Appotus Dominus

[Gribiel]

So I was bored a twork about 2-weeks ago and ran into the Lord of the Rings online beta form..which I had completely forgotten to exist, so I signed up. Lo and behold I got an e-mail 2-days ago with a closed beta account key. So all those nerds that have been waiting for years and years got screwed because I was bored and somehow made it in.

So, is anyone else in the beta? The NDA has apparently been lifted so chatting about it is fine. I have a dwarf on Brandywine named Gribiel. Gimmie a holler!

-Gribiel the Lovedorf

[Mildane]

Is it any fun?

[Gribiel]

To be honest I haven't gotten too far into it. The monster detail is great- really enjoyed the looks of the models. The classes are rather limited, basically have:

Guardian = Tank
Champion = warrior/rogue
Minstrel = Cleric
Ranger = Wizard (Hits hard, but no armor)
Burglar = Rogue + Enchanter (CC abilities)
Lore-master = Nature Necro /w pet + Ranger Heals
Captain = Paladin w/ pet and 10min reuse LoH

The quests are rather confusing and the directions are vague. Where WoW is very "turn left in 50ft and jump 3 times", LotR is more " To the distant north, past the rock of the King Under the Mountain, turn towards the sun and a leap of faith must be taken not once, not twice, but thrice!"

Killing mobs have yeilded little exp, but quests end up giving quite a bit, so grinding is not very efficient. Matter of factly, I would say leveling is rather slow.

Plus transitioning from WoW, where nothing is instanced, and for some reason they've instanced half the damned houses. Loading from one instance to another only takes about 5 seconds, but the fact that you need to is a bit odd.

I think there is a reason for these instances because once you complete certain quests, you will completely change a specific area; i.e. a cave in has taken place. So when you enter an area, the cave in is there and perhaps you can now go down a different path, but for some other guy, the cave in hasn't occured, so he can't go down the 2nd path.

There are these things called "vision pools" or something along those lines, that let you "converse with events in the past", which I'm led to believe that if your friend hasn't completed the "Cave-in" portion of the cave, you can "go back in time" and assist him with that portion of the quest. Haven't tried that out yet, but I would think that's what they'd do.

As I'm only lvl 8, I can't give too much of an opinion, but I get farther along, i'll be able to offer a bit more.

-Gribiel v1.0

[Kalamurv]

I played in the stress test, it was actually pretty fun. And honestly Id much rather vague instructions for quests, wow was way to easy on the quests

[Nerple]

No Ranger = gay.

Brandywine is a good diner.
_________________

[Gribiel]

There are rangers, they just play more like wizards. High dps, low armor/hp.

So I hit 15 over the weekend and enjoying things a bit more. One of the memory slots on my MB is busted, so I'm stuck with playing on only 1G of ram and it gets to be quite a pain- but that's a side note.

Running into more of these 1-room instances and they're definetly used to alter world events. Went to some ruins during the day and was able to fight a group of mobs. When I started a quest that sent me to the ruins, i was able to enter the same ruins but now be able to traverse farther in. And when the quest finished, I can go back to those ruins and I'll still have full access.

Tradeskills...what a pain in the ass. To gather materials you need certain tools and have to have to manually equipt them, and these tools apparently break easily after harvesting a lot of materials. Unfortunatly, there are about 4 nodes in the dwarf starting zone and you can only get, say 1-3 copper per node. Now you need tin, which there is only 2-3 of in the damned place, where you only get 1-3 tin per node. Now you combine copper and tin into some bronze binding, which you need 3 of plus other materials in order to make level 15 bronze boots, that you can buy off merchants for identical AC.

Now, scattered among these copper and tin mines are Iron and Silver, of which I'm not proficient enough to mine, but it doesn't tell me what skill I need to be to use them. I have no idea how to train new skills and there is no guide available.

So looking back on the game, I would say it's a mix between EQ and WoW.

Lots of Quests for Items + EXP = WoW
Large initial learning curve = EQ
Detailed graphics = Better than WoW
Soloing ability = WoW (Though apparently soloing slows down in the mid-30s)
Pain in the ass tradeskills = EQ
Immersion+ Necessity of grouping early for some quests = EQ

Apparently upon hitting lvl 10 I can partake in some Monster Game, which sounded like EQ's Be a Mob scenario, but I haven't tried that out.

I did spend 30 minutes yesterday running from one town to the other...that was fun.

-Gribiel the Lovedorf

[Mildane]

[Gribiel]

It was very remenicient of the first time I ran from Freeport to Qeynos. The maps are quite large, running quite slow, and mobs are too spaced apart. There is a large patch coming this wednesday so I'll take a look at the notes and see what changes they're making.

-Gribiel the Lovedorf