LOTRO is not more easy or more difficult than WOW. What is your idea of a lot of content? If you don't spend any money, you will only be able to experience a small pecentage of LOTRO. LOTRO is not worth playing unless you spend money. But if you spend money, LOTRO is a very enjoyable game. I had a lot of fun with it in the past when paying a monthly subscription. The game is very expensive now though. I really don't consider this MMORPG, to be "free". I wish this too but thanks to capitalism, we will never see this happen. There is more $$$ to be made from MMORPGs.

And for some reason presentation art department wise these games look better than Dragon Age Origins, Elder Scrolls (Well at least Oblivion and Skyrim) and dare I say it Dark Souls.

Like their Dungeons are more "Dungeon-like" I compare them to Zelda Dungeons.

I think the reason for that is MMORPGs are constantly being worked on by the devs. Games thare not MMORPGs are usually worked on for a short amoung of time, sold and abandoned.

Well I've been told that Divinity II has MMO like enviornments? Are the Dungeons big and sprawling like say World of Warcraft's Ulduar or Black Temple?

I don't recall any "sprawling" dungeons in Div2. But the outdoor zones are fairly enjoyable. Mostly I like it for the overall gameplay.

I played LOTRO years ago, and concur with most of what's been said here. You can do purely F2P, but you'll quickly start running into areas or quests you can't access. I enjoyed the time I tinkered with it, but I've never been inclined to go back and sink money into it.

I will say I thought LOTRO was superior to D&D Online, but didn't find either particularly comparable to WoW. But if you're curious, it's worth downloading LOTRO and playing through the free content to get a taste.

I have to say, I really don't see the point here. You want to just travel through a vast world why bother with the MMO stuff? Yeah, I'm sure it's going to feel a hell of a lot like Lord of the Rings with Hobbitfucker99 and Shitfaced_Elf teabagging goblins just outside Shire and Elrond telling you to bring him 30 rat tails.

Buy Morrowind, get Daggerfall for free, and travel to your hearts content.

Some good advice here. Nice avatar BTW. I'm also a huge fan of Star Trek.

Interesting observation. I kind of missed that.

I would add that GW2 is better for vast travel/exploration than LOTRO in my opinion, at least as far as free content goes.

GAH!!!!

What happned to you Breja you aged 30 more years all of a sudden?!

And I do own Morrowind and Daggerfall.

I'm just hoping "Skyrim" Zelda for Wii U will have a great enviornment to explore and epic WOW like Dungeons.


I watched the entire TOS and TNG era of Star Trek...been taking a break from DS9 because Mass Effect Trilogy and KOTOR 2.

I enjoyed it up to (iirc) Lv 50+, I bought a lovely house and furnished it. I quit for awhile and then returned when it went F2P, I had been evicted from my house and my characters INV was filled up with furniture, All my gold was gone because they introduced a gold limit on free accounts I never went back.

I just want my dream Fantasy Sinlge Player RPG to be a big 3D open world with varried enviornments and where all the dungeons are of WOW quality (all the dungeons are different and huge) I don't want 250+ small dungeons that all use recycled assets like Morrowind. Better to have 25 dungones that are all unique and big.

Thats mainly my issue with Elder Scrolls is the recycling of Dungeons types. Oblivion has 4 types. (Mines, Caves, Forts, and Ruins)

Vanilla WOW alone gave us Blackrock Depths+Molten Core, Upper Blackrock Spire+Blackwing Lair, Zul'Gurub, Ahn-Qiraj, and Naxrrammas.

All these MMORPGs just have such appealing enviorments and its a shame that they are all Online only and behind such demanding gameplay its like getting a job.

At max (or near-max) level I think all of those can be soloed easily. At lvl 90 I think I soloed Arthas wearing greens/blues- not too hard since I'd seen the mechanics years earlier when raiding, but still fun enough.

I think the key, though, is that you need MMO type dollars to do the sheer amount of development necessary to produce that content. Esp. since it wasn't all produced in a single development cycle that you'd get with a stand-alone RPG.

Even if you purposefully make a game with the ugly graphics of Vanilla WOW and Everquest 1 and Asheron's Call it would still be a big deal to make today?

But than again I don't know how Ubisoft keeps pumping out AC games every year all with new open world cities.

Well, I'm not a designer/programmer so I don't really know what would be involved. I suspect, though, that unless it were a labor of love there might not be enough market demand to make it pay off.

Even using lower quality/older graphics that level of customization of zones/styles would likely take a significant time investment and/or a larger team to pull off, which increases production costs.

Edit - which is also the answer to how Ubisoft keeps cranking out content - they have a fairly guaranteed high number of unit sales which means more revenue which means more resources to put into a larger team to push the project along.