Tingham
In Cryo Sleep
As some of you may be aware, The Lord of the Rings online went Free to Play some time ago.
While I was away from WoW, I started looking around for some fresh MMOs to play. Ive been playing a few, but one I always come back to all the time is the Lord of the Rings online
It is a very atmospheric, musically wonderful and graphically immersive game that, in my opinion, is something THN should be involved with.
I am therefore making an attempt to set up a THN Kinship (Guild) on The Lord of the Rings online, and this post is to try and get some of you fine people involved.
So, what are the advantages to LoTRO, I hear you shouting at me. "Tell us Tingham. Divulge your wisdom unto us!", I hear you crying.
Firstly, as I have said above, it is a deeply immersive and atmospheric game.
Secondly, it obviously has an immensely popular backstory, and the online game doesnt just back it up and fill it in, it also adds to it in a very believeable way.
Thirdly, and I realise this may not appeal to everyone, it is a challenge. It is considerably harder than WoW or even Guild Wars.
Fourthly, and this could be taken a different way: It isnt as addictive as WoW. It has many of the same things that make you want to get back on and get playing
but you never get that sense of grinding something because you feel you should. Part of this is explained under turbine points below.
So I see your cry has changed. You are somewhat skeptical. I hear you saying "Is it really free to play Ting?!. Really?".
No. It isnt. You can play all the way to max level, raid, pvp , enjoy most of the game for free. Youll be poor and it will take ages, but you can.
To gain some things, such as expansion packs or the ability to auction items, you will have to aquire and spend "Turbine Points". Which is basically Real Money.
These come at a set cost of around 4 euros (£3.20 or so) for 500. To put this in perspective, 5 auction house slots costs 95, while all the expansions costs around 2500.
You can also become a VIP member and get everything, though I have not really looked into this yet.
Cruicially though, these Turbine Points can be earnt in game through Questing, or doing Tasks. Tasks are mostly "Brigand Slayer - kill 25 Blackwolds" etc, but are also of the ilk "COmplete 65 quests in Bree-land".
So you dont HAVE to spend money to get everything, if you had patience and time, you could slowly earn them. I found they mounted up as i went along, mostly.
In terms of gameplay, it is much like WoW, but a little more complex. Characters are far more customisable in terms both of appearance and of role and stats.
The talent system, where you earn "traits" through exploring, questing, or killing stuff, which you then put into trait slots, sounds rubbish but in fact works
very, very well indeed.
Im not going to go into detail here about gameplay, but if you have any questions just give me a poke.
I will, however, have a few examples of the classes, as at least one person has said they would like to know more:
1) Minstrel - A healer. Plays like a mixture of druid a priest, with some direct healing, and some heals which use combinations.
2) Guardian - What I play. The core tank, plays like a Mixture, in wow terms, of Paladin and Druid tanks.
3) Champion - In Wow terms, a fury or arms warrior, basically one of the core melee dpsers.
There is alot more variation between classes than there is in WoW, and that is one of the things that I found really appealed to me.
"So Tingham" i hear you cry with rapturous approval- "How do we get this game! Lead us, and verily we shall follow yonder".
The EU client is available to download at:
http://community.lotro-europe.com/full_client.php.
The easiest way is to make an account as the game is downloading, it is, of course, free.
You will find me on the server "Withywindle EU". Which is a pan-european server. My name, as ever, is Tingham.
Ill update this more tommorow to give clearer and more detailed information, but I hope I can persuade some of you to at least give it a go.
Recent patches have turned this sup par game into a superb and much under appreciated game with an absoloutely incredible community of friendly, helpful and mature players
in which I think a THN Kinship would slot like a hot dog into T-bones Shi-tzu (tee hee!).To begin with , we need 8 people to form a Kinship, and then we can go from there.
Happy gaming folks.
Edit : If Im not on and your trying to get hold of me, then either use in game mail, or PM here
While I was away from WoW, I started looking around for some fresh MMOs to play. Ive been playing a few, but one I always come back to all the time is the Lord of the Rings online
It is a very atmospheric, musically wonderful and graphically immersive game that, in my opinion, is something THN should be involved with.
I am therefore making an attempt to set up a THN Kinship (Guild) on The Lord of the Rings online, and this post is to try and get some of you fine people involved.
So, what are the advantages to LoTRO, I hear you shouting at me. "Tell us Tingham. Divulge your wisdom unto us!", I hear you crying.
Firstly, as I have said above, it is a deeply immersive and atmospheric game.
Secondly, it obviously has an immensely popular backstory, and the online game doesnt just back it up and fill it in, it also adds to it in a very believeable way.
Thirdly, and I realise this may not appeal to everyone, it is a challenge. It is considerably harder than WoW or even Guild Wars.
Fourthly, and this could be taken a different way: It isnt as addictive as WoW. It has many of the same things that make you want to get back on and get playing
but you never get that sense of grinding something because you feel you should. Part of this is explained under turbine points below.
So I see your cry has changed. You are somewhat skeptical. I hear you saying "Is it really free to play Ting?!. Really?".
No. It isnt. You can play all the way to max level, raid, pvp , enjoy most of the game for free. Youll be poor and it will take ages, but you can.
To gain some things, such as expansion packs or the ability to auction items, you will have to aquire and spend "Turbine Points". Which is basically Real Money.
These come at a set cost of around 4 euros (£3.20 or so) for 500. To put this in perspective, 5 auction house slots costs 95, while all the expansions costs around 2500.
You can also become a VIP member and get everything, though I have not really looked into this yet.
Cruicially though, these Turbine Points can be earnt in game through Questing, or doing Tasks. Tasks are mostly "Brigand Slayer - kill 25 Blackwolds" etc, but are also of the ilk "COmplete 65 quests in Bree-land".
So you dont HAVE to spend money to get everything, if you had patience and time, you could slowly earn them. I found they mounted up as i went along, mostly.
In terms of gameplay, it is much like WoW, but a little more complex. Characters are far more customisable in terms both of appearance and of role and stats.
The talent system, where you earn "traits" through exploring, questing, or killing stuff, which you then put into trait slots, sounds rubbish but in fact works
very, very well indeed.
Im not going to go into detail here about gameplay, but if you have any questions just give me a poke.
I will, however, have a few examples of the classes, as at least one person has said they would like to know more:
1) Minstrel - A healer. Plays like a mixture of druid a priest, with some direct healing, and some heals which use combinations.
2) Guardian - What I play. The core tank, plays like a Mixture, in wow terms, of Paladin and Druid tanks.
3) Champion - In Wow terms, a fury or arms warrior, basically one of the core melee dpsers.
There is alot more variation between classes than there is in WoW, and that is one of the things that I found really appealed to me.
"So Tingham" i hear you cry with rapturous approval- "How do we get this game! Lead us, and verily we shall follow yonder".
The EU client is available to download at:
http://community.lotro-europe.com/full_client.php.
The easiest way is to make an account as the game is downloading, it is, of course, free.
You will find me on the server "Withywindle EU". Which is a pan-european server. My name, as ever, is Tingham.
Ill update this more tommorow to give clearer and more detailed information, but I hope I can persuade some of you to at least give it a go.
Recent patches have turned this sup par game into a superb and much under appreciated game with an absoloutely incredible community of friendly, helpful and mature players
in which I think a THN Kinship would slot like a hot dog into T-bones Shi-tzu (tee hee!).To begin with , we need 8 people to form a Kinship, and then we can go from there.
Happy gaming folks.
Edit : If Im not on and your trying to get hold of me, then either use in game mail, or PM here
