I was in the LotRO beta and didn't come back to the game until October and so far I've never had a hard time doing anything except for maybe getting materials to craft with, but if you are social you can find a Kinship pretty easy to solve that problem and the one of group quests.

One of the reasons I enjoy this game more so than WoW and FFXI is that in WoW everything is designed to be a distraction to make you spend time in game even if you aren't leveling all be it covertly and FFXI is a total time sink that forces you to group ( which I didn't mind until Linkshell drama conflicted with enjoying the game way to often) and the fact that as a new player all of your travel options are locked and so are the advanced jobs that are going to take you months to open even if you find groups.

in lotro you can solo pretty much any class to start and get a feel for how you like it and the new "adventure pack" lets you have shared storage between alts so even farming materials becomes easy to start, that along with a pace of play that is mainly dictated by you and not the game allows you to feel like you are accomplishing stuff even if you take it slow so I never feel forced to group or grind just to keep up with others that have been around a long time.

Even if you wanted to work to catch up to the 30's were the new skirmish system from SoM starts you can do it in short order since I got 3 characters now with 1 at 28, 1 at 30 and 1 at 16 and I have only played maybe 3 hours or so a day or less since the end of october and that is even with me taking time off of each 1 for a few days at a time.

people have so many alts running around that finding people around that are your level isn't a problem either so I can easily recommend lotro to a new player even this far into its life far far easier than I could tell someone to try to start FFXI this far in.

the lack of ram might be a problem but I don't think you will be multi-tasking on it ( or even use tabbed browsing) but unless it can handle online streaming video either in the form of flash or html 5 it cannot succeed and the same goes for the ability to handle scripting because there is no way people are gonna buy this over a netbook a tegra/tegra2 based unit or even low priced laptop since most people can already get crappy internet on their phones

@missingNo you could make a business plan and pitch it to banks to get a loan or to VC's for funding or even to family for money to establish a business around what you want to do.

No one is making you develop "homebrew" on a DS for a living.

Heck, I'd like to be able get a job that pays good money to me for designing things i enjoy but companys left and right are telling me I fist have to have all this money and time invested in projects like studying and earing a degree before they will even talk to me and these other business ( lets call them schools) tell me that the projects the first set of companies I talked to require cost quite a bit of money. What am I to do?

( a bit sarcastic I admit and apologize if I offend, I only desire to show how that point of view can be applied differently but now no longer seem to make as much sense.)

@Johanu

Um, last I checked car manufactures didn't sell games or needed their cars to run software off of a cart that you bought to serve their intended purpose.

Telling someone that they cannot modify a product they own is not the issue here. I agree that a person should not be limited to how they can use something they buy, but the issue her is nintendo desend want 3rd parties to sell devices that undermine their own ability to sell you the games that make their systems run.

A car doesn't need, well lets say gas/petrol, in a officially licensed form sold only if produced by a licensed producer ( well gas does have to meet standards and is made by licensed producers but it isn't "BMW" brand gas that only works on "BMW" cars or some such thing) were as Nintendo makes a product with the intent to license you the use of games on it and game publishers pay nintendo for the right to license a SDK so as to make games to sell to you and you can either buy them or not.

Buying or not buying a game doesn't limit your rights in anyway but demanding that you should be able to have access to tools that nintendo would normally charge for as part of how it does business with paying nintendo damages it's ability to do business.

I might not want any limits on what or how I use the internet but i don't expect that if I want to develop web pages or run apps on it that it wont cost me money to make.

Nintendo deon't say you cannot mod it's device if you buy it or use it how you like, it is saying it dosen't want a 3rd party to be able to make it so it cannot do business.

this is along the lines of why AMD sued Intel, because AMD felt that Intel ( a 3rd party to AMD and the consumer) was limiting it's ability to do business.

You don't want to be limited but neither does the company that sells the product in the first place. the judge could have ruled that Nintendo make means avalible for people who do want to make "homebrew" apps available like how mobile handset makers have to allow for unlocked phones but the judge didn't because Nintendo already does sell a SDK and gives the ability to make software for it's platform, it just happens to not be favored by cheap/broke people or counterfeiters. so the judge decided what nintendo offers is somehow a kin to being illegal
I hope you can see a distinction

I'm of two minds on this matter. First off I do realize that the courts in France probably aren't as closely knit with big media/entertainment internists as in the states but to think that a judge would tell a company that it is illegal to not allow third parties to "homebrew" if they wanted seems way outside the scope of protecting the public interest or protecting the public from harm.

While I'm in favor of a individuals interest to "mod" or tinker with a device that they own, if the ablility to do so is limited by hardware or license limitations designed to protect a companys means of income I don't blame the company, unless by them doing so, they make the experience worse for the consumer who only buys licensed content and uses the device in question as the company intends ( i.e phone home activation schemes or poorly implemented DRM that breaks things for real users but not people who copy content without paying for access to it.

This judge seems to not understand that Nintendo is not denying peoples ability to develop for the system, but simply making them pay to do so.

I don't believe we has a good system for software patients and bad licensing implementations is often a reason why many "pirate" but the idea that designing and selling a product with the intent for it to be used as designed so that it is viable in the marketplace doesn't hurt my ability to peruse happiness or infringe on my rights. I could simply not by a "locked down" gaming platform if I have a real need to develop but lacked to money to afford a SDK system.

I'd rather the judge have considered to not limit the ability of people to make emulators that could run said"homebrew" projects for those who want to develop them since a emulator doesn't take away from nintendo's ability to sell "real" game on a "real" DS/DSi but 3rd party flash carts do.

It is one thing to want to be able to do something and another totally to assume that the ability to do it should be free of cost

I need me some OLED sweetness

good luck all

running the game into the ground? you make it sound like this is Warhammer or Age of Conan.

With Siege or Mirkwood many people came back to the game to take advantage of the multi-month deals or lifetime signups.

the developers are still looking at ways to improve the fundamental aspects of the game as time goes on. Nothing is broken or pointless, the community is great and so is the majority of the playerbase.

The story and lore factors into every aspect of the game well and isn't tacked on.

They are even going to improve the pace of combat with SoM and that is pretty much the only thing that was a consistent complaint from MMO players.

Personally I like the pacing as it is because it was easy to solo/explore or farm materials at the speed I wanted to and not feel like I was missing out by taking my time. On the contary, I enjoyed being able to sit and grind levels if I wanted or just explore.

I used to play FinalFanasy XI, and many many people left at the time WoW came out because of much of a time sink getting stuff done was in FFXI, that was years ago and that game was designed and optimized for the Playstation 2 but people still play and server populations are pretty good for a MMO. I don't see how you think the game is going away Age of Conan and Warhammer had much more hype around them and just keep shrinking versus Lotro playerbase.

I really just don't see why you would say they need to fade away and die as if the are languishing a slow death. Even Aion or Champions will probably implode before Lotro in the wake of SWtoR and future AAA titles in terms of a fast shrinking playerbase but neither them or Lotro as going away soon because they all have a captive playerbase that will pay each and every month.

I'm looking forward to this thing releasing so it can help start to better define the MID/ebook/slate market prior to Apple coming in and making the price range for the segment too high.

As long as it does proper full fledged Flash video (if hardware accelerated all the better via tegra or better) handles input well ( easy to use GUI that has things like copy/paste from the start) and is open enough that users or developers can make apps to handle Netflix, Hulu or future online streaming services that might pop up it will be a possible market leader.

I know those are somewhat lofty wants/needs but the idea of Apple just making a large screen iPod that relies on iTunes to get video isn't appealing to me at this point at all so since the rumors that Apple are going to bring out a similar device this would have to be more than a portable media center, color e-book or a slate style netbook.

This can be the device that geeks have lusted after for years that serves as a gateway to their content in a portable package that lends itself to surfing from the couch/toilet ( you know people already use their phones in there) and has the framework to allow you to pick how you want to access your content conveniently rather than booting up your laptop or having to deal with too small of a screen.

Personally, I hate having to use a laptop or netbook to surf while watching TV because fullscreen Flash is crap on most netbooks and unless you want to spend a good amount of money on a laptop it wont be light or quiet.

I kinda wish the CE companys would've already made something like this because computer companys don't get the usage model even though Intel has been pushing the MID concept for years.

Kinda seems like Sony or Samsung would have already brought something like this out rather than adding "net" functionality to their newer TV's cause this would also make just about the best remote possible too and buy making it a home orientated device it wouldn't cut into moblie device sales but instead help tie all one access to sources of media into a more centralized device.

Anybody else watch Supernatural on the CW. That and House are pretty much all I'm interested in seeing week in and out. The Mentalist is good but if i miss it I don't mind, same with Big Bang Theory