ZAM's Lord of the Rings ContestFollow

If Lotro simply made crafting top stuff what it was before Moria, eased a tad on difficulty in the new stuff, removed radiance gating completely, and made legendary weapons attainable and improveable through player effort...not luck...it easily would be the finest PvE game out there for years to come.

I have played LOTRO on and off for the past 2 years ever since it came out and love the game. No matter how many different MMO's I play I always seem to come back to this one. The best thing about the game, which I have never seen duplicated in any other MMO's successfully is the Epic Quests. They are the thing that always drives me to keep playing this game. I don't have time to play the game as much as I use to so I only have 1 lvl 60 character, my minstrel. Even though I have finished all of the new epic quests , there are so many other quests to do in this game that its hard to even think of doing them all. I also like the deed system it is alway fun when you want to kill some time. I also like how friendly and helpful everyone is in the game. You don't often find the immaturaty that you would while playing WOW. I played WOW until I got my druid to lvl 69 and just quit playing even after the 2nd expansion came out. I knew it would just end the same with me getting bored of the raids. At least LOTRO has new epic quests to look forward to to make me want to play again. Yes the game has it faults (what MMO doesn't), but over all its in my opinion that LOTRO is still the best MMO out there so far. Great work Turbine keep it up.

I've been plying since closed Beta.

The game up to and including lvl 50 was great, crafting system worked well, loot system worked well, character balance was good. all classes had a place in groups, group play was done well with small 6 man to large 34 man instances. Graphics are well done as is the Middle earth experience, PvP has been kept out of the main play areas(a plus).

Since The Mines of Moria expansion....game play has gone in the toilet, the content provided is terrible, the design team has changed and the whole "flavor" of the game post level 50 has changed and not for the better.

The content for the last 6+ months has basically been grind fests, grind for reputation, grind for gear(gear gating), grind for traits...all with little to no useful rewards. The legendary Items introduced into the game have essentially destroyed the crafting system, and the system itself is a big low percentage lottery that..yup involves more mind numbing grinding.

Raid clusters now exist when prior to Moria we had none, the cluster involve more mind numbing grinding as your required to repeat the instances numerous time to get the gear you need, and gear is required due to the designers using a stat altering mechanic and binding the mechanic to gear(gear gating)...the raid at the end of the cluster for Moria is a single monster run in and kill it 12 man with little to no rewards.


Overall, pre level 50 the game is awesome, post level 50 its a totally different game severly lacking in story content, crafting, and a reason to play!

The designers 180 deg turn has also brought something to the game that it did not have pre-Moria...a schism between "hardcore" and "Casual" type players...this has turned an otherwise helpful mature community into a divided community with more e-peeners and the level of immaturity that goes along with it!

I've played LotRO for about a year and a half, (GOD has it been that long), and I am totally addicted. I have played EQ, then WoW, then EQ2 and by far I like LotRO the best. It's thrilling too play inside Tolkien's universe.

Not only is the content rich, but the graphics far exceed those of the other games I have played. Turbine continues too enrich our experience with frequent free upgrades and timely expansions.

There are a few problems and bugs as with any game but hopefully Turbine will repair these soon.


Strebor - 60 Minstrel -Servants of the Secret Fire - Silverlode Server

Edited, Jul 20th 2009 1:25pm by DraggonSilvermoon

Edited, Jul 20th 2009 2:17pm by DraggonSilvermoon

Edited, Jul 20th 2009 2:17pm by DraggonSilvermoon

As I've said before, I've played LOTRO for a few months now and it's an overall good experience.

However, I do wish that the end-game content wasn't so heavily raid based. I don't mind raiding and I have a fairly good group of gamers to tackle most instances, but it would be nice to have even more soloable and less hardcore areas and instances available in Moria and further east.

I'm optimistic that as new areas in Middle-Earth are made available, this game will develop into an even more exciting experience. Therefore, I will be sticking around in this game for a long time and I'm considering a lifetime subscription. However, for now I'll accept any prizes from Zam.com :)

I have played LOTRO since it first released. I first played on my brother's account and first subscribed a year ago. I have always loved Tolkien's work and this game stuck to it so well. This game has great graphics which makes it fun just to go around and look at the scenery, something you would never do on WoW. The storyline to this is also great. I am a big fan of this game and still play it a lot.

Hi, I've just started playing lotro very recently. I got the 10-day trial 9 days ago (last day today).When I saw the game i never thought I would return to any other mmo I've ever played. I enjoyed every feature it had: the music system, the charcater customization, and especially the people (long run landroval!). The directx 10 graphics were amazing (or whatever I saw that was close to it, I'm not sure If I got the full blown graphics since I was on trial). I found lotro after i started getting bored of Guild Wars. I also had a problem with Guild Wars, my mom didn't want me playing it, she didn't like the way the girls were dressed. So, when my mom told that to me I went mmo searching. I found Lotro had a nice 10-day trial so I tried it out, now I'm here, enjoying it so much that I want to get the retail version and maybe even a lifetime subsciption. Now I'm having fun while my mom doesn't mind.

That was all the good stuff about it, but nothing is perfect. My dislike is the pvp. From what I've seen pvp in lotro only includes sparring while Guild Wars has guild wars (who knew?), alliance battles, zaishen challenge, and so many others.

Other than that, that's pretty much it, a game that finely details the places in the books, incorporates music, fine people, houses! (I didn't mention), voice chat (I also didn't mention), and the list goes on for a while.

Edited, Jul 20th 2009 8:18pm by Gilthor

Let's see you write a set of contest rules that can cater to all the countries of Europe. Even just the countries in the EU if you like. Not as easy as you'd like to imagine.

On topic, I've never played LOTRO, but I've always heard it has very high-end graphics and a good crafting system. Since I've yet to find any game with a crafting system that's truly enjoyable (including FFXI, EQ2 and WoW), I'd really like to win a shot to try LOTRO out and see if maybe it has what WoW has been lacking for me.

I'm sure you will find LotRO to be the game your looking for. Glad you have an open mind, unlike a lot of WoW players now-a-days...

I've been playing LOTRO since the Fall Festival in 2007. After three months of playing, I canceled my WoW subscription and never looked back. I'm currently an officer in a guild that has existed since the begging of the game.

I love the style and art-direction of being a fantasy setting that is only slightly removed from reality. I love the aesthetics which diverge from the more cartoony look of other MMOs. LOTRO was already the best-looking MMO on the market before introducing the cosmetic system. The lack of cosmetic systems in other MMOs has kept me from even trying them since LOTRO introduced it.

My biggest disappointment to date would be the introduction of Radiance Gear that has resulted in a certain level of "gating" on the upper level of content. It looks wonderful but its social aspects are unfortunate. In Shadows of Angmar, everyone could take part in all content as long as they met the level requirement. In Mines of Moria, some content is only available to those who have succeeded in a certain number of specific raids. I have found myself adventuring solo and more with my lower-level alts and gouping much less often in MoM than I did in SoA due to the "radiance gating". The gating bothers me for the two reasons that first, I don't like using gear as a gating mechanic; second, I feel that the radiance/dread mechanic is context and lore-appropriate only in relation to character and not in relation to items. I can think of only two items in LOTR which inspired Hope or Dread, the vial given to Frodo by Galadriel and the One Ring.

Edited, Jul 21st 2009 2:11am by alfrodul

I have played LOTRO for over a year now, and my primary character is a level 60 hobbit hunter, so I generally like the game.

It was a lot more fun at the lower levels. The Shire, in particular, is full of charming little quests that don't involve slaughtering evil things for their body parts.

Once you get past that, the charm diminishes with level. When you get to Moria, the game has become a relentless grind of killing, killing, killing. Kill ten of these, twenty of those, five of these other things. Moria itself is a dark, confusing, depressing maze. I've spent too much time searching in vain for an objective, only after much frustration finding it's two stories up or down from where I'm standing, with no easy way of getting there.

The legendary items are fun, but need some tweaking. Any item you can't use just becomes fodder for the relic machine. It would be nice if there were some really quirky relics out there that do more than increase damage by 1% or 2%!

Lorien is also very broken. They should have fired the person who thought that grinding the same monotonous quests (Orc filth?????) over and over and over and over again in order to gain entrance would ever be fun. That's a big step back from the quest chain in Eregion to get into Moria itself that was kinda fun!

I like the fact that the special crafting ingredients now make a lot more sense, but crafting has to be beefed up again so the items produced are actually things people want.

So, in general, the game is OK, but the latest expansion packs and patches have taken things in a direction that makes the game less fun, not more.