[LOTR] Starting out

[Satchurio]

Some friends of mine are re-rolling in lord of the rings and I was hoping to get some feedback as to how to take off and get the ball rolling in this game. I played the trial and it seemed enjoyable enough. I was curious which servers are worth rolling as well as any tips and tricks to make leveling less painful and gathering cash a bit quicker. Any race / class combo suggestions are welcomes as well.

[Morph_hammer]

The game is easy and linear, just grind quests to level and follow the main story line (the book quests) for some nice loot at the middle and end of each book, usually.

For class combo's, you can't go wrong with guardian/minstrel/dps if you're 3. If you're 2 i'd say champion/minstrel.

[Sneaky]

You can replace the Ministrel with a Loremaster, too. The LM won't be able to solo-heal when doing some of the book-quests, but for normal content it's fine, with added benefit of crowd-control, debuffs and pet.

I duoed with a Champ while playing my LM for quite a while and it worked great (until I stoped playing around 35).

[Zerai]

If you have a third, dps = rogue. Or whatever they are called. I forget. Their ability to start inspiration things is godly in any dungeon you do.

[Snugglebear]

Burglar! Burglar is a way fun class in LOTRO. And their fellowship maneuvers with 2 or 3 people participating can make you unstoppable. You can all start in the Shire if you like the Tolkien world, because their version of the Shire is a real delight. I don't think hobbits can be champions, captains, or loremasters though.

[ajiatus]

I would second the Hobbit's advice. Hobbits have four classe available to them that cover all needs -- Guardian (ReactiveTank), Hunter (Nuker with speed buffs and other utility skills), Minstrel (Healer), and Burglar (Support + Melee DPS with the very important conjuctions). The Shire is hands down the best starting area of all. The available classes are all very good and fun to play. With three players only I would pick Burglar over Minstrel to fill the last slot, trading survivability for fun and challenge. You would have a complete team, and tons of quests to level up and gear up while having fun and tuning up your teamwork. Remember to do the accomplishments, especially the class and racial ones, and don't worry about racial bonuses, a Hobbit hunter is totally adequate and the racial stealth of elves is not very useful anyway.

[Lost Ranger]

Seriously do -not- go with the cookie cutter Tank/Healer/DPS set up. Getting some random dps class to fill out a group is easy just like it is with all games. More people head for the "omgz big numbers!" classes then anything else. If you want more then just ease of level (I assume you care about end game) then I would suggest going with classes that are important and needed.

Captains. Rolling with a captain in your group is very noticable. They are fairly boring in the early levels but once you start to reach 20+ and start getting some of the shield brother abilities and the different heralds they become very powerful. Not a required class to get shit done by any means but they turn decent groups into great groups. They get a few healing abilities, nice group buffs and they can res in combat which is always handy. If you roll a guardian/captain/mins I think you will be happy with how solid your group feels.

Burglars. You really cant go wrong with hanging out with a burglar heh. The debuffs/group abilities are really powerful. I love having burglars in my groups. I see more burglars then LM on my server but I still think its not the most populated of classes just because alot of people were disappointed that the burglar doesnt = primary dps class.

Loremasters. I dont see many of them so honestly I dont know much about them. The few I have played with were pretty bad too so my first impression of the loremaster is that they suck heh...

Hunter/champion. I see them by the dozen. The number of Hunters running around is almost silly at times. We had a large gathering outside the prancing pony last night with a whole bunch of people just playing music and bullshitting and it made me laugh that easily 50% of them were 40+ hunters. The champions are not that bad but there is still more then enough running around. Rolling one of these 2 classes is not a bad idea just because they do kick alot of ass.. but be prepared to be one of the masses at end game.

Guardians. I only group with the same 2 guardians every day so I dont really know what the guardian end game numbers are like. The class as a whole though kicks ass. I have been thinking about rolling one just because I enjoy tanking on my captain but cant do it nearly as good.

My suggestion is to roll Guardian, Captain/burglar, Mins. That way when you want to do group content you can just grab one of the hunter legion and go for it.

[splorge]

Lotro is convenient in that it allows you to accomplish small things in a short period of time, either in a group or solo. There is plenty of content for both to take you to 50, and some decent and fun raids at the higher end.

Take group quests when you can, advertise in the LFF channel (the grouping tool is lame and useless, but i hear its getting a revamp in march). often times lots of solo content opens up after a group quest.

the game isnt that item centric compared to wow. the gap between high level group quest rewards and raid rewards is marginal. (this can be good or bad depending on how you like your mmo).

i found the epic quest line quite fun. the quest writers are pretty good, and there are lots of quest gems that are great. there is one story line where you track gollum down by laying a trap of fish, and end up chasing him all over the trollshaws. personally i like the atmosphere, graphics and story of the tolkien world far more than wow. the people seem to be more mature as well, although this is just my experience.

other quests you shouldnt miss: retaking weathertop at 25, and tomb of elendil at level 40.

the trait system and deed system is a creatve spinoff of wows talents. the fellowship moves are so so.

if you are coming from wow, the combat system can be jarring since its a queue system. i got used to it within a week. as far as game mechanics is concerned, i feel that wow is still better in this category, but lotro does just fine.

one feature which i feel will spread to every mmo that will be released is the integrated voice chat. this helps pugs tremendously due to the ease of using it. there are a variety of higher level zones designed for 1 group that require some decent coordination; carn dum, barad gularan, urugarth.

I play on brandywine server, i hear that and landroval are highest population. I dont have any trouble getting groups during regular play hours, but there is a significant amount of people on all the time since the game is popular in new zealand/australia.

[Pyros]

Since I'll probably be bored this weekend because we're done raiding until next reset, I'm actually considering getting a trial account and testing this lotr game out again(last time I played was in beta).

So few questions, first, does anyone play the euro version? If you do, how does it compare with the US services. It seems codemasters owns the european distribution, and they pretty much suck, but who knows. Can I play on the US servers from europe? Usually it's not an issue, but I think I remember turbine enforcing IP checks at some point during beta, or was it just on discussion boards?

Now a more lazy question, any website that has a good sum of class abilities/list, and that's updated to last patch info. I'll probably end up playing a tank but well, wanna look into a few classes and I don't wanna go thru leveling a ton of newbs to get my own idea, one of those detailed website will be enough.

[spentmotiff]

Originally Posted by Pyros

Now a more lazy question, any website that has a good sum of class abilities/list, and that's updated to last patch info. I'll probably end up playing a tank but well, wanna look into a few classes and I don't wanna go thru leveling a ton of newbs to get my own idea, one of those detailed website will be enough.

The Lorebook on their official site has some great information. Think of Wowwiki and Thottbot rolled into one and you have a good idea of what is there.

Also, try this web site:

MEHQ - LOTRO - Dynamic Map

Makes life muuuuch easier finding out where things are located.

[Broham]

I played LoTRO during the beta, and had a lot of fun. The thing with this game is, if you are the raiding type who craves item upgrades and large scale battles, this won't be your game. If you are a casual player who just wants a place to unwind and enjoy a good world, solid class design, and plenty of "side content" (professions, music, adventuring), then this will be a good time for you. I enjoyed playing it while I did, but the people I was rolling with were a bit too hardcore for it.

To be honest, I think I'll be picking it back up here soon, just because it's a great game for a casual player. Now I gotta see if I can get into the Old-Timers Guild on the old server I played on...

Minstrels were always in demand, and so were Guardians. This is the nature of every MMO, not many folks enjoy being the Tank/Healer. I personally played a Minstrel up through level 20, and it was a fun class to play.

[Duppin]

Originally Posted by Broham

I played LoTRO during the beta, and had a lot of fun. The thing with this game is, if you are the raiding type who craves item upgrades and large scale battles, this won't be your game. If you are a casual player who just wants a place to unwind and enjoy a good world, solid class design, and plenty of "side content" (professions, music, adventuring), then this will be a good time for you. I enjoyed playing it while I did, but the people I was rolling with were a bit too hardcore for it.

This cannot be emphasized enough, if you're considering playing this game.

LOTRO is an excellent game to sit down and play for an hour or two at a time, a couple of times a week.

If you are going to play substantially more than that, look somewhere else, or else you'll just find it tedious. It just doesn't stand up well to heavy play.

[Draegan]

I'll second that.

[Chrisb3]

I'm getting more and more interested in this game so I looked at that map website and... 14 zones?

Vanilla WoW had ~48.

One of the things I like most in a game is a nice world map, anyone wanna explain this to me?

[Draegan]

It's a very very very very very very very casual game. All the newbs start off in 3 different points and they all converge on Bree where there is basically 1 leveling track after that. At least that's what I remember.