marc3

I feel morally obligated to write a review of this game in general. I have played this game for a number of years, since new years 2009 on and off for substansial periods. I fully stopped playing some months ago. Firstly, the lore of the game, specifically during the Shadows of Angamr phase and Moria phase I found was good, I cannot comment fully on the Mines of Moria expansion content as I never delved much into that specific story, but initially the 'Shadows of Angmar' storyline (which is the first expansion was very nice I thought). Also I really thought the Shadows of Angmar world fit with Tolkien's imagination. However, more recently 2012-2013 I played significantly through the 'Riders of Rohan' expansion, and I was never was pulled in by what was offered at all. Offering extremely boring and endless generic quests of 'kill 10 orcs, and kill 10 wargs', there wasn't anything remarkable, memorable, and so I never even bothered delving into the story of that expansion. Was it lacking the lively spirit of Tolkien's imagination? I cannot comment on thast, as it may be unjust to the story writers as I did not totaly read and pay attention to the story. (I think I just skipped tons of the reading). But there was indeed a dark force at work that did annihilate Tolkien's imagination from this game.. That leads to the second point, the disgusting marketing and 'Free to Play' money grab. After this game went 'Free to Play' sometime in 2010 (around there), the advertisements and marketing went absurd. 'Free to Play', an obvious play on words, also to be personal and blunt - a total deception, an utter scandal from a moral standpoint as it then became impossible to play the game without the slime of endless links to the 'Turbine Store' (the company's online in-game store), and ridiculous advertisements upon entry to the game client. I think basically at this point the 'Turbine Story' and easy profits took precendence over any meaningful game developments or great improvements. Next - the Lord of the Rings online community - it is pathetic. This game is filled with sociopaths, whatever you want to call them - simply cruel narcissistic individuals. Obviously there are decent people too, but I have had many encounters with rude vulgar people who will attempt to offend or grief you. One could say that this is part of the internet, I play a variety of online game, but on this game the community is truly dark and pathetic. The global chat, which is a side player created channel, is filled with fools and whoever is the most offensive and clever not to be banned (which just basically means not using curse words and not really what you write, unless you are a Christain and say Jesus Christ is the Son of God, then that may get you banned for hate speech, but I won't delve into that) will get a lot of 'lol's', and 'haha's'. Continuing, to comment on the PvP, and it's community. The PvP in this game is open sandbox PvP, where other players choose 'monster players' and fight against the regular created players 'Elves, men, etc.' There is no goal, other than some forts each side can fight for, which offer PvP experience bonuses. But the only real visible reward of PvP is the PvP experience you can get which gives you a PvP rank, which a player can then show off in the in-game world. I played PvP very extensively and got to a high rank on both Monster Player side and 'Regular good free peoples' side. The PvP is quite unbalanced, updates made can sometimes have PvP balancing aspects along with PvE, but it remains relatively unbalanced. However, regardless the PvP is not a good experience and it often left me feeling depressed rather than any positive feeling. The PvP community is horrid, filled with many passive aggressive, rude people, and I would highly recommend avoiding all PvP in this game. And with a PvP enviroment that has no purpose, where each side cannot even speak to eachother, true hatred, ganking, and griefing does become reality. I would also like to comment on the adminstration of this game. The in-game admins are horrible, along with the community admins. I was banned from the forums when Free to Play was released, as I oppossed it and even called some others communists, which resulted in GIF's mocking me, but of course, I was banned. Ive also been banned permenantly on 2 accounts, and over probaly a dozen times for different durations. They generally offerred no warnings to me, and simply banned as they saw fit, sometimes without even email confirmation. Bans would be due to using curse words, or such, many times defending myself and getting into fights with many others who often would try and provoke reactions, but in-game admins don't take provocation into account, they are incompetent. During Riders of Rohan I played significantly, it was dark and poor experience. I do not recommend LOTRO.