SerratedBiz
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2009
- Messages
- 4,143
Heard some stupid lore-change thing ruined this game. Is it still fun to get into and play?
Aside from actually reading his works, definitely. It's the best adaptation.LotRO is arguably the best way to immerse yourself into Tolkien lore.
Most importantly, does this still apply?
1) They added a hand-to-hand class called Brawler. It costs points / money so I don't see a lot of them running around. If that kind of thing breaks your immersion, listening to 'Brawlbo' the hobbit talk about his job on world chat may be too much for you.
2) Yes. I'm actually rereading the trilogy for the first time since I was a child and I decided to fire up the game in parallel. There's a ton of little tidbits, quotes and situations which they draw upon and expand quite tastefully, at least in the chunk of game that I've experienced. I'm in Moria right now, which in-game is situated in the aftermath of the Fellowship's passing, but earlier in the game I coincided with the Fellowship in Rivendell and ran some quests for them. Sometimes, a very off-hand line from the book will suddenly make its way into the game and a storyline branches off from it, which gives me a nice feeling of connection and familiarity which I wasn't expecting.
I do recommend NOT completing all the side-quests though, unless you're some kind of masochist completionist. The game has a TON of quests and, although the lore is rich and interesting and even fun to read at times, they're 80% classic MMO fetch quests. You do need to keep up with your levels or the main story will eventually pass you by a bit, but it's not hard to get an idea for how much extra work you need to do to stay on top of your level.
I DO recommend trying the game for free but, if you decide to keep playing further, to buy one of the 1-month subs. It opens up a lot of perks like being able to open a shop or your vault from anywhere and I think it also enables Swift Travel between stable masters, which is eventually going to become a necessity (the game world is huge and there's a lot of back and forth going on).