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online gaming
 The Lord Of The Rings: Shadows Of Angmar $29.95 I've been playing MMOs since the original Everquest was released. It's great to see the genre evolve and improve over time. The orginal Everquest was what most would call "very hardcore". Once you got to lvl 10 you couldn't solo by yourself unless you had a pet and the death penilty was very harsh causing you to loose experience and have to run back to your corpse in solid form without equipment. When it came to quests you had to look for NPC names and then /hail them to see if they had a quest. Since the original EQ this genre has become far more user friendly. A lot of this credit falls on Blizzard and World of Warcraft. WoW as it is called has made a lot of headway in ease of use and is by far the most popular MMO out there with over 10 million current users right now. Now I wouldn't say that all those are players. A portion of those users are gold farmers trying to make money. Regardless of this I believe that WoW has mainstreamed the MMOs and caused the train to start rolling with developers jumping aboard with franchises such as Star Wars, Star Trek, and new IPs. It is extremely hard for a developer to create a successful MMO. They fall about as fast as they start up. Recently Tabula Rasa shut down having been released about a year ago or so. Age of Conan promised a lot and... well it isn't fairing so well either with many of it's servers shutting down and condensing. Now whenever a new MMO comes out it is labled a WoW clone if it looks or plays even remotely like it. Well if it ain't broke don't fix it. WoW has one of the best user interfaces out there and I see no need to change it. Now that's not to say Lord of the Rings Online (lotro) is completely the same but close enough. I've played WoW for over a year and although Blizzard keeps adding new elements to it, it's just not my cup of tea. WoW is starting to focus more on player vs player combat, and the new expansions and updates only benefit the higher levels. Plus Blizzard is pushing the higher levels so much that it is a joke leveling now. This leaves WoW with almost no one playing the low levels to instance with and a lot of high levels that don't know how to play their class. I think WoW is a great game but you really have to enjoy PvP or focus on the end game raids/instances to fully enjoy the game. So now finally about the game I'm reviewing here. For starters I feel that lotro is a more mature game. A lot of people compare it to a love child of Final Fantasy 11 and WoW. It's not quite to the point where you can't solo past lvl 10, but unlike WoW you won't be able to blow your way past 3-4 mobs the same level as you. I find this to be a great sweet spot. It also takes a lot longer to level up then WoW. It took me over 23 hours of fighting and questing to reach lvl 16. In that same time frame I could have hit 23-27 in WoW. The best thing I love about lotro is that there is just so much to do. Those 23+ hours that I spend was in one zone. I must have done over 60 quests easy, and it feels really good to go on to another area. As you fight mobs you will earn deeds. For example in the starter zone you will get a deed to kill the local wolves. Once this deed is complete you will usually earn a title that you can add to your charater which shows people what you have done. This usually leads to an advanced deed that requires you to kill more. Once the second round is killed (usually around 60) you will earn a trait. There are 4 types of traits currently (standard, class, race, epic)that you can earn. These will enchane you character. The best part about this is that you always feel like you are killing a mob for a reason. My character is a tailor, so when I'm fighting wolves not only do I get the kill for the deed, but I could be working on a quest and I also use the skin for tailoring. Other deeds consist of finding all the ruins in an area, or completing a certain amount of quests in that zone. The amount of detail in this game is amazing. It can play on a good amount of system configurations, but don't think that just because you can play WoW that you can play this. WoW is a little easier on the resources. Also this is one of the few MMOs that support DX10. Look on youtube for videos of this game running on DX10 to see it's true beauty. The shadow effects from all the trees swaying, or the flowers on the field. The game just makes you pause and look around. Turbine has done an amazing job with this. The music works perfectly with the Lore and you'll find yourself humming it. Turbine has done their homework. It seems like they looked over a lot of what other MMOs have done an tweeked it for lotro. A lot of people are dissapointed that there are not add-ons like WoW, but truth be told there doesn't really need to be. Everything can be moved around on the user interface, and there are so many options. I'm not saying it is perfect. The location system is pretty bad. As it stands you have to send a tell to yourself with a ;loc to get it. I've no doubt however that Turbine will eventually address this. Most of the updates to lotro come through the books. You see the main story is told through chapter like releases. The first book I believe had 14 chapters. The last 5 or 6 chapters where free updates released online and consisted ov major improvements such as player housing (the best I've seen done in an MMO yet), enchanced character customization, new zones, a whole new hobby system, and more. It is safe to say that with each new update a lot of things are added. Book 2: Mines of Moria came out and that includes 6 chapters with 7 getting ready to come out this month I believe. Just to give you an example of how much more is to come, Turbine said that Mines of Moria is nearing the end of the Fellowship of the Ring. This means they it took two books and a huge load of updates to get through one of the real books. There are still 2 full books to go through so users can look forward to many more years of exciting improvements and updates. Download the trail, you won't regret it. Mines of Moria was voted one of the best expansions released, with some professional reviewers saying it is... dare I say it better then Wraith of the Lich King (which I also played). I can't comment on the end game portion or much of Mines of Moria. I am playing the new Warden class and the gambit system is pretty unique and involved.  UnNamedGaming.com $0.99 UnNamedGaming.com is a multiplatform gaming site that covers every aspect of gaming including game reviews, previews, game trailers and most importantly, the latest gaming news. Gamers from all platforms including the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii, and mobile gaming platforms will find us as a dependable source for all of their gaming knowledge! We also feature a podcast that features special guests from the gaming industry appearing on each episode! If you're looking for a podcast that is actually informative and focuses on the gaming issues then by all means give us a listen! You might even win a prize for visiting our site as we give stuff away all of the time!Kindle blogs are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when you're not wirelessly connected. And unlike RSS readers which often only provide headlines, blogs on Kindle give you full text content and images, and are updated wirelessly throughout the day.  The Guild - Season Two $14.99 I bought this at the same time and watched it in the same evening as season one -- this was as good if not better than the first season. While keeping true to the comedy that made me enjoy the first season (gamers will just get it when they watch it) they actually did a great job developing the characters further. The end of the season was both epically hilarious and left you hanging (and craving) for season three. |
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