Lord Of The Rings Online

[Wolfie]

Well for the gamer geek heads amongst us I'm on the open beta test for the new Lord of the Rings Online MMORPG.

I'll give my first impressions and try and get a couple of screen shots for you over the coming weekend (they have pretty much lifted the Non Disclosure Agreement so i should be able to go into detail without getting myself banned!)

I got online last night and created a couple of characters, played them for a few levels just to get a feel for the game.

Seems to work ok in Vista, although i did have a problem with the patcher getting into an endless loop at one point and had to 'kill' the task manager entry. It would check the game files, think it needed to restart the patcher check the game files again and then think it needed to restart the patcher again... i left if for a few minutes and it became obvious that this was a problem. Killed the process and restarted it and the problem disappeared.

Character creation was simple, if you've played anything like Everquest2 or World of Warcraft you have all the normal options, race, class and some basic appearance options. The races are limited to Human (male and female), Dwarf (male only), Hobbit (male and female) and Elf (male and female). Some races have restriction on what classes they can play.

The classes are (this is from memory, it might be wrong)

Guardian - your basic tank class

Champion - Light tank/Damage dealer

Burglar - your basic Rogue/Thief class

Lore Master - a 'wizard' type class but its not a wizard

Hunter - your ranger/bow user class

Minstrel - a cloth wearing healer type with some impressive range damage

Captain - more of a support class

I rolled a Minstrel and a Lore Master, played them both to lvl6 so my information is limited.

You start the game in an 'instance' or a mini quest where theres only you and NPC's this is a very basic tutorial to get you used to the game, moving around, targeting, looting etc. Its very easy. Once completed (i wont go into the storyline - but its quite impressive) you end up in the 'newbie' area, with quests to guide you along, the game does seem very quest orientated. I grouped up with a Guardian and completed all the basic quests in a couple of hours first time around and less than an hour second time around. Once completed your taken to the main game areas and put in your starting city (this depends on your race) - thats as far as i got.

My Impressions:

I didn't like the limited options on classes, I'm used to having many options of classes to play. The whole game/storyline system seems to force you into a more role-play perspective which is not a bad thing, but i think if you joined a role-play server it would get a bit too much. The game performance wasn't great, i noticed a lot of lag and screen freezing/jitteriness. My Machine isn't top spec but its a fairly good gaming rig and i've never had a problem with Everquest2 or World of Warcraft, so the system requirements are a touch higher than were used to. The graphics looked great (even with my settings set to the minimum) the combat was fairly easy to grasp and quite fluid. I didn't like the default interface and it doesn't seem that 'customisable' although you can create/download 'skins' which will give you choices on what you want your interface to be.

Overall i felt the game was lacking something, my feeling when i finally turned off the PC last night was 'thats a bit of a let down' and the more i think about it the more I'm beginning to think I wont play this at release. I'll carry on with the beta and see if it gets better when you get to higher levels. First Impressions: 4 out of 10

I found a great little article that walks you through the basic screens (loading, logging in, character creation and basic interface stuff) thats worth a look if you want to see what the game looks like (http://www.lotrointerface.com/index.php?p=default_ui_walkthrough)

I'll get together some screen shots and upload them over the weekend, but check back on this thread over the weekend and i'll update it with my opinions/experiences

[quiksilva]

Nice review Wolfie, keep it coming

[kayo]

there was a pretty good review in empire about this... I'll see if I can find it online...

[mac.wheeler]

We have already seen two major game franchises completely messed up in recent years. First we have the disaster that is SWG and more recently the joke that is D&D online, I will not hold my breath for LOTR. They lost my interest when they stated there will be no PvP as there is no precedent for it! Please put me right if I am wrong but I am sure I witnessed a lot of killing in both the books and the recent movies?

[Wolfie]

There will be some kind of PvP they recently announced it