And this time they mean it!
I like so much about New World, just not the PvP focus or the fact that the higher level zones seemed to get progressively darker and more depressing. If they can take a lot of the neat stuff they did with New World and make something that has more for PvE players and is a generally brighter world than New World I’m all in.
Just put lotro onto consoles
I do wonder what this will mean for good ol’ LOTRO.
Same here as well. Although I feel like LOTRO has had to operate on a skeleton crew with old tech that can’t quite get modernized for so long that maybe a new take might be worth it. I would have loved to see Amazon sink the Amazon money into LOTRO on some level and really show it some love.
Surprised they didn’t, honestly.
Getting the New World guys to remake LOTRO or something heavily inspired by it in the New World engine could be really nice. My issues with New World were more around the gameplay decisions. LOTRO is, in my humble opinion, the apex classic MMO and would love to see a modern remake.
Yeah, the New World dev team is competent at making a game that runs and looks good.
I didn’t jive with the PVP focus of New World, but I did enjoy playing it for a few dozen hours as single player.
Agreed. It was an absolute cluster (from a technical perspective) at release and the PVP focus is a bad one, IMO. That said, the environments in New World were fantastic. And that audio team… just wow. The sound of chopping trees or pickaxes hitting rock in the distance was just fantastic.
I would be very much interested in seeing what that team – hopefully with some experience under their belt – could do with a LOTR MMO.
I haven’t played LOTRO for a long time, but I was in the original beta tests way back in the day, and played it for a pretty long while… although I think that they ended up fleshing out the overall world of middle earth way more than it was when I played it. I think I stopped playing after the lothlorien expansion, before Rohan? Something like that.
One thing that was exceptional about LOTRO, is that they really captured the essence of LOTR. It “felt” right, and had just the right amount of reference to the underlying IP.
A great example was the Shire, which was one of the best areas I’ve ever encountered in an MMO. It was just a starter area, so not super hard core, but it felt like the shire should I think. It was very cool.
Honestly, I’ve been holding out hope that the rumors of them bringing LOTRO to consoles was true, as I would definitely jump back into it if I could play it from my couch.
Completely agree. An amazing starting area and honestly the original Angmar 50 level version of LOTRO is a stone cold classic for me. Dumped so much time into that.
As they expanded more and more, it felt like they didn’t really have the content or gameplay to support so many areas (for the ones I experienced). I found Moria impressive in scale but eventually found it tedious and just wanted out. I liked some of the next areas, like Rohan, but eventually found them tedious and just wanted out. In Rohan’s case it was because I couldn’t stand the mounted mechanics. I’m still happy to run through those Angmar areas over and over.
Ya, I think that original release of LOTRO was made by people who actually cared about the IP.
Honestly, I think it’s probably one of the best uses of any IP that I’ve ever seen in a video game.
Yeah, I remember trying it out when it went F2P, and it was really cool just running around Hobbiton. There was a lot of care to make it feel LOTR-y.
I definitely think that the New World peeps could do a great job with that IP, because New World certainly looked and felt pretty great to play.
Remember when Qt3 played it together? We did the opening quests in the Shire, and then Tom Bombadil quests, and then onward until that tall mountain where Aragon fought the Wights in the movie and kicked their ass. And then we reached Rivendell, and then our group petered out.
That was really fun though. @tomchick was great at organizing our group early on, and then we lost him, and we lost others, and then by the time we got to Rivendell, we had lost too many of us and I lost interest as well. I think a core three or four of you actually continued together even after Rivendell.
That was a fascinating and entertaining week.
I think LOTRO’s Shire is my favorite area in any MMO.
Lord of the Rings Online holds a special place in my heart, partly because of those group games, @Rock8man. We did some of those in Guild Wars as well, but I don’t think I ever had the emotional attachment to Guild Wars that I had to Lord of the Rings Online. Guild Wars was never more than just a really cool game; but LOTRO was a world expressed in an MMO.
I’m actually kind of glad I couldn’t get it working last time I tried. In addition to not really needing a lifestyle game in my life, I’m guessing the Actual LOTRO can’t compare to the one I remember. For instance, that mission in Rivendell where you just walk along with Frodo while he muses about the coming journey. Back then, that knocked my socks off. What kind of game did that? Added a fanfic monologue for a familiar literary character?
But I bet if I ran into it now, I’d just be irritated that I couldn’t skip the dialogue. Either games aren’t what they once were or I’m not who I once was. Probably, a little from column A, a little from column B… :)
Oh hey, I found the thread where you got us together Tom.
And here was my comment after the first night:
My little hobbit hunter spent a Sunday afternoon doing the barrow wights quest Bombadil doled out in a fellie Tom put together that day. I took a great screenshot of the group (that I’ve since lost) that I used as my desktop background for several years.
Top 5 gaming experiences for me for sure. My loremaster main was badass. Being in a kin with good people was alot of fun. I never played WoW back in the day, so I guess LOTRO served as my first exposure to many of the same concepts, but the lord of the ringsiness of it all made the game feel very warm and inviting.
The mines of moria expansion is where it started to lose it for me. Perhaps not so much the game itself (although I remember gold inflation became quit the problem), but that everything good has to end sometime.
One of the recent expansions, Gundabad…is basically Mines of Moria part 2. Except they did include some outdoor zones.
I think they also finally did big battles a bit better with the War of Three peaks. Not a seperate mode or small epic instance quest but a whole zone. Also it’s basically WWI. Trenches, tunnels, poison gas.