LOTRO now free to play!

I feel that MMO's don't tap crafting nearly as much as they could. I thought that WAR's potion crafting was very clever though and I liked it a lot. But the rest of the crafting wasn't really up to the same standard and it's a shame because I've always loved making things and selling them for more.

I think the clever thing about WAR's crafting was that it was impossible to get all the ingredients your self. You have to get a band of people together with specific jobs. thats what I liked. I used to do the same on runecrafting in runescape hahaha, I made millions paying people to do all the work haha :)
 
A good crafting system should grab you form the start not totally confuse you and require you to go looking for information from faqs. The gathering of resources was also a pain as there were so few nodes around. All in all I felt it was a poor crafting system when the game launched and from what I played during the free-to-play beta it wasn't any better.

When I say starting areas I mean up to the lvl 17 area.
 
Just checked and my old subscription has indeed been activated. Funny they didnt email me about this :s Downloading now anyhow. I liked this when i first bought it but will probly enjoy it as bit more now its free lol
 
The crafting system in lotro is hardly ultra difficult though, it's pretty much comparable to standard crafting in a lot of modern mmo's. You click a crafting station, pick a recipe, and it tells you what you need. I can understand needing a faq for something like Vanguard's or SWG's old system, but this is pretty straightforward.

There are nodes all over the place, the only exceptions being for scholar, where you only find them in ruins and on the occasional mob, and the infamous tin nodes, which are required for tier 1 metalsmith. Admittedly these are a pain, but only really if you're going for mastery, which should require a bit of effort anyway.
 
Donwloaded this overnight.

I've only ever played WoW and it got a little tiresome and repetative, hoping this is much better. Looking forward to seeing what its like. Will it play on an average laptop? My girlfriend might like to get into it too so might grab the lo-fi version and see how it goes.

When I've got home about 5:20, goodbye social life! lol
 
Dup said:
Donwloaded this overnight.

I've only ever played WoW and it got a little tiresome and repetative, hoping this is much better. Looking forward to seeing what its like. Will it play on an average laptop? My girlfriend might like to get into it too so might grab the lo-fi version and see how it goes.

When I've got home about 5:20, goodbye social life! lol
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It worked on the lowest settings on my macbook( running xp) with integrated intel graphics. Framerate of around 20 - 25 on average
 
Sleepery said:
The crafting system in lotro is hardly ultra difficult though, it's pretty much comparable to standard crafting in a lot of modern mmo's. You click a crafting station, pick a recipe, and it tells you what you need. I can understand needing a faq for something like Vanguard's or SWG's old system, but this is pretty straightforward.

There are nodes all over the place, the only exceptions being for scholar, where you only find them in ruins and on the occasional mob, and the infamous tin nodes, which are required for tier 1 metalsmith. Admittedly these are a pain, but only really if you're going for mastery, which should require a bit of effort anyway.
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Indeed, its a pretty straight forward crafting system imo...its not rocket science that copper ore is mined by hitting copper ore deposits and that copper ore smelts into copper ingots and x number of copper ingots make a metal item. Seems pretty logical
 
some of the quests are a bit diffcult for crafting, like the 1 im doing at the moment its a lvl 23 quest needing to head into the lone lands and kill a mob so he drops the twisted branch, i got the quest when i was lvl 17, currently playing on the american server called Dawwordelf or something like that anyways.
 
yeah they gate some of the crafting tiers of your primary profession behind quest lines, there's also one a 40 i remember for the woodworker which is in the Trollshaws behind the troll that you have to kill as part of the book quests and a cook quest in the same place (with loads of drakes and other nasties about). the major flaw with the crating system was that some of them were pretty useless from a money making pov - cooks, jewellers and scholars are (were) the main money making professions, the rest didn't seem worth trying with, and no serious cash was made until the top tier.

having said that, i found farming and cooking very relaxing in game :D it's nowhere near as frustrating as the AoC one was, spent ages mapping all the nodes only for a patch to come which marked them all on the map - i gave up after that :(
 
Last Kronin said:
some of the quests are a bit diffcult for crafting, like the 1 im doing at the moment its a lvl 23 quest needing to head into the lone lands and kill a mob so he drops the twisted branch, i got the quest when i was lvl 17, currently playing on the american server called Dawwordelf or something like that anyways.
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The thing is, even though the quest is such low level, it unlocks tier 3 crafting for use. Tier 3 crafts need mats you can't get until the high-20s anyway, and if you're making equipment most of the recipes have a level requirement higher than the level of the quest that'll only be usable to you when you're capable of getting the quest completed without help.

One thing I liked about the LOTRO crafting was that it was pretty useful all through the game, at least until Moria. I went scholar by that point, and I got some good stuff out of it even though I only started using the enamels from about tier 4 onwards and didn't join the guild until about lv45, but some of the weaponsmith recipes made weapons noticeably better than the quest reqards equivalent to the min level requirement - especially the critted versions, which were awesome.

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sr4470 said:
So many free to play MMOs now, I wish the industry didn't transparently try to jump on the World of Warcraft bandwagon...
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Yes, because WoW is famous for being free to play :rolleyes:
 
sr4470 said:
Nevermind, seems the point sailed past your head...they're free to play because they're not going to capture anywhere near the same player base. It's a desperate attempt to draw people into the MMO genre.
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Well I am not really sure that applies to LOTRO. Its been out for 3 years so its not a new MMO trying to build a fresh userbase and after seeing their revenues increase 500% when they made DDO f2p I suspect that their motivation is to increase the financial viability of LOTRO for continued growth rather than to lure new players into the MMO genre. Indeed I somewhat suspect that their likely intended audience is actually former LOTRO players rather than new ones specifically.
 
sr4470 said:
Nevermind, seems the point sailed past your head...
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I think it sailed past everyones head :p

The current ftp craze among western mmos is largely due to the success of Dungeons and Dragons, which went from being a hair's breadth from closure to making Turbine an absolute boatload of money.

People have been trying to woo WoW's playerbase for years by making games like WoW. I really don't think this has anything to do with it.
 
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May give this a go now its free :)
Is it worth me purchasing the shadows of agnmar and the mines of moria or just play for free.I can get them both delivered for £9.Would this make me a premium player with benefits or is this not worth it really.I may get the 14 day trial but i go away on monday so am unsure what is the best route to take
 
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