There’s an article on Massively noting that Jeffery Steefel over at Turbine says LotRO is going to be the next World of Warcraft, due to the Hobbit movie and the upcoming Mines of Moria expansion. Now, maybe Mines of Moria is going to be a blockbuster expnasion, introducing hitherto unseen elements into LotRO. Like fun, perhaps.
That aside, Steefel interestingly notes that LotRO’s business model may be changing. If this means transitioning to a free-to-play/microtransactions model, it’s sure to royally piss off those who shelled out the bucks for lifetime memberships. But it will be interesting to see how such a move plays out, since LotRO is pretty clearly a game designed with the subscription model in mind.
And a console version of LotRO is apparently being worked on. While not of interest to me personally, that could have a big impact depending on how well it’s received.
Over the weekend I became terminally bored – I’m not subscribed to anything right now, with both WoW and my StationPass expired. Nor am I inclined to renew either for 30 days, much of which are sure to be consumed by WAR. This state of affairs being unacceptable, I tried to get into Guild Wars and found every PvP queue I got into to be unacceptably long, even though there seemed to be plenty of people logged in, and I didn’t have a taste for PvE. Warhammer’s Open Beta doesn’t start until the 7th.
So I downloaded Dark Age of Camelot and signed up for a 14-day trial of that. It’s the only major western MMO that I had not tried, so I was interested to check it out, and rolled a Midgard-faction character on the Lancelot server.
After maybe three hours of play, he’s up to level 7, and I’m finding the game… interesting. What struck me instantly was how good the game looks, considering its age. The textures and character models are on par with those of LotRO, at least in the starting area. Clipping and flickering issues abound, and the second area I went to didn’t look as good, but for a game that released in 2001 it looks terrific.
Gameplay seems fairly deep; it reminded me of EverQuest, but that may have as much to do with the heavily EQ-inspired UI, which is something I don’t much appreciate. Target frames are rudimentary and item usage is clumsy. For the life of me I can’t figure out how to switch between bow and melee weapon without un-equipping and re-equipping, which is very awkward when some critter is trying to stick a spike in your neck. Hell, the first time I played I couldn’t figure how to log out of the game, and had to close it with the task manager.
This is a game that may be totally eclipsed by Warhammer, but it’s something that I feel like I missed by not playing it in the pre-WoW era; I would have so gotten into this in preference to EverQuest. Now, it may be too late, although it’s stil pretty playable, and strikes me as still pretty good. But the RvR dynamic is something that requires an active populations, and if you have to struggle through 50 levels of PvE to get to that, it’s not worth the trouble – and I saw very few players in the first seven levels.
It’s something to do this week, though. I’ll be playing it some more, if nothing else as I wait for WAR’s inevitable arrival.
Do you post these LOTRO stories to get my ire up…
ARGH!!!
I cannot believe he said that.
Codemasters got dinged on launch for saying they could easily get 1 million subscribers.
And as I have posted, MoM is not on the “fans” radar at all. i.e: No sensible MMO player is discussing it very much.
There may be some changes, but the ugly characters and really bad UI is NOT being updated.
The game will STILL be niche as the Hobbit is a good 2 years off. Why would anyone be interested in a game NOW for a property that will not even be on peoples minds for 2 years.
Now, LOTRO: Conquest…THAT game will be on peoples mouths, as it is console, it uses movie property models (which LOTRO does not) and you can play as EVIL for real. Not in a kiddy playland of PvP.
Ooo…ok, how about DDO, have you maybe tried to trial that again? When is the lat time you played?
Personally I think I just hate Turbine games period.
The engine sucks, all of the UI’s suck, models are weird. Sound effects and music is bland.
Also, I tried to go back to WoW and had my own little shocking weekend story. Scared me to death. And it still is not resolved.
I am thinking MMOs are not a good place to be….
What with the DAoC trial I’m doing right now and WAR Open Beta starting next week, I’m not planning on trying DDO again just now – probably October or November or so, after the next big update.
Just read about your WoW account being hacked – major suckage. But it does seem to happen quite a lot. Blizzard seems to be fairly responsive to this kind of thing, and good about getting people their stuff back, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t take at least a couple of days to work out.
I know these issues are usually some key logger or some website, etc.
What is odd is my system has recently been updated to Vista, I have not had WoW installed in over a year, and one of the few games I play now is GW, and in the past EQ2 and trials of some beta games.
But, no reason to install anything.
And THEN I decided to verify the credit card number.
It is NOT one of my cards, as it is not listed in my credit report…lol
How weird is that.
Should be interesting to see how this progresses…
And yea…do not load up DDO too fast. Talk about disappointment.
Maybe I am too vain when it comes to the visual quality of my games, and I will be hard to please.
I have a folder of 200+ pictures for GW, 100+ for AoC. I took 5 in DDO over it’s whole time I have played it (yes, even in the past), 30+ in EQ2, etc.
Had 50+ in LOTRO, but a lot are landscapes (lol)
Ok…sorry to ramble here…cheers and have fun…
Expecting some awesome reports from WAR when it launches.
Well, on the bright side, getting your WoW account screwed up is much less crappy than losing your own credit card information.
I’ve already talked about why I think LotRO doesn’t look that good, so I won’t comment further, except to say that I think DDO looks better all-around, and the textures and character models in DAoC are almost as good, despite that game being several years older. I’m kind of keeping half an eye on the Moria expansion, but I can’t see it getting me back into LotRO.
What might is LotRO going free-to-play, although I think it likely that DDO will go that route first. For free, I’d be inclined to check in on it every once in a while at least, but as far as I’m concerned it’s not worth $15 for the off chance that I will magically start liking it.
DDO is all about quality grouping; if you have that, the game will shine, and if not, there’s not really enough MMO in there to hold anybody. Going free-to-play might radically shake it up, though.
I’ve got probably 500 screenies from Vanguard, and maybe 100 from EQ2. Only a handful from anything else, though (I’d have taken more in WoW but I never could find the folder the WoW client was sending them to.) The thing with visuals is that MMOs tend not to be strong in that department compared to other types of games, and those that are do it at the cost of a dynamic environment – the backgrounds in GW, AoC and a bunch of superficially fine-looking Asian games are basically matte paintings hung in the background. Vanguard is the exception to this, but as we all know, that game doesn’t have the strongest art design.
Re: switching between weapons – you need to put the bow and melee weapon on your hotbars (don’t you have to have the bow on there to shoot anyways?) and you click to switch between them.
Leveling in DAoC gets painfully slow if you don’t have a group around level 20 or so, and with not many people playing, it might get a little rough. Of course, I haven’t played in 2 years or so, so it might be completely different now. Though when I played, you could level at a pretty good pace in the RvR battlegrounds, but, again, they will be very sparsely populated before the 20-24 one (and probably most after that) due to the /level mechanic. But who knows, you might find yourself surrounded by others waiting for the WAR open beta, I know I considered it.
Interesting point, and well taken regarding those with lifetime subscriptions. Perhaps Turbine would introduce some additional benefits?
@DAoC – agree completely. For a game that’s 7 years old, it still holds it’s own.
@Warhammer – checked it out a bit at the Games Convention in Leipzig. Hold onto your hat, as it’s REALLY interesting.
Scott at PumpingIrony has some good clarifications on this much misquoted article.
I can buy Steefel may well not have meant what he said to come out the way it did, but apologism aside, that IS way it reads. This is, of course, why some studios keep staff on a tight leash. If Scott’s interpretation of the statement is correct, it should have been stated more clearly.
I will agree that Massively sometimes tends toward sensationalistic headlines, though.