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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: 2007-07-28
Cool Game
This game really makes your feel like your inte the lotr world. I do find it hard to get groups everynow and then.
But overall great mmorpg as long as you dont care for pvp.
Date: 2007-07-26
Lots of fun for LOTR fans
I'm up to about level 25 and so far this game is really fun. If you've read the books and seen the movies then there are lots of interesting people and places that you'll come across and recognize immediately. The game puts you right in the story. There are lots of updates on the horizon that look great - like player housing.
Date: 2007-07-18
Very Good Game
An excellent job of bringing Middle Earth to life in a game - if you liked the books and/or the movies, its great fun just to be in this world and see the sights. Character models are just OK, but the rendering of the world (if your PC can handle it) is very beautiful. The quest-based advancement is very well done. Some of the quests are a bit tedious, but this is, overall, a very good game. Worth picking up, worth playing, worth giving a little less time to that OTHER online RPG. The story is woven into the game, and though you are never a central figure, you get to play your part.
Date: 2007-07-16
Not ready for prime time; but it's close
I am an old fan of this series and participated in the beta. I went as far as to contract a Ventilo Server and Web Hosting for a year. The game comes close; however there are some glaring issues which I can only hope Turbine will soon address. In defense, I have heard "It's a new game though, so there are going to be problems." No, not when they are issues which should have been solved in Beta. In retail the purchaser has the reasonable expectation that the game will play with very few issues or hickups. Game balancing and so forth should already have been well addressed or the designers should seek other employment venues along with their managers. There are those of us who are now retired from the business and know better.
Pros:
1. Some of the best graphics this old gamer has seen.
2. LOTR follows the books reasonably well. Every named NPC is out of the series.
3. Lord of the Rings has wonderful potential to be my home for many months to come.
Cons:
1. Customer Support is woefully lacking. There is no telephone number posted. Email support at first glance appears fine until you have a problem which is on their end. Then, Turbine just closes the ticket without any further adieu.
2. Into a few months after retail release, lag became a greater problem than it ever was during beta. This reminds me when Ultima Online was sold to overseas interests and UUNET was dropped as the backbone provider for a less able one. Subscribers left in droves and Ultima Online had to eliminate a good number of the shards. Perhaps Turbine has done something similar whereby their connectivity is not up to the high demands for some geographic locations.
3. The quest reward system needs serious revamping. The majority of items will be of little use to your chosen profession. In my opinion, the selections should be expanded to include items of use for all professions. It is also annoying that so many said rewards are better suited for much lower level characters.
4. Game Lock Ups. The majority of gamers do not suffer this; however there are quite a number who experience computer lockups requiring a hard reboot (cycling the power). Examination of dxdiag and sysinfo by both Turbine and MicroSoft reveiled nothing amiss. Changing out video card, memory, sound card, reinstallation, and running every utility I could find did not discover the problem. The game runs fine on my slower computer. Turbine just closed this ticket instead of offering solution. It has been suggested that the game makes an inappropriate call which is caught by the operating system. Whatever it is, it would appear to be on Turbine's end.
5. Crafting quests are not on a level playing field. For instance, a farmer may advance to grand master status without terrors of near impossible level to face. A cook, on the otherhand, must retrieve a chunk of boar meat in an area better suited for a group of level 35 to 40 adventurers or a battalion of ephzones.
6. Experience gained by defeating a monsters is often not commensurate with the difficulty of doing so. Elites should also offer elite xp.
7. While on the subject of experience, in my opinion, the xp gained from completing a quest should never drop since it requires so much more experience for each subsequent level attained.
8. A new fellowship quest change precludes helping your friends unless you only recently accomplished the feat. At lower levels, burglars and loremasters require more concise planning and execution, as example. They therefore must patiently gain a few more levels than a guardian, minstrel, or champion would need.
9. The tedium with far too many quests requiring an insulting amount of running back and forth, when more content should have been included instead.
10. Some minor issues:
a. Crafting drops should name the craft on mouse over.
b. The ghosting mailbox in MD.
c. Abandon horse? NO. Dismount horse? YES.
d. The often haphazzard placement of NPC supply, produce, etc. vendors.
Date: 2007-07-09
You will love it or hate it.
You will love this game if:
* You are a Tolkien fan, particularly a fan of the books, although attempts were made to draw from both movie and book traditions.
* You want something easy to learn, and have played WoW before.
* You hate not knowing what to do next, and like guided quest progression.
* You love storyline and social aspects such as the ability to play music. If you were an entertainer in Star Wars Galaxies, you may love the new music system, which can use ABC files.
*You are a hardcore role-player.Try the Landroval server or Elendilmir, the unofficial RP servers. I have seen more RP on Landroval than I have ever seen in any mainstream game. On most servers, the dwarf and hobbit areas are RP gathering centers. Smoke the pipeweed that makes smoke rings shaped like ships! Grow veggies. Enjoy the sandbox aspects and "living" there rather than leveling.
*You are an older player. LOTRO has an unusually high average player age. You will meet many married couples and families.
*You hate buying things. Lucky you, quest rewards are actually quite powerful at the recommended quest levels. Most players wear mainly quest items, and they will take you to the next level of quests before you need to upgrade.
*You need new content. New content is added every month, for free.
You will hate this game if:
*Your primary interest is PVP. The PVP system is nice in that even a level 10 can opt to visit a special pool and play a monster alt that is high level any time. However, you cannot play a PVP hero/good guy until at least level 40, and PVP has really not caught on. LOTRO is rather carebear. There are no PVP servers. Few people spar. This may change as the playerbase gets to higher average level. Give it at least 6 months. As a monster, you will find few people to battle at present.
*You are a soloer. That will take you to mid-20s and early 30s, but the best quest rewards are from group(fellowship) quests. These cannot be soloed or duo-ed until you are far above the recommended level. You will love the first half of the game as a soloer. After that you will have a hard time leveling at all, and grinding monsters does not give much experience. Be forewarned, you will probably need to group a lot.
*You prefer to buy your items. The auction house on all servers is fairly dead. Quest rewards are better than dropped items, by far. NPC vendor items are inferior and useless.
*You are primarily a crafter. Craft quests for progression quickly require you to get high level assistance. Without that help, often the best items you can craft are far below your level. The craft system is nice, and quite enjoyable, but recipes are expensive, and it is currently nearly impossible to make much money at the auction house. People aren't using it, and you are competing with excellent quest rewards. Crafting is VERY expensive and only pays off at very high levels of expertise. On most servers, that means Grand Master already.
* Quests bore you. Progression is almost impossible without doing quests. This game is almost entirely quest based, far more so than WoW.
*You want a house. Houses are in development, but not expected to arrive for some time.
* You want to get married or have social clothes. No wedding dresses, no formalwear, no official way to marry, although you can adopt another character as your child. If your character gets married, the best you can do is cloth armor as a wedding outfit.
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