Yes.

do you get more out of it than LotR, cause I don't wanna spend over a day for little more than a free demo

LOTRO plays absolutely atrocious on my machine, yet games like WoW and Runes of Magic run at maxed settings and still look more decent. >.>

Well graphics wise LOTRO stomps WoW if you have the right stuff, if not WoW probably will look better. Need high settings with DX 10 or 11.

You missed me Exorince, my character's name is Cardomir and I'm on Meneldor as well.

In terms of graphics, I'm only running at medium at the highest resolution at DX9. It's all my chipset can handle.

Done

Wait, how free is the game?

If I buy the full version and the expansions on say, Amazon.co.uk, will I then have unlimited access to the entire game and all expansions without a monthly fee?

You don't even need to do that anymore. Just download the client. Play. http://www.lotro-europe.com/freetoplay/info/?territory=EnglishUK The only thing really gameplay limiting are the new areas.

In DDO, you can easily play up to level 13 for free (level cap is 20 in DDO). After that, the free quests get a little sparse, with only one in the 18+ range. The next update promises more f2p quests as well. There are quest packs you can buy, but only a couple of them are must-have's. The Vale of Twilight pack, for example, gets you something like six quests, two explorer areas, three raids, and a crafting system. Most people buy that one if they don't want to go VIP. A number of them just pay for it with the turbine points they have earned, too.


While we are on the subject of DDO, I don't think LOTRO compares favorably. Compared to DDO, the chargen is downright primitive and DDO has very few "kill x boars and come back to me" quests, which seems to be LOTROs go-to style.


Oh, I created a caster whatchamcallit on Meneldor. Name is Tathartaur.

Well I suppose I'll have to create a character on Meneldor too since that's what everyone is doing. Not sure what though. Oh wait I can do a Warden, I don't have one of those floating around.

Exorince you gotta put up my characters too pls.

Gorlaran- Brandywine
Vikdairic- Windfola
Trilbo-Landroval

I played it a while back when you still had to pay the monthly fee. I got bored with it and I don't want to pay for boredom

Still, I might try it out again when it gets free. Then I'll have something to play until The Old Republic is released.

Oh also Exorince, I'm a Guardian .

I started a Human Captain, Gugwynn, on Meneldor. I don't know how much I will be playing but go ahead and add me.

Skufka on Meneldor.

He's an Elf Hunter. I doubt I'll play much but we'll see.

I think I got everyone

Okay I made a new character on Meneldor, Bearamandir. That way I can play with you guys sometime maybe.

On that note, how does grouping up work, anyway?

For example: Say you pick up the quest to go kill four aurochs, do I automatically receive the quest, too? Then we can both kill two and complete it? Or is it more for instanced quests, like that one where you follow Dwalin through that ruin? Do quest get more difficult with more people in your party? Also, do they get more difficult than that quest in general? Because I was expecting something along the lines of Misery's Peak for the end of the starter area. Misery's Peak on Casual is more difficult and involved than that was. Makes me kinda worried. :unsure:

Spelt my character's name wrong.

It's Skufka.

Well there are quests that require more than one person (obviously lol), then you just type /invite [that persons name] and you're in a fellowship. So then you go into the instance or area to do the quest. You can be in a fellowship just to talk and still be able to do things as normal, you just can't enter solo only instances while in a fellowship. It's pretty easy, if you're looking for a quest to do then you just use the LFF chat or GLFF user chat and usually you will find people that will join you. It's LFF system isn't as awesome as DDO's and pretty much useless, only downer to grouping, but the LFF works just as well for most things, although it's not always fast getting a group.

To your edit: No you won't automatically receive the quest, you'd have to pick it up yourself, but it is possible for people in your group to share it with you and then the dialogue pop up appears on your screen. Once that happens, yes you can kill two and complete it while the other person does the same. The difficulty is already there, it doesn't increase or decrease with members in your group. If you try to solo a quest that has the fellowship symbol, then you will most likely die because the monsters are "elite" usually and a step up from normal monsters. The higher level you are the more stepped up they are, they change from elites to elite masters to nemesis and then to arch nemesis for your greatest enemies. As for Skirmishes, there's a solo mode and a mode for small fellowship (3 people), regular fellowship (6 people) or raid (12 people). And yeah the more people you have the harder it gets (3,6 or 12).

Also the starter instance and pretty much 95% of the quests in the starter areas are solo, so you won't find THAT much challenge there. It increases in challenge as you go on. Around level 20 or so you'll see more quests that have fellowship symbol and areas that have elite monsters. Doing the Great Barrow instance is one of these places.

Okay, so the difficulty does step up at some point. That's good to know.

I have a question about buying items. I went to the vendor and noticed you can try them on, which is cool. Even cooler, you can change the colors. So I was able to purchase a nice green robe to replace my oogly orange starting one. Nice. But when I tried to buy green shoes to match, I just got the usual grey ones. Am I missing something here? I'm just trying to stumble through everything.

I'm pretty sure you spelt your name wrong

I'm pretty sure you have to dye them if you want them to be green. Dye's usually aren't that expensive, especially if they're common dyes, you should be able to purchase them on the AH. Or if you have the scholar profession, you can make your own dyes, not sure what tier green is though.

I do have the scholar profession. I'll have to look into that. When I can log in; I'm not gonna sit through the waiting list. Peak hours should be over by the time I am done doing guild raids on DDO.

Yeah, that's the really big downside to F2P is that you have to wait. Especially if you try playing on a popular server.

So, any word on the European free to play date?