Why the Ettermoors are Fun... and Illum is Not

[AndiusTheGreat]

I just want to point out to the other LOTRO lifers out there that the Ettenmoors was incerdibly flawed when it first came out. Do you not remember creeps rolling 5 trolls and then hitting them with the WL bubble? The Ettenmoors may have a few things that Bioware can learn from however it was by no means perfect on its first or even fifth attempt. Give Bioware a chance I am pretty sure they can make Ilum better than the ettenmoors.

 

As someone who played before Mines of Moria, I would like to point out that Trolls didn't exist when the moors first came out. And I'm fairly sure they had a limit of 1 troll at a time when they did. I do remember the expansion well. It's what caused me to stop playing the Ettenmoors for a long time. We would have 5 of us for every freep and when the freeps did show up some idiot would pull a troll. That and I never hit level cap on my freep ever again after the first level increase. The PVE was just too unbearable.

 

BTW Landroval was my server as well. Andius was my main but he was only in the moors pre-Moria. And I had one creep of every class but I enjoyed my warg Argmoor the most.

 

I have no doubts Bioware can do better than the Ettenmoors with a half decent try, but as you said they have things they can learn from them. NPC guards for keeps, and PVE content to keep people occupied with the fighting is no good, are two things I think they should consider.

[ltankhsd]

I just don't see any hope for this.

 

Not trying to be melodramatic but it's like they're missing half the game. They can barely patch Ilum correctly so I doubt they'd be able to give it any real meaning via objectives etc.

 

It'd be nice for the Devs to speak more with the fans they don't. In another month we have 1 new WZ to look forwards to ... annnnd? Nup ... that's it lol.

 

Except that you are being melodramatic. I wish I could IRL slap people everytime they told a "game is dead" like it's the cool thing to say and that somehow I shouldn't play a game because they have a negative opinion of something. Grow up and realize that things will be patched for the better as all MMOs are and that you don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Edited February 9, 2012 by ltankhsd

[MrSteebin]

The moors are definitely not a "paradise" of open world pvp lol. Most of the time it sucked hard. Yes ilum control points are boring but they will make it better. I would like to see actual keeps in ilum with no npcs but with defences that players can control

[Eclipso]

As someone who played before Mines of Moria, I would like to point out that Trolls didn't exist when the moors first came out. And I'm fairly sure they had a limit of 1 troll at a time when they did. I do remember the expansion well. It's what caused me to stop playing the Ettenmoors for a long time. We would have 5 of us for every freep and when the freeps did show up some idiot would pull a troll. That and I never hit level cap on my freep ever again after the first level increase. The PVE was just too unbearable.

 

BTW Landroval was my server as well. Andius was my main but he was only in the moors pre-Moria. And I had one creep of every class but I enjoyed my warg Argmoor the most.

 

I have no doubts Bioware can do better than the Ettenmoors with a half decent try, but as you said they have things they can learn from them. NPC guards for keeps, and PVE content to keep people occupied with the fighting is no good, are two things I think they should consider.

 

Trolls did exist, they were introduced in book 10 and at the time you could roll up to 3 trolls and 3 rangers at a time, book 11 was the purple freeple eater etc etc etc.

 

Regardless of the flaws the moors has it is still superior to Ilum in all aspects.

 

Jaiyne, tell Lee I say hello please.

Edited February 9, 2012 by Eclipso

[ccfire]

Concerns for game improvements are never pre-mature. As someone who has been here well before release I can say a lot of what was suggested on these forums, has ended up in this game. Thank people voicing concerns prematurely for the fact our lightsaber models aren't 3 times larger.

 

Concerns are different than suggestions. My statement was not directed at you.

[Sayc]

PVE content to keep people occupied with the fighting is no good

 

They do need to be careful with this, though. When the PvE content in your open world zones becomes more rewarding than the pvp, there is an issue(just like Ilum at release, moors right after RoI, all everyone did was trade control points/keeps).

[Rogmar]

That is entirely irrelevant to the points discussed in this topic, except to say that Ettenmoors style PVP in TOR would be 1000x better as class-imbalance would be a non-issue. Nobody here is suggesting changes to classes to be more like LOTRO Player vs. Monster Players.

 

Really? I played LOTRO from release up until a year ago and the fights were almost always centralized after B12. When I thought of how bad Ilum PvP was (24/7 fights at Rep base), it reminded me of TA/GV/Grams camp. Is that the type of PvP you enjoy? Because I don't see much different between that and the current iteration of Ilum.

 

Lol, by your own admission you never even played a Freep after Moria. So much for you knowing about what you're talking about.

Edited February 9, 2012 by Rogmar

[Jaiyne]

 

Jaiyne, tell Lee I say hello please.

 

I will!!

[Azesino]

To say that the game just came out and give it time to fix world pvp etc. I dont think thats a valid argument for a company the size of EA/BW and specially with the examples they have from all the other mmo out there before them

IF this was a small company OR it was UO (one of the first mmo) I would completely understand that statement, but from a BIG company with a license to one of the best franchises and after 10+ years of mmo existence that statement is unacceptable

They should have came out with a good world pvp game, with some bugs sure but not the state the game came out, no world pvp, ilum and tatooine pvp zone r a joke

[AndiusTheGreat]

Really? I played LOTRO from release up until a year ago and the fights were almost always centralized after B12. When I thought of how bad Ilum PvP was (24/7 fights at Rep base), it reminded me of TA/GV/Grams camp. Is that the type of PvP you enjoy? Because I don't see much different between that and the current iteration of Ilum.

 

Lol, by your own admission you never even played a Freep after Moria. So much for you knowing about what you're talking about.

 

I'm sorry. Apparently dozens or hundreds of hours of playing fairly simple Open World PVP zones don't qualify me to speak on them.

 

I'll be sure not to talk on this subject again until I have played 10 thousand hours of both Illum and the Ettenmoors and sacrificed my first born on the altar or Open World PVP Zones for Themeparks.

[Mavnas]

If you think the open world PVP in Ettenmoors is good, you haven't played Dark Age of Camelot, lol.

 

I have long ago given up on seeing DAoC2 Now I just accept the sucking of open world PvP. Also, I blame WoW.

[Amp_]

Brilliant summary.

 

The fact that we're even comparing a game that begrudgingly allows pseudo PvP (lotro) to a game that had a focus on it, and even dedicated servers to it, (swtor) is all you need to understand to realize how much of a failure the current end game PvP is.

 

Ilum CAN get better though. It CAN become great! The core of PvP in this game is fairly solid and arguably quite fun at times - but Ilum needs a complete revamp to become anything worthy of drawing players to it for more than their dailies.

 

That is the sad part. LOTRO is the kind of game where if you even mention pvp on the forums you'll probably get flamed for discussing it and told it's not important. It's like the red headed step child of that game. The fact we can even have a discussion between Ilum and the Ettenmoors is a sad sign indeed.

[Mavnas]

That is the sad part. LOTRO is the kind of game where if you even mention pvp on the forums you'll probably get flamed for discussing it and told it's not important. It's like the red headed step child of that game. The fact we can even have a discussion between Ilum and the Ettenmoors is a sad sign indeed.

 

It's just a sign most of you didn't play DAoC

[Vonrictus]

If you think the open world PVP in Ettenmoors is good, you haven't played Dark Age of Camelot, lol.

 

This. Nothing more needs to be said. Stealthers at bridges, docks, archers more range at height, shields actually *********** work against archers if you hit block...

 

zergs, small groups 8v8 ....DAOC had it all from single player stealthers ganking people to full on zergs without the lag

Edited February 9, 2012 by Vonrictus

[hargrave]

the difference is ilum will probably be fixed at some point where as the moors hasnt been fixed in over 4 years. Then you have frelorn a turbine employee sitting in a monster player tribe ts3 and saying hes getting unbiased information out of there when its just mad 12 year olds raging harder then stewie at louis. You think the devs prefer imps in this game well go play lotro for 2 minutes and youll really see biaseness.

 

The only thing lotro got right was the keeps ill give them that at least you can actually capture the keep and control it.

 

Ive said in beta and even know there needs to be a base boss. What we have atm is someone running up solo shooting 2 rockets at 2 base cannons and a flyby bombing run to say hey you just pretend took the base gratz.

 

This game isnt perfect but at least the devs listen here and arent in kinships vents pretending there getting unbiased info.So heres a comparions of lotro to swtor pvp area

 

 

Ettenmoors

 

Hasnt been changed much in over 4 years. Oh sure we got a bird and a tree and some lego castle outposts

 

4 year old skill lock. This issue still hasnt been fixed

 

Bugged out invincible warleaders. Imagine your toon imp/rep running around inside the other sides base invincable you cant attack it and the bugged person cant attack you

 

You want to talk imbalance lmao. 4 years in and its 100 times worse then the last 3 years.

 

Develpoment its either one side or the other is fixed not both. This is where the lotro dev dummies screw up. So imagine them only nerfing smuggler and not agent at the same time thats how lotro does things. So they would nerf 1 side and leave the other side still op of the same class for months at a time to i might add.

 

Then they lied about the new pvp map 2 times in a row now.

 

A tree with a bird is considered pvp content lol i kid you not take a look http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?387447-New-tree-and-Bob-the-Bird

 

You think we have server imbalance in swtor well imagine if bioware made the imp side free to play and not the rep side. Thats what they did in lotro.

 

BUY NOW!! the majority of lotro even the moors is buy now. The store is over 90% of the game its in your face most of the time.

 

Lotro and the ettenmoors are a horrible pos compared to ilum. Ilum sucks dont get me wrong but if had to choose between them id choose ilum and ilum compared to the moors is decent and everyone knows how ilum is atm lol.

 

Swtor

 

Skill lock (adressed in first month and still adressing and fixing)

 

Ilum 1.1 mess was adressed the next day and turrets fixed

 

when adressing class issues both sides are adressed at same time

 

I dont see any bioware employee doing a lack of ethics and dating customers and sitting in a imperial kinship ts3 server and using what he hears in there as "unbiased information" and skewing the game and having a lack of ethics like i do in lotro

 

Yes bioware does allow valor farming but hey lotro has it worse they valor farm more efficently by leeching off 6 boxers lol

 

So if you think we have it that bad in here go play lotro pvp for 1 hour and youll be back here. You think cc is bad here well you dont need cc there when its 50 people rolling 3 or vice versa. You can pot in lotro cc but still close to tor's cc

Edited February 9, 2012 by hargrave

[Rhogn]

You want to talk imbalance lmao. 4 years in and its 100 times worse then the last 3 years.

 

 

QFT. Interesting to note those in this thread thinking about returning to the moors today predominantly play freepside.

[AndiusTheGreat]

QFT. Interesting to note those in this thread thinking about returning to the moors today predominantly play freepside.

 

Why is it so hard to understand that class imbalance is a non-issue in this topic?

 

We are talking about what could be copied from the Ettenmoors to Illum in order to improve it.

 

Those are:

 

1. NPC guards for control points.

2. PVE side-content.

3. Meaningful Rewards.

 

Those are not:

 

1. Creep vs. Freep imbalances

2. Slow Combat

3. Personal grudges against devs and their girlfriends

 

Lets try to keep things focused on the actual talking points shall we?

 

PS. I mainly played creep, and ONLY played creep after Moria.

Edited February 10, 2012 by AndiusTheGreat

[Piriste]

I am torn, I understand what you are saying about the control points having guards, But I am afraid it will be to much like the moors... A group of 6 can Flip a keep if no one is on them. I don't want people to start breaking off into Elite groups of 6! I love when you have a big fight at center and its 50v50.

 

 

What!? That brainless blob vs. blob is what you enjoy?!

 

I'd MUCH rather take the 6 people groups than groups of 50, the blob vs blob combat is just stupid.

[Rhogn]

Why is it so hard to understand that class imbalance is a non-issue in this topic?

 

I realize that. My comment was in ref to above posters wanting to go back to moors today. I responded to your original post 10 pages ago. I'm all for ripping whatever worked from any game. Anything to spread out fights and make solo, small group and raid fighting all viable at the same time.

 

3. Meaningful Rewards

 

Seems to me incentives and rewards are the main driver for the majority of the population, and possibly the issue as well. The fact that people will spend hours clicking boxes is a testament to that. As I mentioned above and a bit diff to your stance re:meaningful rewards, for the majority of the time (and past midish rank creepside) the rewards are very long term and often marginal in lotro, which resulted in less OMG I NEED TO FARM <insert shiney> 24/7 to achieve end game status and then complain I have nothing to farm! Rank 15 took forever to achieve in lotro and was basically unattainable for most. Sure there was infamy/renown/rank, but overall in general people had less of an all encompassing fixation on numbers (rewards measured in months) and people came out to pvp, socialize and have fun......seems a big chunk of the "progression MMO" community likes grind/work over fun.....which is dumb imho.

 

...Maybe less meaningful rewards, or much longer term objectives would moderate the zergs/xploiting and population balances....i.e. i dont really need to farm X 24/7 so since outnumbering the opposition 4:1 is boring, I'm going to go do something else, or hey wander the map and see what's around.

Edited February 10, 2012 by Rhogn

[hargrave]

The only thing i want copied "if" anything is a base boss.I left lotro for a reason its a pos that not even turdbine cares about. If i wanted lotro pvp i wouldnt be here thats for dam sure. I will admit that ilum needs a HUGE revamp and it needs to be a lot better but in no way should we be looking at lotro as an example of how this games pvp should be b/c if they want to make this like lotro pvp thats it for me ive had enough then.

 

I understand your view points though i get what your saying in general.

 

One point i would like to make is why is ilum so small? its not really "world" pvp its area instanced pvp in a "world"

Edited February 10, 2012 by hargrave

[Dementza]

Nope , I was the high school quarterback and I am very competitive. I HATE to get beat

 

Hey ''Cobra'' (LOL ***?)

 

You are nothing special dude so **** and you can dig up your sig as well!

 

There are players on PVE servers with valor rank 80 already!

 

What? I can't hear you!

[Mardur]

I played LOTRO for 2 years.( I lived in the moors.) I am valor rank 72. I now live in Ilum. This game is awesome. Do not change anything ! Just keep adding to it BioWare.

 

 

 

Signed,

Someone who has played more than you.

 

I don' want to hurt your bubbles Mr. IAMTHE*****T, but Valor in this game means only one thing: how much time you spend with pvp activity. It does not mean skill, does not mean how your char is optimized, built, geared, does not mean anything, just time. If your argument based on this, that means nothing.

 

I played 'moors (with a warg or I don't remember, the wolf thingy) for many months (I did not played my main after lvl10 when monster play unlocked), and I agree with the OP, ILUM is not comparable to 'moors, not in the same league.

[hargrave]

I agree the moors is a pos. I also agree ilum isnt compareable it needs work thats for sure. But why did lotro go f2p? and why did the mass majority of vets leave it? Its nothing more then grocery store. The problem with the moors is its based on fotm and op catering. Thats all they did and are doing is catering to people who rely on bieng op and fotm then they get horribly owned when nerfed and rage leave lol

 

I don' want to hurt your bubbles Mr. IAMTHE*****T, but Valor in this game means only one thing: how much time you spend with pvp activity. It does not mean skill, does not mean how your char is optimized, built, geared, does not mean anything, just time. If your argument based on this, that means nothing.

 

I played 'moors (with a warg or I don't remember, the wolf thingy) for many months (I did not played my main after lvl10 when monster play unlocked), and I agree with the OP, ILUM is not comparable to 'moors, not in the same league.

[Powderfinger]

Ex-Creep here, Landroval. People don't normally think of LOTRO when it comes to pvp, but the Moors do in fact a superior design for a pvp zone when compared to Ilum. LOTRO devs don't pay much attention to pvp but they designed that region intelligently.

 

The 2 keys are having stout NPC defenders/making capping more difficult at control points, and having more activities to spread out the population so it's not always zerg v. zerg(or worse zerg vs. no zerg)

 

That doesn't make LOTRO a better game or make TOR a failure...it just means that there is a good template out there for making Ilum a more rewarding experience.

 

+1 to OP.

Edited February 10, 2012 by Powderfinger

[Pulpp]

But why did lotro go f2p?

 

In part because LotRO was a WoW-clone - companies don't get offering a rehash of crap they played for years isn't the path to success. Lore can only pull in so many fanboys.

 

The other part was the success of DDO as f2p. LotRO probably didnt need to go f2p, but since DDO showed Turbine it could ramp up profits, they gave it that model. I'm not sure I totally like f2p, because it seems to encourage Turbine to develop based on Store sales and not actual fun.

 

I actually think it's funny Turbine has one of the better "instanced pvp" systems (lotro monster play) and combat/creation systems (DDO's active combat and char. gen) and yet they put practically zero effort into developing pvp for either game.

 

/shrug