Downloading LotRO 10 day trial

[odeyssus]

Originally Posted by Osprey39

I have a character on Gladden. LoTRO is fun for awhile but it gets far too repetitive for my tastes. Hardly anyone groups below level 50 so and there is almost no general chat so you feel like you are playing a single player game most of the time.

And that pretty much sums it up. The thrill was gone quickly for me, if it was ever there to begin with.

I WANT SWTOR AND I WANT IT NOW! Enough of the medieval BS!

[Gornax]

Originally Posted by Osprey39

I have a character on Gladden. LoTRO is fun for awhile but it gets far too repetitive for my tastes. Hardly anyone groups below level 50 so and there is almost no general chat so you feel like you are playing a single player game most of the time.

There is a general user created channel (GLFF) but you may already know that.

I've noticed the issue with groups for lower quests. Some folks from our kin are having a Roll-an-Alt session where we all rolled new characters and are working them up together. We just finished the Dol Dinen quests yesterday.

I think there are two parts that lead to the problem; first you have new players who want to rush through so they can play with the 'big boys' who have been playing for a while so their characters are higher levels; second is the low influx of new characters for a smaller, established game. Something like WoW, that is so huge, doesn't have that problem as much simply due to its popularity.

Most MMOs I've seen have the same problem with endgame design. In order to keep people playing (and paying), the reward has to be sufficiently uncommon that the player has to run the same stuff repeatedly to get the 'leet loot' for a single character. And that creates more problems when expansions come out, because old content isn't re-worked to fit the new progression curve. LOTRO, as I see it, currently has 3 gaming plateaus corresponding with old (and current) endgame content. First is the L50 stuff in Angmar, second is the L60 stuff in Moria and finally the current L65 stuff in Mirkwood. If you were to actually do all the quests, including getting all the (then) cool gear at each point, you would probably be in the mid-50s by the time you get to the Moria expansion content - and be over level for most of it. And by the time you get through the Moria content, you'd be at level cap when starting Mirkwood. It makes the stuff feel even more tedious. And this seems to be fairly true with most of the MMOs I've played.

One thing I've noticed is that I enjoy the early game content in LOTRO a lot more than the endgame stuff. Lothlorien and Mirkwood are particularly annoying to me as they feel like they're just vehicles to get you to those endgame instances where you grind for the good stuff. It's probably why, after playing for 3+ years, I only have one character at max level (and one almost there). I tend to bounce around and not grind what would make my character 'leet'.

Regardless, I'm still having fun in LOTRO and will be sticking with it for a while. If you're on, I'm usually on a character Borinbor or Gornax in the Balrog Slayer kin.

GG

[Osprey39]

Yeah Gornax, I knew about GLFF but the problem is that nobody wants to do the group quests at the lower levels because they are generally a pain in the ass and the rewards don't matter, they will be replaced in short order. Unfortunately, for someone that hasn't 'been there, done that', you miss out on some of the cooler things in the game in those group quests. I was able to do some with the help of max level people in my kin and that was cool although they mowed everything down so fast.

I was playing a warden and any solo or small fellow quest, I could easily solo but it just gets old. The general lack of chat in the game is just odd. I mean you have the polar opposite in WoW where people won't shut up with the inane babbling but LoTRO at lower levels really feels like you're alone in the world.