Thread: The reason why people like WoW better than LOTRO

For the most part I've seen that WoW beets LOTRO in a landslide of population.
LOTRO has better graphics
LOTRO has a story; WoW does not
LOTRO has one of the best crafting systems out there
LOTRO is a book-based MMORPG naturally appealing to LOTR fans; WoW has no basis.
LOTRO gameplay (in my opinion) is better that WoW's
SO WHY DO MORE PEOPLE PLAY WoW?????!!!
I did a little bit of research on WoW and on MMORGPS in general and learned somthing: people play MMORPGs because they want (in a sense annyway) another world to dwell in; somthing that is out of the world. They want something different from the world as we know it. Think about it would you be DEEPLY interested and drawn to a game where you can only play as a human and do ordinary things? of course not! People want these games because they want to be a hero or an adventurer or simply because it makes they forget about who they are for a short time. I LOVE LOTRO, and I have to admit that it (again in my opinion) is FAR superior to anything WoW will ever become. BUT (yes, there is a "but") WoW drives the unreal into well...... an unreal level which is why it looks childish on the outside to someone who has never played it. But this is what player WANT. As good as a game as LOTRO is I believe it lacks some out-of-this-world things. like for example WoW has flying mounts. can you capture what it would be like to have a FLYING mount in LOTRO!??!??!?!? Or gigantic trees like in WoW's Sheterglen? Lothlorian has HUGE trees but the place is too..... unchallenged. WoW does a great job on satisfying the desire to be.... something more in a place where it just is a dream come true.
Personally I admit that I would probably switch to WoW if I wasn't a fan of the movies and the lore of Middle-Earth
just something to think about

Turbine can only put what is in the books though.

I think maybe you really didn't do any research at all and instead just posted a rambling opinion without any kind of data to support it aside from what is known..... WoW has a lot of subs and LOTRO doesn't have as many.

Originally Posted by Okokdir

I think maybe you really didn't do any research at all and instead just posted a rambling opinion without any kind of data to support it aside from what is known..... WoW has a lot of subs and LOTRO doesn't have as many.

I was going to say "Lotro also has fewer trolls..." Then I discovered, possibly, Bert, Tom or Bill here...
I had initially been put off from playing LOTRO because it was based on the Lord of the Rings. You see, I don't actually like the movies or the books, so I was alienated from the game. If I weren't dating someone playing the game, I would never have begun.
WoW is omnipresent. It's advertised everywhere, and for quite a while I was almost unaware that there were other games. I imagined them as unpopulated wastelands with too few players to find the groups I needed. Surprise, surprise!

I think you have a point. Maybe at times Lotro takes itself too seriously and is too gloomy. I never wanted to be a hero that has to mainly run around killing things anyway.

Some of the reasons why people like WoW better:
No issue of bag space like Lotro.
No inductions. Combat is faster, movement is snappier.
AH is very easy to use - much better than here.

You can PVP right away - when ever you want with your PVE character.
You can find a group whenever you want, quickly, with the dungeon finder.
[These two are my main gripes with Lotro - I would love to be able to break up PVE with a dungeon in a group, or PVP, whenever I want to. Sadly, I cant do that here. Pretty hard to find a group at lower levels on my average pop server.]

Both games have good things the other game does not. Also, I think most people (more than half) in US society under the age of 60 have heard of Warcraft. Very few people know about LOTRO. Some people play WoW because that is all they know - until they get more into MMOs.

When I get really sick of Lotro, I will probably go back to WoW. When I get sick of WoW, I will probably not come back to Lotro but move on a new MMO.

Although I agree with most things you said, there's one I disagree with: WoW does have a "basis": the 4 games that preceded it.

You can say it's not a book/a story like the Lord of the Rings, and it obviously isn't, but it's a good basis anyway. Having played Warcraft since the very first RTS, you see the development of the story, of the world, of the races.

Yes, most of it was created on the fly, but it makes for a cool story nevertheless.

WoW's hugeness has nothing whatever to do with flying mounts - it attained "huge" long before it had those. So why did it become so big, and why has no other western game come close? Basically, because it was the FIRST mass-market MMO. It wasn't designed just for hardcore gamers, it went global very early on, it spent far more $$ on development than any prior MMO had before - and then on marketing after that.

They leveraged their own sky-high reputation and what was one of the most popular game series on the planet, spent a small fortune, and produced a slick, "cool" game with tons of content and a good mix of features at launch. I was playing EVE with a Turbine developer I know just before WoW released, and he'd played its beta. His comment to me was that it was going to be have multiple millions of subscribers, and that it would "change online games forever". That wasn't obvious to everyone back then, but it was obvious to him - and he isn't prone to exaggeration. He also said that its growth would be so explosive that they'd have significant technical problems at launch, and recommended that I hold off on playing for several months until they ironed all that out. I didn't listen to him on that point, but he was correct .

Being first matters - a lot. It gives a company an inertia that's extremely tough for others to break (unless the company that's the 900 pound gorilla in that market screws up badly). It gives the company holding all those cards the opportunity to define and shape the market... in this case, by appealing to a far broader set of gamers than prior MMOs had. The shear size of the game became a huge draw all by itself, as nearly every gamer knew people playing WoW.

This is a bit like what happened with Apple and the iPod/iPhone/iPad. There had been other MP3 players, other "smart" phones, other tablets. But Apple made them better, cooler, smarter. They advertised more, and acquired an almost cultish following among technophiles. Most everyone had friends/relatives/coworkers with those devices, and they wanted them too. Apple grew those markets enormously - and now sit pretty in all of them, with the largest market cap of any company in the world ($600+ B).

Khafar

Originally Posted by Khafar

WoW's hugeness has nothing whatever to do with flying mounts - it attained "huge" long before it had those. So why did it become so big, and why has no other western game come close? Basically, because it was the FIRST mass-market MMO. It wasn't designed just for hardcore gamers, it went global very early on, it spent far more $$ on development than any prior MMO had before - and then on marketing after that.
...
Khafar

^This. Anyone who's studied a bit of macroeconomics can see how initial market gain makes a ridiculous difference in overall market share over the long term (like Khafar's Apple examples, and look at Amazon). There is such a thing as consumer inertia.

The real answer lies closer to this: World of Warcraft was released in 2004. Lord of the Rings Online was released 2007.

Most of the people I knew on WoW remained subbed between peer pressure and inertia--it was just easier to maintain something they no longer enjoyed fully than to stop the sub; I remained subbed for a full year after I should've canceled because of the social ties, not that I "liked" the game itself anymore. The question/assumption "reason why people like WoW better than LotRO" is misleading on different levels. WoW got large market share very early, ergo they could afford larger development and marketing teams compared to later competition, thus they could flood media with more advertising to bring in even more business, and so on.

__________
Crit crafting & the RNG | Dumb noob things we've done in LotRO...
"Be not so eager to advance that you fail to experience the moment, in life and in all things." -Deluros, Rivendell

Originally Posted by Khafar

Being first matters - a lot. It gives a company an inertia that's extremely tough for others to break (unless the company that's the 900 pound gorilla in that market screws up badly). It gives the company holding all those cards the opportunity to define and shape the market... in this case, by appealing to a far broader set of gamers than prior MMOs had. The shear size of the game became a huge draw all by itself, as nearly every gamer knew people playing WoW.

This is a bit like what happened with Apple and the iPod/iPhone/iPad. There had been other MP3 players, other "smart" phones, other tablets. But Apple made them better, cooler, smarter. They advertised more, and acquired an almost cultish following among technophiles. Most everyone had friends/relatives/coworkers with those devices, and they wanted them too. Apple grew those markets enormously - and now sit pretty in all of them, with the largest market cap of any company in the world ($600+ B).

Interesting that you didn't mention another first .. IBM with the PC forever trumping Apple with the Mac. PC getting the entrenched user base is a hurdle Apple has never been able to get over. I see the same thing going on with WoW vs Lotro, and really, WoW vs any game. To beat WoW, a developer is going to have to change the genre - bring something big to the table that no game currently provides.

We can't simply add what we want to the game because it sounds cool though, the books are used as a strict guideline.

I personally find it far easier to immerse myself in LOTRO and forget about the real world for a bit than I ever did in WoW, maybe that's just because I can appreciate the complexity of the world that this one man has created with his own brilliant imagination, and thanks to this game I get to get a sense of what it may actually be like in his brain.

What makes it so much more believable is the fact that it DOESN'T have flying helicopters, rockets, kung fu pandas, pop culture references, over the top armour and weapons etc etc.

The beauty in Middle Earth is the subtlety behind everything, there is no need for Gandalf to part seas or shoot lasers, he is what he is and we accept that he is powerful because we're told so, how powerful exactly is up to us to imagine..?

So sometimes less is more, holding back gives other elements more significance! Stick to the books and you can't go wrong!

(I have to admit though, I would love to be able to control a flying mount over middle earth in LOTRO! Though if they implemented it as a feature, I'd be incredibly let down)

Then there are people like me who walked away from WoW because the toxic community there (dungeon finder and raid finder) finally pushed my last straw for patience after 6 years. I checked out LoTRO since it was free and I was looking for something ELSE to do besides log into WoW and force myself to run more heroics and random raids. Inside a week I was premium. I haven't done more than log into WoW to keep my guilds going since January. I don't miss it. When my subs run out there(WoW) I will be cancelling them and getting a regular sub here.

Why? The community. Overall folks are generally pretty nice here. It just feels more like relaxation time than the stressful panic mode that is endgame WoW.

I agree that people play mmos to enjoy another world but I don't enjoy WoW because I don't enjoy the world. I love LOTRO because I would love to live in Middle-Earth.

Originally Posted by Mirarian

Then there are people like me who walked away from WoW because the toxic community there (dungeon finder and raid finder) finally pushed my last straw for patience after 6 years. I checked out LoTRO since it was free and I was looking for something ELSE to do besides log into WoW and force myself to run more heroics and random raids. Inside a week I was premium. I haven't done more than log into WoW to keep my guilds going since January. I don't miss it. When my subs run out there(WoW) I will be cancelling them and getting a regular sub here.

Why? The community. Overall folks are generally pretty nice here. It just feels more like relaxation time than the stressful panic mode that is endgame WoW.

So....you're saying WOW even has more riffraff than LOTRO?

If the story line behind Lotro and WoW was replaced by a generic story / generic mobs, would people still play?

I think for most WoW players, the answer would be yes. For most Lotro players, the answer would be no. I think that says a lot about the quality of gameplay. WoW will always have numbers because it has quality gameplay, so appeals to a wide variey of people, not just a limited demographic. People don't come to Lotro for the gameplay, they come either because it's free, or because they like LoTR. Its gameplay simply isn't good enough for it to appeal to the mass market.

Originally Posted by paperslug

We can't simply add what we want to the game because it sounds cool though, the books are used as a strict guideline.

This is not true, though. Right, they can't rewrite what is already written, but LotRO has the significant advantage in the breadth and depth of existing lore. There is so much already in place - which means half the work is already done with regard to creating "extraneous" story lines around it. See: Mordirith, et al.

The problem is that Turbine just doesn't take advantage of it. The quality of the storylines in this game have gone seriously downhill pretty much since Volume 1 ended. My opinion, of course, but definitely not mine alone. The emphasis shifted to eye candy over substance right around the time of Moria (again, IMO).

The tangent they chose to take with Dunlendings is really unfortunate. Dunlendings have now occupied around 2 years worth of the story - and IMO their story just isn't that interesting. At all.

Originally Posted by LeonardoB

... They want something different from the world as we know it. Think about it would you be DEEPLY interested and drawn to a game where you can only play as a human and do ordinary things? of course not! People want these games because they want to be a hero or an adventurer or simply because it makes they forget about who they are for a short time. ...

... and I always wonder why people play SIMS

Instead of cleaning rooms, bring out the garbage and feed the dog I rather prefer to full-clear GS, drop scrap on Dhâr and slap hobbits who want to feed on poison pies. Must be the wannabe hero in me

PS: Never been to WoW, I just don't like the grafics. I might've checked WoW just out of curiosity, but a Panda stopped me from doing so. If I ever meet a Panda on a flying mount on Middle Earth I'm out ...

You should add a big "SOME" in front of people, in the topic title. As it does not apply to everyone obviously.

I, for one, hate WoW because of the world. I don't want to escape into some triply cartoon. I want to escape into the world I've been reading about since I was a kid. I was a never a MMO player and Lotro is the only one I play. The reason is because of my huge passion for the books. I would imagine this applies to many people. Most mmo's are for MMO fans. LOTRO is for Tolkien fans as well as MMO fans. In my opinion, this is what makes it better than WoW by a huge margin.

But again, it's strictly an opinion. There is no "better"

WOW is cheaper to play than LOTRO.

Originally Posted by melee_classes

WOW is cheaper to play than LOTRO.

LOTRO is free to play to lvl cap.

The other posters are right. It really has more to do with the fact that WoW was first and it has a very strong marketing department and campaign. Turbine doesn't have either. The first is just circumstance, but the second is rather disappointing. Though the game is based off the books and not PJ's movies (too bad they can't/won't combine visual elements from the movies and the lore-accuracy in the game!), I think it may have done better by capitalizing on the trilogy and the upcoming Hobbit or at least just including an ad inside the DVDs/blu-rays.

I have seen at most maybe a few internet ads here and there for LOTRO (I haven't watched TV for 3 years now, so I don't know if they have commercials), but I get the feeling that it just isn't very well known. If people don't know about it, they can't buy it. I learned about it by chance. I was at a PX and flipped through a magazine that had a small review about LOTRO and there was a little LOTRO box in a corner that I bought out of curiosity.

The WoW engine is made in such a way that they can run on outdated and #### computer systems, thus
they have a larger audience to pull from. When you give your old computer to the kids, they play WoW cause
most other games run slowly or not at all on these system.

This is how WoW has come to be known as the worlds largest babysitting service.




.

If Lotro was released in 2004 (WoW in 2007) and had so much advertisement as WoW had (and WoW had ad's as Lotro had in reality) then Lotro would have 10 million players and WoW have 0,5 million. Well ok fans of Warcraft 3 would increase this number to 1 million. It's mostly matter of marketing, starting conditions, developer fame etc.

Millions of people start their MMORPG experience from WoW and just used to it. WoW is very good game, so i's easy to be used to it. But Lotro also is very good game, alas starting conditions were much worser so it has much smaller base.

WoW has one of the best basis behind them there is - Blizzard... All though i think they dissapointed me with WoW. But Diablo 3 coming out in less than a month... get ready...

Then go play it.

WoW is a childs game, it's a cartoon interactive stupid baby game- IMHO.
Lotro is for the serious, it's a story driven game for people who take their gaming much more seriously.

I think honestly it's down to what's previously been said. WoW came out in 2004? And LotRO followed in 2007, those 3 years were crucial to Blizzard, in which they gained an enormous following and set themselves in stone as the most popular MMO.

If LotRO had done it first, it makes you wonder whether it'd have ended up much the same as WoW is now. In most ways LotRO is superior, depending on what you play MMO's for!

LotRO is realistic and true to it's source material (Mostly..) LotRO also probably has a larger cult following than WoW as Tolkiens' work is revered among the greatest literary works ever written. I would guess that most people who play LotRO have read the books or at very least watched the movies (Or played another LotR game) There will be some who are just trying it out without any prior knowledge.

I play WoW from time to time, because it is drastically different to LotRO, for no other reason. I agree the community is poison and the focus on end-game and gear is going to drive it into the ground eventually, but the game is.. fun for the most part, It's silly and colourful. LotRO's atmosphere is usually dull and depressing but to a LotRO player that is immersive because again it's true to it's source material!

Personally it is my opinion that if WoW had come later, that LotRO may have the larger following, but we'll never know. However LotR in any form is bound to last a lot longer in any form of art than WoW.

Fact.

-Tails-

Why do more people play WoW?

1. Blizzards name and reputation brought it to the masses.
2. It'll run on any kind of ###### PC.
3. It became an internet fad practically overnight and so FOTM folks flocked to it.

Mmm...


WoW in fact is not better than LOTRO, if they were: We would not be here :<)

Wow does have a story line, in fact it has several, are they as classic as Tolkien? That is a hard standard to beat.

LOTRO character graphics are more aestethic than WoW, never been too crazy about the swords that are twice as large as me, and wearing clown colored costumes.

PvP and Battlegrounds is much better in WoW than here, hands down.

LOTRO does not have as stupid gear grind as WoW, but WoW allows you thru Battlegrounds to get just as good gear as from raids, thus allowing for level PvP playing fields, which LOTRO does not.

LOTRO has incredibly marketing funding, which LOTRO does not, come on "They Have Chuck Norris" enough said...

GM customer service in LOTRO is much better than LOTRO.

The landscape graphics in LOTRO is better than WoW, I love to simply just go an explore the world for what it looks like.

Raids: All games suck at this, I can't think of one where the players does not have to follow a strict script to do them, worse yet, requires specific builds within classes, and even quality of gear worn, and of course the developer locked mix of classes too, not friendly at all to the casual gamer. As I said all games suck at this.

Crafting: Lotro actually has the friendliest, least annoying system, yet lately they have done very poorly in recipe distribution for Tier-6 and Tier-7. Also LOTRO, like WoW, have not given much effort to ensure there is a crafting market to speak off; DAOC is much better at that, but their crafting is ultra-annoying!

Transportation: Travel in lotro is nothing to be truly proud of, but there are a lot of games out there that are worse.

From my overall assessment:

I like LOTRO. it is thematic, and you can truly taste Tolkien. There are truly no other games as thematic and true to it as LOTRO, Star Wars is thematic, but based on a rather shallow mithos, DAOC is arthurian mithos based, but post Arthur that it kinda misses the boat all together. If they ever make a Game of Thrones MMORPG, I would definetely be there to try it, but it is said that Martin is today's Tolkien :<)


Sue

I don't know much about WOW, Lotro is my first and only mmo and I'm glad I chose it... not that WOW was ever an option, but if given the choice Lotro would have been picked either way by me since I am more familiar with Tolkien's world and would have no idea what WOW is about and might not have gotten into its story-line if it even has one, some people say it doesn't so I wouldn't know. My guess is that like most games it does have some sort of story and the whole "it doesn't have a story-line like lotro" is merely just a way of comparing better aspects of the games of some sort.

As far as the question to why more people play WOW goes... well, there are a lot of people playing Lotro, but my guess (if I'm not mistaken) would be WOW was around before Lotro I think? And I suppose that's why there may still be more people playing. I've had a couple of in-game friends I met in Lotro who spoke of going back to WOW and did... I can't imagine why, but maybe it's for the same reason a lot of people return to Lotro after playing a newer game, which I've seen happen time and time again. It's something they know and are familiar with. And once they get the newer game out of their system they come back, and maybe all of their old friends play there and miss them, plus they may see better qualities in the game itself that they enjoy over the other one and would rather invest their time and money into something they feel they'll get more enjoyment out of. I still think Lotro is the best mmo ever, but that's just my conclusion or guess.

Originally Posted by melee_classes

WOW is cheaper to play than LOTRO.

No it is not. The subscription fees for WOW are higher than LOTRO. You can get one year of LOTRO for 100 dollars - WoW you going to pay $155.88. If you want 3 months of Lotro game time it is 30 dollars - Blizzard charges $41.97.

Of course you could go F2P to level 20 in WoW, then subscribe. Lotro you can go F2P to level 30 - continue as F2P all the way to the level cap by unlocking via Turbine Points you earn in game.

On the other hand, you'll never need to wish that Blizzard would let you buy extra vault space or shared vault space in their store. That's already part of the game.

WoW does some things far better than LoTRO does, though I left when Cata came out, the changes were too much. Still, they have top-notch customer service, and technical problems in WoW get fixed. Very quickly.

What they do with WoW, they do very well, you have to give them that.

Originally Posted by PoeticNightmare

You should add a big "SOME" in front of people, in the topic title. As it does not apply to everyone obviously.

I, for one, hate WoW because of the world. I don't want to escape into some triply cartoon. I want to escape into the world I've been reading about since I was a kid. I was a never a MMO player and Lotro is the only one I play. The reason is because of my huge passion for the books. I would imagine this applies to many people. Most mmo's are for MMO fans. LOTRO is for Tolkien fans as well as MMO fans. In my opinion, this is what makes it better than WoW by a huge margin...

Quoted for (well, it's my exact sentiment), bold added to emphasize wherein I include myself.. (<- these extraneous characters added because I needed at least 10 for the post anyway)

WoW gets regular advertising on the TELEVISION that people remember, using actors that people know, like Verne Troyer and The Ozz Man, even Captain Kirk himself, Bill Shatner. When's the last time Turbine advertised LOTRO using anyone of note? Back when it went f2p I think is the last time I've seen or heard a peep.

A total lack of real competition at the time too help Blizzard vault into orbit from a complete stand-still.

It's easy to play, runs on 10 year old hardware with few issues beyond graphical bling, and gets regular support from it's development team, as well as Customer Service that is still above par compared to most others except Trion.

The Warhammer brand that Warcraft is based on has been around for a LOT longer as well, so a lot of people are familiar with it, and I think the only reason Blizzard released this version is due to the original IP for a Warhammer game falling through; there are enough similarities to know where they got most of the ideas from, even though it isn't a complete copy/paste job.

It isn't really Turbines fault for not being first, when they didn't come out first. Switch launch dates and I bet things would be much different. They may not even have had to go f2p in the first place.

Originally Posted by LeonardoB

For the most part I've seen that WoW BEATS LOTRO in a landslide of population.
LOTRO has better graphics

Matter of opinion. WoW has cartoonish graphics as opposed to the more realistic graphics of LotRo (and some other games). EQ has similar graphics and is still popular.

LOTRO has a story; WoW does not

WoW does have a story though it plays a very minor role in the game.

LOTRO has one of the best crafting systems out there

Actually, LotRo's crafting is pretty bad. DAoC, FE, STO and many other games have crafting that is better than LotRo's in various ways. Fallen Earth has one of the best crafting systems I've seen. Crafting is a major part of the game and crafted gear is as good or better than merchant or drop gear and you harvest your own components for just about everything. No need to rely on another crafter for hides or metal.

LOTRO is a book-based MMORPG naturally appealing to LOTR fans; WoW has no basis.

WoW is based on the original World of Warcraft computer game. I believe it was a single player RTS. Star Craft is their current version.

LOTRO gameplay (in my opinion) is better that WoW's
SO WHY DO MORE PEOPLE PLAY WoW?????!!!
I did a little bit of research on WoW and on MMORGPS in general and learned somthing: people play MMORPGs because they want (in a sense annyway) another world to dwell in; somthing that is out of the world. They want something different from the world as we know it. Think about it would you be DEEPLY interested and drawn to a game where you can only play as a human and do ordinary things? of course not! People want these games because they want to be a hero or an adventurer or simply because it makes they forget about who they are for a short time. I LOVE LOTRO, and I have to admit that it (again in my opinion) is FAR superior to anything WoW will ever become. BUT (yes, there is a "but") WoW drives the unreal into well...... an unreal level which is why it looks childish on the outside to someone who has never played it. But this is what player WANT. As good as a game as LOTRO is I believe it lacks some out-of-this-world things. like for example WoW has flying mounts. can you capture what it would be like to have a FLYING mount in LOTRO!??!??!?!? Or gigantic trees like in WoW's Sheterglen? Lothlorian has HUGE trees but the place is too..... unchallenged. WoW does a great job on satisfying the desire to be.... something more in a place where it just is a dream come true.
Personally I admit that I would probably switch to WoW if I wasn't a fan of the movies and the lore of Middle-Earth
just something to think about

The people who play LotRo (seriously) do so because they are fans of Middle Earth. Many of the people who have quit have done so because they don't like how Turbine is making Middle Earth come to life. Most of us don't want "unreal" things like flying mounts or other out of the world stuff. We want to see Middle Earth as it was described in the books by Tolkien. Some things break the barrier too much for some folks (Runekeepers did it for some, trolls in Isengard do it for others).
If you're not being satisfied by being a heroic adventurer in Middle Earth, uniting the Free People, fighting the forces of Sauron where ever they appear, then you might be playing the wrong game. If saving the Hobbits from spoiled pies isn't epic enough and singing to trees isn't challenging...
Well, WoW is F2P for the first 20 levels... and most of the games I mentioned above are F2P now too (EQ, FE, STO).
Or you could read a book to escape reality. ;-)

Bottom line is, everyone has their own opinion on what they like (obviously). Some people like WoW, some people like LoTRO. Many, like myself, happen to like both, and many others as well.

WoW is easier to get a grasp on than here. It's easier for younger kids to play, it can run fairly well on low end systems. This, as well as being around for a while, word of mouth, etc etc are a few reasons why there are so many subscribers.

I started playing here because somehow I ended up seeing an ad for it and thought "hey, that looks funky." Did I ever read the books? No, not really. Sure I saw the movies like everyone else, but I'm not some insanely hard core Tolkien fanatic.

People are going to go for free trials, and then go with what they like (and what their systems are able to handle). What you might see as cartoonish, other people might see as far enough away from reality that it's appealing. The entire point of doing any kind of gaming is to escape reality for a while.

WoW has actual world-PvP. WoW also had a strong concept storywise at the start, Horde versus Alliance, based on an established fantasy setting created in the popular PC-game Warcraft.

I've played WoW on a PvP-RP server. And I had a blast there. Contrairy to popular beliefs I found player-RP on WoW to be more alive, intense and immersive than in LOTRO. The world-PvP is a huge help in that. You always look behind your back for actual, real danger: the other player.

That said, I left WoW and never looked back. I'm in LOTRO for the long haul. I've gotten goosebumps moments here, visiting places and interacting with characters from my favourite books and movies. WoW did a lot for me, but not that. LOTRO for me is another level.

Now to step out of the grinding mill and create the time for some RP

Originally Posted by Feadel

WoW does have a story though it plays a very minor role in the game.

WOW has an extensive back-story and does play a role in the game, just that many like you seem to want to ignore it because it helps you [falsely] argue it's more shallow.

Originally Posted by Kraggy_Eldar

WOW has an extensive back-story and does play a role in the game, just that many like you seem to want to ignore it because it helps you [falsely] argue it's more shallow.

It does indeed. Back in the day, I wrote an article on the quest lines that gave you some of that backstory if you hadn't played any of the Warcraft series before then (Warcraft 3 was one of my favourites). So if you're over there, and the Fallen Hero of the Horde quest line is still about (same zone where you find Kara, if that's still around and hasn't been overturned in the upheaval), do it. You won't be sorry.

It isn't the only one, but it was always one of my favourites. You might also want to listen in on some of the conversations that Garrosh Hellscream (is he still stuck way up north? I know he's leader of the Horde now, but did they keep him frozen in time as well?) has at that dingy outpost - you'll start to understand why he's so hated, and how he got banished in the first place.

I fear it was only a temporary quest line, but helping take back the Echo Isles was also a pretty - epic - moment.

This exemplifies my opinion of WoW (after F2Ping to level 10):

Other player: <challenge to duel>
Me: <decline>
Other player: Loser!
Me: You sure are.

Originally Posted by mr_toad

in my very humble opinion, to use a restaurant analogy (and I'm sure that other's have made similar analogies before):

WoW is like McDonalds: it has mass appeal but may not be very "healthy" to play/eat everyday.... nonetheless, due to food additives, it is very addictive

LotRO is like Chipotles: it has fresh, higher-quality ingredients from ethically farmed foods... it appeals to the more discriminating/healthier consumer but because it is in fact so wholesome, may never have the extraordinary mass-market appeal of McD's.

Neither game/restaurant is "good" or "bad," it's just a matter of taste.

Having said all this, (please forgive double neg.) I see no reason that LotRO should not have 1,000,000+ unique people logging in at least once a month and 300,000+ people spending some money at the store or on subscriptions every month. And perhaps 30,000+ people per month who are spending $50+ on Turbine points every month on average.

I see LotRO as an exceptional game for people who are looking for a solo or multiplayer experience (or both) in middle-earth. There's no reason this game should not be attracting an audience of millions of unique players per year. I'm guessing and hoping that it is already. I'm guessing that the release of the Hobbit movies in the coming years will only increase its player base and financial profit.

Noooooooooo way. NOOOOOOOOOO WAY! WoW and LOTRO can be just as healthy and unhealthy as each other as much as you want them to be. I am not engaged into both games as much and I still get the most out of both of them in terms of content, but because WoW offers something I want (I agree with the mass appeal theory) then I'd play it.

Originally Posted by maxjenius

This exemplifies my opinion of WoW (after F2Ping to level 10):

Other player: <challenge to duel>
Me: <decline>
Other player: Loser!
Me: You sure are.

Hehe, it is considered customary for a new player on WoW to receive a challenge to duel. It's another way of greeting a new player on WoW and actually getting them engaged with the whole aspect of the game, which is fighting to survive and protect your faction. My friend, you gotta engage with other players one way or another and it's mostly through dueling where you'll find a great fighting partner, especially in PvP and the dungeon crawling. What you did there was selfish, rude and really cold and that player had every right to call you a loser, and I'm surprised that player didn't say anything more because it's rude to decline something without reason and then call someone else a loser. Besides, dueling occurs at the right time, and there's always a great time to duel. :-) Hell! On every introduction, regardless of which class or race you play on LOTRO, you will be challenged to spar with an NPC. You can't reject that, and LOTRO uses the same social philosophy here; it's a friendly gesture that can't be rejected!