Lord of the Rings Online

[Torre82]

Anyone else playing the closed beta with me? ;)

Torre82 on the Meneldor server.

Working on level 14, IIRC. Power levelers have reached level 40 (the beta's max lvl) since January. LotR:O sucks up system RAM like a bish but it's quite beautiful and for a beta, the lag and unfinished areas are barely noticed.

Anyway, that's my 2cents.

[GT2000]

Right now I have my FFXI and WoW accounts back to active status, and hoping to get my lvl 66 or 67 in ffxi back (can't remember..pretty sure it was a 67 monk) during the next "welcome back" thing they do yearly. If I can't get back into that game, and this one seems appealing I might check it out later on. Also keeping an eye out for the warhammer mmo, looks like it might be cool from the little I actually know about it.

I want some screenies from LOTR mmo though, just upload them here. (http://www.thetesttube.com/fotos)

[Torre82]

Oh hell, while we're on the topic of MMO's.. you know they're going to release a FireFly MMO?! The canceled Fox series with the movie Serenity. Yeah, that one.

Joss Whedon only hooked me with Firefly. Buffy and Angel are too.. :shivers: bleh. But the guy can tell an alright story.

World of Warcraft is alright, but like FFXI.. LotRo has so many more features than most RPG's that going back to WoW is just out of the question.

In LotR every last damn thing you do earns you a new title 'Torre82 the *****'

Insert Feather-Foe if you killed 30 birds. Feather-Rapist if you killed 1,500

Etc etc. Titles for each kind of monster, each of a dozen regions, each of a dozen different levels.. 30 kills/60/150, etc. Do this move 1,500 times and we'll upgrade it or totally change it. Man it's just excessive.

Or gain really small bonuses to various stats. +1.0% Dodge chance. Raise overall speed by .5%, spank your ringdick harder by 1.2 points.

Also, going through an instance successfully raises your hope by 1% so you heal 1% more, and block that much damage, too.

Questgivers in WoW and Everquest were so often one-shot deals. In LotR I cant stop these bastards from giving me like 4 to 8 quests back to back.

Anyhow..enough of my praises to MMO's. I'm waiting patiently for 2 gigs of DDR400 to arrive in the mail so I can finally play some of these games without the usual swapping madness. I should be able to dual channel up my 4 slots at 400 but it'll take some BIOS fiddling to override the automatic dumbing-down to 266. Who knows? The UPS guy is nowhere to be seen. :(

I swear it's amazing my HD's last as long as they do.

[Torre82]

Install went without a hitch. 4 single sided dimm's, 2 gigs of dual channel yumminess. SPD set 'em all to 400. Glad about that. Thought my BIOS or their default would be some 'safe' value.

With 4 slots used, and admittedly a hint of power issues I've had with the 6800.. I upped the voltage to AGP and CPU a notch and cranked out a few more MHz to offset the hint of performance loss. :)

Alrighty. Time to boot up oblivion and test a bit.

[Jesse]

I signed up for the beta the other day, but I don't think I was picked to test.

I might get it when I comes out.

[Torre82]

I signed up for the beta the other day, but I don't think I was picked to test.

I might get it when I comes out.

Took 'em about a week to invite me. They'll wipe the server on March 30th, but.. if you're up for some free gaming and they approve you.. then in the meantime you might as well download the client. I believe it's a hair shy of 4 gigs.

Who knows, maybe people'll write a semi-decent server emulator for LotRo and you'll have the beta right in front of you for future play.

Hmm. Thinking about the server wipe makes grinding all the more useless, tho. I'd preorder but they're not throwing the best deal at us beta testers. :(

[GT2000]

I saw the pre-order deal.. 9.99/mo or 199/lifetime pricing, 'taint too bad.. guessing the reg. monthly price will be 14.99 like most others. I signed up for the beta this morning, if I get an email back I'll check it out.

[Jesse]

When does the game come out?

[GT2000]

Sometime around the end of April. Open beta starts at the end of this month for pre-orders and then for everyone else a week later, apr 6th.

So says their site.

[Jesse]

I wanna get into an MMORPG, but it seems like everybody in WoW is already so far into it. I'd wanna start fresh, on a completely level playing field. Maybe I'll get this game.

[Torre82]

I wanna get into an MMORPG, but it seems like everybody in WoW is already so far into it. I'd wanna start fresh, on a completely level playing field. Maybe I'll get this game.

I hear Vanguard isnt bad at all.. but it began to an extremely slow grand opening with barely anyone playing. Then again.. that could always work to your advantage, Jess. Longevity is pretty much an issue with any MMO these days. If you're not WoW.. you better damn well throw millions of dollars and a HUGE name like LotR at it. Vanguard.. City of Heroes/Villains, Matrix Online, Star Wars Online..:shrug:

Call me crazy but I know for sure that WoW will be standing after all the dust clears.

[GT2000]

I played the vanguard beta.. and, wasn't extremely impressed, plus with a 17gb install.. oof.

I got my hands on a founders copy of Lotr online so I'll hopefully be able to check out the beta at the end of this month without any "obligations" and then if I dig it then I can pick up the game and not lose my toon. /shrug

[Torre82]

I played the vanguard beta.. and, wasn't extremely impressed, plus with a 17gb install.. oof.

I got my hands on a founders copy of Lotr online so I'll hopefully be able to check out the beta at the end of this month without any "obligations" and then if I dig it then I can pick up the game and not lose my toon. /shrug

HOLY HELL seventeen gigs?! Is there an uncompressed HD cutscene every half hour?!

[GT2000]

Yeah man, 17 gigs.. and no, no uncompressed hd cutscenes that I was able to find. That's probably a good reason not a lot of people are getting that, horrid install.

[Torre82]

Man, that's just ludicrous. I had a HD 1080p download of.. ahem, some movie the other ..ahem, months ago that took up 12 gigs spread across 3 DVD5's.

That sucker was a bish to download. Heh, Nvidia's Purevideo decoder is an amazing thing, lemme tell ya..

ANYWAY!

Yeah, 17 gigs huh? What's the TRUE ram requirement on that? Not the 512 that it probably says on the box, either! The thing must blow through every last drop of memory on the system. gfx card included. Then again.. I hear there's cards out there with 768 MB? Whelp, here's my toast to you bastards with monster systems! :clinks a rolling rock to my salsa jar:

May your systems be ever inadequate for Vanguard!

[GT2000]

I cannot remember if I played with that before or after one of my video cards ate it.. anyways, here's my specs now, and, the game ran pretty well.

Opteron 165 in an Evga NF41 mobo
2gb pc3200 (mixed flava)
7800gt 256mb (had 2 in sli until one got the ol' rma)


The rest is just trivial crap, I'm still debating on whether or not to get another video card and NOT run it in sli.. I liked being able to rip my dvds and still have a game running, I got spoiled :/

[Torre82]

The rest is just trivial crap, I'm still debating on whether or not to get another video card and NOT run it in sli.. I liked being able to rip my dvds and still have a game running, I got spoiled :/

Shrink? Decrypter? DVD2AVI?

[GT2000]

I've got shrink/dvdfab/decrypter all installed.. usually shrink tho.

[GT2000]

Open Beta starts tomorrow for the pre-orders and a week after probably for the rest.. anyone still planning on playing? I should be able to log in tomorrow and start playing, will be on the Meneldor server that bun was on.

[GT2000]

Letsgetkrunk on Meneldor, Hobbit Burglar, watch out!

[GT2000]

So anyone still thinking about getting it? I played a little more this morning, and, still have mixed thoughts, I like a lot of the ideas they had, but, sooo many quests.. hard to keep track of where to go even with the quest objectives appearing on the side of the screen.

[Torre82]

So anyone still thinking about getting it? I played a little more this morning, and, still have mixed thoughts, I like a lot of the ideas they had, but, sooo many quests.. hard to keep track of where to go even with the quest objectives appearing on the side of the screen.

Indeed, it's pretty daunting. Honestly I'd rather be overwhelmed with them than have to go searching for 'em like in so many other MMO's.

But, eh.. I'm not too into 'em at the moment. Trying to find a decent MMO experience in a single player game. Like mixing Dungeon Siege 2's grinding with Oblivion/Morrowind's vast expanses of land.