Yet Another LOTR Game - Lord of the Rings Online
By RelentlessKnight 1 Comments
Since it has been a non-so busy week for me, I had the chance to play Lord of the Rings Online, Bulletstorm and Marvel vs Capcom 3 consecutively and let me just say that two of them gave me a huge headache after playing it and may or may not play it.
Lord of the Rings Online
Last year it was announced that this game was finally free to play after three years, probably because of World of Warcraft. After much reluctance due to not wanting to play another MMORPG (or WoW) primarily due to actually try to play the game but morons decided harass me and the fact that I have to listen to a group of parents in ventrilo taking long breaks like their annoying baby crying to smoking breaks while doing a raid instance constantly wanting for them. These are the hundreds of reasons why I didn't want to play MMORPG specifically for WoW but since my 360 is acting strangely these couple of days and trying to find a game fit for my PC, I decided to download Lord of the Rings Online. The registration was no hassle, it took about a minute and didn't ask me anything else, the installation process on the other hand was slow for me due to my PC being crappy but still unable to play it despite a number of hiccups in terms of lagging. When the installation process and the update was completed which took about 7 hours or so, the game launched.
In the character-creation, I decided to go for Dave's law of choosing a female and be a Gondor Champion which is primarily a rogue or a DPS warrior in WoW being able to duel-wield with a sword and a dagger and like the rogue you have to get enough Fervour to do specific abilities which is located at the button of the screen but abilities also uses up your power too like mana. Unlike WoW, you start off with a short tutorial as you are some prisoner who was then rescued by Strider which was weird because Strider or Aragorn was with the Fellowship during that time, escaping from the Mines of Moria or perhaps the beginning was before the fellowship even created in Rivendell. Anyways he frees you but realizes you're not a hobbit and asks you to rescue two hobbits and meet with another ranger at the gate, fighting against blackwold jailers. The combat at first felt slow for me at the beginning, it took me awhile to attack as well as loot.
After I rescue the two hobbits from captive, I met up with another ranger at the gate but apparently was attacked by a Black Rider poisoning him as I was then warped to another zone, Archet which included a short cutscene with a wannabe Gandalf narrating. There's a neat story within this zone, it felt like Catacylsm with the whole intros - it's pretty much betrayal that has to do with Blackwolds raiding the town which immediately throw you into a single player instance like the starting in a destroyed town trying to rescue and repel the invaders and experience a memorable scene where a black rider takes the injured ranger under his command and also you get a ton of rewards like a rental horse to a ton of consumables. I wouldn't go into much detail of my adventures with quests but it seems like Turbine has created a marketplace in their Lotr store purchasing quests, cosmetics to exclusive items redeemable with Turbine points which funds the game and the fact that you earn titles like not getting killed through ten levels gets you, the title of unstoppable, cosmetics like using dye to colour your gear and doing deeds like killing a specific number of mobs.
After hitting level 10 and going off to Combe which is the Westfall, a button appear on the screen called perks which also rewarded me 200 points enabling me to buy permanent items to benefit from getting more experience to increasing my morale and power which is health and mana. My main gripe about this feature is that I had to wait long enough to open the Lotr site everytime it enables me to unlock perks to traits. Now I'm level 11 after countless hours of playing and it's kinda growing on me... talking about it makes me want to play more.