I Played Lord of The Rings Online For 75 Hours - The Good, The Bad, And The REALLY REALLY ugly... 

My compressor was apparently WAY higher while recording this video and I didn't realize it until I was editing this video. You may here some pops throughout the video. Sorry dudes! Love you all :)

Hi, good review but there is something that I wish to see more: a clear message that if the game is good, why not spend some dollar on it. One detail that I find interesting is that when I like something, I don't mind paying the game for the developpers to continue working on it. For example, having limited bags: buy LOTRO points and for a few hundred points you get extra space. If you don't want to avoid long travel, you can always fast travel (using your gold) if you have discovered the location. Or use mithril point to unlock it and go there in an instant. Also, mitrhil coin can allow you to travel to your quest giver. For a few dollars, you can enhance your experience and support the dev. It's a message that I wish reviewers/influencers would spread more. 🙂

There is really a certain charm to this game that really draws you in. I played it briefly years ago but still get a weird nostalgia watching current videos.

My advice for you and anyone in your position: buy premium for one month. that permanently turns your account into a "premium" account, even after you unsubscribe. This solves your character slot, auction house, (and inventory i think?) problems. I also dont think you talked enough about the positives of the lotro point system. A f2p player naturally generates lotro points just by playing, which they can use to unlock anything in the game. It takes a while, but f2p players do have the ability to unlock any VIP benefits. MY biggest complaint about the game is the lag. Supposedly they are working on it, but right now, the server lag makes the game unplayable at times.

I'm glad you're liking LOTRO. I hope you'll make more LOTRO videos. You points on inventory are valid. Even if you buy vault space, there is a cap.

About the mounts. It used to be that you need like 95 lotro points to unlock the permanent mount skill called riding. Which is really easy to get. But now I think you get the lotro points from a quest and get the riding skill even as a ftp person

The game wasn't free to play orinally. Now FTPs hav eit made and it's almost not worth it to be VIP. Youy get most of the content free now, stuff VIPs had to pay for back when it came out. I think the FTPers expect too much to be free, and are spoiled.

Mounts are easy to get, do some deeds and you only need 90 for the mount skill . At LVL 20 you can buy one for in game money near bree

lotro points can be earned by completing achievements, which can be used to get anything in the premium shop. it is completely possible to play lotro completely f2p, just gotta be a completionist and do the achievements. not as hard as it seems. also, houses can be bought with gold, and houses have a chest in them for storage.

I know I'm late, but as of 12/2022 almost all of the content, except the last major expansion, Gundabad, and the mini expansion Beyond the Darkness, are available to all F2P players (freeps). The mount skill is also available to free to play players. The only thing you would really want / "need" is inventory space. The easy solution, make alts to hold your stuff, there is a whole shared storage system and housing storage that you can use to transfer items between toons pretty easily. Also note you get something called LP (Lotro Points) for damn near just playing the game, by the time you can do the Gundabad content, you could just buy the expansion using the LP you collected, same for inventory space. Also SSG gives away a ton of stuff regularly, including giving away all content that used to be locked behind a paywall for free to everyone.

It's funny how the "bad" and the "really ugly" are problems you could solve RIGHT NOW by using your earned points in the LOTRO store. I can't believe you're still using Wanderlust even if it's way better to purchase the riding skill and get a horse that doesn't slow down in combat. Buy that and inventory/auction slots immediately and your problems will be solved.

Found you from Brightlife's react on stream. Well done! Loved this. Lots of very valid points made throughout. I was reminded of WoW with the crafting materials issue back before they got rid of leveling requirements for older tradeskills. Back when copper was worth more than some of the top tier ore because no one farmed it.

I've been playing Lord of the rings for about 12 years and I've got to say this is one of the best reviews I have ever seen I'm really looking forward to you reviewing it from a VIP standpoint

You're right that some of those, like the lack of automatic AH access, are "quit moments". However, much like with the inventory space limits, the problem is solved really easily by spending the LP you earned with Deeds. Honestly, I kept waiting for you to stop going on about the AH and talk about how you felt about doing Deeds and earning LP. I'm a bit disappointed that you spent 3/5 of your review going in circles on a single problem that you can solved easily. Tbh, there are other LP-locked features that I thought you'd be more annoyed about than spending 200 LP (about $2) on AH access and Riding. My personal experience with it was that I've got a trickle of it coming in every hour or so without even trying. Doing quests gets you some, killing monsters gets you some, doing quests gives you reputation ranks, which gives you some, exploring the whole map gets you some. Completing a zone gives me about 200 LP, so your 1200 LP made sense to me. And when bank / inventory / character slots go on sale, spend your saved up points. I'm not sure if you bought any of those 1200 LP you had, but if they were all earned with Deeds, you're still F2P even if you interact with the store and spend them. At least in my opinion. As for actual limitations... take it from a player who got hooked on the cosmetics system and did crafting: Yes, you'll need to buy slots. Yes, it's solving a problem introduced by the devs. No, I don't think it's too limited at the start of the game. Not everything you pick up is useful and I don't think your AH complain is a significant barrier to being able to earn in-game gold, so you should be able to sell off the excess crafting items. Junk items can be turned in at Task boards for a bit of xp and rep or sold for a good amount of money. Equipment you find outside of dungeons are almost always crap; throw them out.

The reason to block Freeps is because of spammers and scammers. Also people complain about F2P games and how they make money, but they spend $60 for a game for 40 hours of game play... while these MMOs are proving 100s if not 1000s of hours of game play, for free. People even complain if a game has a subscription with no microtransactions, they just want people / companies to work for free...

As a FtP player you can buy riding skill just for 90 lotro points a then get horse in bree-land. So there is mobility. You will earn 90 lotro points before you hit 20.

There's need for a damper on complaints about limited storage. Shop currency can be acquired from regular gameplay, making purchases basically costless. It'll take time, but complaining you are FORCED to pay for storage isn't honest

Good on you for putting this video out there. I, as a 15-year, veteran player myself, agree with many of your points, some well-made ones too. Hopefully, a lot of this will be taken on board, and sorted out with the upcoming Developers' meetings, as we currently have the "Before the Shadow" content being released very soon. However, certainly, one thing that did make me wonder was did you experience any LAG during your 75-hour playthrough? If there is one thing that has stopped new players from fully committing, it would have been that. Like so many before Me, many of us had started in WoW, and for me particularly, it wasn't the Cartoony feel that drove me away, but the ages of many of the players, constantly having players quit during Dungeons and Raids, as they were 7-12+ years old and had to go to School / Bed / Dinner during critical times!!! That and the Monthly subscription has killed off so many games for me.

So I'm trying LOTRO again. And I'm reading the quests. So far, story wise, I'm getting the same feeling I get from FF14, a well-made game that is about the journey not just the end game.

I see your reasoning for your complaints but for anyone watching this video currently, and considering whether to try LOTRO or not, I would like to just suggest that you don't go in with quite as heavy of an expectation, as Drydek apparently did, that a "free to play" account should make things WAY more free. He was VERY focused on things not being "free enough". This game is actively supported and the company requires income to do so. We can argue all day about how much is enough but in the end, if you try the game out and love it then SIGN UP. It OK to pay a little bit for something you enjoy and that someone else is providing. And here's the really cool part - if you sign up for just a single month and then cancel, you get to keep some perks forever including Swift Travel and additional inventory slots (this would have made Drydek's day). Bottom line - if you try it and like, go ahead and support the company and get the benefits.

You can complete deeds to get LOTRO points. Each zone has a set of deeds and they give you 5,10,15 LOTRO points per deed. You can save up your points for what ever you want in the store. Doing the deeds also gives you other rewards like virtue points.

All those limitations are unlockable with LotroPoints. If you buy a house. The storage inside it its shared in the account so you can store stuff or gold there for the other charecter you have. At start you will have less bag space but every time you unlock bag space or the house storage space it will be for all charecters. Auction House is 5 slots easly unlocked with LP for anny F2P

Awesome video man! Thank you for answering a bunch of questions I had on the free to play part of it.

The way I sold this game to my friends back in the day was to just ask them "You like Lord of the Rings? Books, movies or both? You know that awesome hand-drawn map of Middle Earth that's in both? Yeah, that's the game map -- if it's on the map, you can go there, if you've seen it in a movie, you can go there." I liked this review a lot because a many of us can totally relate to the immersion part, even without being a total LOTR nerd.

If anyone is coming across this video, and wants to play mostly for the story, and not PvP (which is not recommended, as it is chronically unbalanced), your first servers of choice should be Landroval (US role playing, friendly community), Laurelin (UK role playing, friendly community), and Belegaer (german role play, if you can speak german, also a friendly community). Others can be nice as well, but Arkenstone and Brandywine are notoriously aggressive. On these three servers, you can ask any old question in world chat and will receive an honest answer, and often people will go out of their way and send you something helpful per mail, or even offer you to help you to get past an especially difficult moment in the game. And don't be shy to make use of the Book of Deeds, and accumulate shop points. You'll have to grind a bit, but it also means, you will stay (wink wink). Note that the devs never made it harder to obtain the LP for the shop; in a few cases they even reduced the initial amount of deed targets (like in Angmar, where you initially had to amass more than 300 warg kills).

I love the enthusiasm. I’ll share this

I've been a huge LotRO player and fan since the very beginning! One of your first few major points you hit on was exactly why I never went back to WoW, I couldn't stand the cartoony look! It looked great but it was just too cartoonish feeling for me and while LotRO could do with a graphics update, I still prefer it's look over WoW's

I am thrilled with this game, and on top of that the expansions are at 99 LP right now. I regret not having played it sooner hahaha.

I have played many mmos, Lotro has the best open world. It looks like a real one, not a game one, sometimes I just ride and watch the views. Also here are the best quests for those who read them. I go into the game periodically, and when new content comes out, the game is super.

Loved LOTRO met some great people, what I liked about the community everyone I met was mature and worked well together. The writing of adventures was top notch. My peak playing experience was with the release of Moria. But overall what drew me in was the world, I just loved exploring and getting thrashed in areas I shouldn't have been in, for my level LOL. Crafting was so fun, loved finding ore with my dwarf and selling for gold. Became a lifetime member (remember when they had that on sale for like 200 bucks). Overall, super fun times.

Plenty of good points. Though i couldn't disagree more with your statements on monetization. Giving shit for convenience, is waaaaaay preferrable to selling power. ...and to new players: AVOID THE "BEFORE THE SHADOW" STARTING AREA LIKE THE PLAGUE! Not only is it designed to be only playable with low level mounts, its also the starting zone equivalent of amazon rings of power.

I've never watched any of your videos but I watched this one and the one you did when you first started on Weirdgaming, and dam man love the content though seems a bit like you didn't enjoy your time.--- Really hope you do more Lotro!!! Will look forward too more! :D

I played this game for free for a long time, you can actually unlock all those things you mention just by playing the game and making some types of quests that are called deeds that give you LOTRO points that is the real money, of course it will be more grindy but you could definitely play this game for free up to like level 90 or so, since I loved the game so much I just went Vip for a month and got all unlocked forever, also bought some LOTRO points just to support the game. one more thing, if you want to have really good travel skills around the world, create a hunter :D

Most of the gripes I heard have ways around in the ftp model like for instance bag space there is in game rewards that you can choose a carry all that has limited slots but they hold crafting mats or food or potions but they take up one slot, the mount is accessible for ftp at level 20 just need 500 silver which by 20 you will have, also you can grind deeds for in game currency i think starting area has over 250 lotro points to gain from slayer deeds exploration and quest completion, which if you want a bag or mount earlier will just be a deed grind, the auction house is now open to ftp with i think a gold cap on mailed gold not for sure tho glad you enjoyed it tho great video and hope you keep up playing

You only have to buy one month VIP, so many things are unlocked forever then. All bags, many space in the bank, auction house...

They changed their Monetization with some updates. you can get the riding skill and a starter mount really early on for 10 lotro points via a quest in the prologue zones. ten lotro points is super easy to get

About the auction house thing, yes it would be that bad. There are a few items that can drop at lower levels that can invalidate the currency (worth 1k-10k gold). Gold IS NOT a primary currency after a while, endgame is 98% barter tokens and if you want to buy from other players you can but those resources will also be obtainable through just gameplay. The farming craft profession is a net gold positive so you can craft as much gold as you have time (or macro). There is a lot of other things that seem small but are actually fairly economy breaking. The traversal is meant to be for mounts, but I know mounts are store locked for F2P players, also need to be VIP (but only have to buy it once iirc) for the instant stable transport (wow portals pretty much). I have played this game for a long time and I always enjoy seeing the content people make especially these types of reviews. It's an amazing LoTR game but it fails as an MMO to me it is closer to a single player game with a co-op feature.

I heard you mention travelling around the map is extremely slow even with a fast mount but didn't hear you mention teleporting(milestone usage) is extremely limited unless you purchase milestone numbers and time decreases from the store. Luckily i started playing as a hunter and have lots of telepoting options earlier game which helped me a lot. If i started any other class, i might have deleted that and started hunter or warden just to help traveling around.

There is a minor hack for free players who don;t want to grind for lotro points. That is go vip for one month, you get the benefit of vip while member (xp boost, portable mail box, lotro 500 points, all the monster races etc), but when you stop you keep some of the perks, like riding skills ,auction access, gold limits or alts created. Cheaper than paying for them individually. Very much a casual player for more than 10 years , now play with son while he is at university, just a chilled experience slowly making our way to Mordor :) .

The gold cap for free players blows my mind. Its just saying to them "Hey hi welcome spend money or suffer" The aution house restrictions is also mind boggling.

Great video love seeing more people finding and playing LOTRO! I played years ago and just started again. One thing about the free to play. Nothing is really free. FF14 free to play you can’t access the auction house either. This keeps gold sellers at bay and keeps them from controlling the market. If you look at what you get VIP most games are $15 a month. LOTRO is $15 one month $20 for 3 months then you can drop it and your account to converted to a premium account. You still have most perks that you are complaining about. So pony up a few bucks and support a great game!!! 😉😮

Has there happened alot since this video? I could use the ah as a f2p, but I started playing less than a month ago. Also deeds earn lotro points so I got the riding skill real fast. Also I got a free mount that lasted for 24 hour (24 hour use that only counts down while actually using it).

I was surprised you didn't mention the lag in the really really ugly

Just a couple of pointers, it's easy to make gold in LOTRO just by selling junk, people, if rarely, only depend on the AH. Another thing about crafting is you can level any profession up really fast with processing recipes instead of crafting items. It's hidden tricks like this you have to learn over time to survive.

Being a die hard Tolkien fan, Ive played for 8 years now. Its a great experience. The developers really take care to keep the feel and ambience and stories grafted to Middle Earth. Keep playing Buy you an ale and we'll smoke a bowl at the Green Dragon. Be well.

Lotro 2022 free to play model is very good in my opinion. (I started playing a couple of days ago because of their quest coupon promo thing.)

Couldn't agree more. Specially about the world. Most of my time in game, as a lotr and tolkien fan is just running around in the world visiting cool areas I know from the books and being completely immersed in the atmosphere. No other mmorpg comes close to this aspect. My biggest issue with the game is the clunkiness of combat. It's passable for some classes and worse for others but it's nowhere near as smooth and snappy as WoW for example. All in all a decent mmorpg and a must if you're a tolkien fan and like mmorpgs.

Since this game is old school mmo, it all depends how you play. You can rush to max level farming skirmishes but i think the true way to experience lotro is through questing since that way you will get to experience cool stories, deeds etc. Doing the original shadow of angmar epic quest can take up days.

I thought you could send gold between alts using the mailbox.

Im a free player. the inventory thing is a nightmare. my vault bank service is also full sincei use it as additional inventory. And im a cook and a farmer!

Dude you look rad man :)

I thought F2P players just had to wait until level 20 to get a mount with a quest

I am late but if you do the VIP it will take care of everything but Before the shadows and Gundabad xpacs then you can just use the tokens to buy the xpacs for free and w/e you want afterwards.

you can buy lotro points once and your account becomes premium forever. just go for the cheapest offer. that alone gives you alot of QoL.

I'd be curious on your opinion of Return of Reckoning. I've been getting into it recently. Super fun MMO, non of the BS you typically get with MMO's, no cash shop. Just an awesome game set in the Warhammer universe. All this stuff you talk about with F2P and general business models is something I really hate about MMO's. I just have to recommend RoR for it's an honest fun time with no BS and the people the keep it running should be commended!

Reject live lotro, embrace echoes of angmar

You can buy vault up to 120 for normal gold. You should buy VIP at least once and it should unlock some stuff. I dont understand that persistance to play free forever even tho it just costs like 10$ to get VIP for month or so. Those F2P from my understanding are just like demo version of the game, if you like it, contribute and pay for more. LOTRO is very easy on p2w, there is no such thing here. You really need to work through and level your toon, even geared toon is not all, you need to have XP playing class or you will be just a burden for party later. This game requires work from you, even if you pay 1000$ it gives you just starter poisition, ytou need to do some endgame stuff and still learn how to play. The most beatiful thing tho is that LOTRO is very true to the book and you can jkust play here for a year going through completely everything from shire, through galtrev, rohan, gondor, anorien, dale, erebor, mordor ffs iots just literally everything and more.

At level 20 you can unlock the riding skill by doing a quest at Hengstacer Farm just north of Bree. And you can buy a mount with gold there also

On one hand, the complaints about travel & storage limits for free to play are real and I get that could be frustrating for someone just trying out in FTP mode .... on the other hand, this just begs the question on just what the limits should be for free to play? Isn't it likely that no matter what those limits are, they won't be enough for someone? The problem with allowing FTP to post items to the auction house is that becomes another vector for FTP gold farming. Not saying there aren't potential solutions to guard against that, but I can see where their concern is. Ultimately, they have to provide incentives to players to fork over real, actual $$ in order to pay for the game's development. The tough question will always be just where the limits are set in order to get the right balance between incentive versus discouragement.

Long time wow player and general MMO guy. Played this at release and it was, well, just not very good. Started up again and immediately subbed to show support for the game. Its come a long way. Feels like Vannila wow in play style, but with way more story depth and atmosphere.

Thank you!

I played this game like 10 years ago for a short period before WoW sucked me in completely. Great times.

Fix the LAG and rehaul the UI and it’ll be mint

Just for the record it is very possible to get a mount when you are free to play since u get a LOT of lotropoints throught deeds when i hit 50 i had 1500 lotro points and i was just playing the game. And that ammount is enough for multible riding skills and mounts

You have to be careful with what you say about monetization. You can earn shop currency in game. Saying Mounts are locked behind paywalls, while true, can be achieved in game with Slayer deeds in like an hour. Other than that, yeah the monetization is pretty bad. I don't see how it's possible to get through Moria without VIP. They give you more LOTRO points in Moria but having to sell your legendary upgrades because of inventory space sounds bad.

They did a lot to stop Gold spammers

Its not a matter of them making f2p as inconvenient as they can it's a simple case of wanting to get f2p players to subscribe to vip

Hi. Can you pls tell me the name of music on 18:20? Enjoy lotro

God review is nixw to see a new fce in Lotro as a 8 year player is nice to see new content of the game,just a couple of comentaries: The ride times is part of the inmersion in the game the fact that the zones are huge is part of the lore but i get that for a new player is tiring. Second is that the free to play experience is balance with the Lotro point system is the only mmo where you can gain the premium currency if you want you can buy anything without of money they are multiple guides the how to farm lotro point in a decent rate to acomplish this The other thing you are right

i know is year later but now u get mount at lvl 4

RIFT as a game had probably the best in terms of bags for inventory management. you could make them, or you could buy them. You most certainly can send gold in large amounts if you use the bag of coin that you can get at the vault keeper. it does stack, so you're complaining about something pointless, and seeing as how this video was made around the time of the changes to the game that removed gold cap, and other QoL changes you may need to come back and correct some of what you've said in this video. It's only astronomical because people choose to be greedy, if you look around, you'll find fairly good deals made by people who aren't interested in acquiring digital gold in a video game. people also use the AH as a place to store excess items and put the price up at a high rate fully expecting that no one will buy it.

Thank you for saying the point of the care they have taken into this game. It's an amazing Game! I have been playing since start. Its one of the best MMOs out there.

you forgot to tell that you can get the store point by playing the game if you do all the deeds in a land you can buy the auction and horse in no time i only spend a 100 bucks in 11 years and i can have 8 chars and have 5000 store points in the bank by just doing the deeds and the game is alot better when i started it was free to play to lvl 30 now it is to 130 and beoring use to be 1250 store points and u only had 1200 so u get alot

What server do you play on? Its Probably arkenstone

I just started and now I’m confused do you just get a free horse if you are premium

Pretty sure the gold cap was removed earlier this year. There’s been a huge tendency to give away more and more content and quality of life things for free in recent years. The code FREEQUESTS2022 can be redeemed through 10/31 2022.

Mounts are free now 🙂

hi dude have you ever been the pvp zone i run creep raids every morning on evernight 7 am gmt my creep alt is dairuind.

I think the criticism at the end is a bit unfair because at that point you have not paid at all for anything in the game. No matter what kind of game the end goal is fair exchange of money. The problem and quality of free to play game is that its free so somehow developers must get money to make the game. Thats why you should have a set monthly rate you want to use on videogames such as lotro. Wow has a fixed rate you must pay. Lotro lets you choose with some hoops to jump through. I mean they are all money grabbing sons of bitches we must just choose what we want of their service

Can you not mail your alts the money as a f2p then

A lot of your issues will be fix with just 1 month of sub.

farm lotro points and buy bags

*Final Fantasy 14.* You're welcome. 😎

The community in this game is so far in denial that standing stone games could charge them everytime they go into a dungeon and they would still worship the ground the devs walk on. Literally no point in trying to say anything negative about this game unless you want a massive headache.

bad graphic design bad graphic level

very nice review ...as a f2p you can have everything in this game..things cost ingame curency which u can get more then enough just playing the game:) this isnt a game which u complete in 1 month,i play it from 12 years and still have many unfinished things haha...there is nothing in this game which would hold back f2p players to enjoy the play...best game ever

the way they do sub + micro transactions are disgusting. Cary all bags, mount training, quest packs, xpacs... all micro-transaction atrocities. The fact people play and support these practices is shameful.