Confused about the LotRO free to play/ VIP bonuses?

What does VIP get you? and how do you become a premium member?

Free-to-Play opens up more choices and options so you can play your way. When LOTRO Free-to-Play is available, you can download the game for free and start playing without a subscription or even a credit card.

Anyone can join the game for free as a Free player when LOTRO Free-to-Play is available. You will automatically be upgraded from Free player to Premium player status with your first purchase of Turbine Points in the LOTRO Store.

And for a monthly fee, LOTRO's VIP program offers the best value and the most options for players who like the convenience of having unlimited access to all of LOTRO's game content and features. If you are already a subscriber, just maintain your active subscription to be automatically upgraded to VIP!

To make things simple:

Free to play : Pay nothing ever
Premium: Pay once at any point
VIP: Pay a subscription each month or pay for a lifetime one off payment.

Here is a link to the LotRO chart for the benefits of each “Tier” of subscription

http://www.lotro.com/betasignup/vipchart.html

Sauron gives Arthas the Evil Eye

LotRO vs Warcraft

Well in my opinion, the game is definitely a significant competitor to World of Warcraft, even more so when it goes free to play. It has that much potential and is graphically astounding to boot, stick it on Ultra High graphics and you’ll be drooling. In all honesty the game of Lord of the Rings Online is for the most part World of Warcraft. For example, mounts, interface, configuration, instances. But this doesn't deter you from trying it out, because the game itself is promising and has an epic story behind it with a veritable feast of characters, story lines to follow, nooks and crannies to find and the all important monsters to fight. Not only that, but the development and content still to be created.

One feature that does strike you as very similar as in World of Warcraft is how people level in Lord of the Rings, the levelling in this is based on questing, yawn. Don’t get dis-heartened tho. Too often, MMORPGs  base their levelling on killing lots and lots of monsters for your level. While, questing in LotRO is just as important for people to continue further into the game as it is with any other, there are hundreds of quests from each city, but on top of this is the Epic Storyline within the multitude of other quests to do.
It's not just one story tho its broken down, bite-size into many chapters from story we all know, involving the character we all love; I met strider at the Prancing Pony in Bree and Farmer Maggot just across from the Brandywine Bridge..
There's a array of things to do: instances, solo-able missions and normal/ epic missions. Each type are enjoyable and have goals well worth trying for.
Not to mention the rewards you get for complete Deeds, which also give bonus to players.

My favourite in World of Warcraft was doing instances, I’ve not had a chance to do a major 5 man instance in LotRO yet, but I am looking forward to what LotRo has to offer. In LotRO, I have read its very different to World or Warcraft, in that as you proceed thru the instance, you have action and tense moments when you run in trying to complete a complex quest with a party that you have to work well together to succeed, not just about killing bosses and moving on to the next. No co-ordination and you're basically gone. How this really differs to World of Warcraft I have yet to experience.

From viewing the map when I was playing in the small bit I have done in Bree-Land it is vast, immense even. It’s not just one huge map that you would look at normally, instead it’s set out from city to land to countries. Honestly, it is the biggest map I've ever seen, I wonder what new features will appear in future to fill up them spaces...
This is just one section of the huge map of middle earth>

The graphics and looks of the game are absolutely amazing. In World of Warcraft, most people recognise the game as too cartoony and this can be said for maybe LotRO too but not from my stand point, the graphics are more akin to Guild Wars than the cartoony World of Warcraft. You get the full detail and realism without seeing any cartoony effect on it but in my opinion, that's fine.

The interface of the game isn't too confusing or hard to get to grips with, it's well laid out and you can customise the skill bars UI scale to fit your needs, and if you have played World of Warcraft again it’s very very similar. And I am told very soon you will be seeing LotRO addons as you would see at Curse.com for World of Warcraft.

The game is heavily concentrated on the original book itself, but that's what makes the game so exciting. Experiencing new challenges and chapters and interacting with the main story characters.
Well, you may think that this game requires you to be a big fan of LOTR. But to me it isn't. Just from this game, you will practically get to know the whole story but in a slower and exciting way of achieving it.

I will be paying for this game in near future for the VIP service when it goes free to play on Sept 10th, just so I can experience the full outcome that it will bring to the MMORPG genre and I know it will be fantastic.

The Quest for the Ring – The Prologue

Oooooooooooo it’s great being a MMO noob again. Having no clue what I’m doing, where I’m going, no idea what my class can do, or what it’s role is.

I’ve chosen Lore-Master, which surprisingly I didn’t know was a pet class till i got my Raven as lvl 2. I specifically didn’t go for hunter as that’s the first class I always take. But, lo and behold i chose a pet class. It’s destiny!

So Raven in hand I’m off to save the world of men.

My Lore master Fleata with her Blood Raven (Raven with Blood Amulet)

My sister has been playing LOTRO of and on for about a year and she has been taking me round and showing me the sites, helping me lvl and giving me gear :) woot for sibling who play MMOS :)

 

This is my Sister’s Bard and myself on my first day in Bree-Land.

 

 

 

Reflections and First Impressions

The game is lovely graphically, the story is immersive, the NPC’s have some funny, albeit surly outbursts at the poor quester and the Quests are maybe a little samey as WoW but, none the less fun to do and better with a friend.
My one issue is the in game quest helper with isn't the greatest in the world, being rather hit and miss with what quests it will help you with and ones it wont, but this cam be gotten round with all the various quest helping sites, wiki’s and databases. Which in my first 3 days on LOTRO have been invaluable. Yes reading the quest properly helps, but sometimes they are so god damn vague or say west  of the place you where when you got he quest. 2 days later “where was I when i picked it up?” no clue so yeah its best to bookmark the best LORTO quest help databases and wiki.

It’s not WoW by any means, but its close, and this may put people off that want to get away from WoW, for some it may be just what they need. For me I’m not so sure yet, but enjoying the experience, and best of all ITS FREE from 10th SEPT.
LOTRO goes FREE TO PLAY so after my 14-30 day (I have no idea what I have) trial ends I wont have to pay a subscription.

So I can play both WoW and LOTRO and not have to fork out 2 subscriptions.

You say Orcs, I say Uruk-hai, you say Gnomes, I say Hobbits. Until the Big Black Dragon sings.

Being in WoW has been great. All the friends and people ive met and talked to, all the guilds I've been in and fun I've had. It’s been a blast. But, again I've cancelled my subscription and may come back to see how they implement Cataclysm.

After my 10 month of so break; I moved servers and factions to Bronzebeard – Horde and spend some cash to transfer me mains to there, its all fallen apart again. Expansion time comes and the population decreases by 80% and no one wants to raid. Same ol’ same ol. We saw it happen just before WOTLK and its happening again as before, now with CATA. The guild I'm in has decided to temporarily freeze itself and lo longer raid, which is a crying shame as it’s a great guild and raids well when they do do raids.

SO for the time being I've turned me MMO attentions so LOTRO, a game i tried a little while ago elf story, which i got bored with in a couple of days. But now I'm trying the Human Lore-Master class and enjoying a lot more. I guess the patches and re-workings of various quest givers and stables has helped this significantly.

So triple LOTRO pack in the bag that’s LORTO + mines of Moria + Shadows of Agmar I’m off to catch me a sexy Aragorn.. er.. cough… I mean evil Sauron… cough.. maybe… ooo maybe Legolas.. Decisions, decisions. :)