After the company made Vanguard I had my reservations about Lord of the Rings Online but after playing it for a while it has turned out to be a great game. It's good to see all the characters I remember reading about as a kid in the game :)
Tex
GamerTex.com
LOTRO was made by Turbine, who made D&D ONLINE and the ASHERON'S CALL games. VANGUARD was made by Sigil Games.
I offer this correction only in the interest of not sullying the good name of LOTRO with the half-assed, poorly-planned, epically mishandled cluster**** that was VANGUARD.
Not to make this into a Vanguard thread, but just to clarify. Brad McQuaid, the founder of EverQuest, which was my first MMoRPG, started Verant Interactive, struggling to get the game going, he went to 989/Sony, which became Sony online Entertainment. After SoE got their hands on EQ, the game went downhill, they fired Brad and took over all the rights to EQ.
Year later Brad started Sigil, and again trying to meet deadlines he went to Microsoft, and they wanted the game released at a certain date, unable to meet the time line, Brad offered to release the game with tons of bugs, Microsoft said no, and dropped them. Guess who Brad went crying to, you guessed it, SoE, and like EverQuest, Vanguard was released with billions of bugs, and guess what. Brad was fired again from SoE. You'd think he'd learn the first time. Some argue Brad wasn't fired, but what do you call it when you're the lead of a project with no say whatsoever, and only make press appearances? Yep, he was reared by SoE twice, and I wonder if he's going to make another game to yet again, not be able to meet deadlines, and go back on his hands and knees to SoE.
Vanguard could have been a good game if SoE didn't get their hands on it. Now LoTRO, and a happy 1 yr Anniversary 4/24. Has always been good to the players. The environment is beautiful, the game play is fun, and on my server we have good people.
LoTRO has undergone some problems as well, it was first in the hands of Siera, but delays and deadlines forced them to sell the licensing and rights to Turbine. At first I thought my beloved story was going to be a disaster as they were the ones that did D&D and AC2, which were abysmal. Thank goodness the players and feed back were a huge priority for them. I beta tested since Nov '06 and have participated in the dev chats, many times, and they listened to the players. And they still do occasional Dev Chats, especially prior to a major patch. Turbine got one thing very right, they listen to the players. I don't know of any other game that does this. Most companies will stop dev/player chats after the game has been released, Turbine still goes on, and with that, our immersion should be top notched.
This last patch is my only disappointment, Book 13 was not fun at all for me, the traveling was painful. The rewards were average. BUT the fishing is awsome :)
-The Price of freedom is eternal vigilance.