Well, though I started the thread, I never made it into the closed Beta, so I'm hoping for a chance in the open Beta. Thanks for all the info, guys, keep it up!

I have screenshots, as Farael can attest to.

If you are especially nice I might post them...after tonight, maybe tomorrow...I'll probably have more by then.

Speaking of which, we do need to decide what server we will play on.

Brandywine
Elendilmir
Gladden
Landroval
Meneldor
Silverlode
Windfola

Assuming they are presented in that order, I'd say Meneldor or Landroval might be the best bets to avoid undue crowds.

Also, Open Beta will see the birth of Kuruharan, but I won't be playing him much to keep him under the lvl 15 retention limit. I'll probably be playing as "Khoreth," Kuruharan's father according to lore.

I think it's been two-three weeks since I last played...is that what's behind my headaches and stomach pains? :eek:

Screenshots from LOTRO
 

Here are some screenshots I've taken from LOTRO over the course of the closed beta.

Drake Ho!

My Character, Issith, in Garth Agarwen

A View of Imladris from the Top

Gandalf the Grey in Elrond's Library

The Streets of Imladris

Flying Badger!

A Night View of Imladris' Falls

Issith's Funeral, with Fazi in Attendance Playing the Lute

Enjoy!

My experience last night was a bit odd.

The client crashed 5 times in total and I had bad lag a lot during the early part.

However, later on the amount of lag I experienced was inversely proportional to the number of players in the area.

I'll post my screenshots later tonight.

I'm probably going to be playing on the Silverlode server. Nice and low on the list.

Note: The testing server was still online as of a few minutes ago before I came to work.

EDIT: Those screenshots may not be going up tonight, I'm finishing my computer upgrade...

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing...
 

Here are some of my screenshots from March 25 where we were having a little player organized party to celebrate the end of beta.

Getting the Party Started

"They have begun to arrive."

A shot without the UI

CONGA!!

This was actually my second line, shorter than the first and had no devs in it

da, da, da, da, da...DA!

This guy was good.

These shots are from March 26 during "The Event"

Fazi is very sad.

Maybe some music will help

Dwalin wasn't particularly comforting...

Street performers in Bree

We're going to party like it is TA 3021!

When the moon hits your eye...

Fazi has a groupie

Hello Rivendell!

Looks like a fun time has been had by all.

...and fun continuing to be had.

Check my level...Issith, eat your heart out!

MOMMY!

Letting others catch the worst bits of the fighting

Fazi moving up to the line of scrimmage

Fazi in the scrum

Now you see him...

...now you don't...cheater

There he is!

Have to take a rest.

Toe to toe!

Running away, eh?

Git 'him, Fazi, Git 'im!!

Victory

Told ya I could take him

Gandalf and Elrond congratulate me on my victory.

Bilbo likes my music

Farewell to Rivendell.

Good-bye Bree.

Nasty dev warg eating partygoers at the Party Tree

Good-bye Shire.

Good-bye Thorin's Hall

Good-bye Troll's Head Tavern

Home at last.

Farewell Fazi!

The next morning I discovered the server hadn't been taken down yet, so...

One last hurrah!

Final Good-bye from Fazi.

Open beta (for everyone) starts today -- which means I'll be ignoring what I'm suppose to be doing for a good while and probably going slightly psychotic in Eriador, but I figured for everyone thats been eyeing the game and hasn't joined the beta you're time is now. : )

Also, after looking at those screen shots (Thank you for them, they're great!) I can just imagine what this game does to Tol-in-Gauroth. ; D

I can recommend Silverlode as a pretty good server. The crowds have been reasonable (up to this point...) and the people are all pretty nice. I haven't run across any griefers (up to this point...) Even the spam in the general chat channel has been...tolerable.

Stay away from Brandywine and I've heard that Windfola has been collecting a number of griefers.

I've been playing in Landroval, and so far it's been good. As the "unofficial RP server" It's been easy to find RPers, which is always a plus for me. Here are a few screen shots I took last time.

A talk by the fountain of Dulliond (High def... as HD as my PC will go)

And Low Def

Weather top (from Closed Beta)

The River by Dulliond (from Closed Beta)


And last but not least... the country-side, by Dulliond as well

Hope you enjoy! =) I'll try to get some more soon

Yay! It's finally downloaded. :p

If you're careful you might catch Valesseka (currently a very low level lore-master) running around Bree on the Landroval server!

For those who are thinking about trying it out, beware that the file is HUGE. With a quick connection it still took me six hours to download the entire package however the pay off is glorious. My regards go to the effort the Turbine people put into the artwork and voice-characters... the end result puts other games to shame however with such detail in the art therein requires lots of loading (anytime you enter a building... something foreign to WoWarcrafters, such as I) and there aren't many interaction codes.. yet? I'm not sure if there are plans for more, but I hope so.

Can't wait to see some other downer's online... and for those who have preordered it, is there a Barrowdowns fellowship yet?

Kuruharan

This is actually surprisingly close to how I'd always pictured him...not quite right, but close.

Hello

Rainbow

I had pretty much determined I wasn't getting it, but...

Mmm, rainbow......

Here I thought you hated bright green as a color choice for armor...;)

And that's a wonderful screenshot (the second one) of your dwarf. It makes me want to at least play the beta...again. Not that I'd play as a dwarf, though...

If only I could afford the pre-order.

I do detest green. Unfortunately, at that moment I didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter.

I assure you that awful thing found itself in some vendor's dustbin at the earliest opportunity.

I'm not particularly enamoured of how he looks right now either. That is just about the best that is available right now because not too many people can get to the good stuff (although tonight I saw that some maniac had at level 15 been out into the Misty Mountains and mined 70 units of platinum and 20 units of Misty Mountains silver...show off.)

Unfortunately, not too many people have found recipes for good suits of armor and they are not spreading the wealth.

CoD linked me to this (he's an avid Penny Arcade fan...):

The wonders of a minstrel...

People kept telling me the other movie based games for LotR were not very good :( I've played the book based FotR (wish they'd made the sequels!) and The Hobbit. You think this'll be good? Do you have to pay monthly or anything? (looking through the videos at the moment. Bet they'll answer both my questions, lol). Graphics looks like it wont run on my pc anyway :(

I thought...oh...maybe one or two people might be interested in a few more screenshots.

Here is my alt Khoreth in Bag End, I have no idea why Cyrano de Bergerac is pictured by the fire

Khoreth and Tom Bombadil

Here is Kuruharan in civilian clothes

Hello again

Stomping on a troll's toe

No need for me to soil my fingers on that one

Nice view of the Lone Lands

I still miss Issith and Durelin though. :(

Nice screens, Kuru! I particularly like the troll toe-stomping one. Perhaps that's because I hate them so much from fighting them in Dol Dinen. I'm curious though, as to where that screenshot was taken. It looks like the swamp in the Lone Lands, but I can't be sure anymore. ;)

And I miss Issith too. :p

Yes, that was in the southeastern swamp in the Lone Lands.

Kuruharan has only been in Dol Dinen once and had a traumatic experience.

He'll probably be going back before too long.

And I'm not the one who can fix us missing Issith. ;)

I do miss being a Bard and not being completely worthless!

Oh sigh...if it didn't cost so bloody much to buy the game itself I'd pay for a couple months this summer... ;) Maybe I still will....(and that means I'll try my best to get Issith back in the game, though CoD is *gasp* a working man this summer, so he has an excuse all set up for him... :p)

What level have ye gotten Kuru up to, by the by?

Tell him to get his priorities in order! After all, he has to spend the money he's earning. :D

Kuruharan will be level 31 by the end of today. Khoreth is level 26. My third and much neglected alt Otir is level 15.

<-----------Insert gloating by Issith that in two months I still haven't passed his level at the end of closed beta.

I do indeed need to spend some of it. Though, I was thinking more along the lines of the Wii rather than LOTRO. :p


It's quite depressing that in less than a month I went from level 0 to level 40, and you still haven't passed me in that time. ;)

In my defense, I've been leveling more characters.

Here's some fun stuff
 

Chrysophylax's Cousin

Which probably explains why he just flew past me

And the stable-hand says, "What the heck?"

Nice quest load there, Kuru. Those collection quests are tedious though, aren't they? :P

I do recall the Great Auroch Skull quest being rather fun...

Those quests are heaven compared to fighting through Agamaur and Garth Agarwen, though. Those are utter and complete misery.

It was kind of funny watching me running along carrying this huge skull that was bigger than my toon, although it didn't really last very long.

Yea, I had a great laugh watching a couple of dwarves do the Auroch skull quests. It's even better watching a hobbit do it...

Agamaur and Garth Agarwen aren't that bad, though. They were hard areas, but they were fun if you got in a good group. Otherwise it was a pain, considering everything was 'Elite'.

You wouldn't believe how much money I lost there last night getting killed over and over and over again trying to get Ivar. We finally got him in the end but I had to cap it all off by getting killed again at the end of that fight. What made me mad was my last death was totally unnecessary, I was tanking an archer mob when Ivar got killed and instead of coming to help me with the mob, they just stood there and oooed and awwwed over the phat lootz while I got chopped to ribbons because I was out of power.

After that, they asked me to stay when I wanted to leave the instance and repair because my stuff was breaking. I like a couple of them, so against my better judgment I stayed a bit...I personally got nothing accomplished except losing a lot more money because more of my stuff broke.

I was not happy when I logged off last night.

No, I'm not bitter! :p

Dang...I just downloaded the 7-day free trial, and have to say I like it but can't afford to keep playing. :(

*uses "Enlivening Grace" on this thread*

So, any BDers currently playing this other than Kuru, CoD, and myself? Yeah, I know, said I couldn't afford it... :rolleyes: :D

Decided you could afford it yet, Oddwen? ;)

The first expansion is coming out supposedly in the fall: the Mines of Moria, adding two more classes and who knows what else. < / advertisement >

So, come September 10th, LotROnline will be free-to-play. Something which is very close to what I can afford!

Does anyone still play?

Oh...hi there!
 

Meh...sort of.

I hate to be a party pooper but the game has gotten steadily worse over the course of its lifetime. I was playing pretty regularly up until a month or so ago but when I saw the changes they were going to be bringing in with it going f2p and, more importantly, some of the glaring problems they were not fixing I...uhh...kinda sorta did a.../ragequit. :o

CaptainofDespair is probably wondering what in the world happened to me.

I do intend to keep playing some...I already had a lifetime membership which means I automatically have premium when it goes f2p...but as far as really *playing* it for more than just advancing the story for my characters, I don't see myself willing to do that anymore. The game is just not that great and there are much more fun things for me to spend my time on.

Hmmm...where do I start about LotRO?

I was once closely related to the game and the developers, but having gone through the alpha and beta stages of the game, it was evident to me that the vision of the game had digressed from 'living in Middle-earth' to amassing piles of swag, endlessly killing mobs and basically emulating World of Warcraft. In fact, the head dev admitted his desire to compete with WoW, rather than deliver a gaming experience solidly entrenched in the lore and ethics of Middle-earth.

Interesting to so see LotRO has declined to the point where it requires free-to-play status. Perhaps if they catered to the very folks who believed in the original game design (MEO or Middle-earth Online) and were avid fans of Tolkien's Middle-earth, then they may have maintained a loyal customer base without the need to use such desperate tactics to remain viable.

Couldn't have said it better myself. My early high hopes for MEO were dashed before release, and I never came to ever starting to play it.

That's what I'd figured. The problem with competing with WoW is that nobody can compete with WoW because nobody can do WoW better than WoW (follow that sentence, I dare you :p). Its sad but true, WoW is just a better game than LOTRO. Having played WoW, which I hadn't until earlier this year, it is depressing with that perspective to see how LOTRO never had a shot because of the misguided intentions of its developers.

When one adds in the excruciatingly bizarre decisions made by Turbine over the course of the game's life its kind of amazing that it’s lasted as long as it has.

It’s sad to see Tolkien's amazing world sink to the level of Allods Online (even though Allods is probably a better game) and the other myriads of such offerings that don't even deserve a mention. It could have been so much more than this. When I look at the things that are planned for games like Guild Wars 2 and compare it to the twaddle Turbine peddles...its just pathetic. :(

You may be amused to read my final review of LotRo from February, 2007, when I washed my hands of the whole thing in as scathing a fashion as possible. It set off a firestorm between Turbine sycophants and brown-nosers VS. the Tolkien crowd. I must say, I was furious when I wrote it, particularly after championing lore-appropriateness in a Middle-earth MMORPG since Sierra had the designing rights in the late 90's. Be warned, the language is not pretty or civil, but in retrospect, I still believe I was entirely correct: I Will Not Be Playing LOTRO

That review is...hilarious, I love it.

I also think that my being able to stomach LOTRO had to do with the fact that LOTRO was my first MMO...well, actually second, third if you want to stretch...but anyway, the point is I'd not played many. The more MMOs I've played the worse LOTRO has looked.

I think it would do us all good if some of these Tolkien based multiplayer mods for Mount & Blade would ever get themselves off the ground... :rolleyes:

Ah, well, sounds like it's good for a laugh:

Nah. I could tell from your last month or so in-game that you were not terribly pleased with Turbine's continued direction. Good to see you are still kickin' though. ;-)

Yep, I'm still kicking.

I've been playing WoW, Guild Wars (Guild Wars 2 looks like it will be awesome, btw) and single player games. :eek:

I haven't even logged in since LOTRO went f2p. What do you think of how the game is now?