Love It Or Hate It: The Lord of the Rings Online
Some free-to-play games are more polarizing than others, with some sides taking the stance of "great, totally non-exploitative implementation" and others thinking "total pay-to-win trash." We'd like to see on what side of the spectrum the gaming public -- and by that, we mean you guys -- think of certain F2P games, and so we've invented something new called Love It Or Hate It?
Every week, we'll present a new F2P game and give you the option of passing judgment on it. Then we'll look back at it the next week and see what people thought. There are no prizes, except for the satisfaction of knowing you clicked on a button and made something happen. Really, what else do you need?
Well, that went about as expected. We get it, you guys love Path of Exile: An overwhelming 74.3% voted Love, versus just 4.6% voting for Hate. #LoveWins
This week, I'd like to all to give your thoughts on the MMO that -- if you've been listening to our podcasts -- was my MMO of choice for years, The Lord of the Rings Online. Turbine's flagship MMO has been through a lot in its eight years of existence, and I for one am not in love with it as much as I used to be, but I'll be really interested to see what the rest of you think. Humor me.
Tell us what you think of Path of Exile, and leave a comment below to expound upon your views!
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About the Author
Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.
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For 3 years I loved LOTRO, I played it a ton and was amazed at the world Turbine had built. Yet over time I saw the Turbine as a company was falling apart and it was starting to effect the game itself. QA being culled and the game becoming a buggy mess even with extended beta periods to test for bugs. I waited a year for Turbine to finish the class changes coming "soon" for hunters but went update after update with not a single hotfix or bugfix for the hunter class. With every update many classes would get changes so drastic that their very roles as DPS/Tank/Healers would change and throw the meta of the game into a spiral. Even with Turbine doing a top notch job of creating a virtual world for Lord of the Rings, after a while of dealing with Turbines very limited community interaction (that sometimes would border on acceptable when expansions neared) and the the game slowly degrading many people started to leave. The server I played on used to be the third most populated server that was very active but over time all my friends left, i went from guild to guild as they emptied and when I visit now I only come back to a ghost town as everyone is consolidating to one server (Brandywine) due to the lack of people.
There is much I loved about LOTRO that would take a while to list but it gets old and Turbine did not do a good job of making it last for those who had been around for a while and that was when Turbine was still a pretty good company. Now I have very little respect for Turbine as they have totally fallen apart as a company, they have fired many of their staff and what is very aggravating is that often a dev would just disappear and no work would be done on his work for months (like classes, as I mentioned earlier). Another decision that made Turbine look very stupid was their decision for one expansion (Riders of Rohan I think) to not release dungeons so PvE players were left with a stupid solo raid thing that was honestly TERRIBLE and SHIT. Turbine also makes tons of promises and carries them out rarely, in one instance (that im pretty sure acutally happend before I joined LOTRO also) they advertised for an expansion they would release a new PvMP zone, this was listed as apart of the pre-order but was dropped close to release (when I think as false advertising but that is just me).
Now I (as you can tell) would say that I HATE Lord of the Rings Online as it is now a shadow of its former glory and it is all due to the company, Turbine.
I like their model on the whole, but really think it needs to be updated. Since they've now stopped making full expansions (instead releasing smaller content updates), it's too much to expect people to pay a subscription and still have to pay for several old expansions on top. They really should just include everything in VIP. They should also stop selling separate expansions and just sell them all in one, cheap bundle.
I also think it's best to view this as a semi-buy to play game, where you pay for one month's VIP to unlock loads of features permanently, and can then play for free.
As for the game in general, yes it's getting a bit dated in animations and character models, but the landscapes remain beautifully designed, the community is the best I've ever found in an MMO, and it's a game I can always get straight back into after a break. The festivals are fun, there are plenty of events such as music, and it has to be one of the largest MMO worlds around.