There are a few quests where you need to group up, but very few in the “epic” storyline that require it – and those are generally all quite short (non-storyline quests can easily be skipped if you so choose). Plus, there’s no shortage of QT3 folk who’ll group up with you.
I hate pick-up group hell as much as anyone, and I have no complaints about LOTRO whatsoever.
Speaking of group quests, I still need to find a group to do Broken Alliance. I want to see how that storyline progresses. I’ve tried it at least twice so far, with no luck yet. I could have tried it this morning, as a PUG was forming, but I had to go to work.
I can’t see how anyone who doesn’t like WoW would be at all interested in LotRO unless they are quite the Tolkin fanboi.
The fact that you even reference the fact that the gameplay is weak after lvl 10 is rather surprising. Maybe they turned up the xp required to level but in a long weekend of casual gameplay I came close to lvl 10.
As bad as WoW? Have my ears gone insane?
In LotRO, there aren’t many classes, and most have some sort of morale
boosting ability to survive longer. Morale is what passes for health here.
Minstrels restore it directly, captains can boost their group, champions can
manage their own morale to some extent. You’ve got much more leeway with
the group composition, and you don’t really need a full group when more than
one person is needed. I’d say WoW grouping is bad compared to it, but only
because LotRO does it a notch better.
Are there multiple quest/story paths like in WoW, or does everyone sort of end up doing the same things after the low level areas? I actually would prefer the latter for now, so I can get onto the same quest paths as other players easily. Right now I’m still in Ered Luin, so I’m wondering if I’m expected to go west after this, or if I head east to Bree to join up with the mans (SWORDED!) and hobbits.
Actually, I disagree with Equis that you can solo to 30. It might be physically possible, but you would have to skip a lot of quests, many of which are in the storyline. You would also have to do a lot of tedious under-level questing.
Now, keep in mind that grouping doesn’t mean what you might think it means from WoW. You don’t have to throw your lot in with a bunch of random jokers and play for an hour through a long instance. The Great Barrows stuff we did yesterday was fairly involved, but those were sideline quests. The story instances tend to be really short.
So you can tool along on your own, get to where you need to group and – depending on the time of day – just join some folks on-the-fly to accomplish an objective. Then you can peel off and be soloing on your merry way. The mid-level quests are also littered with hunting quests that can be varying degrees of tedious depending on your class, but they can be easily soloed.
In LOTRO, you will group, like it or not. But they can be short, non-committal groups with players who are, in my experience, much less juvenile than what I’ve encountered in WoW. Although, ideally, you won’t have to fuss with them. There are a couple dozen of us in the kinship who have been very active since the beginning. We’d love to have you join us and I’m keen on continuing to organize regular gatherings.
As for the quest progression, each of the four races has its own starting area. Then you’re channeled into Bree. Then you move outwards from Bree into the Lone Lands and North Downs, basically moving back and forth between them. After that, there are still the Trollshaws, Misty Mountains, and Angmar to be seen, not to mention the Ettenmoors with the PvP stuff.
Also something very cool: Trolls.
-Tom“Kill elves. Take ears.”
Well, just to put in a little defense of WoW, there is plenty of on the fly grouping there for regular quests or for shorter elite quests (at least when a server’s population is healthy for a given level range), and you could comfortably level from 1-70 without ever setting foot inside an instance if you so chose. (You wouldn’t be the best geared, unless you took the time to make enough money to kit yourself out at the auction house, but you would be well geared enough to keep advancing – until you reach the level cap, of course, at which point advancement itself takes on a different meaning.)
As for the juvenile WoW player base, well, yes. No argument there. Plenty of good people too but you have to find them.
I think the difference is that LOTRO never discourages grouping. For instance, there are plenty of hunting quests in WoW where you have to gather ‘x’ drops. In WoW, no one wants to group for those, because they take longer to get ‘x’ when you have more people. But LOTRO either always gives everyone an ‘x’, or gives everyone an equal chance of spawning an ‘x’ from a given corpse.
Similarly, even if your character has finished a quest, there is almost always a deed incentive to replay it. Even if you’re not getting xp, that’s not the only track for character advancement. My elf just qualified for a cool ability called ‘Return to Rivendell’ once she kills 150 orcs. So now I have a great incentive to group with someone doing the orc-killing quests, because I’ll get credit for all the orcs we kill. In WoW, there would be no reason for me to group with someone doing a quest that gives me greys, for instance.
Also, in LOTRO, the quests that require groups are almost always very short. I’ve come across a few that are long, but they’re on the sidelines, and it’s usually pretty clear that they’re going to be long. Instead, it seems like LOTRO is built to encourage you to jump in with people from time to time, and to give you an incentive to stay with them if you all get along.
But in most cases, grouping is something like "/t bystander Hey, would you help me kill this guy?’ Bystander says ‘sure’, you both kill the guy, and you go your separate ways. This is even more feasible because LOTRO has a number of tricks that mix up the levels of player characters in the world (deeds and crafting). I routinely see folks several levels below me, and I know the quests they’re doing and where they need help. It’s no skin of my back to offer them a hand, and I think LOTRO planned it to be that way.
-TomI’ve noticed this as well. Despite the node-thieving, critter-stealing stuff I tend to recognize from my WoW days (hey, it’s the gorilla, of course the crappy behaviour gets attributed to it), for the most part the impromptu quest groups I’ve been a part of (or created myself) have been very focused, quick, and polite.
Sometimes totally silent, true, but still competent and useful.
Any idea why that is? Is it exactly because these quests are for the most part rather short?
Wonder if that’s the trick. Keep it short so that even the juveniles don’t get bored and antsy…
My theory is that it’s a number of things:
a) The instances are short and driven by a narrative.
b) Quests that require grouping are placed in high traffic areas (for instance, in the Barrow Downs, you can’t swing a dead barghest without hitting someone who wants to rescue Lalia or get to that ancient chest for Ruins of Cardolan).
c) We’re seeing players who are drawn into the game because of the license, not because it’s the latest MMO.
d) The game is still new and hasn’t been dissected by hardcore min/maxxers yet.
I’ve also run into a few assholes, of course. I had grouped with some obvious new players who were hanging out by that altar for Drawing the Pack, a quest where you have to summon a badass Warg leader in the Lone Lands. This group had tried it once, gotten killed, and asked for help in the Looking For Fellowship channel.
I was the same level as them and I had yet to finish that quest. I was in the neighborhood, since there are so many other quests over there. I saw the request and thought, ‘Perfect! I’ve been waiting for a group for that. Here’s the opportunity for me to finish this group quest and then move on with what else I’m doing.’
Meanwhile, another guy – Imyanoob – had offered to join them as well. Seems you can tell a lot by the name someone chooses. He was on his way, while the four of us were sitting around the altar waiting to summon the Warg leader. He’s still a ways off when he tells the Fellowship to summon the Warg. We do. It arrives. We’re fighting it. It’s going all right.
And here comes Imyanoob running over a hill, swooping down, and finishing off the Warg and it’s companions in two or three hits. He was about ten levels above the quest, and the Wargs were obviously grey for him, and he was at the point where he must have been catassing the hell out of the game since its launch. He loots the corpse, gets the roll for the rare drop (used for certain crafting recipes), and then leaves the fellowship without another word.
Now he didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, and he was answering a call for help. But it was pretty unsatisfying to be completely twinked by some guy who swoops in and essentially finishes the quest for us without saying a word. Maybe it’s just me.
But I ended up hanging out with these three other guys, killing Dourhands, showing them where Ost Guruth was, and having a much easier time cracking open Ancient Vases for the scholar goodies I need. In the end, it was a best-case scenario for how LOTRO encourages – and then rewards – grouping.
-TomYou know it wasn’t you ;)
It seems that the only way to enjoy an MMO for some of us is to preempt the Thotbotters (both the users and creator/contributors). In the perfect future MMO that I envision, the cortical implant will be scanned for thottbot implants and deny entry to those even vaguely tainted by it.
Ok, so I installed the client but it does not patch properly. What’s this file that I need?
Edit: Never mind, I think I found what I need through google.
Edit Deux: Argh, the key Andrew sent me doesn’t work.
Edit the Third: Ok, so I found the appropriate website to enter the key, but I apparently have a US account but a EU client, which won’t play nicely together. This is maddening.
I’ll corroborate what Tom is saying. I am definitely a solo-minded player, but the way they’ve implemented grouping in LOTRO, I don’t mind it at all. My server (Vilya*) is fairly empty of numbskull players and groups only need to last as long as you want them to, so pick-up groups don’t grate on me like they have in other games.
IOW, for those of you still looking for excuses to hate this game, the grouping requirement isn’t really a good one to hang your hat on.
*Tom, you might want to relieve me of officer duties for KoQt3. My main was started on Vilya before you guys settled on Nimrodel and I can’t bear to let her go, so I’m doing most of my playing there again. I had fun on the Monster Run, though. If you do another one of those, I’d like to join in.
How are the classes at soloing? I’ve read that lore-masters, champions guardians, and hunters are the best. How similar are burglars to Wow’s rogues?
Well, technically, you could solo all the way to 30. You would just be missing out on a lot the game has to offer. Then again, this is an MMORPG, the social factor of playing with other people online is a large part of the quest design. If you didn’t want to group while playing, might I suggest that anything online might not be for you.
There is one thing I would like to add to the grouping experience in LOTRO. These group quest (sans the chapter stuff) don’t usually come at the end of a long group quest chain. Most of the time, you’re following a solo quest chain of 3-5 quests until the final boss quest. It isn’t hard to find someone else who just wants to tick that final quests of their log, especially if they’re already in the area. It’s sort of like playing a single player and finding a handy NPC right when you need to for a boss fight.
The other group quests are upfront about their grouping requirement. Whether you choose to do them or not depends on whether you want to experience the content, get the reward or actually be sociable in an MMORPG. They aren’t all required game-playing.
The reason why you would group though is to follow the narrative. (The chapter stuff) I think this is one thing that LOTRO far outstrips WoW in; there’s an actual story to follow. It’s not fantastic writing, but it is pretty interesting, especially if you’re a already a fan of Tolkien’s world. WoW never really had a story, just bits and pieces cobbled together without really ever connecting. In LOTRO, you do have a feeling that you’re aiding in the larger war against Mordor. Those story instances where they change some part of the world design is actually pretty cool and does a little to offset the static world feeling many other MMORPGs have. I think it’s fine that few NPCs are treating me as the saviour of the world, rather then the helpful hand that’s passing through on my own adventures.
Also, fellowship manoeuvres; they are the cool.
I have a great time playing WoW mostly solo. I group up to do instances and battlegrounds but otherwise play entirely solo. At least in WoW, getting a group to do instances is very easy, and I have had very few bad experiences with pickup groups (though I only do the regular 5 man stuff and would never even consider doing any raid content). I’ve found in WoW that it is nearly impossible to find a pick up group for non-instance quests. You can pretty much forget about doing the string of elite quests in Arathi or the Hinterlands unless you get very lucky with some incredibly persistent person who’s been working for months to put a group together that you happen to stumble into. I take it this is very different in LOTRO? Even so, I’m thinking that conceptually I just wouldn’t be liking it even if it were.
I haven’t found it to be quite that bad, getting groups for non-instanced elite stuff in WoW – on various toons at various times I’ve pugged Jintha Alor or the ogre mound in Loch Modan, the elite dwarf places in Hillsbrad and Wetlands. Part of it is dependent on the server population, and whether you are part of a “wave” of toons at the right level moving through a zone. In Burning Crusade, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been involved in pugs for the various Nagrand elite stuff – Tusker, Durn the Hungerer, Cho’War, Gurok the Usurper, Ring of Blood, etc. Again, it probably helps that the zone is fairly crowded these days and that even level 70 characters might be puttering around there to mine or fight over Halaa etc.
It is harder than getting a dungeon group generally, I’ll grant. I think that partly has to do with the fact that people may be willing to run a dungeon in their level range even if they have already completed the relevant quests – whether because of rep grinding or because there is loot they want. On the other hand, you aren’t going to be too inclined to run Stromguarde when you have already done the quests on that character, so it comes down to whether you are helping a friend/guildy or just feeling altruistic.
I don’t know anything about World of Warcraft, but my burglar is doing decently well at soloing. He started out as kind of a crappy DPSer, but around 20 he began to come into his own.