I don't really mind. I think of it this way. I play my single player RPG's for maybe 50 hours. That translates to me paying 1 dollar per hour for my entertainment, not bad at all. With my online game LOTRO, I've played around 7 hours per week for the past year. That's about 50 cents per hour, and it only gets cheaper the more you play. In other words, I don't mind because I get my money's worth out of it easily.
I was looking into this a few weeks back. I was intrigued with all the puzzle stuff, but it seemed that it had all already been solved at the time. I'll be interested in seeing some info on the actual game, whenever it comes out. If anything, it will at least have a cool setting.Alaris83
True, true. I'm hoping the counter will reveal something new soon. All the conspiracy theories are getting crazy.
Well, as awesome as it can be for a game with no screenshots available. It's called The Secret World, and it's being published by the same guys who did Anarchy Online and Age of Conan. It takes place in the modern day, and really really really bad stuff happens to the world. (Think cities destroyed, demons, that kind of thing.) So far it has really been geared towards the people who are willing to decipher the riddles and questions posted by some of the Admins on the officials for the game. That is, people smarter than me. Some of the riddles and questions are absolutely nuts. Anyway, check it out.
Multiple major reviews have pointed out VSOH's major bugs. Such as the avatar randomization and quest NPC's going on vacation for days at a time. That is the major difference. LOTRO NPC's don't get vacations.
Sounds cool and it would be great to see something come along that can break the WOW monopoly. So what are it's strengths and weaknesses compared to WOW??? I think I'm going to try and get on board with this. Did you get some kind of 2 person discount so both you and your wife can play? I'd like to hear more about how that works although $500 all at once is nothing to sneeze at for a game!DuaneDog
I'm working...so I can't go into too much detail, but I'll tell you my LOTRO vs. WOW opinion. Meh, work is boring. Haters of reading beware. I only ask that you and all the other readers would refrain from pwnzoring my opinion. I'm not stating anything as if it's set in stone, just my thoughts, plain and sadly simple.
LOTRO pros vs. WOW first shall we?
I can't stress this enough. ALL OF THIS IS MY OPINION.
1. Graphic approach. Both of these games have good graphics, or at least the industry and community seem to think so. The pastel (sp?) technique of WOW doesn't really float my boat, it's well done in my opinion, but just not what I'm wanting for 15 bucks a month. LOTRO has graphics that resemble the more modern single player rpg's, I would say Oblivion quality when running at max settings. This just suits me better.
2. LOTRO is more casual friendly. I can jump on lotro (lets stop with the caps, yes?) for an hour a night and get something done, this was very rarely the case in my wow experience. Lotro has 24 person raids, but devs have stated that it absolutely will NOT make up the whole of end game content. End game raiding seems to be the main focus for wow, and as a casual player I'm not on even close to enough to think about rolling on raid loot.
3. Turbine is the bomb-diggity with content updates. They have historically had content updates (quests, loot, new landscape, tweaks, fixes) every 4-6 weeks with their past releases. I believe they intend to deliver these updates to lotro every 6 weeks. Fixes and new content seemed more spread out than I would have liked in wow. I understand there is more to worry about in wow, (pvp balance etc.) but I'm not a big pvp'er either. Which brings me to...
4. There is no traditional pvp in lotro. This is a deal-breaker for some people, but a deal maker for me. I've seen the pve environment take it up the chute more than once to maintain pvp balance. In lotro, players can spar, but that's about the extent of player char vs player char fighting. However, you can play as a monster in this game. You can choose to play as a Warg, spider, or various types of Orc-kind and take on the Free Peoples (player chars) of Middle Earth, within a certain zone called the Ettenmoors. Monster chars undertake quests and can advance their stats and skillsets just like a regular character, though there is no leveling for monster chars, they start their game life at the max level, which happens to be 50.
5. The story is much more apparent to me in lotro than it is in wow. I've heard this one argued both ways, but the story in lotro is driven by "epic" quests that do a great job of actually telling me a story. In wow I was consistently taken with the cool factor of the game, but it never really felt immersive.
6. It's cheaper than wow. I can pay 9.99 a month as a founder if I pre-order the game, or 199 once and never pay a monthly fee. That's pretty sweet and cheaper than wow by a nice lil bit. (Note: If don't pre-order the game, the prices are the same for each game.)
Okies, now for some cons.
1. Compared to wow, it feels less epic. As I read from a semi-dissapointed beta tester who's name escapes me, everything seems to be "just around the corner" which lends itself to being casual friendly, but not really a epic journey. At launch, the lotro world size is expected to be 60% of wow's total map size. I'm not sure how long before we'll see the first landscape additions, but 60% of wow seems smallish.
2. At this moment, I expect the demand for player crafted items to be low in lotro. This will discourage a crafting community, which I generally like to be a part of. In wow there seems to be a decent market for some player crafted items. However, the game is still in closed beta and big changes are no doubt on the way.
3. There are less character customization options in lotro than I would like. The wow chars seem to have more options in this area. Again, these could be changed prior to launch. Right now, (and this won't change) there is no real "mage" character. Turbine did this to stay within the limits of the lotro lore. It's a bittersweet thing for me.
4. Turbine is limited by the lore of lotro. They intend to stick with the nature of Tolkien's works. This is also a double edged thing. On one hand it won't let things like ubery blazing wizard staves exist for players, but it also provides for a great expandable game. Wow on the other hand can pretty much do what it wants when it wants.
I'm sure I've left some negatives out, and some points are a re-hash of the first post, but there you go.
Check here for screens of the game that aren't ancient. Alot of old ones floating around.
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