Lord of the Rings Europe goes F2P

After some contract negotiations that delayed the European side of Lord of the Rings online Free-to-Play going live, Both CodeMasters and Warner Brothers - Turbine have come to an agreement and the game is now being updated.

Simple go to one of these links here:

EN: https://www.lotro-europe.com/Home/Index/en
DE: https://www.lotro-europe.com/Home/Index/de

you signup, continue your account with email confirmation and it should be fairly straight forward fro mthere (log into account, download f2p client)

the servers are currently offline as they are being updated, but if you are downloading the full client, which is around 13gb, I doubt you'll be playing today ;)

Servers:

[EN] - English language-preferred server (lots of Spaniards too)
[FR] - French language-preferred server
[DE] - German language-preferred server
[RP] - RP means Roleplaying, most people will instantly think "I have to go around speaking as if I am a elf or dwarf or w/e" this is not the case, only in open chat is it seen as a courtesy to speak properly, there are global channels and a lot of Kinships (Basically your Guild) that have light to no RP required so kinship chat is simple. The only real requirement of an RP server is you have a realistic name for LOTR - basically you cant be called "TERMINATORLOLS" you will be reported and instantly renamed - most peoples ET names will be fine unless they have obvious other meanings. Waki will be fine but Wakizashi might have issues, but its worth trying ;)

Other servers allow you to name whatever you like, but tend to have more griefing on the servers, although it isnt as bad as WoW etc.

There are 9 classes, and you can find out what each do here: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Class

As a free-to-play user, you only get one character - so choose wisely or make chars on multiple servers before you decide which class you like. You cannot choose the Warden or Rune keeper as a free-to-play user.

just for anyone who was interested - I know Waki was!
Comments
65
beware of the dwarf with a forehead the size of a mountain
most boring mmorpg you can play :$
in fucking deed
Parent
no thanks, i have a life in world of warcraft
Thats savage right? :D
Parent
Is he really like that or is he getting 'trolled hard'
Parent
the biggest WoW addict that I know of!
Parent
Shoop'd, I can see from the pixels.
Parent
might try it, never played any mmorpg tho
Quite boring game tbh
the servers are currently offline as they are being updated, but if you are downloading the full client, which is around 13gb, I doubt you'll be playing today ;)

so the servers aren't gonna come online today or you doubt our connections?? :p
more doubt the connections, but who knows - all data is going to another set of better servers so it could run into problems - hope not! ;)
Parent
ah ok well i'm getting steady 2-3 mb/s atm so shouldn't take that long :D
Parent
4 hrs max, am i right ? :D
Parent
It was ETA 50mins-1hour when i left i think
Parent
After download remember to go to Control panel -> Add/Remove programs and remove "Pando Media Booster", the malware-ish distribution program of the game (unless you used a torrent or something). This PMB thing keeps starting up with Windows and running on the background, uploading the game to other people downloading it (it's mentioned in the EULA but who the fuck reads those?). I can't understand why the fuck do they insist on using such a trojan to distribute the game, but oh well.
Parent
cheers mate will do when i get home
Parent
100-200 kb/s :D
Parent
Nice! How long will it take? Like 30 hours?? :D
Parent
15 hours left.. :P
Parent
torrenting went way faster for me
Parent
Couldn't be assed to torrent/newsgroup it, had to go to school for an exam anyways. Should be done by now was indicating 1h before i went out.
Parent
F2P people get two character slots, or three if they have played in the past or have made a purchase. It can be extended to 9 with "points".
even better for new players then =)
Parent
crossfire guild?
lotr:bfme > *
2h30min here
so is it just free to play? or free to download too?
my lil review i put on taggers.eu after we tried out the game with ze TAG crew

QuoteThis game tries to be something in between a single player game like Morrowind - Oblivion and a mmoRPG like rose or thang. You start off, the back ground music is shit and by default set to a low volume. I try to decide between the races but all I got is some vague description. I pick hobit and decide to go Archer. Kinda like hon, faggotting from range etc.

Anyway, I started off in some building. Had no clue wtf I was supposed to do. After downloading 10 gb for some random online game and taking +30 mins to install that shit you expect more. Inside buildings everything looked shit and you are wondering if they shouldnt have invested more time in the first map of the game you enter.

Anyway, you clikc some random guys till you get some dialogue box, click next as fast as possible.You run around a bit, randomly killing things. All is very exciting as you usually exit a battle with 5% health lost. Also the mana bar is totaly useless as i never had a chance to get it lower then 90% of max.

Missions are boring. The single player mission which have could been excellent if they only added some voices and a bit of creativity are ... boring? MP prolly could have been ok but after spending 6h in this game I'm pretty sure why they made it free. It sux.

I applaud them for trying to give the game a real rpg aspect, with the numerous single player missions and the huge universe LoTR can draw upon, but hey they failed :D Anyway, waste of your bandwith, waste of your time. I'm not expert in mmorpg but this game sux :D
Of course every game is shit if you have a shit attitude towards them.

"So I downloaded this ET game, it wasn't that big of a download, around 250 megs. After the install, when I was starting the game I was greeted by some shit openGL error. Wtf? These noobz can't make their games work lol. After some googling and 9000 hours of work I got it to start. I was trying to join some server but it wanted me to download 100 megs at 20kbps!! LOL!! WHAT A SHIT GAME! Really!
I joined another, and before the loading screen was finished I got kicked by some bunkpuster for unkwon reason. I googled, did some random stuffs and then got past the loading screen. I finally actually got to the game! Oh wait, no I didn't, I was kicked for PB again, this time for GUID AUTH UNKN.
After that, and then some more disconnects for uknown reason, and a few bans, I finally found a server that worked. It was kinda odd, everyone seemed to have a speed hack. They moved hella fast and just jumped around and shot me within seconds. Then there was some noob with this rocket louncher thing who killed me in my spawn all the time.

What a shit game, totally not worth the download"
Parent
sounds like ET!
Parent
somebody seems to have sand up their vagina. I just gave a review of a game I didnt appreciate at all. I have played a shitload of PC games so far and I consider myself somewhat of vetaran when it comes to pc gaming. Theres a reason the game was released for free: nobody wanted to play it. Scene was dying and FP was their only solution to not loose their whole investment.
Parent
actually Lotro wasnt dying, D&D their other title was - they changed it to f2p and it is now flourishing, they only changed it to f2p to boost not to 'revive' its better for older users this way too as generally they will release content faster, as it is in their own interest to release stuff people need to pay for. :)

You say you're a gaming veteran but not an mmorpg expert, it just seems you dont get on with the genre, rather than this game alone.
Parent
I beg you pardon?

I have to admit I never played Wow but I did my share of grinding mmorpg like runescape, thang, mu online, rose online and I'm currently looking forward to Firefall (borderlands meets wow).

Just to make sure I'm not pulling random shit out of my ass I took the liberty to link to some post I made a while ago (after I played the free LOTR trial). This is just one of the many posts that I saw on reddit over the past month.

http://www.taggers.eu/flame/855
QuotePaiz also shared that 20% of LotRO's former players have returned to the game since the switchover, and that the game has seen a 300% increase in peak concurrency, with three times the number of players online simultaneously, and a 400% increase in active players total.


Now to the subject of gameplay. Please explain me what the point of a health or manabar is when there is no way to deplete it. Dying involves standing still, not moving and even then it takes over a minute to die. The user interface ... well fuck it. Shit gameplay is shit.

About the storyline ... You got the fucking universe of Tolkien to work. They try to give the game a nice single player touch, which i admire. Its a great improvement over the wow grinding. But would it have been that much to ask to have some voices to the speech? How fucking hard can it be to add some atmosphere, little details here and there.

I'm sorry but I'll stick with my conviction. This game isnt worth the bandwith i spent on it. There without a doubt several mmo wich are more fun to play than LOTR. I personally really enjoyed Rose online though the buffwhoring was a bit annoying from time to time.
Parent
Judging by your complaints of the game being "too easy", you obviously played the game perhaps up to lvl10 or so. Mostly every single MMO I have ever played (including but not limited to WoW, Guild Wars and dozens of Asian MMOs) have been relatively easy in the beginning. Also the starter areas are just as boring in almost every MMO I have played. If the starter areas are overly difficult, people won't play the game. If they die dozens of times before getting up to level 5, they'll quit.

And if you stop being silly, you'll also find that it's not a very common practise to have the quest texts voice acted in MMORPGs. It's more of a rule than an exception not to have voice-acted NPC dialogue. There is so much text that it would take extremely long to dub it all up. Also the Book quests in the game (which are quests based on the events of trilogy) actually have quite a bit of story immersion to them. But obviously you haven't noticed that as you never gave the game a chance, never played it longer than an hour.
In fact, how can you whine about the game having no story immersion when you didn't read any of the quest dialogues that tell you what's going on? That's like reading a book but skipping all the text and just looking at the pictures.
Parent
you are basing it on early game, they don't want to put newbs off by getting ripped apart early on, after level20 you'll be dying regularly if you aren't upto scratch - end game most instances require good approach or you can literally die in a single hit.

'Mana' requirements increase with your level, like I said about the newbs getting into a game, management comes in around level20 as well.

As with the comment about your lack of expertise in mmorpg I was just quoting your OP ;p you cant base the game on the opening few hours of gameplay, I can understand your reluctance to continue basically because you feel you have no need to - you paid nothing, you have no sub you can just leave. if you had paid you would have got to a stage where you would see the game for what it is ;)

also of course pops are going to increase with it being free, just look at ET - my argument was population in the game was not that bad before it went to free-to-play although it had decreased, but this was to do with the lack of new content not standard of game.

For your enjoyment you should perhaps try a Human Champion, Elf Hunter or Hobbit/Human Burglar. These are the more enjoyable and quickly progressive classes in general, but at end game they are in less demand for any of the grouping stuff ;)
Parent
I have to agree with most of what you wrote, I might even give the game another shot :)
Parent
If you take your head out of your arse you'll notice that your review describes just about every single MMO out there. Stop being an idiot.
Parent
Nope, I enjoyed playing several MMO. This one is just shit :) And all the newsposts I read before and after I played the game said the same. Ppl were leaving the game and the only way to keep it alive was to make it FP with extra content ppl would have to pay for.

Try this site http://www.reddit.com/ if you want to pretend you are up to date ...
Parent
free-to-play has become a better game model for devs/players - they wont sell content unless its any good and they will want to release content regularly to make money, its basically win-win.

People were only leaving the game due to there not being any major updates for nearly a year. as mentioned above, with f2p this should not be a problem anymore :)
Parent
Aight, pm me and midas sometime. I guess we can give the game another try.
Parent
Nice was looking for the link <3 :D
Some wnb-wow with frodo´s etc?
Was doing some quests and was pretty fun, but then i talked to some midget and suddenly my dwarf was instant lvl 20, which killed the fun for me.
You were in the stress test :P
Parent
Played it for some hours, its horribly boring though ;c
just like any other mmorpg thats been out for 3+ years, the low levels you are by yourself and most people get bored by that aspect.
Parent
Well, the lvling goes quite slow aswell, if you compare it to WoW, EverQuest, Guild Wars etc.
Parent
do quests :P can get to maximum level in around a weeks game time - its not that slow.

it's more casual than other games though, its not a career game like wow for instance ;p
Parent
Hmm, I lvled ALOT faster at WoW =D Been doing quests all the time @ LOTRO and just reached lvl 15 >.<
Parent
what race / class are you?
Parent
Elf hunter =D At the moment updating my girl friends laptop (LOTR) 6500 files.. god... taking ages with her net =D
Parent
hunter is like the fastest class :P

But I think as a free2play client you have limited quests or you have to 'buy' them with the points you make in game or ones bought ingame with irl monies.

and yea quite fun to play with people you know, lot of ladies seem to love it at least, weird going into a group with 5 dwarfs and 3 of them have female voices on ingame comms ;)]

hf!
Parent
Hehe nice=D Ye hunter is easy as hell, sjeez :D What server are you playing on btw?
Parent
Laurelin, RP server mainly to avoid seeing 'Terminator' and 'Bilbo Faggins' running around :D
Parent
Is there a big difference between RP and a normal server?
Parent
Ive never role played and Ive been on there forever - generally your just meant to talk politely in open /say chat - fellowship chat is relaxed and it depends on which kinship you join. main thing is the names of chars Ive found, if your char name is not LOTR like, you will be renamed. There are some serious RP players though but they normally keep to themselves and stand in the prancing pony pub all day (:D)
Parent
Hahah okay =D Maybe ill give it a shot there or something, snowboun or w/e is rather boring atm :c
Parent
Back to top