LOTRO to relaunch as free to play?

I mean, it is free to play and all the content is open play until April something. Just start a new acct while you wait for your old one.

Seriously, all reports are that it takes weeks to hear back.

But…but…what about my main?

Jesus, is that true? For a log-in issue? That makes me…not want to bother with LOTRO. If that’s the level of support it’s getting these days… :(

Honestly, though, I’m in no hurry now. I wanted to grab footage for a video I was making about bears, but it had to be posted today. Since I couldn’t get that footage, I can just wait until whenever they get back to me. I guess I’ll go recover the hard drive space now.

-Tom

Aawww the class that summons, the name of which I forget, gets a bear as their first summoned buddy.

These days arent exactly normal, though - I sent a ticket to ubisoft 6 days ago, and havent heard anything yet.

Lore-master, hey stop reminding me of how great this is.

And it lost its spot in the top ten to the bear a Ranger gets in Guild Wars 2.

Yeah, that makes sense. It just seems to me “hey, I need a new password for my account and your email system isn’t sending the email to re-set my password” is the sort of thing someone could fix in ten minutes, top, even if they’re working from home. But it’s always easy to talk about how easy something is when you can’t see inside the sausage factory.

-Tom

I got a password reset in seconds after my request last night. However, I had my old username saved. Guessing your submitted email or username isn’t matching anything in their system?

FWIW, ArenaNet is on top of these types of requests. I needed to change the email I log in with and they got back to me in a few days.

You’re right though, they should have some way of being able to confirm you are who you are. Blizzard used to just have you send them a copy of your license or something and they’d use that for authorization.

Whenever I get stuck in one of those “password reset email never shows up” it’s almost always because the email I had associated with my account was an old one that I no longer had access to (in fact, I’m experiencing that right now with my Origin account and I’ve pretty much written it off because I can’t seem to get it straightened out).

A lot of the “send me a password reset emails” just blithely accept an email address that’s not in their system - they don’t warn you the email isn’t found, they just don’t send the email (that’s sort of security related so while I understand why they do it, I still don’t like it).

Still zero response from Standing Stone on my customer support ticket for being unable to get an automated password reset. No replies to my emails or my attempt to reach them on Twitter. At this point, the only reason I want into my account is so I can shut it down out of spite! That’ll show 'em!

-Tom

Aside from laggard customer service, I am finding another reason to stop playing this.

I have been playing LOTRO on and off for over 12 years. It had always been possible to be a fairly casual player but still compete “on level”. There has always been a lot of grinding involved to get the best gear, but having that level of gear was optional to do most of the content.

That no longer seems to be the case. I am playing a level 123 Loremaster, and I am getting spanked by level 120 landscape MOBs. I can survive against one, but two is tough and 3 will usually kill me. Especially if one is “signature” level. This is all related to gear. I have imbued legendaries that are at the level cap. But it seems you can no longer acquire suitable armor to be competitive without serious grinding. This is an unfortunate change that has forced me to leave.

A rebuild of your skills might be the thing, I noticed my character was lacking in either dps or survivability until I moved some stuff around.

But yea, I am thinking certain areas of the game have been skewed to heavily towards grouping again, the game had this problem at launch also - where you could hardly progress without a group to aid you.

The legendary system is also a great idea, but the implementation of it leaves a lot to be desired. Especially when it seems like it doesn’t keep up with the rest of the item drops in the game, so if you spent thousands on the gear since 100 and still use it… it might be holding you back by a lot compared to some shitty purple drop at ilevel 120.

I haven’t been back to the game for a while now (bought the expensive expansion edition)… so stuck at 125 still. The reason is simply - Full inventory and full quest journal. I do not want to drop quests I have “kept” just so I can pick up some more in the new zone, and the inventory items are mostly task items that should stack to 1000 and not 50, as well as foodstuffs, gear I haven’t gotten around to be using, maps and whatnot. (Already have 300+ slot bank/shared vault etc… that is full).

Why can not games let me hoard everything and pick up every quest. When UO first started you could fill your inventory with soooo much stuff… then they added weight to it and you ran into problems (and some interesting way to kill people, by dropping stuff on other characters to overload them, then attacking them immediately aftewards they’d run out of stamina quickly because they had 1000 crossbow arrows in their inventory suddenly… or a bunch of ore…).

I don’t think it’s a skill issue. My armor is way behind where it needs to be at this level. It used to be if I just did quests, I would get armor as rewards that would keep up. That doesn’t seem to be happening now. Armor rewards for quests are scarce. The game seems to want me to grind for rep to get tokens to spend on level appropriate gear. No thanks.

I found that doing Skirmishes was the best way to get gear, and it didn’t require me to “LFG” for hours to find a party either. Sometimes I even do a “box run” also, if I happen to be lucky by looking in chat when someone announces a run.

Really hate that
a) nobody uses the new lfg system
b) the new lfg system doesn’t incentivise use.

They really should have taken a 20 minute playthrough of Rift to see how their LFG / Dungeon finder works and incentivies group play.

https://www.lotro.com/en/friendsforever
Free content now extended through August 31st, and they are going to be issuing a free coupon code redeemable for ALL currently available quest packs added to your account permanently.

You will also soon be able to purchase the expansion quests for Moria, Mirkwood, Isengard, Rohan and Helm’s Deep, plus the instance clusters for Isengard and Rohan, for only 99 LOTRO points each from the in-game store. That is fantastic, as it should allow all F2P accounts to basically play the game free for months/years even after the current free promotion ends. You can easily scoop up 700 LOTRO points to purchase all 7 of the above packs just by normal adventuring/exploring and doing deeds in the early zones.

Note that if I am reading that correctly, you will only get the expansion quests and instances, NOT the expansion add-ons like extra character classes, slots, abilities, etc… For those you would still need to purchase the expansions.

That’s still an amazing deal! Thank you!

I jumped back in because COVID.

Made a new toon, and just hit level 105, which was the level cap on my main when I quit like four years ago. It was way easier/faster to get to 105 this go around, which is kind of sad because I felt like I had to skip a lot of content just to avoid outleveling the book quests. At this point, I’m in Minas Tirith, and just doing book quests.

The game runs much better than before, since the 64-bit engine upgrade and the recent physics patch. The graphics also seem updated from launch, with NPC/mob models seemingly more detailed. The game is still fantastic, the lore unmatched. I’m glad I jumped back in, though my Witcher 3 run has stalled because of it!

Yea, was going to bump for the news SLaintheMhath posted. Good stuff from Tur…Stone…Lotro.
Well worth it to grab it even if you’re not currently playing.

Only thing missing now is for them to update Premium Housing with task boards from 110+ and possibly adding the correct tooltips to all task items. (and the whole performance increase, and RTX support).

Just to clarify, so basically anyone will be able to do the quests for those expansions permanently if they use the coupon code. But in order to get all the add-ons, like slots, etc, you can buy each one for 99 points each?

Not exactly.

It has not been released yet, but from what I understand the coupon code is good for all the individual zone quest packs you can purchase from the LOTRO store, usually for 595- 795 LOTRO points. Quest packs like Trollshaws, Angmar, Enedwaith, Wildermore, etc…

The 99 LOTRO point discounted price will be specifically for Expansion Quest Packs. Those are typically more expensive (1495 LOTRO points, except for Mirkwood which is 695). These are limited to Moria, Mirkwood, Isengard, Rohan and Helm’s Deep. The instance clusters for the Isengard and Rohan Expansions will also have a price reduction to 99 LOTRO points. These discounts will only be for a limited time however, so save up those LOTRO points now.

You can see a list of all Quest Packs, including the Expansion Quest Packs, here.

If, however, you want the other features that come with the Expansions, such as the Rune Keeper and Warden classes with Moria, or the level cap increases, or the crafting tier increases, or Mounted Combat from Rohan for example, you will either have to purchase the Expansions through the Standing Stones store (they go on sale fairly often) OR you can purchase only the individual features you want using LOTRO points through the in-game store.