A few months ago I received an invitation to participate in Turbine's Riders of Rohan closed beta program.  The email didn't make an impression on me since I decided to write it off as a phishing attempt.  To my surprise the legitmacy of the email was confirmed when I logged into Turbine's LOTRO forums and was able to see the Closed Beta discussion site.

I downloaded the program to both my Windows computer and to, my surprise, my Mac computer as well.  The majority of my play time was dedicated to testing the Beta client for the Mac.

Mac Client

As far as performance for the Mac client, I had no major problems.  My Mac is a mid-2007 and it ran the beta client rather well.  My graphic settings ran comfortably on mid to high.  There were a few strange artifacts here and there (such as flickering) but those problems were also shared by the windows client too.  However, I can't vouch for the client staying playable for older macs for the release in October (if they release the mac client with ROR).  Many things could change and that may make the client unusable for older macs.  As of now, it works amazingly well.

Rohan

I don't want to release too many spoilers for the new expansion.  But to just say that right now, the quest stories for Rohan are very interesting.  Every quest left me waiting to learn more as I traveled to each new quest hub.  The graphics are outstanding.  The Turbine art team really went to great lengths to capture the area from Tolkein's books.  The area now has new music scored by the Chance Thomas (returning due to popular demand).  All I can say is that theme used to introduce the player's entrance to Rohan is wonderful.

Game Play and Mounted Combat

Regular game play has not radically changed in this expansion.  Everything is still the same for most classes with some added tweaks.

The real change comes with mounted combat.  Mounted combat is not like the mount system used in WoW's Lich King expansion.  Turbine is really taking chances with this new system and tailoring it to act as closely as possible to real world dynamics.  Each class has mounted attacks that closely mimic their regular combat technique.  But just punching out these attacks are not where the difficulty comes into the picture.  Every player must learn how to maneuver their mount around enemies.  The horse mounts are based on heavy combat destrier models used during the Middle Ages.  Since they are large and muscular, they don't turn on a dime once they are up to full speed.

This is where Turbine has added in a special trait line, in which players can choose between speed or strength or a mix for their mounts.  If you choose a quicker horse, a player will gain speed and manuverability over health.  These horses suited for DPS classes need to keep moving since being unhorsed is an ever present probability.  Believe me, you don't want to be unhorsed in the middle of an NPC warband.  The trait line geared for strength and health are for the tank classes.  But that doesn't mean a player gets to stand still while attacking.  A player needs to move to build up fury for their mounted attacks.

The mounted combat tutorial does give good basics but the majority of the learning curve is spent in regular combat.  Once you learn how to maneuver the mount into and out of combat, it makes this new fighting style very exciting.

Delayed Launch

ROR was originally set to release today, the 5th.  But due to various bugs, the date was pushed back to October 15.  I believe that was a very good decision.  The major reason why this was done was to ensure that mounted combat was as smooth as possible.  There will little issues with mounted animations and manuverability.  I believe Turbine is really close to the end result so an extra month is just what was needed.  There were also little graphic anomalies during quest instances and some broken NPCs.  Which shouldn't be too hard to fix up.

All in all this will be Turbine's most exciting expansion in quite awhile and I'm looking forward to it.

Shadow of the Argonath - Chance Thomas

Although I really liked the "Rise of Isengard" expansion last fall, one of the main disappointments I had with it was that it did not have a new music score.  I believe one of the main reasons why I fell in love with LOTRO so much was the beautiful score composed by Chance Thomas.  His music captured the spirit of Middle Earth wonderfully.

Since ROI, I noticed that I was not the only one who wanted a new score.  The forums had a few posts regarding the absence of new music.  It seems Turbine took this into account and commissioned Chance Thomas to write new music for Riders of Rohan.

ROR will be released on Sept 5 and Turbine is in the midst of drumming up excitement by releasing snippets of Thomas' new score.  It sounds as gorgeous as the original score for the game.  I can't wait to hear more of it.  Turbine has also dropped hints that they may rerelease the old soundtracks along with the new one for sale.

Why?

So my time in SWTOR was a bust.  I did not pay for a subscription after my 30 days of free play time expired.

Incidentally I was given promotional time in RIFT.  Which I used to create new defiant based characters on a new server.  Not long after it was announced that the server for my original characters was being downgraded to a trial server.  So all my original characters had to be moved elsewhere.  I liked my original server.  It made me sad to see it disappear.  After that event, I lost the will to keep playing RIFT.

Another game I dabble in, Wizard 101, expanded to a new area called Zafaria.  It was interesting but it didn't catch my imagination as the previous areas.  Also Wizard 101 is in a strange state, it has attracted a great many raiding gamers.  So now the game is tuned to grinding for gear in numerous raid level instances.  They have changed their gear for mitigation stats and class boosts but with barely any morale on them.  The NPCs have been given boosts in damage and health.  All of this is not really that terrible.  But considering that the game began as a hobby for young children in grammar school and junior high, the high level raid type atmosphere at end game is extremely unnecessary.  KingsIsle was in a great position to experiment with different end game experiences because their main audience was not yet used to the WOW mmorpg end game paradigms.  Did they? NOPE.  They just tacked on raids and gear grind.  Thanks KingsIsle.  Now, like other mmorpgs, Wizard 101 end game story instances are only available for the 5 to 20% of the playing audience.

I'm not even going to get into the inflation on items in the company store.  There are many threads about that in the KingsIsle forums, and none of them have been addressed.  And it looks as if they never will be addressed.

This leads me to LOTRO.  This is where I went after I left SWTOR and I've long since given up on WOW.  I liked the expansion last fall called "Rise of Isengard".  It had interesting stories and well done phased content.  However there were a great many bugs in instanced areas.  Plus I was deeply disappointed that Turbine did not commission new music from composer Chance Thomas (I'm hoping this will rectified in the upcoming expansion this fall).

But as like all mmorpgs, I've hit the raid or lie fallow paradigm.  And the more I see this gated tactic in games the more I ask WHY?  WHY? WHY?  Why spend a great amount of monetary resources on end game stories, instances, items etc that only 5 to 20% of your paying audience will see?  WHY FUCKING WHY?  It doesn't make any sense and it is the very example of insanity.  You know what happens with this gated shit?  Every night, in any given MMORPG, are spammers looking for those last few players to fill out a raid.  PST! PST! PST!  And the people willing to go on these runs are denied because they are not geared for the encounter.  Because you have to run the instance to get gear for the instance.

I'm so sick of this, it is getting to the point where I don't want to play these games anymore.  And I'm sure a great many psychologists would encourage me to give up the gaming hobby.  Yet I go on.  Something has to give one of these days.  I suppose.  Or maybe a group of developers will get it and design a game that is inclusive to all players and doesn't use the gated tactic.  Or maybe not.  Most likely not.

My VR Photostream

My Flickr photos in Pummelvision from Melponeme_k on Vimeo.


I discovered the link to Pummelvision on GoSpeed Racer's webpage.

Its an interesting stream of all my VR travels including a few flashes of my RL photos.  It is the RL that looks bizarre in this grouping.

Tom Bombadil's Theme - Lonely Mountain Band

A fanvid and fan cover of one of my favorite songs in LOTRO.  I have this playing in my game house.

Lord of the Rings Online

I signed up for LOTR before it changed from subscription to Free2Play.  But I never had a chance to play it until now.

I'm not a big fan of the free to play model.  When done well, as in Wizard 101, it feels like a perk on top of the game.  But in other games it seems as if it is being used to milk money in any way possible.  The LOTR model is bad marriage between the two.  It's store has nice perks but the game also makes you pay for things that are needed in the game.  Lets discuss basics such as mounts.  In the Wizard 101 plan,  mounts are a perk you can buy from the get go.  In fact it is presented as a pay option from the start.  There is no farming a player can do in game to get a permanent mount.  It is a perk and customers know they must factor in the cost if they want a horse, shark, tiger or unicorn.  In LOTR, the F2P customer must buy the option to ride a mount plus the mount.  This just strikes me as a bit of gouging.  The game will let you grind your way to a mount but considering the economy in game, that could take a long, long time.

The penny pinching over mounts in LOTR is just annoying, especially when they are ignoring the truly pay dirt pay options such as housing.  I'm sure Wizard 101 makes a bundle with vanity housing.  You cannot buy housing in LOTR as a pay option.   Plus there are limits within the game on housing, such as only one house to an account on one character.  If you want more housing, you need to create another account.  You must buy the housing with in game gold (slow in the gathering) plus be subjected to weekly rent.  Also the player has limits to housing size and limits to what can be placed inside of the house.  Mansions are only available to guilds (called kinships).  This set up just strikes me as insane.  Especially when Turbine could be charging real money for this option with no limits and people will buy it.  They would and will buy multiple houses for each character.  I've checked out their forums and there are rumors that Turbine is looking to changing the set up, but nothing is concrete.  Many on the forums have speculated that the code the housing is built upon will not scale.  So that is why the game puts so many caveats on the option.

LOTR is graphically gorgeous to behold.  The creators have truly worked hard to create Tolkein's world in VR.  The avatar creation process is simple yet holds numerous possibilities in looks and background stories.

There are two, instanced starting areas for all 4 races (Men, Dwarves, Hobbits and Elves).  One start area is shared by Elves and Dwarves the other by Hobbits and Men.  So there is quite a bit of overlap in the quest story lines.  As players level, they all end up on the main quest line which converges in Bree Town.  Basically players are just a few steps behind the story written by Tolkein in his trilogy.

The fight mechanics are the same as any mmorpg where LOTR excels is the graphics and the IP it is based upon.  Lord of the Rings gave birth to the modern fantasy genre so visiting this mmorpg is rather like being able to visit fantasy's Ur.  All the important landmarks have been lovingly recreated by the graphic designers.  Truly no expense was spared when it came to creating the visuals.

The game play is strictly PvE and the player will never run out of quests to complete.  If one is an explorer there are even more hidden quests with found objects and from lonely NPC travelers.  The number of quests do depend on the type of subscription the player is working on.  If F2P, there is an option to buy more quests.   Premium players (those who use the Turbine store) get a few more perks.  But to truly get everything the game offers (with the exception of a few designer classes), VIP is the way to go.  VIP is a monthly pay subscription to the game.

The PvP option is not as large nor seems that popular with the players.  It is embodied as something called MonsterPlay, which only VIP customers can access.  Monsterplay allows players to build an endgame level Orc to fight against players on the side of Frodo & Co.  I haven't tried it yet, so I can't properly review it.

The training system for classes and professions is well done.  There is also the well loved fishing hobby included in the game play.  A past time that I never understood the love for in WoW or in this game.  There have been players in Wizard 101 and WAR asking for Fishing to be added.  Why?  Fishing doesn't feel like playing a game...well...whatever.  If you love virtual Fishing, it is in LOTR.  And like the rest of the game, it is beautifully animated with appetizing fish and gorgeous fishing hole locations.  LOTR even includes a profession that I've only seen in Asian mmorpgs, which is farming.  The farming areas are located in Hobbit villages such as Michel Delving, Straddle and Buckland.  Just throw out seed and reap the rewards.  Although the produce can only be used by players who have cooking as a sister profession.

The economy is slow.  It is a black mark it shares with Asian mmorpg's such as Jade Dynasty.  Which means the rewards gotten from quests are really chump change.  The AH is inundated with junk and basics.  Which means it will take a player a long, long, long time to make that first gold piece.  On the other hand, if you do manage to slog all the way to level 20, then the rewards will improve and drops from monsters get better as well.  So it does get better.

What is not slow is the population.  I'm on a server that is very busy.  Which is good to see.  It seems that the free option has attracted more players and not scared away older, paying players.  While sometimes it can turn into a fight fest to get to monster NPCs first or farm nodes, it is better than playing in totally empty areas.

To sum up this game has a lot to offer.  While it does have some drawbacks in it's F2P option, it makes up for it in wonderful game looks and play.