Incline The Lord of the Rings Online - Legacy of Morgoth

[ironmask]

Is this mmo truly "free to play" or is it pay to win like 99% of "free to play" games. Thinking about giving this a try since I love LOTR.

 

[Fluent]

if u love LOTR u will love this game, in my opinion. it's very good, and u get a lot for free. that said, i would probably subscribe if i played again in order to get access to every area, every perk, etc.. but the game gives u a wide range of "stuff" for free. all in all it's an excellent mmo if mmos are your thing. good luck! <3

 

[Frank Capicoli]

Is this mmo truly "free to play" or is it pay to win like 99% of "free to play" games. Thinking about giving this a try since I love LOTR.

Most of the cash shop is cosmetics and pay2notgrind. Quick travel is also somewhat limited as f2p. Last I checked (which was a few years ago) the base game is free but expansions require either purchase or a subscription to play through. For anybody that loves LOTR this is probably the best put together game regardless of the gross mismanagement earlier on from Turbine/Warner Brothers. If you can deal with a severely dated engine and afford a sub it's worth a casual playthrough, the "endgame" as an mmo is a different story however.

 

[ADL]

Is this mmo truly "free to play" or is it pay to win like 99% of "free to play" games. Thinking about giving this a try since I love LOTR.

The business model is not great but if you can avoid the pay2notgrind and cosmetic shit from the shop and only pay for content, the content itself is worth it and it was clearly made with love by Tolkien fanatics. Enjoy it while you can before Amazon's Second Age LOTRO2 comes out and kills this one.

 

[Achilleslastand]

Is this mmo truly "free to play" or is it pay to win like 99% of "free to play" games. Thinking about giving this a try since I love LOTR.

The game is second to none in terms of atmosphere especially if you like LOTR, and the graphics have held up fairly well given their age.
All this being said the PVE{Landscape} has been made quite easy especially compared to what the game was pre FTP. I swear for most opponents you could go AFK and just auto attack and beat most landscape enemies.
As far as the cash shop goes there are items in there that will help your progress and are not just cosmetic.

If SSG had any sense they would make the landscape combat what it was pre 2010, remove the silly cash shop and go back to the 15 bucks a month model.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The designers of lotro were obviously big Tolkien fans and really dug through all the material to find minor characters they could flesh out to avoid stepping on any of Tolkien's work. If you're a Tolkien purist, you might not like it. But IMO they did a very good job.
Monetization is the bad side, however. Lotro(and DDO, their other game) really suffer from poor monetization, nickel and diming for the content.

It also has a few unique features like the epic battle system which lets you participate in the major battles of LOTR. I had a good bit of fun playing around with that.
Also, unlike most other MMOs, the newer content is actually good and fun. They never really strayed far from the base game's systems but just added more of the story over time.

 

[Achilleslastand]

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is the server populations, not sure about EU but am certain it is about the same as NA. Arkenstone is probably the most populated NA server and it isn't really anything impressive. I believe{?} around 700 players on a good night which pales in comparison to what the game used to have. Maybe another server merge is needed.

 

[The Great Deceiver]

I'd definitely play it again if they re-introduced the challenge that this game used to provide. Best atmosphere and exploration mean nothing if you can do the content half asleep.

They should just make it one of the Legendary servers - that said, I doubt that they will as they seem to have cemented themselves as a super-casual MMO for a long while now.

 

[Achilleslastand]

I'd definitely play it again if they re-introduced the challenge that this game used to provide. Best atmosphere and exploration mean nothing if you can do the content half asleep.

They should just make it one of the Legendary servers - that said, I doubt that they will as they seem to have cemented themselves as a super-casual MMO for a long while now.

Exactly, went back and have played the FTP version a few times since 2010 and the content for the most part is a cakewalk. There used to be several areas/zones where you needed 2 people{at least} to clear some of the content. Not anymore...

 

[Hellion]

Some would argue that this is an improvement. People used to complain that they couldn't play some of the group content because zones were too sparsely populated and they couldn't form a 3-man or 6-man fellowship to do group quests, so they introduced the possibility to do some (not all, AFAIK) group quests by selecting a "Solo version" of them.

 

[ironmask]

To everyone who was worried this game would be killed by the Amazon mmo, I got good news for you.

 

[Gerrard]

Maybe Tencent didn't want this baizuo dumpster fire.

 

[ironmask]

Let's just hope the same thing will happen to the show.

 

[ADL]

To everyone who was worried this game would be killed by the Amazon mmo, I got good news for you.

Prediction they hand the project over to Digital Extremes as they should have from the start.

 

[cvv]

Oh noes, now I can't play as a black female Gandalf.

Gotta wait for the Amazon TV show to see that.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I wonder if daybreak was already aware of this when they stated they planned on modernizing lotro's graphics to capitalize on Amazon's TV series popularity.

 

[Frank Capicoli]

SSG is run like a headless chicken I doubt any meaningful graphical overhaul will be accomplished like they were talking about in the Enad Global 7 investor report.

Developers still don't know how they are going to fix the ILI system since they've set it up for so long to heavily incentivize the cash shop.

Good news is SSG has recently announced optional increased difficulty choices for landscape content. Now to wait and see if it ever gets implemented.

 

[Fishy]

I left the game not long after Isengard, and went back to it a few months ago (that life pass is paying serious dividends), going through Rohan and Gondor. Right now, story-wise I'm after the battle of Minas Tirith.

Imho, it still holds up magnificently. It still has its slow passive combat and the graphics show their age, but it's still a fantastic digital rendition of Middle-Earth. The old areas are still as good as ever, and it's amazing how massive the map is now. For anyone into LotR, it's not a game that you can afford to miss out on. It won't live forever, so get in before in happens, and enjoy the ride of the various stories of Middle-Earth, taking you all the way from the Shire to Mordor, with many side-trips to other regions.

I can't give an objective view of the F2P design though, as I'm playing on lifepass with access to pretty much everything and a shitload of free points each month that accumulated over my years of break, so I can even just indulge into whatever cosmetic or accelerator I feel like. Back when I dropped, the biggest QoL improvement for F2P players was to buy 1 month of premium subscription, as even after it ended, plenty of stuff stayed unlocked forever (gold limits and stuff like that). Not sure how true that is these days.

 

[Rahdulan]

SSG is run like a headless chicken I doubt any meaningful graphical overhaul will be accomplished like they were talking about in the Enad Global 7 investor report.

I think their biggest problem is, at this point, absolutely decrepit engine that did not scale up with better hardware. You'd think running a game from almost 15 years ago on modern PCs should be a breeze, but you still have omnipresent performance issues. So much so players have accepted those jitters whenever assets get loaded as normal part of experience. Improving graphics with higher fidelity assets and bolting them onto that very same infrastructure sounds mental. I am honestly amazed they actually got around to character model updates at some point.

 

[Data4]

I played this waaaay back before FTP. I never got beyond the next settlement just passed Weathertop. As much as I like Tolkien, I just found the game boring at the time. Since I'm an eternal soloer when it comes to MMOs, maybe I should dip my toe back in since its easier. Not that I require "easy" in my MMOs, but if it pushes me further along in the game for the sake of seeing what all it has to offer in the limited time I have available to play games, eh... why not?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I think their biggest problem is, at this point

whoever is in charge of marketing
they should have left the free old content promotion active forever, and retroactively add old content to it when new expansions were released
SSG is owned by the same company that manages EQ & EQ2, which does exactly this model. It's a pretty standard one(or near to it) for the MMO market, LOTRO/DDO are such massive outliers. Expecting people to pay full price for years old content is ridiculous.

DDO has the same exact problem btw. Both LOTRO and DDO are fantastic in their own ways and it's a shame what's being done to them.

ESO is one of the worst performing MMOs I've touched and it's also one of the most popular. People can easily look past shit performance, shit graphics, etc., if they like the game. They won't look past massive paywalls though.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Been looking for a new game to try and I put a few hours into this. Seems ok for what it is.

Is this worth playing? Is the endgame any fun?

Looks like you can buy ur way to instant level 120.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Been looking for a new game to try and I put a few hours into this. Seems ok for what it is.

Is this worth playing? Is the endgame any fun?

Looks like you can buy ur way to instant level 120.

lotro is about the journey, not the destination

 

[Frank Capicoli]

Is this worth playing? Is the endgame any fun?

The locations are the best lotr implemented in video games. The endgame is cancer.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Been looking for a new game to try and I put a few hours into this. Seems ok for what it is.

Is this worth playing? Is the endgame any fun?

Looks like you can buy ur way to instant level 120.

lotro is about the journey, not the destination

Ayy, just trying to do the math on buying a 6 month sub or just buying a little gold and getting only the things I need for basic quests.

If I finish the game in 6 months or less, and it remains this easy, then I'll just buy piecemeal item shop stuff as needed. I played about 4 hours today got to level 13, was farming red creatures around the horse spawn quest guy. Guess I need level 20 to get a horse though. I'm just thinking about it, haven't made up my mind yet whether I want to continue playing yet.