Maybe if I get really lonely, if my friend Mark has to move to NJ like he's saying he might, I might go try a MMO. They always look really cool. I wanted to play Age of Empires Online, but I just read it was shut down July 1. Oh well. There are others like the LOTR's one you mentioned.
Lets Discuss LOTRO!
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 On 07/23/2014 at 12:52 AM by asrealasitgets See More From This User » |
Apologies for the much delayed posting of my weekly MMO Reports. As stated before, I've been mostly playing MMOs this summer, and I feel very fulfilled with my selections so far. I would not describe myself as an expert MMO player or social player in any sense, but I do love the idea of endless RPGs, and I like seeing other people in the same world from time to time.
I've been mostly starting new characters and getting through beginner areas of these MMOs, which is a bit annoying, having to learn all the systems and mechanics and such, but most of these games work pretty much the same, for better or worse. I've been spending about a week with each game and thus I've been reporting back on here because I know y'all are on the edge of your seats eagerly waiting for the next installment.
Lord of the Rings Online (Free-to-Play)
I want to quickly point out that a financial report was recently circulating the interwebs listing the top grossing MMOs of the year, or last year and surprisingly LOTRO made the list as did Star Wars TOR, TERA, World of Warcraft of course, and a few others. Now I don't care much about popularity contests but as "theme park" games go I play what I like, and I like Lord of the Rings, and I like Star Trek.
Often you'll find a lot of gross comments criticisizing players just like me for contributing my time to these games due to fandom when otherwise these games would have died a long time ago. I don't disagree entirely. I could very well see these games using much needed content as opposed to just adding bits of wardrobe or armor, lets say, to sell in an online store. However, much of these games focus have been some what steered towards single players now-- the casual fanboys like me who just log in here and there, and I'm just fine with that.
Anyhow, Lord of the Rings Online is pretty old now. The level cap has reached 100, and much of the story in the books hasn't been included yet. However, there are plenty of quests and game lore to rummage through, and questing through areas from the book and film is pretty fun as a back drop to a game. From the very beginning you will work with Strider and then Gandalf investigating surrounding areas from the book for them. Your quest log is actually divided into volumes with books and chapters, along with other story quests.
Visually, the graphics and areas hold up pretty well considering the aging game engine, or whatever. I set the visual very high, and the environments look pretty decent. The water looks fabulous actually. The soundtrack is pretty brilliant. One of the best soundtracks for a game in my opinion. One glaring issue with this game that comes up a lot are the character models. WoW has gone and upgraded their old character models, and I'm sure other MMOs have done as well, but the one area Turbine hasn't touched is the much needed upgrade to the toons. They aren't that bad, but they could use a bit of a face lift.
I still log into this game every now and then. I'm only at about lvl 25-30 with most of these characters in all these games which is pretty good considering I only played them for a week at a time.
I'm sure I'll blog more about LOTRO in the future. I hope it doesn't get unplugged any time soon.
Next up on my MMO Reports will be:
Star Trek Online
Do you play any MMOs? If so, can you suggest one so I can try out and add to my MMO summer!
My current playing list:
The Secret World
RIFT
Guild Wars 2
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Lord of the Rings Online
Fallen Earth
Star Trek Online
Interested in:
Archage
EverquestNext
Firefall
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