Playing LOTRO like an offline RPGFollow

Welcome and don't be sorry, we're here to answer questions from folks who are new to our community...

Now to respond to your questions...


Absolutely! I tend to mostly play solo due to the hours of the day I play and the small chunks of time I can afford to spend in game. Neither has held me back - I have a character at level cap and two alts in their mid 30s. The game is designed so that you can log in and get something done whether you have 30 minutes or 30 hours to spend!


Most of them, yes. The epic story line includes a wide variety of quests within the quest lines. These can range from "go talk to this guy", to "go get this thing", or "go kill these mobs" and stretch all the way to "get a bunch of your friends and kill this guy".

The group quests always include a warning from the quest giver (bring some friends) so you can handle these steps in a few different ways;
A) you can advertise in LFF (looking For Fellowship) to find a PUG to do that step in the quest with.
B) you can ask the members of your kin for help in running that step and schedule a time that is convenient for you
C) you can wait till the content is trivial and run the step solo. (This will work since the epic story lines are separate from the main game and do not affect your character development).


Absolutely. Mobs are all color coded and not all mobs are aggro. So as long as you avoid the aggressive mobs that happen to be red or purple to you, even a high level zone is accessible for exploration.


More than possible... it is seriously and easily doable!

Edited, Mar 7th 2009 9:54am by OldBlueDragon

Turbine is currently running a free 10 day trial so when you complete the download and you're ready to create a character, consider playing on the Meneldor server. It is home to the un-official Alla kin - "There Is No Fifth Star".

We have a bunch of really nice folks, most of us are adults, most of us are casual gamers with outside rl responsibilities (so you'll relate) and we even have some FFXI refugees so you'll never feel lonely! :)

Hi, my name is Arrowmonkey, and I am a ffxi refugee.

I just reactivated my ffxi account, but only because I was getting a little tired of solo play.

I figure, I'll play lotro during the evenings, when population online goes up, and I can merit/exp/farm on ffxi when I can't find groups on lotro.

It is completely different on lotro though than ffxi. And you sound just like I did when I first came here. I think you'll like this game, as it is a very refreshing change from ffxi. You don't have to find 5 other people to do something every time you log in, you can actually make progress even if you only have 30 minutes to play.

Start on Meneldor Server. Join our Kinship. There is no Fifth Star.

Pie: One dessert to rule them all...

That all depends on what kind of control pad you're talking about.

LOTRO is not a converted console game (like FFXI) so you can't really play efficiently or effectively with a console type controller (two handed - thumb buttons etc).

The problem is that a console type controller is way to limiting in terms of available options and there are far too many things you can and should be doing in a modern (well designed) PC game. Whatever character class you choose there are dozens of spells or combat moves to use and an endless list of options that you just can't cover within the limitations of a console type controller.

That said, there are other controller options that do work well for this or any complex MMO.

Since EQ live (EQ1) I've been playing MMOs with a left hand desktop controller called a "Nostromo speedpad N52" manufactured by Belkin

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=164714

Connected by USB, it sits on your desktop to the left of your keyboard and offers 4 different fully programmable control "banks" each of which features 14 push buttons, a thumb wheel, an 8 position directional control pad and a big red "fire" button (which I use as a push to talk). There is also a thumb button that is used to cycle through the different control banks and while technically it's also programmable, you can't really program it for another task since you'll need it for shifting banks!

The device includes software through which you can program all the controls (including macros and multi-key stroke commands) and then save your different configurations along with the game .exe command so the pad will automatically re-configure when you launch a game. And yes, you can use it with multiple games and store all the different configs.

They are available pretty much everywhere (including NewEgg & Amazon) and frankly I can't imagine playing an MMO without one (I even bought a spare to keep with my laptop)


Edited, Apr 21st 2009 1:15pm by OldBlueDragon

Thanks guys,