Comments on: The Year In Graphs

By: qrter

qrter — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:24:41 +0000

.. are you reading comments out loud..?

By: Bidermaier

Bidermaier — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:14:56 +0000

stop saying LOTRO LOTRO. I hate how it sounds.
EVE on the other hand…

By: Xercies

Xercies — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:13:10 +0000

@the affront

I find it the other way around on my server, the lower level areas are packed(especially the dwarf/elf starting area) but when you get to about middle 20s up to middle 40s most of the areas become ghost towns.

@Paul B

I find this as well, when I picked a server ages ago I had no idea what would be populated and what wouldn’t and it was only by trial and error that I found quite a good one. Though I’m still regretting a bit the choice I made because it isn’t that heavily populated. Though I won’t move since I got a lot friends on the server. So maybe Codemasters/Turbine should put a health meter beside each of their servers. It will be easy to implement since AOC does it.

By: Caiman

Caiman — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:28:09 +0000

These things are cute, but pretty worthless overall except for very obvious trends. Nobody seems to do any actual statistical analysis on these kinds of data. Commenting on minor kinks in a line does not equal “analysis” so there’s no more insight going on that I can’t see myself. Hell, they haven’t even labelled the x-axes of the graphs! I hate that.

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:11:27 +0000

LOTRO is awesome, but my god, couldn’t they make it easier to level a minstrel up 50-60? Combat hurts.

By: shon

shon — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:43:06 +0000

@thelief Then you want the short story collection, Bubbas of the Apocalypse edited by Selina Rosen. I think they actually have a couple of books now in their franchise. I know I have read stories covering at least 3 of the points you mentioned.

By: Feet

Feet — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:28:29 +0000

LOTRO is the only MMO I would play right now. A very good and beautiful MMO, but Mainly because of the exceptionally friendly and helpful userbase but it helps that it’s the best MMO out there. I fully expect to start playing it again in Feb once I get back from my hols.

By: the affront

the affront — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 02:10:44 +0000

Paul B: Once you get out of the newb zones and reach Bree it gets a lot better (in case you didn’t).
The first zone can really feel empty because every race has their own.. and considering that many people just hang around in Moria at the moment, I found Bree (and other such hubs like the Esteldin craft hall) to be more populated than I thought they would be.
Probably around 50 players in Bree during peak hours on my server, including those in the auction/crafting house, which feels quite alright – not too crowded and not a ghost town.

The world also feels far from empty, I run across a lot of people just questing even in the mid levels, I’d guess at 50+ there are a lot more atm due to people still leveling up to 60 and/or farming legendary items/etc.
Splitting up the starter zones might not have been the best decision in hindsight, as new players really get the impression that there aren’t many people around, when in truth they only see a quarter of those that are in between level 5 and 14 (give or take), and those levels are over really fast if it’s not your first time.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised that there were still so many people playing, as I had feared otherwise (tried Vanguard again a few months ago and that really felt like a ghost town, not really a fair comparison because its launch sucked donkey balls, but still).

And yeah, the community is mostly really helpful.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 01:37:47 +0000

I tried the free 2-week LoTRO trial that’s available and, while it was in some ways better then WoW, I also found the server population left a bit to be desired.

If I recall, there was no way to tell whether a server was empty, half empty or full from the start-up browser. I’ve also got to say that I found LoTRO one of the friendliest MMOs around, once there were a few other players on the server.

By: FP

FP — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:04:43 +0000

FWIW the book quest in western lone-lands was where my character got stuck. After spending hours trying to find a grp I kind of gave-up, got distracted by another game and never went back to LotRO (maybe Turbine need to do some Valve-style profiling to find these spots).

By: Larington

Larington — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:38:07 +0000

Thats what I suspected, makes me wonder if Turbine/Codies should revisit that quest chain and refurbish it, since they can apply lessons since learned to its design.

By: the affront

the affront — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:09:02 +0000

You probably mean the Garth Agarwen quests, then, Larington.. and yeah, those can be a problem, but I think it’s because they’re so damn tedious and long-winded (the ones in the actual instance, not the last part of the book), so that people these days just skip them or get a high level kinmate to shuttle them – with all the quests in Evendim now you really don’t need to do them to progress.
Even only a few months after release there were comparably fewer groups for those as there were for nearly everything else, if I remember correctly – but that could just be me hating the shit out of that particular instance :P

But: there were still groups for these going on my server, even if as you say fewer than elsewhere.