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HPanda posted:I also found that some classes just feel less impactful, at least at the early stages. Weirdly, Minstrel feels like their attacks have some actual impact to them, moreso to me than something like Champion or Hunter. Minstrels are definitely glass cannons, but they at least seem to have the cannon part at the proper level to be fun to play. It's so funny because I have been playing my champion, gathering up half a zone's worth of mobs and decimating them. When I leveled my Captain, I had to go one-by-one or I would die (that was a million years ago though)
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May 24, 2021 16:04
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| # ? May 11, 2024 21:49 |
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One of the things I really like about LOTRO is each class feels different. they aren't all on the same global cooldown, skills have different animations and recharge speeds and some of the classes get a nice rhythm to the combat, its one of the reasons I keep going back to my Champion even though I generally prefer more hybrid classes. Not sure what level you get all your skills and get a strong rotation but it just feels good once you get into the rhythm of it. Warden is probably the closest to the WoW style GCD combat except, it has the additional complexity of trying to remember all your rotations.
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May 24, 2021 16:31
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Zam Wesell posted:After playing a few hours, what strikes me is how peaceful and just nice it is to run around in this game. Not a constant mess of sound and particle effects and constantly instancing in and out of «epic moments». I think the calmness of old school MMOs is something I’ve been missing. Also, the super active World chat makes it seem like there’re loads more playing this game than most other MMOs where no one is talking. For all of its many flaws over the years, LOTRO has always been really good about having a good feel to it and just wandering around*. IIRC the Old Forest used to be a bunch of champion(?) and elite tree mobs in addition to the roots and stuff, so questing in there solo (or even as a small group that wasn't careful) could get real brutal. * Except for Isengard, gently caress that entire expansion. Mirkwood was a step down from Moria but Isengard felt like falling off of a cliff.
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May 24, 2021 17:09
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Evil Fluffy posted:For all of its many flaws over the years, LOTRO has always been really good about having a good feel to it and just wandering around*. IIRC the Old Forest used to be a bunch of champion(?) and elite tree mobs in addition to the roots and stuff, so questing in there solo (or even as a small group that wasn't careful) could get real brutal. I just came back after a decade or so away, but yeah, I do remember the early levels being much more difficult in places. Then again, I’ve also been noticing that at least in early levels, the crafted gear is miles ahead of quest rewards, so was kinda wondering if maybe they just added a bunch of insane gear to help speed through low levels. Or maybe there’s more experience points in early levels now? I have yet to go questing through the whole Shire like I used to because I outlevel the place by the time I hit Hobbiton. Though I guess crafting exp might account for some of that.
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May 24, 2021 17:17
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HPanda posted:I just came back after a decade or so away, but yeah, I do remember the early levels being much more difficult in places. Then again, I’ve also been noticing that at least in early levels, the crafted gear is miles ahead of quest rewards, so was kinda wondering if maybe they just added a bunch of insane gear to help speed through low levels. Good crafted gear was pretty much always better than quest rewards until 40 or so when you could get that one armor set in Angmar, then in Moria the quest rewards were sometimes better (the Epic gave a really good cloak iirc) with instances like Grand Stairs having good potential loot too as you worked your way to 60 to run DN and such for the raid gear that was the best. I'm not sure if crafted gear changed, but when they made the level scaling for a bunch of dungeons I recall the teal drops from places like the Great Barrows and the Warg Pens just vastly overshadowed any quest rewards (and some/all crafted gear) because those drops had stats in line with the attribute revamp while the quest rewards and crafted stuff were still setup under the old "all stats are important to some degree" system that was used until Isengard or Rohan.
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May 24, 2021 17:29
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Also pretty good support for ultrawide monitors in this game. Well, except for the map which makes me lol: https://imgur.com/a/jkC3qJM
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May 24, 2021 17:41
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Zam Wesell posted:Seems like it? Isn’t that just a speed upgrade, not the actual skill?
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May 24, 2021 20:32
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Comrade Koba posted:Isn’t that just a speed upgrade, not the actual skill? Ride skill for all characters on account, now and future, is part of those.
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May 24, 2021 20:40
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Zam Wesell posted:Also pretty good support for ultrawide monitors in this game. Well, except for the map which makes me lol: https://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info581-JRRSkinscollection-Atributetomiddleearth.html
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May 24, 2021 21:11
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Zam Wesell posted:Started out with hunter, but switched over to champion. It's okay, maybe I'll give minstrel a shot? Did you pick red line hunter? Blue line is a lot more mobile and doesn't have movement penalties. I vastly prefer it.
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May 24, 2021 21:46
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fenix down posted:Yikes, I hope that can be fixed by a UI reskin. Thanks a lot for this! Installed it and chose the JRR *C* skin. Looks a million times better now. Also, the map's now windowed.
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May 24, 2021 22:39
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I always wanted to like this game but the starting places are old and abandoned and no one runs the leveling dungeons If they had just done a simple ff14 roulette it would have been great Oh well I think I got to level 40 something . Never made it to Moria
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May 25, 2021 00:47
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euphronius posted:I always wanted to like this game but the starting places are old and abandoned and no one runs the leveling dungeons Yeah, agreed on the roulette. As it is, just nice that it’s F2P. Can just jump in whenever and chill in Middle Earth for a while without feeling like I need to get my $15 worth for a month.
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May 25, 2021 00:55
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Zam Wesell posted:Also pretty good support for ultrawide monitors in this game. Well, except for the map which makes me lol: Get a UI mod (I use this one), they all put the map in a window for this reason https://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info1049 (e;f;b, but my skin is better so there)
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May 25, 2021 04:03
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These go on sale fairly often. If it would give you enjoyment now to have max speed (it does make every quest better) then don't wait, but generally you can get them 20ish percent off if you just wait a bit.
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May 25, 2021 04:31
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(Note: Lotro Points are normally anywhere from 75/$1 to 115/$1 depending on how many you buy at once. If there's a point bonus sale on it goes from 87.6/$1 to 167.5/$1. You can also earn them in game very slowly but unless you value your time as less than sub-minimum wage buying them is easier.) (Note: Most of this list goes on sale at some point. These are non-sale prices.) THINGS TO BUY FIRST THAT ARE PROBABLY NECESSARY: Premium Wallet: 995 LP buy this before anything else. About 700 things that normally go in your inventory will disappear into the wallet. For some reason VIP status doesn't give you this. One month VIP: $17 or so with tax once you do this, make a character of every class you think you might want to play; creating them while VIP unlocks enough things (fast travel, talents, virtues) to make it worth buying a month. after the first month you need never buy it again (unless you want to make a new character). Note: if you get to level 20 during that month (which is easily doable) you can buy your first horse with in-game gold. i'd rather just unlock it immediately (see below) but you do you! THINGS TO BUY AFTER VIP EXPIRES THAT ARE PROBABLY NECESSARY EVENTUALLY: Currency Cap Removal: 395 LP LOTRO rains money on you and it's pretty easy to hit the 5G cap (2G if you never buy anything from the store ever). This solves that problem. Quest Zones: Didn't get them all for free when SSG was giving them away during the pandemic? Welp. This is where you'll pay the most - but bear in mind once you pay for a zone, you unlock it for your account, for every character, forever, instead of paying a subscription. The ideal min-max path for levelling will require the following to get to max level: (before doing this get to level 30 via starter zone/Bree-lands/Lone-lands for free) Zones prefixed with (1) are included in Eriador bundle for 3995 LP which is by far a better deal if you're not paying as you level. (1) Evendim: 30-40 595 LP (1) Misty Mountains: 40-45 695 LP (can skip if you can get to 43 or better in Evendim, which is possible) Wildwood: 45-50 1195 LP (can do (1) Eregion with this level range for 695 LP, Wildwood just came out this year) Moria: 50-60 2495 LP (1495 LP for the quests version, doesn't include instances) Mirkwood: 60-65 695 LP (1) Enedwaith: 65-70 695 LP Great River: 70-75 795 LP (may be able to skip if you've gotten to 75 in Enedwaith) I Hate Rohan Part One (aka "Riders of Rohan"): 75-85 2495 LP (1495 LP for the quests version, doesn't include instances) I Hate Rohan Part Two (aka "Helms Deep"): 85-95 2495 LP (want a cheaper version? nope!) Western Gondor: 95-100 795 LP At this point for about a year? 2? SSG just said "screw you, no more level cap increases" and everything stayed at level 100 for a very long time, which makes levelling through Gondor awkward. You'll hit level 100 easily in Western Gondor, so just do the epic quest (which is free) and nothing else once you finish Western Gondor until you get to Far Anorien (the Minas Tirith area - after you escape Osgiliath) at which point SSG said "ok, we'll give you level bumps again" and progression continues. Far Anorien: 100-105 1995 LP If you get to 106 or better in Far Anorien, don't bother buying any other quest content and just do the epic quest until Mordor opens up (again, epic quest is free and you get to fight alongside Aragorn - spoiler, he lives, the ring doesn't, Frodo's saved. Note: being overlevelled well past 105 once you hit Mordor is helpful, as everything in Mordor hits level-appropriate players like a truck. Mordor: 105-115 2495 LP I Hate Dwarves Part One (aka "Where Dragons Dwell"): 115-120 1995 LP Minas Morgul: 120-130 2495 LP You're done! Time to join endless parties where internet nerds yell at you because you don't have four maxed out legendary weapons you swap out for each skill. (I Hate Dwarves Part Two is a brief quest pack at the level cap "War of Three Peaks" and I Hate Dwarves Part Three "Gundabad" is the next expansion due this year.) THINGS TO BUY IN ROUGH ORDER TO MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER Account-wide fast horse unlock: 2995 LP Gotta go fast! Every character you make, for the rest of your life, can have the fastest horse in the game at level 5. Buy this if you value your time at all. Milestone time-reduction: - Expedient Traveller: 495 LP Milestone cooldown now 35m instead of 60m - Hurried Traveller: 495 LP Milestone cooldown now 5m instead of 35m Having a milestone skill available every 5 minutes will save hours and hours of your life. (IF YOU'RE NOT A HUNTER/WARDEN - IF YOU ARE YOU GET BETTER FOR FREE AS CLASS SKILLS) Extra milestone bind points (495 LP each) Buy a few of these. Set one in Bree, have a couple spread out among multiple quest hubs. For the love of god, if you're doing the epic quest book 1 (the first one) put one in Rivendell. The game LOVES to send you back to talk to your buddy Elrond every five minutes for a very long stretch. And that's it, really. You COULD blow more points on mithril coins (zap yourself to quest destinations) or housing or whatever. But at this point you've bought the game and can now play for free. Until the next expansion, anyway.
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May 25, 2021 05:44
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That's a great guide! The best use I've found for mithril coins is leveling up your LI DPS at high levels. At lower levels, but crystals from skirmish vendors and/or during festivals. I also got a ton of Mithril coins in the winter festival but YMMV.
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May 25, 2021 08:00
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Thanks for the guide! So far I’m completely f2p, had to grind out some deeds yesterday so I could hit 95 points and get a 62% mount, but it felt good.
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May 25, 2021 11:10
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My main is a hunter and I still got 2 milestones and 5 min CD. Tempted to grab a third.
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May 25, 2021 12:14
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At level 105 the Mordor allegiance factions each give you a 5 min cooldown travel skill to an area with vendors, vaultkeepers, stablemasters etc, which basically removes the need to worry about milestone cooldowns. I usually only use the Court of Lothlorien one since it's the most compact space but it's given to you for free after doing the first quest for each faction so you can grab all four without any rep grinding whatsoever.
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May 25, 2021 17:16
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I wish the milestone skills were account-wide and not just for that character. I character hop too much to make that worth it. Another thing that might be worth buying is inventory space. You can pay for one month of VIP to get the extra slots for all current characters, but even then, more slots is nice. Get them on sale, though. Just do VIP first because otherwise you might have to bug a GM to unlock your extra slots like I did (I guess VIP just checks how many slots you have at that moment or something, but the GM was nice and opened them up for me; just takes a few days). I also get a ton of use out of shared storage space, but that’s really only useful if you like running several alts with all the crafting jobs spread among them.
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May 25, 2021 17:23
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HPanda posted:I wish the milestone skills were account-wide and not just for that character. I character hop too much to make that worth it. As annoying as going back and forth to settlements is, you can get a decent amount of regular bank vault space for gold. I stick all my cosmetics and one off boosts in there and just carry what I need.
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May 25, 2021 17:50
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there's also housing storage, a regular (non-premium) house is easily affordable in gold and there's plenty available I bought some shared storage because it's account-wide and I maxed it out with crafting junk, but you can buy even quite a bit of that with in-game gold
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May 25, 2021 20:21
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I also didn't include task or crafting carryalls in the above guide because I think they're vastly overpriced, but if you want they do exist and will further shrink your inventory load. Crafting carryalls: small (10 slot): 1295 LP medium (25 slot): 1495 LP large (50 slot): 1995 LP I have NEVER seen them go on sale. Task item carry-alls also exist but you can only get them as a bonus for buying lots of points during sales events (or the stupid-expensive deluxe edition of war of three peaks) Lum_ fucked around with this message at 20:28 on May 25, 2021 |
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May 25, 2021 20:24
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Lum_ posted:Milestone time-reduction: I'd have easily paid $20 for this back when Moria came out (god knows how many mithril coins I used when those got added). Is this account-wide or per character? I'm guessing per character but if it's account wide that's up there with the VIP wallet in terms of QoL improvements. I didn't see it mentioned in the VIP section, but unless it changed, new characters on a free account have something like 2 inventory bags and VIP gives your characters 5 bags. Did this change? I remember being able to buy extra bags too.
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May 25, 2021 20:50
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Evil Fluffy posted:I'd have easily paid $20 for this back when Moria came out (god knows how many mithril coins I used when those got added). Is this account-wide or per character? I'm guessing per character but if it's account wide that's up there with the VIP wallet in terms of QoL improvements. Per character unfortunately, otherwise it'd be a must-buy. Evil Fluffy posted:I didn't see it mentioned in the VIP section, but unless it changed, new characters on a free account have something like 2 inventory bags and VIP gives your characters 5 bags. Did this change? I remember being able to buy extra bags too. I don't think so but honestly it wouldn't surprise me, you REALLY get nickel and dimed on character progression if you don't have a character touch VIP status at least once. It's really a necessity IMHO and almost certainly cost-effective.
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May 25, 2021 21:08
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Lum_ posted:Per character unfortunately, otherwise it'd be a must-buy. This is my biggest pet peeve with the store, I would have spent a lot more on store items if they were account wide, somewhere someone crunching the numbers must see that getting whales is more important though.
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May 25, 2021 22:01
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I mean they could sell it account-wide at a price calculated to be riiiiiiiight at your particular whale size, to get more whales.
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May 26, 2021 02:58
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euphronius posted:I always wanted to like this game but the starting places are old and abandoned and no one runs the leveling dungeons i agree that the group finder and leveling dungeons could use a lot of love but moria owns and you should definitely play through it once
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May 26, 2021 03:03
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Moria was hands down the best MMO content when it came out and was still amazing even when Mirkwood launched despite Mirkwood not being as good. It does real well at getting across the whole "this was once a giant and amazing city" while also still keeping to the fact that it wasn't lovingly carved from end to end and still had rough pathways at times, to say nothing of when you start going into the deep dark depths of Moria. Foundations of Stone and most of its enemies really do well at working off of Gandalf's brief mention of the nameless things he saw after eventually landing in water and then chasing Durin's Bane up the endless stairs.
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May 26, 2021 03:09
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I'm really enjoying this game still. The sense of scale is really good, for several reasons. The zones themselves are huge, there's very little instancing, and since I can't teleport around but actually have to ride there on my horsey it makes everything seem bigger. Really gives you the sense of being in the world. Very moody as well, like visiting Tom Bombadil's house for the first time during night time, love it. There're a lot of things that are a bit annoying with regards to interface and such, but whatever. World chat is also... interesting (I like it, tho).
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May 26, 2021 08:01
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I never bought any quest packs for the 40-50 range. I usually finish Evendim at 41-43ish and then would do skirmishes ad nauseum until 44 and then go to Eregion, but I just discovered that 42-43 is the perfect level to go into Sarnur and grind instead. You get tons of Thorin Hall items and there's deeds you can accomplish. Definitely quicker just to get Angmar, Forochel or Misty Mountains, but it's a decent alternative if you don't have those.
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May 28, 2021 16:57
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Did Evendim change in the last few years that people are finishing it at 42-43 or are you just not going there until you're done in the Lone Lands? I always remember finishing it around 41 and then needing to run the early Forochel stuff for 2-3 levels so I could go to Eregion (which is better than the other zones even if the mobs are orange/red tbh).
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May 28, 2021 17:46
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Evil Fluffy posted:Did Evendim change in the last few years that people are finishing it at 42-43 or are you just not going there until you're done in the Lone Lands? I always remember finishing it around 41 and then needing to run the early Forochel stuff for 2-3 levels so I could go to Eregion (which is better than the other zones even if the mobs are orange/red tbh). I did everything in Lonelands except for the group stuff at the end near the instance clusters. IIRC I moved on to Evendim at ~32 and didn’t leave until 44-45.
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May 28, 2021 18:05
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Comrade Koba posted:I did everything in Lonelands except for the group stuff at the end near the instance clusters. IIRC I moved on to Evendim at ~32 and didn’t leave until 44-45. I really did grind a bunch in the Lone Lands and in Evendim to get the deeds done. But I went lone-lands->trollshaws->Evendim. So when I started Evendim most of the quests were green and finished being white/light blue.
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May 28, 2021 23:45
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https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?&postid=8077327#post8077327 "Update 30 is currently expected to be released next week, so there will not be another preview of Update 30 content. We have other previews planned for the relatively near future, though. "
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Jun 4, 2021 19:54
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whats up with turbine wrt the Warner sale or whatever it was
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Jun 4, 2021 23:59
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extra stout posted:https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?&postid=8077327#post8077327 Looks like everyone in that thread is not happy about the state of the patch.
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Jun 5, 2021 04:03
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Didn’t realize people were that rabid about the test server.
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Jun 5, 2021 04:38
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Zam Wesell posted:I'm really enjoying this game still. The sense of scale is really good, for several reasons. The zones themselves are huge, there's very little instancing, and since I can't teleport around but actually have to ride there on my horsey it makes everything seem bigger. Really gives you the sense of being in the world. Very moody as well, like visiting Tom Bombadil's house for the first time during night time, love it. I go back to this game every now and again, but always end up pissed off. I have a lifetime sub, but picked probably the worst class to play solo. Guardian combat is like watching paint dry, I swear! I love so much about how the world was put together, and as you describe, riding your horse and seeing everything was brilliant. I took up farming because I enjoy that as well, but combat is just brutal.
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Jun 9, 2021 19:20
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