LOTRO becomes free to play

[Legio]

You will. <_<

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

Remember this when you make a kinship
http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Kinship

[Legio]

Remember this when you make a kinship
http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Kinship

What's a fellowship? I kept joining them yesterday. A few guys would be like 'hey join us' and I would say 'yo this will be epic'. So we ran around killing stuff and taking blows for eachother, but then I would run off randomly and the fellowship would be broken.

I think 8 or so people hate me now.

[Manco]

fellowhips are Lotro's version of a party. You're supposed to quest together or do some early dungeons

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

fellowhips are Lotro's version of a party. You're supposed to quest together or do some early dungeons

Also in fellowships you can do fellowship moves.
When you trigger a fellowship move, it says that you(or your team-mate) has broken a enemy's defense. The enemy in question will be stunned for a short while and a window appears that has four buttons on it, red, green, blue and orange.

The task here is that everyone has to target the stunned enemy and then select one of these colors, if you do proper combos you can get powerful buffs, debuffs or even do alot of damage.
For example, if you are in a 5 man fellowship and you get a fellowship move, if 3 of you pick the green button and the other 2 pick the blue button, you get a very powerful buff that pretty much restores all your health and power for all in the fellowship and gets a short buff that keeps it that way.
If you are in a 6 man fellowship and 5 of you go red and the last one goes blue, you will do massive damage against the enemy but you will also spawn a oathbreaker, a ghost warrior that will spawn and help you in the battle. He will disappear once you have defeated one enemy or after a certain amount of time.
Those are just two examples but there are many more of these sort of combos you can do.

All classes can trigger this but only burglars have a specific skill that allows them to trigger it when they want. The others simply have to rely on luck.
Needless to say that it can turn the tide if you are losing.

[Legio]

I was once in a fellowship with some Pelargir guy. I left him to die because he was surrounded by spiders. I'm glad there is a censor in the chat box.

[Mangerman]

You can turn the filter off in the options, if you like. I have since it filters out random words too sometimes.

[Nesimî]

Levels? I think Im 4, since I got bored and started to play with Bodypaint 3D

[Banned]

In certain massively multiplayer online games, words like Nazi, Hitler, God and Christ are censored.

[Nesimî]

wow, this might be more fun than WoW

[SigniferOne]

I thought I'd add my impressions from the trial several months back, for all it's worth:

After 3 or 4 days:

Named weapons and items start to appear way too early in a character's life, as early as level 5 or so. This in my view significantly diminishes the importance of more elite items, and also significantly "kid's" down the game. If you have an "Sword of Elgin", and Aragorn has a "Narsil", what's to distinguish your weapon from Aragorn's? A bunch of stats? Would the contrast have been better if you had "sturdy iron sword", everyone running around had "forged broadword"s and such, but here came Aragorn with a "Narsil"?

I like it, but would have hoped that they took a far more gritty/realistic approach, where you spend most of your life running around in leather armor, or plain steel breastplates; perhaps 'improved', perhaps 'shiny', but nevertheless plain and sensical. What do you think Aragorn's kit would've been like if he were imagined by the LOTRO team? a bunch of radiance armor, super-awesome multi-colored item names, named after famous game monsters, etc. Instead, he had plain but sturdy leather armor. Only his sword was legendary, and almost nobody in the world had a named sword, or any sword like it.

That is not to say that all aspects are far removed from the authentic LOTR gameplay. I like the Historian profession, where you have to scour dilapidated Arnorian ruins for scraps of ancient fragments and texts.

Several weeks later, near the end of the trial:

The problem is that imo the game quite significantly drops off in LOTR relevance, as you play into the game further. I am in the last stages of the trial and like I said, nearly every single item of equipment is named, and among other things, you begin to realize that the classes are a bit oddly distributed; e.g. Aragorn of the original LOTR is here what would be somehow a mix of the Hunter and Champion classes. You cannot be a Hunter and be a full Aragorn, because for instance Hunter-oriented professions (e.g. Woodworking) are aimed towards providing him with the best bow; to become leather-clad like Aragorn in the movies you have to become a Tailor.

I tried to go with a difficult but lore choice, a Hunter with a scholar profession. Really it is underwhelming to realize that each class has pigeonholed professions, and they really expect you to always accept profession X if you're class A. The unorthodox Hunter/ scholar is fun, I get to scour the ruins of Arnor for various ancient trinkets and relics as a result, but I get the feeling that the scholar profession was really meant for the Lore-Master class instead. It would've been much more powerful with that class, and I get nothing out of it besides the kick of following the movies, even though it basically retards my character and set him back. How reasonable is that?

What you begin to realize, at the end of it all, is that the game designers basically picked out 5 or 6 generic RPG classes which didn't have to have anything to do with the original LOTR, and then merely slapped some LOTR-like names on them to give the veneer of relatedness.

The more you get into it the less it appears to be an authentic, profound LOTR gameplay, and the more very resoundingly just another arcade game, with the LOTR logo incidentally attached to its opening screen and a few in-game titles.

The point is not about the realism of "naming one's weapons", but the realism of "immersing ourselves in the LOTR universe". Everyone carrying a named sword diminishes greatly the few named swords when they exist in the actual LOTR universe. Are we given the name of Gimli's axe? Is Legolas equipped with The Bow or Pure Pwnage? What about the 300 elite Elves present (at least in the movies) at Helm's Deep? What about the thousands of Men at the siege, with their swords? Surely they would all have epic-named colorful items, to be present at such an "advanced" siege right?

In truth named swords are of rarest existence in the LOTR universe. Every single one of them is of legendary, epic importance, even the little Sting owned by Frodo which is of Elvish make and of nearly unimaginable antiquity and legend. He needed to almost die to get it, and just as significantly, he continued to use it until the very end. Contary to LOTRO, it didn't get "outdated" when he got to "more advanced" stages, like Helm's Deep, or to the "epic instance" of the plane of Gorgoroth.

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

Stay on topic

[Banned]

Stay on topic

Okay, soldier, but one or two off-topic comment(s) doesn't hurt, does it?

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

Okay, soldier, but one or two off-topic comment(s) doesn't hurt, does it?

Stay on topic

[Banned]

Stay on topic

You're the one with the hammer.

By the way, should I really create a minstrel? I've heard all good things about this class, but what about the cons? It would be hard to switch back if I find him annoying, tedious or just scrawny like a thin sheet of paper.

[Legio]

Man I finally encountered goblins earlier today. Feels good. I think I'll run to Angmar and try to survive for as long as I can.

Can I do quests for the wicked men or do I have to be all hero ish?

[Nesimî]

Man I finally encountered goblins earlier today. Feels good. I think I'll run to Angmar and try to survive for as long as I can.

Can I do quests for the wicked men or do I have to be all hero ish?

You have to be hero-ish but you can play as an orc by clicking Monster play once you have a lvl 10 char

[Legio]

Bah! I wanted to be a swarthy man of Angmar.

[Legio]

Is there any way to fast travel? I hate walking everywhere. I'm in Thorin's Halls and shudder at the thought of trekking back to Bree..

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

Is there any way to fast travel? I hate walking everywhere. I'm in Thorin's Halls and shudder at the thought of trekking back to Bree..

There are stable masters that provide fast travel(swift travel as it's called).

You make it sound like a very cool feature.

It is.
there is a music making system in the game.
For those that are interested in the music system
http://www.thefatlute.com/
There is both tutorials and songs you can download and play using instruments in the game.