The best MMORPG games of this moment part 1
Times have been pretty dark in the world of MMORPG gaming. Since the rise in popularity back in 2004 when World of Warcraft released and the genre became a mainstream trend, there have been lots and lots of new MMORPG games released to jump on the hype train.
Sadly, there have only been a few good quality MMORPG games since that time, that are still very active and alive right now.
I want to start of with a classic MMORPG that still have a active community after all these years.
Lord of the rings online
Ok so i know what you might be thinking, LOTRO is a really old game, dating back to pretty much the same time WoW released give or take a few years. I also know, that there are not many other gamers out there making lists like this, that would give LOTRO a spot here.
But trust me, there is a very good reason behind it. Because in my opinion, LOTRO is the last remaining classic MMORPG that is still active and offers a ton of content. And i do mean, it is the last of its kind as a classic mmo, and some people do really miss those times, same as they want Vanilla WoW back so bad (which is of course coming soon). Because WoW today, is not really a classic mmo experience anymore, it has changed way too much, which is not a bad thing at all though.
Lets go over some of the aspects of the game.
Races
The base game at launch had a total of 4 playable races. The latest addition to the races are the Beorning and the High Elf, so right now there are 6 total playable races. However the Beorning and High Elf are premium, so you will have to pay some money for those.
Racial Passive Skills
So all races have unique passive skills that could slightly effect gameplay and can have some benefits when combined with the right classes.
Lotro is a really in-depth MMORPG so to understand what all the passive skills mean, you will first have to learn what the different stats all mean. So we will briefly go over that now.
Stats
In LOTRO there are basic stats, secondary stats and damage reduction. And those are really complex. So for now we will just cover the basic and most important stats so you will get at least some understanding of what it all means.
Morale: This is your total life or HP (hitpoints)
Power: Tour primary resource to use your skills, in many games this is called mana
Wrath: This is the resource for the Beorning class that works a bit differently
Armour: Reduces the damage you take from attacks
Might: Main stat for Beornings, Captains, Champians, Guardians and Wardens. Increases your block and parry chance and weapon damage if you are one of the classes above.
Agility: Main stat for Beornings, Burglars, Hunters and Wardens. Increases evade and parry chance and increases the damage for above classes.
Vitality: Inceases Morale, Non-Combat Morale Regeneration and resistances.
Will: Main stat for magic users like Lore-Masters, Minstrels and Rune-keepers. Also increases your maximum power and Non-Combat Power Regeneration.
Fate: Increases In-Combat Power and Morale Regeneration and provides for more critical hit chance for some abilities.
So lets go back to the races passives now you have a basic understanding of what the stats mean.
Man
-7 Will
+5% Incoming Healing
+15 Fate
+15 Might
Beorning
+15 Might
-7 Fate
+1% Poison Resistance
+15 Vitality
Hobbit
+1% Fear Resistance
+15 Vitality
+60 Non-Combat Morale Regeneration
+1% Shadow Mitigation
-7 Might
Elf
+15 Agility
-7 Fate
-20 Max Morale -60 Non-Combat Morale Regeneration
+1% Disease and Poison Resistance
Dwarf
-7 Fate
-7 Agility
+15 Might +10 Vitality +1 Common Mitigation
+30 In-Combat Morale Regeneration +30 In-Combat Power Regeneration
High Elf
-7 Fate
+20 Maximum Morale +60 Non-Combat Morale Regeneration
-7 Will
+1 Disease and Poison Resistance
So you can see there are some differences between the passive skills of races that could slightly impact gameplay. But the differences are not so great that this would mean you have to pick a certain race for the class you want to play.
There are also some other features a race will unlock once they reach higher levels that are also unique for each race.
But going into that is a bit too much in-depth for this post.
Lets go over the 10 classes you can play as in LOTRO.
Classes
This is a premium melee class added in 2014 that can shapeshift into a bear. It can be played as a tank, DPS and healer. This class can only be played by the Beorning race and the Beorning race can only play as the Beorning class.
Race: Beorning
Role: (off)Tank, DPS, Healer
Armor: Light, Medium
Weapons: Daggers, 1H Axes, Bows, 1H Clubs, Dual Wield, Spear, 2H Axes, 2H Clubs
The Burglar is the stealty melee class that have severel tricks up its sleeve to crowd control and debuff enemies. This is my personal favorite class, since they have lots of utility.
Race: Man, Hobbit
Role: DPS, CC, Debuff
Armor: Light, Medium
Weapons: Daggers, 1H Swords, 1H Maces, 1H Clubs, Dual Wield
The Captain is kinda a class that has a bit of everything but does not excel in anything. Although one of the best things they do is buffing allies. This is a melee class and uses a pet.
Race: Man, Elf, Dwarf, High-elf
Role: (off)Tank, Healer, Buffing
Armor: Light, Medium, Heavy, Heavy shield
Weapons: All but no staves/halberts and no dual wield
This is the melee gladiator class. It can use lots of weapons and can do high single target dps, high AOE dps and can tank. This is the ultimate fighter class.
Race: Man, Elf, Dwarf, High elf
Role: (off)Tank, DPS
Armor: Light, Medium, Heavy
Weapons: Almost all 1H weapons, 2H weapons, bows and can dual wield.
This is the main tank class in the game. If you want to play as something that can pull 5 mobs at a time, this is the one for you! As DPS it does low damage though, and leveling up can be hard.
Race: All
Role: Tank
Armor: Light, Medium, Heavy, Heavy shield
Weapons: All but not staffs/halberts and cannot dual wield
This ranged class uses bows and can use some melee weapons to do high damage to their enemies. It has some nice utility as traps and is the best class to pick for traveling the world.
Race: All
Role: DPS nuker
Armor: Light, Medium
Weapons: Bow, all melee weapons except halbert and can dual wield
This is a ranged magic class that can also use animals as pets. This class is pretty much like Gandalf in the movies. It has one of the best looking animations in the game.
Race: Man, Elf, High Elf
Role: DPS, CC, Debuff
Armor: Light
Weapons: Staff + Sword in off-hand
This is a bit of a special class which uses music instruments to deal damage, buff or heal. It is pretty much the main healer in the game, but also have the highest damage nukes in the game. Leveling up a Mintrel should be really fast.
Race: All
Role: Healer
Armor: Light, Shield
Weapons: Dagger, Mace, 1H sword, 1H club
This is another premium magic class that uses runestones as its weapon. It can use fire, frost or lighting damage.
Race: Elf, High elf, Dwarf
Role: Healer, DPS
Armor: Light
Weapons: Rune stone
Ok the Warden is considered to be the hardest class to learn in the game. It works different from other classes where you have to do combos with our skills to use your abilities. It is also considered to be the most OP class in the game when you master it. It can solo instances and bosses that are usually done by a group.
Race: Hobbit, Man, Elf, High Elf
Role: DPS, Tank
Armor: Light, Medium, Warden Shield
Weapons: All 1H weapons
Going into Middle-Earth for the first time
When you start your journey with one of the classes, you will begin in a sort of tutorial zone to learn the basics of the game. In about 20 to 60 minutes you can have this first zone completed and you are free to go wherever you want to!
No matter in what zone you start, you will notice that the environment feels really peaceful and looks beautiful with all forms of flora and fauna. It really feels you are in that world, it does a great job of immersion.
What also helps with that is the amazing sountrack they use. Different zones have other music also.
There are plenty of quests to choose from and each have a story behind it. Around level 10 you can start your first story quest that will guide you on your main quest to stop Sauron and help destroy the ring.
Zones
This game is completely open world and it is huge! There are many zones that all have their own story and feel to it. And like i said, when you just started the zones are really peaceful. But as you progress, you will go into zones like the Mines of Moria and Mordor and those zones are dark and evil. So there is much variety in this aspect of the game.
Progression
Like in any other MMORPG you will start from being a nobody at level 1 to becoming a well-known champion in the world at max level which is 115 at this moment.
There is one big diffrence some MMO's like WoW here. Leveling is NOT so easy at all. To reach level cap in LOTRO prepare for a enormous journey that could take several months to complete. Don't get me wrong, it feels like a good journey and some people miss this kind of thing in recent MMO's. This is one of the reasons i feel LOTRO is one of the best classic MMO's of this moment.
Next to leveling there are still lots of other things to do to build your character. You will have to complete "Deeds" (achievements) to unlock powerful passives. You can farm reputation with various factions to unlock crafting recipies, cosmetics and gear. To unlock everything there is to unlock for 1 character could take you a full year or more. But that is only if you are a real completionist, to unlock all is not really neccesary.
Around level 50 you can also get your first Legendary weapon. This is a special weapon that will gain XP on its own and can be upgraded to make your abilities more effective. This system is also very in-depth so i won't go into too much detail right now, but you will be much stronger when you get access to legendary weapons. The game will become way more interesting at level 50 (this was the level cap when the game first released).
Anyway there is lots to do in terms of progression in this game.
Dungeons and Raiding
LOTRO has a pretty crazy amount of instances like dungeons and raids for PVE gameplay. Even better is that you can set it for different levels and difficulty, so there is always a reason to play the older instances even at level cap, as it still rewards you for it. So its not like in games like WoW where you have around 5 dungeons every new expansion that you keep running over and over until the next expansion hits. So that is a big plus.
In LOTRO there is also a system in place called skirmish which are short instanced dungeons that you can play solo or with a group. This is also a great way to level up fast besides normal questing. Its a cool addition to the game for when you are bored of questing non stop.
PVP
Ok to be honest with you, this game is mainly a PVE game, it has lots of PVE content. But there is also PVP but way different from what you have seen in other games.
In LOTRO you can NOT play as the "Free people" (Freeps) and fight other Freeps in a arena. The only way to PVP is to either use your normal (freep) character and go to one of the few PVP zones and fight monster players.
Around lvl 10 as a freep, you will unlock the ability to create a max level monster character. This monster character or creep, can only play in the PVP zones and you can only fight the freeps. And while you can enter the PVP zone as a lower level freep player, all creeps are max level...
So in order for you to fight the creeps effectively as your Lore-Master for example, you better be max level with some nice gear.
From last time i checked, PVP is still pretty active in the evening. But its not like there are always huge fights going on. The gameplay itself is similar to the the PVP in Elder Scrolls Online.
End Game
First of all, the older content of this game is really well done and is still fun to play through several times. Its not like in WoW where you just want to rush to max level because that is the only fun part of the game.
So max level is 115 at the moment but even at level 70ish there are some really epic things you can do. Think about things like assaulting the tower of Isengard and defeat Saruman, which is a really cool raid in the game.
But ok, lets talk about the end game now. There are several dungeons and raids, old and new that you can run with a group. New dungeons and other group content is always being added over time.
For some people however, they see PVP as a Freep as the real end game. Because you will be needing very good gear to compete with the creeps in the PVP zones. It sure is fun thats for sure!
There are also always better passives you can unlock by doing the deeds achievements, which there are a ton of to do. Some deeds can also give you really cool titels or even mounts and cosmetic items.
But in my personal opinion, the true end game for me is FASHION and PRESTIGE. This game can really make you stand out from the rest and make you feel super cool about yourself. This is done by the super cool titels you can get and of course mounts, and gear cosmetics. I once spend a few weeks farming reputation quests just to have a really special sword skin i liked. And it felt good when i finally got it.
In this game there is still a sense of awe and wonder since some special cosmetics can take real work to finaly get, and it will get noticed by other players.
Free to play model
I am pretty sure that LOTRO is the first MMORPG that started a free to play model after its subscription model. And they did a pretty good job at that.
LOTRO is NOT pay to win, and has a fair model in place. It is possible to play this game for free, without paying once, and unlock all content needed to progress. It would just take you lots of time.
To explain this further, you can play LOTRO for free until you reach around level 30 i believe, and this is when you will need quests packs in order to unlock higher level quests. You can buy those quest packs for the zones you want and by using LOTRO Points.
You can also get these LOTRO Points by completing the Deeds achievements we talked about. There are some guides online on how you can reach max level just by farming LOTRO Points from Deeds and using those to buy the quest packs you need.
If you don't want to do that, you can just buy a VIP monthly membership which will unlock all zones and quests as long as your membership is active. Or you can just buy the quest packs you want.
Verdict
So this game is free to play on Steam, it might be kinda old but it is still fun and offers a huge amount of content. I better stop this review now since it is becoming pretty long :)
Lets just for a last time look over the good and the bad things of this game:
The Pros
- It has a huge open world and i believe it might be the biggest game world next to WoW.
- It is set in the world of middle earth! Everyone who loves LOTR, would love LOTRO
- It has a amazing story-line quest wise
- The zones feel alive and have pretty decent graphics for such a old game
- Whatever class you might play, you will have many skills and so many buttons to press. Its not like in WoW where you have a 3 or 4 button rotation.
- The community is amazing! If you need help in LOTRO, many people will help you. They will even give you or craft you some really good gear for free even!
- It is free to play and has the best and most fair f2p models out there
The Cons
- In some area's the graphics could look a bit outdated
- The engine the game runs on is really not well optimized and can sometimes cause lag or stuttering
- The fighting animations, especially for melee classes, can feel a bit buggy sometimes
- It can get a bit grindy as you need to farm x count of monsters to unlock some passives
So there you have it, you can download this game for free on Steam and see for yourself if its something you would like.