LOTRO NDA is lifted

[Itzena]

Codemasters : The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ : News

Feb 12th 2007, 14:00 GMT
The NDA has been lifted!

Codemasters Online Gaming announced today that following this weekend's successful Stress Test Event, LOTRO is now on the home straight and entering into the extensive Public Beta Phase which begins today.

The NDA has also been lifted which will open the floodgates to a slew of previews, articles and previously unseen material from the various gaming portals and fansites.

So share, people!

[theacolyte]

Hmm. I can't find anything that mentions the NDA has been lifted on The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ > Home Page. I'm sure people would post, possibly even myself if I may or may not have been in beta. I just fear lawyers.

On a side note, I guess I can finally post. Applied for this account like 3 (2) years ago.

[Khorum]

It's pretty.

[Nakilos]

Its pretty terrible.

[holymight]

It's pretty. UI is one of the worst I have ever seen.

[Believe]

Decent game but doesn't really offer anything new, atleast that I seen.

[Vorph]

It's been posted on the beta forums that the NDA is lifted as of today.

I've been in the beta for about 7 months now, and I won't be buying the game. The main reason being that there isn't a single class I would want to play.

Minstrels are the least fun healer of any I've ever played in a MMO, due to the combination of bardic button-mashing and uninspired heal spell design. On top of that, there's no other class that can heal anywhere remotely as well as they can.

Loremasters are a horrible excuse for a combination pet class and nuker. They tried to appease both lore fanatics (good luck) and MMO players who demand a caster class, and it's going to end up pissing off both groups in the end. Plus their primary group ability is something along the lines of EQ Necro's Sedulous Subversion, so if you play one every group you're in past L24 will be expecting you to pump each of the minstrel's orifices full of your mana at all times. I didn't even train the spell on my second LM, it was so retarded.

Melees, who knows. The balance pendulum has gone back and forth on them enough times I can't keep track of which ones suck and which were overpowered. I didn't enjoy playing any of them anyway. Rogue is probably the best of the bunch if you intend to group all the time.

Hunters have also swung back and forth a lot, with the added bonus of making up about 82.45% of the character population at any given time. Legolazz ftw!



The game itself isn't bad, but it isn't exactly awe-inspiring either. The main story arcs are fun with a group of non-idiots. There's instancing, which allows for some interesting scripted stuff in most of them. I'm not sure that's going to be enough to get people away from WoW or VG, though, except for people who are just absolutely dying for a LOTR game.

[theacolyte]

Well -- safety in numbers I guess, right?

I started playing right after the first public beta invites went out.

I played it for about an hour total (less time than it took to download and install it).

It truely was at least when I was playing it, a terrible game.

Character models were very ugly.

I also couldn't get over the impression that it's just another game, nothing all that special.

Everything combined, I deleted it after my 1 hour foray.

[Khorum]

I'd posted something similar in a previous thread, the game's gotten better last month or so, and it's sure as hell better prepared for release than VG was. But the game is shallow and the combat is limp and unexciting, even for a straight-up WoW clone. But the environments and character models are gorgeous without making the engine too demanding. Little things stand out like the water effects; the sweeping vistas you get from a large seamless outdoor area and the actual locales themselves look great. The scripted events/instances are outstanding. The dungeons themselves are great-looking and pretty fun.

There's just something clunky and unfun about the combat. Ranged OR melee. At first I thought it was the sound work, which is subtle and great for everything else but really lame and unrewarding for combat. Although I still believe the combat audio needs some help, now I think it's more because of this horrible global timer on everything, it just saps the reaction out of combat. So while the animation, the models and the spell effects are pretty, the overall combat experience isn't tactile or visceral at all. It's kind of a shame. I'm thinking that Turbine may have overcompensated for criticism for DDO's combat, which was a clickfest.

I'm sure Midway/Turbine will do OK. I'll definitely keep an eye on it after release; maybe sales performance could compel the sort of changes I'd like to see. But I won't be subscribing at release.

[Vorph]

Yep, I agree completely about the combat. I think that's the main reason why I didn't find any of the melee classes fun at all. I always thought the combat was the best part of DDO so I was disappointed when LOTRO had a more conventional (dull) system. If anything Turbine should have put the slower system into DDO where it would've fit with the PnP rules better, and saved the clicky combat for LOTRO.

[Nakilos]

This game has 2 terrible features - the screen white out in certain named mob fights (usually for some quest), and by extension the swirly white screen as a death penalty, and the delay on EVERYTHING. You CAN queue abilities, but unlike the EQ2 queueing system, its not at all functional, i.e. you queue an ability in EQ2, and it starts casting after the first spell finishes casting. This one you wait a second, then maybe it will go off. On top of that every spell, in addition to its cast time, basically has yet another delay while the animation cycles. Its fun to cast a heal after getting 2+ seconds tacked on to it from damage only to have to wait another full second for the heal to even affect anyone.

This isn't a game for MMO'ers, at all. Its a bastard clone which manages to screw up pretty much any good feature it steals and brings nothing new and exciting to the table. Well I stand corrected, accomplishments are in my opinion a good idea. Terribly executed in this case and so underpowered they might as well not be there, but the idea isn't bad. Basically accomplishments range from kill x monsters in an area and you get the equivalent of a talent which you can socket in for a stat/resist bonus, or use an ability enough times and you get a trait which often makes that ability better/lowers power cost/adds a different effect. The intent of course is customization since there is a limit to the amount of traits/accomplishments you can socket, it just was so poorly implemented as some traits are great, others are terrible so its not even a real choice, and you could get to max level with 0 accomplishments and it literally wouldn't make a difference as the stat gains are so small.

[Draegan]

Everything about the game is just average. Graphics are average. Sound is average. Combat is whatever. I appreciate how they tried to change class structure around a little bit and make it unique. But it wasn't for me.

[Ikia]

I have to agree with the lack of praise for this game -- it's very uninspiring. There's absolutely nothing that made me want to try it again after I played for a few days. The combat was klunky to put it mildly and the classes were pretty much what was described.

The graphics are great and the story arcs are also, but I'm not sure how much that can pull things out of the hole for this game. It seems to be made for LOTR fans, not MMO players, which I suppose is the niche market they're going for.

[ZeckEQ]

Gotta agree here. The game looks good and has some great features. I love how they instance out the starter areas and then you go through a scripted event, the world chages up some, etc.. But the actual gameplay is clunky. Combat does not feel intuitive and smooth, but choppy and uncomfortable.

Thats the real killer, for me, it's just does not feel fun to play.

[Hatorade]

Played it about a month ago got to level 22 I think I was a rogue....sneaking let you skip all kinds of content to just finish a quest. If you didn't have to kill something anyways.