I loved the original crafting system of lotro back in 2007. As a Blacksmith and a Dwarf Guardian "I had to" craft my own stuff. But those god damn rare monsters were not easy to find. So one day a (3 months after lotro's release) Captain and me went to Angmar (Himbar) and looked for the rare spawn Spider called "Achathling". I will never ever forget that experience. The whole cave were full of spiders, every each of them attacking us. We spent more than 2 hours in that cave alone to make her spawn (not kidding!), but no luck. The Captain then got bored and ported back to town after two hours. I didn't, and I couldn't give up ... I stayed in that cave and kept fighting against a countless number of spiders. I was about to give up, too. When I was running towards the exit of the cave (Carn Dûm shortcut) I had to run down a little something like a hill. What I saw then was for that moment breathtaking. There she was ... huge, pride, beautiful and scary as ****. Achathling! She was accompanied by two other spiders - and keep in mind that in that cave there were spiders all over anyway. Never would I have been able to fight and kill her all by myself. And this path is used by hundrets and hundrets of players to reach Carn Dûm. I was so worried that a party on its way to Carn Dûm would now find her and kill her before me. I told the Captain to make his way again to the cave as fast as he could (I think he was in Gabilshatur). Meanwhile, I tried to not aggro her, because if I did, I knew I would die. I killed off those little spiders spawning left and right. But Achathling was moving! She was slowly patroling the cave! At one point I had to make a decision: Engage Achathling and try to stay alive until my Captain arrives or wait in safety in risk that a party on the way to Carn Dûm finds and kills her. I engaged her. I only had 3500 Moral back then as a lvl50. Achathling had 9000 and several spiders surrounding her. But I had to engage her. I couldn't let this soppurtunity slip away. I was fighting for my life when suddenly my Captain friend arrived and we managed to kill that beast. Achathling dropped a very very rare and expensive crafting material that I needed to craft my own Blue Chest piece which was one of the best Chest pieces in the game back then. The only problem is, the recipe was a one-time recipe and the crit chance was even with my blacksmith hammer in total only 21% (!). I gave it a shot and BAM! I did it! I actually managed to find and kill Achathling, get the rare ingredient and even managed to crit craft my chest armor. I couldn't believe it. I was shouting and chanting all over the place. Wearing one of the best Chest Armors in the game which I even crafted by myself helped me to become one of the best known Blacksmiths on my server (during 2007-2008). Priceless experience!
Dude I read this whole story and I absolutely love it!!! This is what made lotro so great! Memories and experiences exactly like this!! The sense of accomplishment and fulfilment when you go through all the hard work to finally obtain what you were working towards!! This is what I miss so much!
Everyone thinks everything is a race nowadays instead of just enjoying the journey and I don't get it! Man the old trait system was the GOAT, it made lotro unique compared to other mmos I can't believe they destroyed it!
To me, the whole schism of Live vs Echoes is "How much of X do we sacrifice for Y?" To explain further using crafting: On Live, Crafting...there isn't really a point. Like, sure, you can make a decent chunk of money from Scholar/Jeweler consumables...but what do you repurpose that gold for? Where do you invest it? It's a road with a dead end. They sacrificed grindy and immersive crafting (especially the sense of accomplishment of it) for the convenience of players to not bother with the system and that's just shooting yourself in the foot honestly. On Echoes, crafting is a chore but it was so very much worth. Getting that single-use recipe rare drop, gathering the materials for it, finding the crit item and sacrificing your lineage to get a crit felt fulfilling and prideful. When you see someone in full set of crafted gear, you know that person put in a lot of effort and hope into getting the pieces...it instills a certain level of respect. You can pretty much apply this to any concept where Live vs Echoes differentiate. How much of X have they sacrificed for Y? Does this mean Live is bad? No. It's just catering to what the community has become over time. Things that make Live bad are server performance, lack of endgame content (that doesn't make you wanna castrate yourself with a rusty tin can lid) and the toxic positivity around it (You're not allowed to critique the game by the community lol)
Exactly, they have sacrificed a lot of amazing things that made lotro unique and stand out from its competition. Only now to become exactly like them. There's not a lot of sense of accomplishment in the game much anymore compared to what it was back in the day!
Nice video, to me it all boils down to one thing: Everything felt worth doing in EOA. Doing the quests, deeds, farming for gold etc, it just felt vert rewarding. Also, the sense of accomplishment is a thing in EOA, as there are no shortcuts to anything.. Hitting cap, unlocking all virtues/class deeds getting rare drops etc, is not something that can be bought for IRL money. You have to work for it, and at the same time have fun with other people. In retail, even the new content can be skipped. The fastest way to hit cap with a new expansion is to turn in task quests with 200% xp boost. I really don't hate live, I play it for story and if I feel like it doing some instances. I still enjoy your retail content :) But yeah, I agree with all points you made here.
I left live LOTRO when they made the announcement for the trait tree update, which I believe was helm's deep. I used to love logging into all my toons and working on the class deeds for the traits, because if you took a little time to start out, you could really cruise through the landscape content because of the traits you had earned. I came back to live LOTRO recently to play with my brother, and it wasn't necessary for me to spend a single trait point until nearly level 50. I'm very disappointed with how easy the game is now. Keep giving us Echoes content, Matty. We miss playing an actual MMO :)😀
I would love for the LOA Era with content up to today. Horizon XI is doing that with FFXI. I know it's a big undertaking rebalancing the content to fit that Era but that would be great.
The reason I wanna play classic is the amount of content and features new MMOs bring. I got older and I don't want to learn 10 new mechanics and features or explore 100 new areas. Give me a game that is smaller
Considering the player base dropped into the toilet after the first month and never really recovered I’m going to go with - no. Not until Moria which brought a lot of people back.
I loved the original crafting system of lotro back in 2007. As a Blacksmith and a Dwarf Guardian "I had to" craft my own stuff. But those god damn rare monsters were not easy to find.
So one day a (3 months after lotro's release) Captain and me went to Angmar (Himbar) and looked for the rare spawn Spider called "Achathling". I will never ever forget that experience. The whole cave were full of spiders, every each of them attacking us. We spent more than 2 hours in that cave alone to make her spawn (not kidding!), but no luck.
The Captain then got bored and ported back to town after two hours.
I didn't, and I couldn't give up ... I stayed in that cave and kept fighting against a countless number of spiders. I was about to give up, too. When I was running towards the exit of the cave (Carn Dûm shortcut) I had to run down a little something like a hill. What I saw then was for that moment breathtaking.
There she was ... huge, pride, beautiful and scary as ****. Achathling!
She was accompanied by two other spiders - and keep in mind that in that cave there were spiders all over anyway. Never would I have been able to fight and kill her all by myself. And this path is used by hundrets and hundrets of players to reach Carn Dûm. I was so worried that a party on its way to Carn Dûm would now find her and kill her before me.
I told the Captain to make his way again to the cave as fast as he could (I think he was in Gabilshatur). Meanwhile, I tried to not aggro her, because if I did, I knew I would die. I killed off those little spiders spawning left and right. But Achathling was moving! She was slowly patroling the cave! At one point I had to make a decision: Engage Achathling and try to stay alive until my Captain arrives or wait in safety in risk that a party on the way to Carn Dûm finds and kills her.
I engaged her. I only had 3500 Moral back then as a lvl50. Achathling had 9000 and several spiders surrounding her. But I had to engage her. I couldn't let this soppurtunity slip away.
I was fighting for my life when suddenly my Captain friend arrived and we managed to kill that beast. Achathling dropped a very very rare and expensive crafting material that I needed to craft my own Blue Chest piece which was one of the best Chest pieces in the game back then. The only problem is, the recipe was a one-time recipe and the crit chance was even with my blacksmith hammer in total only 21% (!).
I gave it a shot and BAM!
I did it! I actually managed to find and kill Achathling, get the rare ingredient and even managed to crit craft my chest armor. I couldn't believe it. I was shouting and chanting all over the place.
Wearing one of the best Chest Armors in the game which I even crafted by myself helped me to become one of the best known Blacksmiths on my server (during 2007-2008).
Priceless experience!
Dude I read this whole story and I absolutely love it!!! This is what made lotro so great! Memories and experiences exactly like this!! The sense of accomplishment and fulfilment when you go through all the hard work to finally obtain what you were working towards!! This is what I miss so much!
I agree with you at everything. I loved how slow everything was. Taking time for stuff and really deep dive into the trait system was great fun.
Everyone thinks everything is a race nowadays instead of just enjoying the journey and I don't get it! Man the old trait system was the GOAT, it made lotro unique compared to other mmos I can't believe they destroyed it!
Amen to that.
To me, the whole schism of Live vs Echoes is "How much of X do we sacrifice for Y?"
To explain further using crafting:
On Live, Crafting...there isn't really a point. Like, sure, you can make a decent chunk of money from Scholar/Jeweler consumables...but what do you repurpose that gold for? Where do you invest it? It's a road with a dead end.
They sacrificed grindy and immersive crafting (especially the sense of accomplishment of it) for the convenience of players to not bother with the system and that's just shooting yourself in the foot honestly.
On Echoes, crafting is a chore but it was so very much worth. Getting that single-use recipe rare drop, gathering the materials for it, finding the crit item and sacrificing your lineage to get a crit felt fulfilling and prideful.
When you see someone in full set of crafted gear, you know that person put in a lot of effort and hope into getting the pieces...it instills a certain level of respect.
You can pretty much apply this to any concept where Live vs Echoes differentiate. How much of X have they sacrificed for Y?
Does this mean Live is bad?
No. It's just catering to what the community has become over time.
Things that make Live bad are server performance, lack of endgame content (that doesn't make you wanna castrate yourself with a rusty tin can lid) and the toxic positivity around it (You're not allowed to critique the game by the community lol)
Exactly, they have sacrificed a lot of amazing things that made lotro unique and stand out from its competition. Only now to become exactly like them. There's not a lot of sense of accomplishment in the game much anymore compared to what it was back in the day!
Just to point out, people make complaints and criticisms in the forums all the time.
Nice video, to me it all boils down to one thing: Everything felt worth doing in EOA. Doing the quests, deeds, farming for gold etc, it just felt vert rewarding. Also, the sense of accomplishment is a thing in EOA, as there are no shortcuts to anything.. Hitting cap, unlocking all virtues/class deeds getting rare drops etc, is not something that can be bought for IRL money. You have to work for it, and at the same time have fun with other people. In retail, even the new content can be skipped. The fastest way to hit cap with a new expansion is to turn in task quests with 200% xp boost. I really don't hate live, I play it for story and if I feel like it doing some instances. I still enjoy your retail content :) But yeah, I agree with all points you made here.
Well put, same story here still enjoy live but it's lost a lot of what made it unique.
Another good vid, thanks.
Thanks man much appreciated!
I left live LOTRO when they made the announcement for the trait tree update, which I believe was helm's deep. I used to love logging into all my toons and working on the class deeds for the traits, because if you took a little time to start out, you could really cruise through the landscape content because of the traits you had earned.
I came back to live LOTRO recently to play with my brother, and it wasn't necessary for me to spend a single trait point until nearly level 50. I'm very disappointed with how easy the game is now.
Keep giving us Echoes content, Matty. We miss playing an actual MMO :)😀
Yep exactly it's either too easy or something is so imbalanced it's not even possible...it's really gone down a path of no return it feels like.
I really hope the EOA project comes back, it hits very differently to the live version, keep up the good work
I really hope it does too!
I would love for the LOA Era with content up to today. Horizon XI is doing that with FFXI. I know it's a big undertaking rebalancing the content to fit that Era but that would be great.
It would be awesome, I don't have high hopes for it but only time will tell...
You should say about fellowship maneuvres system which was also unic. Sad it doesnt work in actual lotro now
Yes!! I forgot about that!! The maneuvers actually mattered and meant something!! That was another big one!!
The reason I wanna play classic is the amount of content and features new MMOs bring. I got older and I don't want to learn 10 new mechanics and features or explore 100 new areas. Give me a game that is smaller
Actually a fair point, classic is much smaller in content wise but it's still complex enough to where it's fun and challenging!
Long story short: Yes, yes it was.
Yes! 😂😅
Love u kiwi
hahaha xD
Considering the player base dropped into the toilet after the first month and never really recovered I’m going to go with - no. Not until Moria which brought a lot of people back.
Nerd
You're a nerd
I wish there was a way to know we're in the good ole days before they become the good ole days
I see what you did there lol from the office right. 😂😂