-09-11
A Good Game
I figured I would give the game 100hrs of playtime before I wrote my review but now I have put in over 200+hrs since the game was released and reached the level cap of 50 and started another player that is currently at lvl 41. This is honestly my first MMO that I have spent a decent amount of time playing. I lost interest in WoW, EQ2, and SWG because I really do not like to grind to level and the story just did not suck me. What I like about LoTRO is the fact that you can level at a decent rate just by completing quests. Something I never could do decently in other games without feeling like I had to kill everything I came across to keep gaining XP to level at a decent pace. This could just be my playing style though and nothing else.
The game has some of the nicest graphics I have seen in a MMO to date and I have experienced few technical difficulties with the game. The couple of times I have had a problem I searched the forums and found a solution or submitted a trouble ticket and it was fixed within about 36hrs. The servers are stable and undergo routine maintenance (about once every 3-4 weeks) to keep them operating properly. Since the game was released last Apr there have already been two decent-sized updates adding hundreds of new quests for both mid and high level players.
The only thing that I am disappointed in is the fact that the Player vs Player (PvP) aspect of the game is fairly weak. Since everyone is technically on the same team (you can't be bad guys in the regular game) there is a special zone where people can play their lvl 40+ players from the regular game against lvl 50 monsters that other players can control. That was the one thing I did enjoy about my limited time with WoW was that you could play on a PvP server and have full blown war breakout around you when the different factions or guilds met each other in the game. LoTRO is really a Player vs Environment (PvE) focused game with PvP feeling like an afterthought tacked on at the end. I know it wasn't a last minute addition, it just isn't all that interesting to me.
The last thing I would like to point out is that this game focuses on group questing towards the later lvls of the game...lvl 40+ is largely fellowship group quests. Early on there is quite a bit of solo stuff but later in the game expect to spend time getting groups together to go finish quests. I read some of the reviews disappointed in the fact that they thought the quests could largely be solo'ed and all I can say is this: the books focused on a fellowship so to expect the game to be any different is somewhat unrealistic. Turbine had to stick closely to the lore of LoTR otherwise there would be no game since the property is so tightly controlled by Tolkien's estate.
Bottom line: This game is a lot of fun if you know what you are getting into. If it had a better PvP aspect, it would be a five star in my book. This is not WoW or any other MMO. It takes aspects of many different MMO and combines them into the game however it is unique and not a clone of any other in my opinion. This game is about the lore of LoTR and has to follow that closely since it has been in existence for about three quarters of a century. Turbine cannot be as creative as other developers that have more liberal control over the intellectual property that they created and hence the direction the game takes. If you want to take part in the War of the Ring then this is probably the best way to do so.
A upcoming MMO that is on my radar is Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures it looks like it will be great!
If you are looking for something more WoW-ish I would say go with: Warhammer On-line: Age of Reckoning
Both are slated to come out in Mar 08. I personally will be going with Conan.
Date: 2007-08-28
This is the One MMO to Rule them All
Game
LoTRO
GENIUS - in it's complexity yet accesibility
WoW
Designed for idiots ONLY
Story
LotRo
The GREATEST ever told and after the movie trilogy it may have even surpassed the Bible.
WoW
IS THERE A STORY?
GRAPHICS
LotRO
Even on a less than top of the line box... LotRO is STILL the most beautiful in any game ever developed including DX10 Conan
WoW
Are you kidding? Some of the lamest graphics EVER unles you are 10 or under. The original Zelda looked better than WoW.
User Interface
LotRO - 11+ year old tried and true Turbine Interface. Developed before WoW was even a concept
WoW
Ripped nNOT from the headlines but from Turbine's development team and claimed as Blizzard's own 8 years after it was developed by Turbine.
This game probably has won more awards and has recieved more POSITIVE press than ANY game ever, even Halo, but thankfully the general population of WoW holds a collective I.Q. of about 2 and find LotRO too challenging for their limited ability. Most have thankfully gone back to MMORPGs for DUMMIES.
LotRO is now thinning down to a superlative community ranging in age from 10 to 75, but the average maturity of LotRO's youngest is at least in the 20s... the leetle WoW kiddies are thankfully gone.
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