JeremyR

The big problem with LOTRO, besides the content trickling out (this is basically the only new content in the 6 months since it went F2P) and the money grubbing item mall, is the insular behavior of the community.

People just do not want to group (or talk) outside of their guilds.

So I don't know who this new content is aimed at. Turbine seems to think this game is full of hard core raiding guilds, but it mostly attracts casual players, who end up leaving because the game just isn't designed for them (in terms of content and how much grinding is needed).

Guild Wars 2 is the direction the design of this game should have gone in, rather than being a cookie cutter Tank-DPS-Heal raiding MMORPG...

I don't understand how they can add new content to D&DO every couple of months, but in the six months since F2P hit LOTRO, they've basically added nothing.

Yes, I know we're get a thing for raiders in the next update. Whee (I say as a non-raider). And I know we got a small region when F2P hit 6 months ago. The sort Turbine used to put out every 2 months when LOTRO launched.

@Lenn

Well, yeah, that's because there hasn't been any content added since F2P hit, except Enedwaith, which is one small area.

And let me add that my 65 Champ has less morale than the standard mobs in Enedwaith. Yet not only am I supposed to be able to take on two or more of those at once to do the Epic quests (which are supposed to be solo), there are quests where I need to take out special mobs that literally have triple (or 10,000) more morale than I do

@Dunraven

That's really not true at all.

In D&D, you had a Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, and Thief

In MMORPG terms, Fighters basically were tanks and did melee DPS, because they were strong which gave them a big damage bonus.

Clerics healed, tanked, and fought fairly well.

Thieves mostly dealt with traps and such.

Only MUs were a single sort - DPS.

And because of how D&D worked, spellcasters having limited amounts of spells, they couldn't do the constant healing that you find in MMORPGs - where the tank takes all the damage, only to have it constantly healed. Usually there was no healing at all until combat was over..

I think it has its place in games where raiding is the emphasis. But it pretty much destroys PvE in a game

The different between RMT and the actual in game cash shop is that the former leads to massive inflation.

This gets to be a very big problem in F2P games, you're already generally penalized by not spending money at the item mall. But then the RMTers come along and completely screw up the in game economy by massive inflation that outdoes even anything Obama can whip up.

@DiscoJer

And don't get me started on stat tomes. Drop in the game? Sure, sure...

"The largest fear among MMO players, Paiz said, was that a F2P/microtransaction model would lead to unfairness as the rich player would buy the best toys and dominate the poorer players."

That's not possible as LOTRO doesn't have character vs character PvP. But Pay to Win is exactly what is happening in the next update. Rather than fix the problems with the Legendary Item system fairly, they've just farmed it out to the cash shop. Want a perfect weapon? Spend $100 and buy the abilities you want.

Otherwise, kept on grinding, grinding, grinding away.

But hey, they've having a deal, 15,000 Turbine Points (enough for two maxed out weapons, really) if you spend $100 right now...

What if, Turbine actually devoted the development resources that the game deserved? We'd probably be in Rohan by now...

This might be a good game, but in my limited experience with it, it's going to be a case of those in NA being second class citizens.

You see that a lot in the case of games from Asia, the NA or international versions are always nerfed compared to the originals, and there is no feedback from that audience to the original developers.