LOTRO Pickup

[squirrelfanatic]

Ok, some first impressions and thoughts that might be relevant for us.

- Lots of quests. LOTS. And a lot of running to and fro. Conveniently, there are

- Steeds. I am still running around like a sucker, but I am already planning on getting some kind of ride in the near future. I gather they cost quite a bit of money but it seems there is pretty much no alternative if you want to get anywhere in a bearable amount of time. The wiki tells me that you can learn to ride for free via a certain quest after reaching level 20. So there is a first milestone to work towards.

- Houses. Even more expensive, Deluxe Houses that have more features than normal ones are unavailable for F2P players since they cost way more than the 2 gold you are allowed to have. Plus, they cost frigging upkeep. Maybe it would be possible to get a shared home but I am not comfortable with paying (and working for) rent in game. It's not the Sims.

- Storage. There seems to be enough room in the Vault for all kinds of stuff, at least if you just have to store stuff for a single character. If need be I guess you can always make a second F2P account and exchange stuff between characters pretty easily.

- Leveling. Seems to be pretty quick if you know what you're doing. Simple running around doing quests and killing a few critters on the way worked fine for me until now. Doing stuff together should speed things up even more.

Therefore, I suggest that we should get our group together as soon as possible (maybe some more experienced people can share some knowledge on how quickly you can meet up when coming from different starting areas) and see to it that we all hit level 20 in order to get our rides. If anybody (read: Humans and Hobbits) needs help with starter quests, I'll be happy to give you a hand to make things go quicker.

What are your thoughts?

[Scilantius]

If we're talking about Laurelin here, I have a lvl 20 loremaster there, but was thinking of trying a runekeeper as well. However, my playing time is really erratic, so I am loathe to add myself to the spreadsheet, even moreso because of having only the lvl 20 guy.

I'm a relatively old player, I just about stopped playing after f2p/mirkwood got introduced, so there's new things I don't know, and I've forgotten most of the old :P But if anyone needs anything, or has any questions, I'm very much willing to help.

I guess if it's alright with you guys, I'll add my char somewhere out of the way on the spreadsheet, so you can contact me in game. If it gets inconvenient or whatever, just delete me from the spreadsheet.

[Gerbick]

Before I roll a new char, is there any class we a in need of?

[Rakysh]

I think we're basically covered. Pick what interests you.

[Taidan]

Are we gonna make ourselves a tasty little Guild to get started, or should we try riding on the coattails of an established Guild to get ourselves moving?

There are pros and cons either way, of course, which basically break down into "Having more people around to play at a greater range of times" versus "Having complete control of what goes on in the Guild". For what it's worth, I'm not bothered either way, as we can always tread the other path if our first attempt goes awry.

Also, those little content/quest packs I've seen for sale in the store. I've not played LOTRO since it's gone F2P, and I only ever got to level 25-ish first time around anyway. Are we going to have to buy those at some point? Will we need to sort out which ones we're going to get, or do we wind up buying them all anyway in time?

Are there people here who just won't spend any money on the game at all, for any reason? Are there people who will just shoot in and buy out the entire store? Personally I don't mind the idea of spending real money, as unlike a subscription deal it's not an endlessly recurring deal, and you get to "keep" what you buy for the game's lifetime. However, I would be extremely wary of spending more than... Oh, let's say £8.99 a month to keep playing, plus the odd expansion. (Ex-WoW subscriber.)

Also, what are people actually going to want to achieve in these games? Are people relaxed, playing socially in whatever way the mini-hive takes them, or will we be dragged kicking and screaming by people who are racing to the level cap to dominate the raiding scene? (Relaxed player with submerged obsessive-completist streak here. It'll ramp up to "unbearable" if we reach the level cap.)

My God, these F2P MMOs are a minefield.

[squirrelfanatic]

After spending way too much time with Guild Wars I promised myself not to invest heavily (timewise) in any MMO anymore. I'm doing this for the fun of exploring the world and some bonkers action with nice people adventuring together, so it is very unlikely that you'll see me raiding or even just playing on a fixed schedule.

Since I don't know for how long this game will keep me entertained, I won't invest really much money in extra quest packs (maybe I'll buy one of the bigger expansions like Moria if everybody wants to do a certain questline) and rather get as much fun out of the free content available.

Concerning the whole F2P thing I have to say that I am pretty satisfied with both quality and quantity of the content you get for free. Subscriptions have always been out of the question for me (you either spend too much money or too much time on a game with that) and I pretty much think of this as an experiment to see how things turn out. I think it's a shame that so very few games follow a "purchase once, pay no monthly fees, buy cosmetics if you like" model like Guild Wars did. This alone makes me look forward to GW2's release.

[Rakysh]

I'm in a similar boat to squirrel re: time commitments, and I've already shelled out for a mount and a quest pack or two. That'll be the extent though. We should do the free content and then see where we are.

[squirrelfanatic]

Just noticed a little error in my post above concerning mounts: You need to buy the riding skill with Turbine Points if you are no "VIP" (read: subscriber). I don't yet know what to think of that, maybe the TP you earn in game are enough for this. If not... yeah, don't really know.

Edit: Maybe this will come in handy for getting TPs: http://lotro.mmorsel.com/2010/08/how...ne-points.html

[Xercies]

I will probably be getting my character up and ready for this evening, lets see if I can remember my account.

[Gorm]

I should probably say, if you find items with a green background in the little square they are crafting items. Keep them if you possibly can. Someone will probably need them.
Also i made a strange decision when this game came out and became a life time subscriber, so i am a VIP player, no idea how this changes my experience. Seems like i get random gifts every few levels that only last for around an hour each. But you could use them to good effect. Things like extra health, extra experience, quicker completion of deeds. Also deeds get you turbine points, is this just because i have a VIP account or is it the same for everyone?

[squirrelfanatic]

This is the same for everyone. See the link in my post above (or check the LotRO wiki) for what gives which amount. It is possibly tiresome and inconvenient trying to buy extra content with them (as the packs are quite expensive), but it should be enough for us F2P people to get the riding skill.

However, it is really nice to have a "guaranteed VIP" with us as it removes some obstacles with the money cap (we could transfer money to your account for saving up for expensive stuff).

[Gorm]

Yes thats right, send me all your money.

Bwhahahahaha

[squirrelfanatic]

Yes thats right, send me all your money.

Bwhahahahaha

And then China saved Capitalism. :)

[Scilantius]

I'm in the same boat as you with the lifetime subscription Gorm, but I don't really know which random gifts you are referring to - I've never seen any extra buffs or whatever on my characters. And yes, I'm sure some of the amenities can be earned with the deeds - there's quite a lot of them, and each is worth 5 TP and may have multiple tiers as well. Riding should be quite easy to achieve, I imagine, since I saw it costs about 75 TP. I'm thinking you can get that easy until lvl 20. One other thing you can get is the money-cap remover (I don't recall what it's called, but someone mentioned it on chat the other day), which is a bit costlier, and may be grindy,... on the other hand, you could go premium, and get the moneycap removed + bags + I-have-no-idea :P

EDIT:
Well, here's the comparison chart,... turns out even if you go premium, your max is 5gold, and you can get the removal via TP. And you don't get the bags,... hmm.

And it looks like this comparison is a bit old, since now you get Ered Luin, Shire, Bree and Lonelands as f2p + monster play as well I believe.

[squirrelfanatic]

It is possible to subscribe for one month though and keep the extra bags and removed money cap as well as other stuff as explained here (section 'D'): http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...e-2-Play-F-A-Q

[Taidan]

Yeah, I think as long as you're not planning on starting multiple alts over time, paying a one-month sub then cancelling again seems to be a cheap way of getting some of the nicer bonuses added, especially considering you get almost £5's worth of points with it anyway.

The only thing that's of concern to me is how this whole "Fast Travel" thing is handled. It looks to me that if you're not a VIP, you have to buy items to temporarily give you the ability to fast-travel outside of the low-level areas, at about 700-800 TPs a month? That would be a pricey luxury.

Also, I can't find any solid information on how much the VIP subscriptions are these days. I'm guessing it's £8.99 still, but the official site and store seems unwilling to tell me until I've actually entered my credit card details...

[Xercies]

An elf can fast travel a group so most people use them to fast travel a lot of times!

[Gorm]

Okay, so meet in Bree when the Epic quest takes us there? I haven't had anything to do some i'm level 16, sorry. I have about 4 characters on another server from the low 20's to 52 so if i think hard enough i've probably tried most of the quests atleast once. But they have actually changed up some of them from when i first played at the launch.
If anyone needs help then i'll come along on quests with you.

Have we decided a time to all play together?

[squirrelfanatic]

Yeah, I'm finding it hard to resist fooling around as well. ;) I think we could start out after Tuesday, since you've mentioned that would be best for you afaik. I will be on holidays (and away from my PC) from Saturday until the 18th though, so you lot go on ahead and I'll join in after my return.

[LowKey]

I am still waiting to hear back from Turbine, as their in the states ill give them the benefit of the doubt for today but if I dont hear from them by tomorrow morn I will just crack on with a fresh account, so having tuesday to get some levels would be useful for me