Getting back into LoTRO can be tough but you start picking things up as you play. I’d been gone for a year or two when I came back to Hagall and at first I was just boggled. But through trial and mostly error it all started coming back to me. “Wait, wasn’t there something I did when this happened? Oh, right, there it is.”
Also rejiggering my toolbars helped me refocus myself on how things worked by putting related or complimentary powers in proximity.
Anyhow, there’s some bumps on the road to Mirkwood for some of us:
We have the following issues reported on Brandywine and Landroval:
* Stuck at loading screens
* Rubber-banding
* Kinship information not appearing for several minutes
* A confirmed crash to desktop when a housing/kinhall port is moused over while in "kinless" state
* Unable to take the boat to Mirkwood (stuck loading screen - this seems specific to Landroval)
* "Cleaning up old connections" error message
* "Character still being saved" error message
* Unable to form fellowships
* Standing corpses
I didn’t see this myself but I’ve not quite made it into Mirkwood yet. Still lurking around Lothlorien. One of my friends did hit several including the Kinship and login issues.
One of my issues with LOTRO is the art style - it is usually dreadfully bland. I simply hate playing after a while because the world is ugly. I’m wondering if Turbine’s artists have gotten any better.
I think you’re nuts. I find LoTRO gorgeous in most cases. Some places more than others but it’s much better than WoW for example. It may be more subtle than candy-like but it’s all in the details.
To add a bit more detail, I think Hobbiton is really neat looking, but places like the Lone Lands were dreadful. Some of the newer ice area (can’t remember the name) captivated me, but when I think the Misty Mountains sucked.
Well, from the screenies Mirkwood looks a bit murky and dark. Not sure that’s the most fascinating visual stuff even if it’s the most appropriate. What do you want? It’s Mirkwood.
I think it’s the sameness of the world that bothers me. There are places that are pretty incredible looking, but there are just too many that look just like places you’ve just been. I know that helps with creating a cohesive world, but it just gets dull. Plus, the ground textures in some places just bother the heck out of me, like this screenie:
I obviously didn’t hate it entirely as I did get a character to level 51. I bought the Moria pack but never even got in that area. It probably didn’t help that my minstrel (I always play a healer) never felt very powerful and so leveling was a real struggle. About once a year, I hear its siren’s call and end up playing for a month or two, but I just can’t seem to stick to it.
The new combat seems super fast to me on my Burglar. I never had a skill queued up. I turned on the optional animations, that probably helps a bit too (the character is constantly moving now).
They revamped combat so that auto attack animations don’t hold up specials. As a result many classes fight more fluidly. As a minstrel, the change isn’t as profound, but combat feels better and dps output may be higher. Certain skills can also interrupt currently executing skills, so you don’t get stuck waiting to use clobber, for instance.
At first blush, I’m enjoying the skirmish system. Insta-friggin-gratification. From anywhere in the world you can just access a menu and decide to launch a skirmish mission. Most of them can be set to solo but they scale up all the way to 12-man raids at least. The maps are set, with certain victory locations or conditions in each playthrough, but the type and number of enemies that show up for each battle seems, somewhat, randomized. Additionally there can be “encounters” that throw a special objective at you.
It reminds me most of playing a scenario in Dynasty Warriors but with far fewer soldiers on the field when you’re soloing. Here are the objectives, here are some slight variations, and here are some boss fights. There’s a good deal of variation in the skirmish battle types (defense, assault, and map layout) but within each scenario it’s clear this could get grindy and repetitive fast. The randomization doesn’t really lend itself to changing the flow of the battle. You still pretty much do the same thing each time.
But it is fun for now.
Rewards flow from skirmish mob drops and mission rewards and there are a mess of vendors at various skirmish camps set up in the world. You can improve your NPC soldier in a variety of ways and with different specializations, buy armor and weapons for yourself, get Legacy junk, reputation stuff, cosmetic stuff…all without leaving the camp itself.
The only think I don’t think you can do with the assorted skirmish tokens is buy up Deeds. Which is a damn shame. I hate grinding those things.
All in all, it’s good stuff. Many players like it in particular because it’s content they can use to keep entertained when other friends can’t play for a while. Many people like moving through the epic story and other missions together. Harvesting ore isn’t quite the fascinating minigame but skirmish mode is.
Edit: I should add I’ve only started with this and I’ve only soloed so far. At higher difficulties, or with larger parties, what seem to be trivial differences in randomization or “power up” loot drops might have more of an impact on how a battle plays out.
I noticed that but I wasn’t at all sure which Deeds they were going towards. What I was saying is that you can’t spend tokens on Deeds. I’d love to see a link to that diary, or may look it up myself, because if this helps with Deeds too I may never leave skirmish mode. They’ll miss me at the Prancing Pony.
I think it depends on which deeds you referring to. Any non-gray mob will count toward a skill deed and any of a specific class of mob, orc, hillman, etc. will count toward a racial deed. However I believe that the skirmishes are in their own pocket realities and don’t count toward location specific deeds, like kill 200 orcs in Bree-land.
The skirmishes scale quite well. There is a choice in group size and difficulty. (Tier I, II, or III). I ran a few with a small fellowship, 3 people, at Tier III difficulty and it was quite a challenge. The are new lieutnent mobs in the skirmishes which really change the complextion of the battle. There are deeds for killing these as well.
The skirmishes are also nice as RP instances, but I am probably in the minority in caring about that.
We’re talking about LoTRO. Next to SWG, there are more roleplayers per capita there than any other MMO I’ve played in. Send me a tell if you’d like more muscle on a mission. Hagall’s a L60 Champion with an AoE focus (always has but now it’s finally paying off in Skirmish mode) and I’m building up a Warrior Soldier wingman who’s also going to be an AoE machine in time.
My thinking is that if one Champion is awesome in skirmish mode the only thing better is, effectively, two Champions!
As much as I love grouping when I can in LotRO (and anytime an ad hoc group forms up nearby and asks for more, I happily jump right in), I’ve had a real hell of a time trying to get groups for the Volume 1 books, and I refuse to do them out of order or start Volume 2 until I finish them. I want to enjoy the ongoing story, darnit! :)
I’d love it if they setup the story quests so that you could set them to “solo” or “fellowship” mode. Make the fellowship versions much more rewarding in terms of experience and item/money rewards to encourage grouping, but this way there’s a solo option for players going through older content when there are fewer people looking to run it later in a game’s lifecycle.
I’d love to do some RP again it’s been forever since we’ve RP’d together.
We always have room for more in skirmishes. Lately Ive been doing them with two friends using either a hunter, burg, minstrel combo, or a hunter and two minstrels. Suffice to say we could use someone with some toughness. Though it really tests your skill and creativity to fight say two EM’s without a tank.
