Lord of The Rings Online - LOTRO

[Ehndras]

It recently came to my attention that I'm not the only LOTRO player on BM. :-P

www.LOTRO.com of course.

I figured I might as well find out who else might be playing! We've been getting a massive influx of players bored of DDO and WoW lately, because of LOTRO's awesome storyline, ridiculous volume of quests small and large, massive world, vast and complex crafting system, streamlined resource gathering system, thousands of skills, special scenarios, expansive campaigns, multiple races with different storylines and massive home regions with their own quests and perks, multiple classes in various combat roles, optional crafting professions that enable you to craft thousands upon thousands of unique items, furniture for player houses, and bonus items that give all sorts of extras, free and paid players get access to mounts and most things in-game, and there's so much friggin' gameplay that its impossible to ever get bored of the damn game.

I have 4 main characters, one of every race, (Human Guardian-Tank and Armoursmith/Tailor/Miner, Hobbit Burglar debuff/damager and Jeweler/Etc, Dwarf Champion-armoured wall of blades and weaponsmith, scholar(unique and interesting profession), and cook, and last but not least my stereotypical female elf ranger Alurien, a woodworker and farmer.

They each start in their races own MASSIVE region with their own quest lines, but any character can go to any region and do all the quests there. My Hobbit, Elf and Dwarf are in the Elf lands right now because I love the awesome landscape and breathtakingly beautiful architecture, while my Human is in the Barrowlands fighting undead around Bree. To really understand the full storyline you'd need at least two characters, a Hobbit/Human and a Dwarf/Elf, because every quest line shows a different look into the overall storyline, giving you little secrets and tidbits here and there that really bring the game together into a massively-multiplayer yet uniquely-fulfilling experience whether you choose to play with others or to go solo. (I do both.)

I've played every good MMO and online game there is, anything from stick-figure flash games all the way to the infamous Anarchy Online, I've played Eve, Star Trek online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, World of Warcraft, I was in the top-30 in Runescape for about 3 years running, I've played MUDs extensively, indie games in full ASCII, I've played it all. The most interesting and well-balanced MMO of this sort that I've played I would say is LOTRO. That's not to say someone else's opinion won't differ, but this is exactly what I've been looking for all my life. :-) To be honest, screw the combat, the scenarios, the campaigns, the quests, the epic storyline, the clan-questing, the skirmish scenarios, the group instance scenarios, the awesome main storyline quests we all know and love from the books and movies, forget all that. I've been looking for a damn game that lets me do literally EVERYTHING crafting-related, from the group up, my entire life. You see, I love crafting. Love it. I love to gather the resources, I love to shape them into materials, I love making armor, weapons, furniture, runes, potions, scrolls, buffs, debuffs, jewelry, I love it all. I love that LOTRO lets me specialize in not one but 3 skill umbrellas at once, gradually increasing with xp gained in said skills while being supplemented or circumvented by mob-dropped, player-bought, or store-bought recipes and scrolls that let you make rare items and unique item variations that potentially no one else can make. I !@#$ing love it.

Love it love it love it. This is like a drug, man. :-P And a few of my RL and online buddies play too, so I'm loooooving it even more.

If you're interested, shoot me a request and a message. My main character is, of course, Ehndras on the first server, Withywindle (Don't ask, the name sounds ridiculous to me too.) I've got a super-active, experienced, very friendly Kin (guild/clan) that will answer all your questions, quest with you, give you a hand with armor and weapons, has a massive mansion where we throw parties and have constant giveaways since most players specialize on one profession set and just give away all the items pertaining to skills they don't use, or are just generally nice and love giving away free !@#$.

I'm relatively low level, level 22, because I focus on crafting rather than combat. My friend Gus is level 35, my buddy Karl is level 15, and I know a few others who play too. :-)

[Bael]

My main server is Nimrodel, with a low level on Landroval and Snowbourne (25 and 18 respectively). A pity we're not on the same server :)

[Ehndras]

Make a character on my server ;-) I would have been up to joining other folks' servers but most of my goodies from the $100.00 I dropped on my account won't transfer since most of it went into upgrading my awesome main char, bahaha.

[Bael]

Make a character on my server ;-) I would have been up to joining other folks' servers but most of my goodies from the $100.00 I dropped on my account won't transfer since most of it went into upgrading my awesome main char, bahaha.

What sort of upgrades?

[Ehndras]

Full Might/Vitality book upgrades to my main character's stats, vault and shared vault upgrades, mounts, cosmetics, and all sorts of fun goodies since I practically got 7,000 TP for 'free' with my transaction.

[Bael]

Full Might/Vitality book upgrades to my main character's stats, vault and shared vault upgrades, mounts, cosmetics, and all sorts of fun goodies since I practically got 7,000 TP for 'free' with my transaction.

Sounds pretty good :)

I take it you are going to be a subscriber then? It takes quite a while to buy all the regions, otherwise :/

PS: there is currently a special (50% off) on the regions, if people hadn't noticed!

[Ehndras]

Yeah, I'm a VIP sub already, 30 dollars per 3 months, its a steal! And yeah, 50% off for a little while, TOTALLY worth it!

[fodder]

wait... characters can't be moved between servers? (what's the difference anyway)
and... haven't they heard of auto-logins/saved pw?

[Ehndras]

Yes, characters CAN be moved between servers, but it costs you. Every server has its own economy and players, they are not shared between servers. That's standard for this type of game.

I have my information saved to login, I just have to type in my password. I would not like it if they had saved passwords, it is in no way safe.

[fodder]

don't see why it's not safe... if someone physically get to your home desktop.. you are buggered anyway. different if it's laptop or cybercafe. it's not like it has to be forcibly stored locally.. so the user should have the option.

lots of mmo (or anything) = lots of different pw to remember... which is even more unsafe.. i'd rather have the game securely store pw locally.

[Bael]

wait... characters can't be moved between servers? (what's the difference anyway)
and... haven't they heard of auto-logins/saved pw?

The main differences between the servers are the number of players, and the timezone (origin) of said players. Some of them were american, and some of them were european, and a large amount of these people have carried over. This means that prime time will be different for different servers, as well as dealing with different groups of people.

[fodder]

i just found out about names and surnames... doh.

start from scratch again... i think the server i'm on atm is a bit laggy XD

unless it's my machine going funny on me... ever since adding the new hdd...