Lord of the rings Online (LotrO)

[jmak]

Where are all the orcs?

[Fexelea]

Lotro is a really fun game, and I don't think u need to run it on the best graphics to enjoy it. Just do stop and read the quest text hehe

Btw asking about levels:

Epic story (main story that takes u through middle earth events) is free, including Moria and Mirkwood parts and the start of Volume 3 in Enedwaith. All players can also use legendary items (from Moria expansion originally) and level up to 65 without a subscription. But not having a subscription means you will have to buy the quest packs for each area that you visit outside of the basic areas (Shire, Ered Luin, Bree, LoneLands). If you don't buy the packs, you are locked out of deeds and quests so your leveling is tied to killing mobs. Probably boring.

I do think that if you try the game as a f2p, you'll likely get the itch to subscribe by lvl 25, although some of my friends are level 60 and still on the free plan...

One thing to note: chose your server wisely, some places are just much friendlier than others!

[SHODANFreeman]

I'm Gragdesh on Meneldor, though I haven't been playing much recently.

[FatHobbit]

Ah, I used to play LotrO, though not actively all the time because I didn't want to invest money so much. Anyways, now that it's free I thought I'll start playing it again. Of course my installation was broken since motherboard had died. So I decided to download the game(it seems it's not possible to install with game disc anymore), but the problem is that the downloader.. is bad. It crashes after few minutes and also install background program(should help downloading large files, eats you're internet connection speed) that runs even when you're not downloading. Nice.

But still, it's great MMO. Even better if you play on RP-servers.

[Yistaan]

Anyone here a member of any LOTRO kinships (called guilds in other MMOs)?

[SHODANFreeman]

Anyone here a member of any LOTRO kinships (called guilds in other MMOs)?

I'm in one called Cliff Divers of Middle Earth.

[Yistaan]

I got recruited into the Black Riders of Elysium about a month ago.

[Fexelea]

I've been in some kinships, so for what it's worth:

Big kinships aren't worth it. People telling you what to do, demanding you tailor your character to play with them, running programs to check if your dps is the best or not, etc... plus TONS of drama, power struggles etc.
Small kinships are the way to go. Get together with some people who share your gamestyle, who are as obsessive or relaxed as you are, and will help you out with crafting, raiding, etc at your own pace.
Tiny kinships are only worth it for the house. It is unlikely you will get much more out of that, since a very small group means you end up missing critical people for raids or fellow quests, when people go on holiday you actually really notice you are alone, and the range of levels and crafting will be minor.

[mrtoad]

I'm pretty sure that even if you never pay a penny for the game, you can reach level 65 (the max right now) and explore and kill monsters in every region (including Moria) of the game. You even get the 'epic quest line' for free that takes you through all the areas of middle-earth that have been released so far. But you won't have access to any other quests beyond the starter zones/epic quests unless you buy the quest packs individually, or pay at least $10-$15 month as a vip subscriber (as a subscriber you have access to everything of course).

I couldn't recommend lotro enough, it's probably my favorite pc game of all time. To me, it captures the land and life of middle-earth as good as a pc game could, plus it's a really fun rpg in and of itself, even if you play mostly solo like a traditional rpg. I've made a couple really good friends in the game, logging on is almost like walking in to the 'Cheers' bar room, sans Norm

[Vajhoj]

For the LotrO interested here there is a cool interview from PAX 2011, talking about a new contest, 5 new instances, new story and more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwBLQpTCHRg