One Man’s LOTRO vrs WoW Grudgematch!

These three entries about Lord of the Rings Online are actually some old entries I re-published because I was noticing that LOTRO is currently performing quite well on MMORPG.com’s charts and was putting some consideration towards playing myself.  What’s being said here actually more pertains to my perception of LOTRO back when it was released.

True Roles of the Fellowship

One of the lead perks of alt-i-tus for me is the class balance discussions. I just love to see the interplay of the various professions the developers have designed into the game. Today, I turn my roving eye to the classes of Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar.

The funny thing about this game is the developers tried to make the class roles really simple by boiling them down into a few words, for example, “Nuker.” Nevermind how immersion-breaking that is: For whatever reason, these official roles are often inaccurate. Fortunately, a little research is all it takes to assemble an understanding closer to the truth.

Cresting Mount Doom

Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar has, thus far, failed to hook to me. It is not a bad game, but I’ve already played the fantasy MMORPG genre to death. Turbine has done a fairly good job of rounding up some of the best features of popular MMORPGs, as well as introducing a few new features of their own, but the overall experience feels derivative.

About the only way this game could interest me is if it were exceptionally deep or visceral, and so far it has not been. Activatable power variety per class, being an important measure for MMORPG quality for me, is about on par with your average American-made MMORPG and no greater. The animations are good, and the classes distribute the skill sets a little differently from your standard Warrior/Mage/Thief/Cleric setup, but it’s not quite a saving grace.

I haven’t given up yet, and currently plan to continue to experiment with the various classes in LOTRO and see if I can find one that plays in an entertaining fashion for me. So far I’ve tried a Lore Master, Rogue, and Captain. They start off promising enough but the treadmill asserts itself quickly. Soon, by around level 5-10ish, I’m too bored to continue playing them. Well, there’s still the Champion, Hunter, Guardian, and Minstrel. Hopefully, at least one of those will prove entertaining to me, or else maybe I’ll find the fun in one of those I’ve already played.

Bored of the Rings

Well, it’s official: Lord of the Rings Online hasn’t totally dominated my attention. Though I’ve played the release state game exclusively lately, today I only made time for City of Heroes. I found those three hours in Cryptic’s City of Heroes more thrilling than during the last three days I spent playing Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online.