Lord of the Rings Online

It should still be going on, was through August. All quests free with coupon LOTROFREEQUESTS , and all expansion quests were in the store for super cheap 99 points sale.

However their Packard Bell servers are having a tough time, they've been down for almost a week now, so good luck.

Rajaah said:

Is this still going on? I'd love to resume my 33 Hunter and have 3 weeks or so to kill until the Kunark launches on Phinny/Ara. Not sure how far I can get in LOTR in 3 weeks but I'm open to try.

Also are the expansions free yet? The main thing keeping me from getting back into the game was having to buy like six expansions. Think the last one I got was the third one, whichever that was. The one before Rohan I think. Then I ended up getting bored to death in North Downs and didn't get to see too much more of the game.

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From the link Kriptini posted:


We have seen our communities come together in recent months as we unlocked quest, raid, and adventure area content to all players, and we are excited to make some announcements today that you'll want to read.
We would like to thank you for supporting us! To begin with, you can continue to enjoy playing all quests, raids, and adventure areas for free through August 31st, 2020. We would also like to provide a way for you to move forward with your gaming when our event eventually comes to an end, so in the coming days we will be providing a Coupon Code that will let you acquire all currently-available quest packs permanently on your account(s)! However, you will need to act quickly, as this Coupon Code is available to redeem through August 31st, 2020.
The Coupon Code is: LOTROFREEQUESTS (1/Account, available to redeem through August 31st, 2020)
This Coupon Code will grant the following to your game account:

• Quest Pack: Central Gondor
• Quest Pack: East Gondor
• Quest Pack: West Gondor
• Quest Pack: Wildermore
• Quest Pack: Angmar
• Quest Pack: Enedwaith
• Quest Pack: Eregion
• Quest Pack: Evendim
• Quest Pack: Forochel
• Quest Pack: Eriador Bundle
• Quest Pack: Misty Mountains
• Quest Pack: North Downs
• Quest Pack: Trollshaws
• Quest Pack: Lothlorien
• Quest Pack: Great River
• Quest Pack: Old Anórien
• Region Pack: Far Anórien
• Quest Pack: March of the King
• Quest Pack: Battle of the Black Gate
• Quest Pack: Legacy of the Necromancer
• Quest Pack: Where Dragons Dwell
• Quest Pack: The Vales of Anduin
• Quest Pack: Mists of Wilderland

Additionally, in the near future, we will be conducting a limited time sale on select Expansion quests in the LOTRO Store where you will be able to pick up the following items for only 99 points through August 31st, 2020:

• Expansion Quests: Mines of Moria
• Expansion Quests: Siege of Mirkwood
• Expansion Quests: Rise of Isengard
• Expansion Quests: Riders of Rohan
• Expansion Quests: Helm's Deep
• Instance Cluster: Rise of Isengard
• Instance Cluster: Riders of Rohan

We are also announcing an update to our VIP program! Soon, VIPs will get access to a vendor that will grant them the following benefits once per day: 48-hours of town services items, a buff that negates item wear, and a buff that provides rapid crafting.
VIPs do not need to do anything to get this update, as your VIP account(s) will automatically receive this benefit in a game update in the near future.
Please continue to enjoy our games, and we are happy to have you here.
Sincerely,
The teams at Standing Stone Games

Rajaah said:

Is this still going on? I'd love to resume my 33 Hunter and have 3 weeks or so to kill until the Kunark launches on Phinny/Ara. Not sure how far I can get in LOTR in 3 weeks but I'm open to try.

Also are the expansions free yet? The main thing keeping me from getting back into the game was having to buy like six expansions. Think the last one I got was the third one, whichever that was. The one before Rohan I think. Then I ended up getting bored to death in North Downs and didn't get to see too much more of the game.

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Not 100 percent - at the end of April I started playing EQ and Destiny. I’ll have to check back in on this

As they mentioned, if you have any interest in this, you'll want to get all the quest packs before 8/31.

Still futzing with it, and fair warning, if you aren't grinding out some of the imbued legendary scrolls daily as you get past 100, your DPS will become painfully bad. Minas Tirith dailies at the north and south take a minimal amount of time at higher levels, so it's not too bad.

I will say that LOTRO is the counter argument to people complaining about WOW adding mechanics every expansion. Dozens and dozens of levels in a row in the same volcano / forest / grassland settings with largely the same mob types, gameplay, etc. gets very repetitive after a while. Even when they do throw in a new reputation wrinkle (like allegiances or whatever) you outlevel any of the rewards long before you would get enough rep to care.

This was the only themepark MMO that I gave up on before even hitting level 10.

I haven't been to the newest high level zones but I always thought LoTRO could have a tourist mode, kind of like AC:Origins discovery tours. The world is surprisingly beautiful for an older game and full of detail from both the books and movies.

Regarding quest packs vs expansions: Expansions are like the X.0 versions of the game and usually include a couple zones and their quests, plus dungeons/raids and sometimes other new things. All the x.1, x.2, etc, updates are quest packs and not included with the recent expansion the way WoW does it. You need to actually buy them to get the quests for those new zones. All those inbetween-expansion zones are what are free in the code above.

Did they ever make combat not feel like a weird molasses slog? I did Captain and... some melee thing, and both felt like everything was in shitty slow-motion but without the key presses doing anything useful. Was very disjointed.

Just to clarify a bit further, since it's a bit confusing. Expansions vs Expansion quest packs: The actual full expansion comes with a few goodies (items) that the quest packs won't have, they're just extras not essential. Plus the instance clusters (dungeons). The other "region quest packs" are areas in between expansions and you don't need all of them, there are usually a couple for each level bracket, so you can choose which you want. Also these are accessible for "free" while you are subbed. These are all the ones they are giving away with the code above. Expansions are only accessible if you own them. Except for the "Main Storyline Quest" which lets you do just that questline through expansion areas you don't own, up until Mordor I believe.

The sale is already going and I'm definitely gonna pick up Rohan and Helm's Deep. Pissed that I just got Isengard (for points) a few months ago, but that's fine. Helm's Deep was 40 bucks/4000 points for years and when they finally lowered the price to the "old expansion" price of 20 bucks, they left the point cost the same. I have a sweet optimized point farming setup, but 4000 points is still a fuckload.

Rezz The combat has been improved a bit, and they sped up auto-attack a ton which helped a lot. It'll never be like WoW, but it's better than it was.

Kriptini said:

How is it for a group of 2? My brother and I might try to duo some stuff. We also might bring some other people into it but they wouldn't be as dedicated as us, is there a good mentor system for grouping with lower leveled players?

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What Aaron said is pretty much spot on.

A long ass time ago played this game to max level at the time in a duo of minstrel and captain. We managed to do shitloads of group open world stuff. Some questlines in the game were designed in a way where you needed a trio sometimes, mostly quest instances. A trio (tank, heal, dps) is perfect but a duo does work for most content. Maybe that's changed now but back then some content was pretty challenging for a duo.

We did find people easily for stuff we couldn't do as playing a tank and heal you've got the bases covered to form a party and just grab anyone pretty much.

I played minstrel and it was pretty fun, they were dire to solo with back then so being in a duo made it much more bearable.

Hmmm, now may not be the best time to be playing Lotro. Seems their servers are fubar'd. Hopefully they can fix it quick, but who knows? It's been ongoing for a week or two? Not sure, been skimming the forums. I assume they are having issues due to a smaller dev team (fewer engineers), cheaper, smaller servers (probably downgraded/downsized after the split) and giving away all this free access for months during a lockdown.

How does the future of the game look? I think I finished, or made it halfway through Mordor the last time I played. I stopped when the new lotr MMO was announced because the it seemed like lotro would be doomed, but they have another expac announced on the wiki page?

sukik said:

How does the future of the game look? I think I finished, or made it halfway through Mordor the last time I played. I stopped when the new lotr MMO was announced because the it seemed like lotro would be doomed, but they have another expac announced on the wiki page?

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From what I remember them saying about this, their license is not affected by the Amazon lotr mmo and they have a lot of plans for the future of the game. Just a tiny dev team, so it's a slow process. Minas Morgul was added after Mordor. I haven't played in a few months, so I don't know about what's planned for the next expansion. I know they have plans for a major overhaul of the Legendary system, that's about it.

I was gonna start casually playing a dwarf guardian cause FTP and was in the mmo mood but the game has been down/unplayable for about a week now.

Yeah, I was hoping to get back to working my main thru Isengard and getting my alts to the start of it, now that I'm almost at a point in Lost Ark where I'll be able to just do the weekly with my alts for gold while I wait for the big Season 2 update. Guess it'll be Swtor instead.

Aaron said:

Yeah, the servers shat themselves a few days ago and no-one knows what's going on. DDO which is made by the same dev company is unaffected.

As for the future, the player base has been increasing, and the have years of expansions planned.

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Thanks, I'll fire it up again and check out the new content.