General Discussions

On another note, Age of Empires Online is coming.

I have been paying for it when it wasn't free and am now playing even more since I don't have to pay for it.

Let me just add that this game is not really free... what I mean is that you will have to work hard to unlock everything the free way. And please no WOW vs LOTRO arguments, they are more than different games.

[Edited by shianova, 9/27/2010 7:54:25 AM]

I'm still not interested in it. I'm a LotR fan but the online games just never interested me. I have a cousin who plays LotRO ALL the time but I never understood its appeal.

When I asked you guys if you'd heard of it, I meant something more along the lines 'What do you guys think of this?'

I did play it when it came out, it just did not appeal to me at all, although it was easy to level your professions in it, especially mining as nodes always spawned at particular locations regularly.

It does look nice, but.... the game became a bit too samey samey after a while.

As for Shia, I wasn't comparing the two was stating a fact when an MMO is released and it doesn't manage to compete with WoW in terms of subscriptions etc then it does force developers into going in a new direction.

Even Warhammer has gone free to an extent also. Could be due to the fact that Mythos was bought out so to speak.

The only MMO that truly hasn't went free bar the exception of WoW, is EVE its still the longest running MMO out there. And that costs more than WoW monthly, but you get expansions for free. And they have cleverly added a way of pay for game time with in game currency, by buying PLEX's which are sold by other players by converting time code cards. This is clever as it eliminates the needs for people to go buy from dodgey sources if they want ingame money.

Lotro went the cash shop way which means more money by promoting the "Free" part of nothing you get. It has no point what so ever to do with keeping up with WOW.

You can still pay per month to play LOTRO by the way.

I don't feel like downloading it. Eh.

Of course it does, to entice newer possible paying customers to the game they had to do something radical, and allow to be free to play.

MMO's have one thing in mind when released to grab a chunk of the market away from Blizzard who are dominating the MMO market. That is fact.

But they always fail on one deciding feature that WoW has, its addictiveness, a MMO may have the best Graphics, Sound and Gameplay but if it is not addictive, people will always return back to WoW.

But, saying that Blizzard has started to ruin WoW and it is becoming a bore, Cataclysm will be Blizzards last gasp attempt of keeping control. They will always have the Lore buffs who will continue to play but casual gamers may soon get bored again and try something else, until they realise they miss WoW and go back again.

If the future Star Wars and Stargate MMO's live up to expectations those 2 combined may hit Blizzard hard and grab the fans of both from Blizzard's grasp finally.