LotR Online vs. Vanguard: SoH
February 1, 2007
Well, it’s been coming for a long time, and here it is. Vanguard vs. LotR the final showdown. Which one should you buy, well; they both have their merits, let me break it down:
Sound:
Sound has never mattered that much to me in an mmo, I usually play with the radio on and never really experience the sound, but I played with natural sound for the time I spent testing.
Vanguard:
Vanguard has my personal preference for music. The music in Vanguard was well done. The music fit the region you were in, and fit very well. Sound really isn’t my area of expertise, but Vanguard, in my opinion, had the upper hand.
LotR:
Not much I can say about LotR online. The music just wasn’t that strong, though I think it had a slight advantage in the combat effects but overall I wasn’t as impressed with LotR’s sound.
OVERALL:
Overall I have to say that Vanguard pulls out a win here, LotR just didn’t feel all that strong in the sound department.
Graphics:
Both of these games went in completely different directions in terms of graphics.
Vanguard:
Vanguard went big. With perhaps the best graphics ever seen in an mmo Vanguard did stand out, though without a good computer you may never see them. Vanguard did lack a bit of the visual punch and style that games like WoW has, but I still found the environments to be detailed and beautiful. The animations for the graphics all fall apart here unfortunately. The animations felt very 1.0 in terms of mmos. They didn’t feel as realistic as I had hoped for, the animations arn’t BAD, just not GOOD.
LotR:
When people said LotR would be just like WoW, it actually was pretty spot on. Not exactly, but still there is resemblance, with just enough changed to feel new, yet still familiar. The graphics are a step up from WoW and I did find the regions to have a fair amount of personality. When I visited the hobbit starting town, the world did have a feeling of life. The animations were also a lot more charming then in Vangaurd. LotR can be played on less then top of the line pc’s, unlike Vanguard.
Overall:
Its a tie. Vanguard is realistic yet stiff, while LotR is charming but perhaps a bit too WoW like graphics wise. If its down to graphics and you need to pick a game, unless you have a good graphics card (I think a GeForce 7800GT would be able to handle the game no problem, maybe something a little lower then that) I’d say go for LotR. If you care about game play, read on.
Game Play:
Game play is the last category, and the most important:
Vanguard:
Vanguard has a lot of thing to do, not to mention see. Want to explore a vast world? Go for it. Want to build boats or something stupid like that? Whatever! The deep crafting, fun combat, fast-paced and challenging group experiences and the simple yet engaging diplomacy card game, Vanguard just has it all.
LotR:
LotR lacks a lot of things. I don’t believe crafting is in, nor is monster play (monster play sounds interesting, but I don’t have high hopes) the combat is pretty much WoW’s combat, but the classes didn’t feel all that different at lower levels, that may have just been me. Regardless, LotR is average at best.
Vanguard wins. I just had a better experience overall with Vanguard, theres nothing else to be said.
Summary:
If you like WoW but have just grown tired of it’s setting LotR is for you. It enhances many of WoW’s features, but still has a ways to go to offer anywhere near the content, I’d say just wait for a trial and see if its the game for you.
If you want something familiar, but loads of fun, Vanguard may just be for you. You need a good pc, but it is a fun game, and worth playing. I’d expect to see a trial of this soon, so you may want to wait for that to see if your pc will be up to the challenge. In a couple months the game should be polished, I plan on waiting till then.
-Radical
WoW’s biggest drawback seems to be the account banning. Reasons aren’t given, the decisions are ‘irreversible’. Great money maker for Blizzard, as they just ‘close’ the account. The sad player who may have done nothing wrong now gets to spend another $40 to buy the game again, another $40 for Burning Crusade upgrade, and hundreds of hours to build a new character.
Lets see….if you ban 10% of your players every month, and you have 4 million players, and only half of them decide to restart, you’ve generated 160 thousand dollars in revenue that month. Awesome business plan.
While I agree with many of the points in this review, the review itself lacks depth. LOTRO is a vast world and I must admit I made the mistake of underestimating the vastness when I started playing at the lower levels. Tolkien fans will enjoy visiting and exploring the many famous locales throughout northern Middle-Earth, or Eriador which the team at Turbine have adequately represented. I think it’s a little off the mark to compare the graphics of LOTRO to those of World of Warcraft. The WoW graphic design was based on the smaller-scale Warcraft games and Blizzard geniously developed their graphical concept further by injecting their own lore and humor into what has been described as a more comical/exaggerated design. The LOTRO design is far more realistic, even reminiscent of a lot of the fantasy artwork made famous by John Howe or Ted Nasmith. Both artists who painted realistic depictions of the Tolkien world (or as realistic as places named Hobbiton will allow). In that respect, Vanguard and LOTRO are very much alike. Both developers painted realistic worlds, they merely used different brush strokes.
To compare LOTRO’s game play to WoW is also a little off the mark, for one reason alone…WoW’s game play is not that unique. It is a formula made famous by many an MMO before it — build a character, quest, earn experience, gain levels. That said, WoW’s uniqeness is derived from the Blizzard mission (and I’m paraphrasing): “easy to play, difficult to master”. It is worthy to note that WoW’s questing system is designed to get the player to reach the end game as quickly as possible within the player’s limits. The unique byproduct of this is a player experiences advancement in a reasonable amount of time. It is a game design that works and is a major reason Blizzard has a user base in the millions. It is worth noting that Blizzard loses out on the large user base numbers once the end game roles around. It is at that point that WoW becomes a different type of grind and a far more frustrating grind on a larger scale. Those who have left a 4-5 hour raid empty-handed know what I am talking about. LOTRO merely explores further this tried and true formula. Will it offer a more interesting spin on the quest/level grind? Probably not. LOTRO is designed to explore, (some might say “finally”) the realm conceived by Tolkien and along the way a player will be able to quest and craft. If anything, every MMO uses a quest system derived from Tolkien, or any piece of myth or folklore where a hero must travel to reach a particular goal or attain some treasured object.
I won’t dispute the comments on sound, as they are more based in opinion. I will say that Vanguard’s music selections are fitting for the region, but typical in that they are representative of musical themes we’ve heard before: woodland elf cities = choral/ethereal tones, desert regions = middle-east/egyptian themes. LOTRO does not offer much more, however it successfully holds its own in remaining different from Howard Shore’s themes from the movies.
As far as the graphics go, I will not dispute this review. I concur that while Vanguard is beautiful to look at, one can only see it through the eyes of a hefty graphics card. I have been playing with a geForce 6800, which is the toddler of graphics cards these days in this era of SLi. LOTRO has fewer graphic requirements, so in terms of global compatibility, LOTRO might come out ahead. As Radical points out, the animation in Vanguard is second rate. LOTRO’s is better in terms of smoothness and realism. Vanguard has the potential of great animation, but that just might send the client requirements off the charts. At this point it comes down to game engine. Vanguard’s hefty requirements may suggest sloppy/excessive coding…?
Like Radical, I will happily await Sigil’s efforts to clean up Vanguard and maybe even trounce on over to Eriador when I want a puff of pipeweed.
I would just like to say thank you very much Buej you have proven to me that LOTRO is nothing like it was downgraded to be, (so much like WOW) i was considering never attempting to purchase LOTRO even though i am a LOTR fanatic… With my low computer graphic cards these days i find it very difficult to play any of the leading games and with that said even harder to find an MMO game that is compatible with my graphics card.
I have played WOW and quickly became bored of it, it has no real sense of doing anything worthwhile, whereas LOTRO sounds like it actually has a story to it.
As for Vanguard i do agree with you very much on almost everything you said, it does have better sound and graphics (i have played it a few times), it also is more interactive however for those that simply cant afford a high tech pc i think that LOTRO or WOW is a reasonable game (shame about the $30 per month).
I thank you all for your reviews i know that you have certainly helped me reach a decision