The new expansion is slated for release 18th November, 2013. I was going to get it, until I realized the "base" version is 39.99 - with every expansion they release for lotro, the price keeps going higher and higher for the base version.

Thanks but no thanks, I may still get the quest pack for $20 like I did with Riders of Rohan, but I think I'm going to skip the expansion. 40 bucks... for lotro... you'd think they had 8 million players or something ;)

I had a pretty awesome house, left for awhile, got evicted and all my furniture dumped into my characters inventory, really fucking annoying, tried f2p and wasnt allowed to carry enough gold to get my house back, plus some really shit other restrictions really turned me off, so I said fukit and never returned.

The F2P limits the amount of gold you can carry? LOL - hilarious.

Expansion Quad Pack - Digital Download Only 19,99$ !
https://store.lotro.com/en/expansion-packs/item/expansionquadpack-bundle/

Good moment to start adventure with Lotro.

Don't know since Helm's Deep hasn't come out yet, but speaking from experience with the game previously they do not have any movie rights, just rights to the books and that with a pretty strict contract regarding the lore as I understand it. I've been impressed with all the little details they have brought in from the books while still making it a fun game. I've explained it as something along the lines of as the fellowship passes evil is stirred up, and your character is trying to go around and clean up those messes while the fellowship does it's thing. There are plenty of interactions with the primary characters of the books, but so far as I can recall none in a lore breaking kind of way.

The Epic questline is the most directly related to the books and the primary characters. Going so far as to call each section a book, with the sub-sections as chapters. I've very much enjoyed playing through this with my character when I was playing Lord of the Rings Online much more than currently. Looking forward to the expansion to see how they work the battle and draw the character into the background of the actual story from the books. I would agree with the OP though, don't like the pricing since the game went F2P, though, the costs might be relative to the change in subscription fees.

The one lore breaking complaint some players have is the character classes have several 'magic-like' varieties which while keeping strictly with the lore in that they are not labeled as magic, and the skill descriptions and backstory for the character class are all written in a lore friendly way, they definitely play like magic users. Which is a stretch since magic has a very limited place in Tolkein's Middle Earth.

There are few games where this isn't the case. Limiting the amount of currency that can be carried makes it much harder for RMT (real money trade) to flourish, as it severely affects the efficacy of botting.

And there is a 'wallet upgrade' you can purchase for in-game tokens that you earn for completing quests which will raise or eliminate the currency cap.

They let you board at the grey havens with such a bad mood ? ;D

Yes, also, I think I got some free shop credits or something for logging in for some event, which allowed me some extra character slots and the wallet extension, but I had lost touch with he game by then and most people I knew there had left for other games.

Gold sellers don't want to go to that extra length.

That doesn't sound very exciting.. a helm isn't very deep.

I think LoTRO is no worse than all the other F2P MMORPGs in its restrictions though, not sure about the base game though that does seem expensive. But do you need to buy the base game, or can you just play the F2P version and buy the expansions?

The "base game" is free, so to speak. You get all 3 starting regions and one extra zone included as well as the epic questline. Everything else costs Turbine Points to unlock, with one zone unlock unlocking everything in it. For example, when Riders of Rohan released, the base package was 39.99 - instead of paying that, I bought $20 in points and farmed a few deeds (think like achievements only with TP rewards as well as stat increases) and purchased the quest pack for half the price. Downside? I don't have access to the new dungeons.

Turbine's model for lotro is one in which anyone can grind deeds across characters and farm TP enough to unlock every zone for free; expansions, not so much as they cost a lot more, but still possible. When the game first relaunched as f2p it was common practice for the freebies to roll 3 characters (max char slots are 3 for totally free people iirc) and on each character do all the deeds in the 3 starting regions, then take each character through each unlocked region and do all the deeds, etc etc, or just delete and reroll, doing the 3 starting regions again. It is not an exploit in the eyes of Turbine, and it's a fast way to earn points that you can't afford.

In contrast, DDO is much more stingy with its TP, and no, you can't cross-share TP between games due to licensing issues.

I actually really enjoyed LOTRO when it went F2P.

With the Moria Collector's I bought for $10 I got... the entire game just playing (barring the repetitive as all hell skirmishes).

However, they revamp classes far too often and I was one of the best Wardens for my level when they revamped my class and put my best DPS skill locked behind a new expansion's levels. Fuck that. Redoing Warden skill use orders is FREAKING HARD.

https://www.lotro.com/en/lotteries
Chance to win copy of Helm s Deep premium ed. code.


Helm's Deep Premium Edition Lottery


All characters level 10 - 85. Win a copy of Helm's Deep Premium Edition! 1 winner per server will win a free Helm's Deep Premium Edition Pre-order code. The code will be sent via an in game email to the winning character.