Lord of the Rings Online info

Turbine Entertainment, have made a a World of Warcraft clone with Middle-earth nomenclature on it and called it a day The Lord of the Rings Online.It is such an accessible experience is bound to draw comparisons to the genre's leading title, but that it's so enjoyable to play is a testament to its great design. Its inventive aspects are peripheral, but they are there, and combined with slick and engaging questing, the package makes for plenty of appealing exploration.

The game is brimming with well-known characters and name-dropping galore, as well as familiar races that should please anyone acquainted with the LOTR universe. Men, dwarves, hobbits, and elves are all represented, along with seven total classes being up for grabs.On the other hand of playing, there is a good variety of gameplay styles from which to choose within those limitations. Classes like the pet-handling lore-master and the stealthy burglar play much differently, and all of them have a role to play within a group of adventurers. Significantly, all of them are viable solo classes as well.

narrative-focused MMOGs like Dungeons & Dragons Online and Asheron's Call 2 under Turbine's belt, it should came as no surprise that a group of story quests thread together your adventures. Completing each one of the rewards you with a high-quality cutscene, and it's in these moments that the license shines most. In your early adventures, it's tough to shake the feeling that you've seen most of these types of quests before in other fantasy RPGs. Once the story quests kick in, though, the immersion factor rises and the world's unique qualities come more clearly into focus.

Lord of the Rings Online doesn't feature the most technically proficient visuals, with occasionally simple geometry and relatively lackluster character models.The game engine Lord of the Rings Online runs smoothly and has few frame-rate jitters on even more modest systems, so performance issues are not likely to stand in the way of your escapades.

The sound design of the game  is even better, starting with a striking and varied soundtrack that transitions seamlessly from one locale to the next. The tribal music that you hear when entering the Old Forest is exciting and bound to get your heart pounding, and the occasional orchestral swooping of Ered Luin is well attuned to the visuals. Voice-overs are top notch as well, though most non-player characters aren't all that chatty anyway. It's harder for an online RPG to distinguish its sound effects, but they are all quite good in The Lord of the Rings Online, from the growls of wargs to the caws of pet ravens.

The greatest asset is that there's simply so much to do. World of Warcraft may be the king of quest-based MMOGs, but The Lord of the Rings Online is no slouch, and in fact, you may find yourself with so much to do that you reach the 40-quest limit in your quest log more often than you would expect.The quests require you to roam about a good deal, which makes for some occasionally leisurely travel but gives exploration types plenty to see. Aside from the story quests, they mostly boil down to the usual go-there-kill-that missions.

The other distinguishing hallmark is monster play. Once your hero character hits level 10, you can create a secondary monster avatar that's already at the maximum level of 50. For better or worse, you can't play as a full-fledged evil character. However, you can create a monster and enter the Ettenmoors, where a separate set of quests and advancement mechanics await you. This is also where The Lord of the Rings Online's main player-versus-player component comes into play, as hero characters at level 40 and higher can head out there and engage the player-controlled monstrosities. It's a fairly clever system, yet at this stage in the game where few hero characters have hit the necessary level, it's hard to say how successful monster play will be in the long run. At the very least, it gives lower-level players a chance to experience high-level PVP and raid content at an early stage.

The Lord of the Rings Online is no exception. Temporary groups are found in the guise of fellowships, while guilds are represented by kinships. Fellowships are necessary for group quest completion, but joining one has its own gameplay reward: fellowship maneuvers. While in combat, you can trigger a fellowship maneuver, which brings up a set of icons on your screen that represent these temporary skills. These skills can be both offensive and defensive, and they come in mighty handy while in the midst of combat. You can also plug in a headset and communicate with your fellowship via voice chat, though it would have been nice to have a kinship voice-chat option.

Gameplay basics like standard combat and crafting are par for the course in the genre. They are streamlined and pleasant enough, but they're missing a certain oomph found in other MMOGs. Crafting skills are combined into groups of three abilities called vocations. You can't pick and choose your skills. Crafted items are relevant right away, often producing better items than those dropped from monsters or earned as quest rewards, and certainly superior to those found at NPC vendors. The fundamental combat is quick and fun, but it sometimes feels as though there is a dearth of new skills and spells to learn as you advance, so gaining levels doesn't always bring as much excitement as you would hope.The Lord of the Rings Online's greatest asset: It's fun to play. And it's not often you can make such an unequivocal statement about an MMOG. It is also incredibly stable, so playing is never a struggle, and you can put all your effort into killing monsters and bashing hobbits rather than fiddling with settings or relogging.