Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #510 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Codemasters Limited
• Released on: 2007-04-24
• Platform: Windows XP

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Codemasters is not the sort of company to ignore a new market trend, and indeed they were one of the first companies to speak up in praise of the enormous success of World of Warcraft. Since they own the official license to The Lord of the Rings books (this game is not based directly on anything in the movies), a massively multiplayer online game to rival Blizzard's blockbuster was all but inevitable. Angmar is the domain of the Witch-king, the leader of the Ringwraiths, and the game world is set during the events of The Fellowship of the Ring as Frodo and company set out from The Shire. In the game you'll have the chance to meet all of the major characters as you play as any one of four races: human, elf, dwarf or hobbit. Your character can also be one of seven different classes - from burglar to hunter or minstrel. Not all races can be all of the classes though, so you must choose carefully.

In gameplay terms things work in a similar manner to World of Warcraft and other fantasy games, with up to six characters grouping to gather to form a "fellowship", which in turn can team up with up to 24 others to go on larger raids in enemy controlled areas. The game includes seven crafting professions and three gathering professions, allowing each character the chance to learn and utilise unique skills, from manufacturing armour to cooking. Player versus player combat is allowed to a degree; although instead of two player controlled characters facing off, one will temporarily take control of a monster for the duration of the fight. Whether the game can truly challenge the success of Warcraft remains to be seen, but if anyone can do it Tolkien can.
HARRISON DENT

Manufacturer's Description

The LOTRO: Gold Edition comes complete with 4 European Exclusive In-game items including an all-new player horse (available at level 25) and a welcome mat for you new home in Middle-earth all housed within a stunning Steel DVD pack. Features include:

NEW player and kinship housing!

Over 200 NEW quests and 14 NEW dungeons.

Over 500 NEW monsters.

Over 250 NEW skills, 2 dozen NEW titles, 200 NEW NPC's.

NEW monster play features let you enter Middle-earth as a monster right from the character select screen.

NEW High-level armor sets and quest rewards offering advanced battle enhancements.

NEW massive region of Evendim PLUS huge expansion in the Misty Mountains and Trollshaws.

Customer Reviews

Travel to Middle Earth, Live the Story
MMOs are a strange bunch, they have their fair share of -ve's and +ve's from rubbish graphics to lame repetitive "Is this it until Level xx" kind quests, which gets them more critisism by the fact that you end up playing it to justify your £10 a month. I have played every P2P (Pay 2 Play) MMO on the market, so I have a little experience in this. Now its not my intension to slate WoW, because WoW in itself is a good gameplay experience, if a little dated graphically and repetitive quest wise, but the RAID and PVP portions are solid. Conan, unfortunately, has been let down by non excistent tech and community support and dev. Laziness to even acknowledge the community excists, so MMO players are crying out for something new.

Although Lord of the Rings Online (Lotro) is not new, it has had its fair share of criticism, from being boring and too drawn out to being PC spec heavy, however, I have to say that these days, Lotro is incredible. Every 2 -3 months we get FREE massive contents updates in the form of "Books", such as believe in or not, entire New continents(Not the usual MMO update), plus New weapons, armour, skills, quests, bug fixes, graphic engine updates and streamlines, instances and raids, and a huge storyline arc in the "books", and has also improved since the addition of more solo support.

As of the date of this review, We've just been given Book 14 today, which amongst the usual stuff has a huge new continent. Now I am like most people, very cinical when comes to giving away money to MMOs, but Codemasters and Turbine have done incredibly well with this, the developers keep us posted and are active weekly on the forms, listening to us, answering questions and even, if its possible, adding things into the "Book" updates we ask for.

What makes an MMO though is the Player community and I have to admit, they are awesome, ranging from about 20+ but mainly are 30+, very helpful and respectful, they "ask" you for help, to join their group or even duel and no one takes offense if you say no. Dont get me wrong, we do get idiots, which MMO doesn't right, but on the whole 99.9% are really great and whats better than running through a lush green field or under the canopies of Chetwood, fighting for the fellowship of the ring with your group (kinship). Its amazingly atmospheric.

PVP comes in the form of "monster play". When you reach level 10, you can combat PVP on the Entmoors, which is similar idea to WoW's Battlegrounds. You can play an ORC, Uriki or one of Saurons forces and fight on the side of Saruman, but Ive never much looked into this as there is so much to do in PvE, but Ive heard its great fun. Monster Play was Lotros bad weak point, but rom what ive been hearing from serious PVPers, its been fixed to amazing proportions.

One of the great things that sets Lotro apart from other MMOs is the Deed system, basically, you get extra skills and points for playing the game, such as extra skill points for grinding on a particular type of mob or mobs, new skills for finishing all the quests in a certain area, staying alive for so many levels and loads more to find out, theres just so much to do and see.

The quests are varied enough, but some early quests do suffer from the "fetch and carry" or "kill so many of X" type, but they are just to get you started into the story, and yes there is a story, albeit a big one with 100's of side quests, skills and areas to go to, but its there. And the greatest of all is, last time I checked, Codemasters were running the game for £5 a month.

Lotro is a great game in every respect, Codemasters should be praised for what they've done for it in such a short space of time. If you want something New, exciting, Dx10 graphically beautiful and steeped in lore. LotrO is a great choice.

Great Graphics Bad Gameplay
I purchased the game based on what people had said about the game and tehy were all good, so installed the game downloaded a 700mb patch, I patched the game and was hoping to play the game but no the game then decided io had not patched enough and made me download another 20000 files! No matter so i finally get into the game and my first thoughts were "What the hell! I walk like a puppet and feel like a puppet" the game feels like it doesnt want you to play without punishing you for trying. The quests are like any MMORPG samey things like kill this or get that, and the class names!!! "burgular" its basically a rogue but a really bad one half of the spells you want to do you can because you need a combo point and neeed to be behind the enemy which is impossible! So my advice is jnot to buy it as it is a waste of money. Or if you like to play lame boring ass games go ahead.

Pretty good game but horrible graphic stutter
This game reminds me of the ancient Asheron's Call. That too was a pretty good game marred by the fact that it was constantly loading in graphics and therefore 'stuttering' all of the time. This does not make for a smooth game experience. Not only this but due to the way the detailed textures are applied, the world around you is constantly 'changing.' What I mean by this is that when you walk towards a tree or something the tree will physically change as you get closer to it because of each layer of detailed textures that are being applied. This means that objects within the game are always 'jumping' from one look to another. This is very off-putting and just reminds you that you are playing a game rather than exploring a world.

Now my PC is very powerful: Geforce 8800, 2GB RAM, 6600 duel CPU and can handle anything I throw at it including Crysis and Bioshock so I know it's nothing to do with my machine. Anyway, I did visit various forums to find if I could solve all of the graphic problems but I found that they seem to be pretty much par for the course.

So, if you think you can put up with the troubles I have talked of then you will enjoy this game because it is good fun. Personally, after playing other smooth MMORGS, I simply could not put up with this.