Comments on: LoTRO: Day 2

By: Mallika

Mallika — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:34:56 +0000

That’s odd about the screenshots thing, as mine were definitely easy to find. LotRO put a folder called Lord of the Rings Online in my My Documents, and inside that were the screenshots. I’m glad you found yours, in any case.

Nice that you enjoy it. I had to get used to a whole bunch of things, too, and I remember my first hours in the Shire was just running around lost and confused, talking to people and getting quests and having absolutely no idea where things were. It would have been frustrating but I forced myself to relax, slow down, and really read the quest text I was given. I knew that at first I would suffer acutely from the whole ‘lack of knowledge/familiarity’ that I would’ve had if I were playing a previous MMO, and I really wanted to give LotRO a chance so I pushed through the mental ‘where in the hell is everything?! AAAAAAGHHHH!!’ moments.

You may want to go to your Options menu (CTRL-O) and go to UI Settings, and kind of look down the list to see if there’s anything you want to enable. Item Names are disabled by default and I tend to turn them on again, as it’s easier to see things that way. I also have Chat Bubbles enabled because I find that I miss some people’s /says when I’m not actively looking at the chatbox and have no idea they’re saying something to me. I did leave Loot All off for a few levels, but eventually turned it on.

By: Openedge1

Openedge1 — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:39:58 +0000

I LOVE Vista and the setup to centralize data. I know where to go to find all my downloads, with zero issues, where saves are, screenies..
As long as the game plays good with Vista, I am always impressed with how things work out (Witcher worked really well in Vista, and any game made for the 360 that you buy for the PC also works well, like Devil May Cry 4…)

Hooray for centralization.

By: stargrace

stargrace — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:40:20 +0000

No no, I appreciate it I really do!
This is all great info for me!

By: Pete S

Pete S — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:35:36 +0000

I think they might have to do it in order to comply and get that “Games for Windows” branding… not sure about that, though.

BTW, it probably isn’t obvious, but you’re still in an instance. The character starting process in LOTRO is first, a solo, scripted tutorial instance (which it sounds like you’ve completed), then a larger, communal instance with other characters (don’t worry, you won’t have to restart this bit!!) then another short solo instance, then finally out into the general world.

I just mention it because at first blush the world can seem pretty desolate when you’re in that starter instance, but think of it like the newbie islands in EQ2.

OK now I’m sounding like a granddad droning on and on about his experiences for the umpteenth time, so I’ll shut my yap….

By: stargrace

stargrace — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:14:46 +0000

Thanks for the technical info about that Pete, I didn’t have the faintest idea what the reasoning behind it was. I’m such a newb.

By: Pete S

Pete S — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:02:37 +0000

Putting game data into your “My Documents” (XP) or “Documents” (Vista) folder is the new Microsoft-sanctioned way of doing things, I think. All of a sudden games started doing it. Sometimes in the docs folder, and sometimes in doc/my games. But still not *all* games do it, so it can get really confusing. I rather found the old way was much neater, but I guess the idea is that if everything did this, you could just do a daily backup of your documents folder and have all your data safe.