LOTRO NDA is lifted

[TwiNCannoN]

Originally Posted by DeLLyz

Does anyone know if you preorder can you pay 9.99 for a couple months and THEN pay 199 later? Or do you have to decide right away? I don't wanna dish out the cash right away.. then again paying 9.99 for 20 months would be the same price.. and I dunno if I'd play it even that long.

yeah it's a tough decision. Part of the lifetime appeal for me though is skipping the whole "should I reactivate or not" decisions when a new patch comes after you've canceled or such. That said I'm still not sure if I'm gonna do $10/mo or lifetime.

A note is that if you do $10/mo and then cancel, when you reactivate your rate will be $15/mo. :/

Also you will have up to a month after retail to decide I THINK. I'm pretty sure they'll make an announcement or two about it, at least warning when the grace period to choose a subscription type goes away though. Thing is you get a free month with retail so they have to at least give you that before making you decide on a subscription.

edit: oh wait, I misunderstood. No, if you choose the $9.99 plan then you can't change your mind and do the lifetime later. Once you pick one of the options you're stuck with it.

[Lonin]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

How many launch serves are planned?

7 at least for the start of open beta. I assume if they get as many players as it appears they will, many more will follow.

Brandywine
Elendilmir
Gladden
Landroval
Meneldor
Silverlode
Windfola

[DeLLyz]

Originally Posted by TwiNCannoN

yeah it's a tough decision. Part of the lifetime appeal for me though is skipping the whole "should I reactivate or not" decisions when a new patch comes after you've canceled or such. That said I'm still not sure if I'm gonna do $10/mo or lifetime.

A note is that if you do $10/mo and then cancel, when you reactivate your rate will be $15/mo. :/

Also you will have up to a month after retail to decide I THINK. I'm pretty sure they'll make an announcement or two about it, at least warning when the grace period to choose a subscription type goes away though. Thing is you get a free month with retail so they have to at least give you that before making you decide on a subscription.

edit: oh wait, I misunderstood. No, if you choose the $9.99 plan then you can't change your mind and do the lifetime later. Once you pick one of the options you're stuck with it.

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

Oh well hopefully they give you the chance to pick a month after the game comes out after the free period.. I don't think I could dish 200 so quickly without getting a good chance to play it.

[MetalNeo]

Originally Posted by TwiNCannoN

it's a shame open beta level cap is 15. That's so short, and there's titles for not dying up to level 20... I would've liked 20 just to have the affirmation that I would have ample time to get the Undying title. :P

Anyway, I'll be playing on Meneldor. Played monster play (pvp) pretty much exclusively for the past couple months in closed beta and all the cool pvp folk are going there.

Can someone please in depth explain the monster play stuff???

[TwiNCannoN]

Originally Posted by MetalNeo

Can someone please in depth explain the monster play stuff???

Originally Posted by my patchtimer post

Monster play is the games answer to PVP, and a fairly interesting one at that. It's also in it's infant stages, so I'd say expect quite a few changes even post-release here.

Right now, players can access to Ettenmoors with their characters starting at level 40 (the level cap being 50). They can enter as a monster, however, starting at level 10, from the Monster Controllers found in the major cities. Obviously, at release this'll be pretty unbalanced for a month or two unless they do something like restricting monster play for a month. It doesn't matter much though, since monsters can acquire all the Destiny Points they like but they need ranks (which they get from killing players) to actually get more skills and such. Currently, rank does nothing for players aside bragging rights. Rank can be gained constantly, regardless of deaths. Killing an enemy gives infamy/reknown to monsters/players per fellowship, depending on how much damage was dealt by which parties/people.

Another form of ranking is Rating, but this does nothing aside bragging rights. Rating goes up and down depending on who you kill, and who kills you. If you have a high rating and die from a low-rated player, you lose a lot of rating and he gains a lot. Rating starts at 1000 (or 1.000, not quite sure if it's a comma or decimal :P), and each 100 rating over 1000 you obtain, you get a half star. Thus, 1600 rating = 3 stars, etc. Currently the only real rewards players get is from these tokens you get from taking over keeps and some other misc. quests. Every 10 tokens you get can be traded in for opening a chest which gives random loot. Aside from that, you can spend destiny points at a monster controller to give your player temporary buffs. I'm not sure how useful they are.

Aside that it's basically just like an ongoing battleground type thing. The main goal is to invade a keep and kill the tyrant or general, a raid boss with 140,000ish hp, and then the keep switches sides. Monsters get destiny points from this, players get honor tokens which when you get enough can open chests in the main city and get loot.

One thing to note is that due to the level 40 restriction for people to join on the Free Peoples side, monster play won't be very active for probably the first month and a half/two months of the game, so if you're looking for that exclusively you should probably wait (although monsters can grind massive destiny points in the meantime - they still need rank, gained from killing players, to unlock new talents/skills to spend DP on).

[Lonin]

Originally Posted by TwiNCannoN

Aside that it's basically just like an ongoing battleground type thing. The main goal is to invade a keep and kill the tyrant or general, a raid boss with 140,000ish hp, and then the keep switches sides. Monsters get destiny points from this, players get honor tokens which when you get enough can open chests in the main city and get loot.

One thing to note is that due to the level 40 restriction for people to join on the Free Peoples side, monster play won't be very active for probably the first month and a half/two months of the game, so if you're looking for that exclusively you should probably wait (although monsters can grind massive destiny points in the meantime - they still need rank, gained from killing players, to unlock new talents/skills to spend DP on).

A few notes:

-The "Monster Controllers" are little pools of water (I forget the name) in an obelisk type thing. The ones that allow you to enter PvM glow red, whereas Reflecting Pools, which look similar but glow white, allow you to enter instances that you've done in the past.

-The rating system starts at 1.000. If you suck it lowers to, for instance, .985, and if you are good it raises to something like 1.114. There's a whole UI for your K/D ratio, rating, infamy/renown, etc.

-You can also earn Destiny Points on your non-monster character as well from leveling. You can use those points to buy temporary buffs or stuff for you monster character. Destiny Points are also account wide, they all add into the same pool.

-Your monster character is persistent, so it's essentially just like another character. They have no equipment but can equip traits and skills as they gain destiny and rank.

[Rayne]

Damn! Near a half-million open beta invites so far.

The Lord of the Rings Online™:Shadows of Angmar™ > Open Beta World Tour

If AoC and Warhammer experience similar results, i'd expect WoWs population to thin out quite a bit as the gamespace begins to spread out among these three games.

[Guiness]

BTW the Goon presence is loading up on Silverlode for those that are interested in that type of shenanigans.

[Guiness]

Based off of the speculation that the servers are on GMT -4 (as they were in beta). Is possible that they could be up tonight?

MST 10:01pm
CST 11:01pm
EST 12:01am

[Ravensign]

I pre-ordered.

I have been WoW'd out lately (let my sub lapse) and COH, while fun, isn't going anywhere for me really, now that I am 32 and got the cool attack.

[Draegan]

Looks like Silverlode is the place to be.

[TwiNCannoN]

Originally Posted by Ravensign

I pre-ordered.

I have been WoW'd out lately (let my sub lapse) and COH, while fun, isn't going anywhere for me really, now that I am 32 and got the cool attack.

heh yeah... it's funny, CoH is still one of my favorite MMO's ever but I played it so much I can't really ever play it again. Also there was like a dozen experience exploits (hilarious ones, too) when the game was in it's infancy so leveling a character from scratch is hard without them. :P

[Kuro]

Other games need to steal City of Heroes' travel powers.

[DeLLyz]

I went out and pre-order it at Gamestop.. now I'm waiting for it to update. All I know is if you're pre-ordering it from a store then you best do it now because I've been updating the game for like 45 minutes and its only at 16% updated.

[Draegan]

I bought the preorder today. I have the open beta client downloaded, did it last night. Is this the same as the disc I have? I'm assuming it is.