lotro endgame,and other questions

iffymack

Im thinking of buying the game today,and want to find out a few things before I part with my cash.

I played WoW for a long time,and really enjoyed it no matter what all the haters say about it sucking. I loved levelling to 60,visiting all the varous zones and questing,it remains my favourite gaming experience to date.

What I hated about that game though was the complete grindfest it became at 60,the repetitive raiding syndrome and the 100% focus on gear. Not to mention the gear greed disease that afffected many players..

So reading up on LOTRO,it seems to be what I liked about WoW without the high end grindathons waiting at max level,lots of questing and visiting different areas as part of the quests. I was in EU open beta so ive played the game,though max was level 15 and the servers had the good old  lagginess that you get in 99% of OB or test servers so i didnt really get to play the game as i'd have liked.

So anyway; whats the endgame for LOTRO? I imagine no ones there yet as its only just released,but is there anywhere I can read up on high end content? are there dungeons that dont have to be visited 1453 times and can just be enjoyed?

and about gear;whats the focus like? are you totally dependant on your progress in the game by having to have the elite armor? is the way you get your stuff the usual kill X boss for this piece of headgear,random world drops etc or can you do just as well by crating your own pieces and buying from vendors? I'd love it if I could work at crafting my gear,gradually building up skill to create good items. WoWs crafting system seems to have finally rewarded its profesions with the onset of TBC which I like the idea of,but of course I dont want to go back to that particular game .

So those are my questions,and with hope I can say ill be joining the LOTRO community today.

Unknown

I don't know if there even IS an end game.

So far I have heard almost nothing about any high level uber-boss or raid type zones. I don't think there is even a UI window for raids (at least I could not find it).

bewicked

I think youtube.com has some fraps video of beta game content that looks fun and crazy. Here is a beta link to one.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gglBAqo0NPg

And as you know if you play LoTR you got this continuing chapters you complete (aka raids). I just finished Book 1 Chapter 11 I believe it was and was amazed by the whole instance itself and I was level 17. There were alot of level 15 elites and without a full man party, this instance was going to be tuff. We pulled if off and got some excellent gear after the quest was over.

Here is a group doing Book 5 Chapter 8.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EuHA3dm6XJ0

I noticed crafting in this system can get complicated, but you can make some real excellent gear and sell on the AH.

All in All, turbine did a wonderful job on the game and I am hooked! I hate to say it, but being a WoW junkie prior to this game, I rarely play WoW now and my guild has been running Karazhan and Heroic instances, but find my way back to sneaky on LoTR Online.

This game is very unique if you give it a chance, but if you got another MMO on the brain with time invested on it, you probably just pass this game up and miss a good thing.

To each his own they say, but definetly, this game I am having a blast at and I am only lvl 18 now. Probably the hardest choice I had in the game was picking a class.. LOL I got way too many alts.

 

Goodluck to you and enjoy LoTR if you decide to play it.

ps. I hear good things about some later pvp content, right now the game got what they call PvMP <Player versus Monster Player>. It not everyday you can create a lvl 50 baddie and start questing. Once peeps on my server start hitting in the 40s, this game is definetly going to get interesting.

 

dj_decay

Actually thy do have raids, and a nice raid interface (you can set it up under social panel, if I remember correctly) - they're putting a big raid in for month 1, Helegrod I think, and I know there's a few others as well.  In addition to raids, there's also Monster Play (PvMP), which, in my opinion, is the best PvP system I've ever seen, because it doesn't cater to the typical 14 year old gankers - everyone stars off on pretty level footing.  It's really, really fun.