Lord of the Rings Online: Something something
 

Well, the North American Beta is available on Fileplanet. I'm downloading the client now.

Anybody else going to at least give it a go while it's free? I can't say I've been following it at all, but I've never minded trying a free MMO bearing a popular name (i.e. DDO, WoW, SWG)

Guess I'll post my sign in name once I finish the download, case any of y'all want to try it out. Heck, maybe I should go and read what the hell it's about, aside from hairy-footed short people.

I've been playing it off and on since it has gone into open beta. I have several nitpicks about it, and don't really care for LotR lore on the whole (I find it to be the quintessential 'vanilla' fantasy, and as such boring). Though several associates have decided to try it out and leave WoW, I've decided not to stick with it.

There is a level 15 cap in the open beta, which kind of makes it hard to know how it will pan out in the future. Most of my issues might be due to the game still being in beta, but I think a lot of them are intentional or won't be addressed any time soon.

I hate it. I absolutely hated it.

It's nothing more than a glorified WoW/EVQ hybrid clone.

Damn, two negative replies doesn't bode well for my already rapidly decreasing hard drive space.

A little vague though, what exactly is wrong with it? I mean technically, cloning World of Warcraft is a pretty good way to start things. :p

I tried it during the closed beta, but I was sorely disappointed.

It just wasn't, I dunno the word...

...fun? New? Worth playing?

It just seemed like the same shit we see over and over.

Don't get me wrong, I like playing a MMO, I've played an MMO regularly since the Kunark X-pac on EQ, It just was kinda blah. If its the same shit, then why take the trouble learning a new game?

Personally, I have heard nothing but good from Vanguard, and the only reason I have not tried it is because it takes 20gb to install! (I have a 40Gb HD)

Well, blah, I had sort of expected that anyway.

Damn you, Turbine. Either way, the bugger runs like shit on my laptop, so screw it. Now to find something else to waste my time...

See, if it was a Dragonalnce online, I might consider finding a private server for it, but it is a LORT MMO, and you knew the game was gonna be crappy as soon as you heard of it, at leqast, that is the impression a lot of people I know did. Have you heard of their paymenyt system in this game?

I imagine their payment method is the standard Pay Per Month/Quarter/Annum, since it uses the same billing system (and account) as Dungeons and Dragons Online. It's made by the same company, Turbine, though I think it's a different dev team.

Nonetheless, the few laggy minutes I spent in the game, I could tell it used basically the exact same engine as DDO, with some flavour of WoW thrown in. I noticed it ran smoother than DDO in terms of load times, though, which was nice.

I was skeptical of the game from the get go because I knew Turbine was making it. I have nothing greatly against Turbine, but they turned Dungeons and Dragons Online into an "okay" MMO, when it could have been a super great one. I expected something similar for LotR is all, and I'm probably not too far off.

Somewhat tempted to download it on my real gaming rig, crank it up, and try it again. But meh. If it's just going to be a WoW-ish experience it won't hold my interest for long at all, because WoW sure didn't.

They wanted you to either pay monthly, or a lump sum of $200 to play for free after. I was told this by my friend who is already saving for the $200 to play this, just ecasue it is LOTR.

$200, wow. That's a pretty long investment to get your money's worth, no single MMO can claim to have captured me for that long. The record is DDO at 5 months, and that amounts to about $85 in subscription fees.

Admittedly, that's handy if you REALLY plan on playing the game for a long time. The question, ultimately, is this: how much replayability is there in the game? This was DDO's downfall for me. Nothing to do.

Anyhoo, decided to give it an honest try on my new whacked out rig.