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[IMG News]

Turbine has officially announced the launch of a Mac beta client for The Lord of the Rings Online. The online game incarnation of the classic Lord of the Rings fantasy series is a free to play MMO which gives players the chance to build a character from one of four races, and seven unique classes.

“We are really excited to open up the world of Middle-earth to Mac,” said Kate Paiz, Executive Producer of The Lord of the Rings Online. “We’ve just launched our biggest expansion yet and we’re happy to welcome gamers to play the game natively on Mac OS X for the first time ever.”

The Lord of the Rings Online™ is the ultimate adventure! This award-winning free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game delivers an interactive experience brimming with life and filled with the familiar people, places, and monsters from the most famous fantasy of all time.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog recently posted an interview with Turbine's VP of Product Development, Craig Alexander about the game's transition to Mac. Among other things Alexander discussed the company's decision to build a native mac port in-house.

From TUAW:

Turbine first considered bringing Lord of the Rings Online to Mac back when the game went free-to-play, said Alexander, but the reason it took so long was because the company decided to build a native port for the game rather than depend on emulation or other similar methods. "Trying to outsource the task just didn't make sense," said Alexander.

Kate Paiz is the executive producer of the game, and she said that because the Mac client is native, it'll be the exact same game on the Mac as it is on the PC. "It'll all just work natively," she told TUAW. "The Mac stuff will work through the same patcher." The Mac game itself won't have any extra features or experiences exclusive to the Mac, but Paiz said the team always tries to figure out how to best welcome new players, and was thinking about the Mac client even while developing the game's latest expansion, Riders of Rohan, released a few weeks ago.

Learn more at the links below.

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[uff0]

Downloading to try it out! Never played LotRO, but it looks good!

[Nox]

I played this via CrossOver for a bit and I wasn't too thrilled... graphics looked a little dated, and much of the content (=playable map areas) needs to be paid for (on the bright side, of course, there's no sub fee). But hey, maybe it'll look better with a dedicated Mac client.

[Frigidman™]

I played this off and on often on the PC. It was pretty wonderful using the ultra-textures and everything turned to max. Sure its not Crysis 3, but it has more gameplay in it than visual thrills that you can easily tire of.

Its fun, decent. A thrill for LOTR fans.

Sometimes I just load it up so I can run through the Shire and take in the atmosphere. Especially during the fall festivals.

[Tesseract]

Of course "free to play" doesn't mean you can just play all the content without paying. They have to make a living somehow, after all. The expectation is that you go through the four free zones (which is in fact a pretty generous amount of completely free content), and then pay when you want more. However, it is entirely possible (if ridiculously grindy) to buy all the content by paying only with your time, since you can earn Turbine Points in game as well as buying them with cash.

Even if you don't buy a zone's quest pack, you can still go into it, look around, and fight mobs as much as you want. There are even task boards that give out generic "bring me 10 wolf pelts" type quests, if that's all you want.

So you can buy what you want a la carte, or you can pay a subscription fee and get access to the base game, plus buy expansion packs, just like in the old days.

[ikir]

Uh? I didn't expected this!!! GW2 or LotrO?

Is Mac client native?

[Tesseract]

Yes, it's native.

[Frigidman™]

Tesseract, on 02 November 2012 - 08:13 PM, said:

Of course "free to play" doesn't mean you can just play all the content without paying. They have to make a living somehow, after all. The expectation is that you go through the four free zones (which is in fact a pretty generous amount of completely free content), and then pay when you want more. However, it is entirely possible (if ridiculously grindy) to buy all the content by paying only with your time, since you can earn Turbine Points in game as well as buying them with cash.

Even if you don't buy a zone's quest pack, you can still go into it, look around, and fight mobs as much as you want. There are even task boards that give out generic "bring me 10 wolf pelts" type quests, if that's all you want.

So you can buy what you want a la carte, or you can pay a subscription fee and get access to the base game, plus buy expansion packs, just like in the old days.

Exactly correct. Really dedicated people can pretty much play all the content in the game, for free. Its tough, but you can do it... and if you pay attention to the 'sales' on packs, you can grab them for even less (all content is bought with in-game coins you can earn through deeds and activities for free).

[doh123]

its still Beta for sure... has some troubles and no way to choose fullscreen resolution which stinks...

[Djevlen]

It says beta below the download button so yeah, still in beta.

[doh123]

Djevlen, on 03 November 2012 - 04:17 PM, said:

It says beta below the download button so yeah, still in beta.

a lot of software today stays in "Beta" so they don't have to support it much, but is near perfected...  This game is NOT that way... its still in "Beta" simply because its not quite finished and very buggy...

[AspyrRyan]

I was hitting 35ish FPS in Lorien on Ultra settings on a 6750M MBP, so that's pretty cool.   It's too bad that all my keybindings from PC didn't carry over, or I'd have tried it out in combat.

[Sneaky Snake]

Is the main draw of this game a rich LOTR based world? Or are the gameplay and stuff up to par as well?

[Frigidman™]

Sneaky Snake, on 05 November 2012 - 01:07 PM, said:

Is the main draw of this game a rich LOTR based world? Or are the gameplay and stuff up to par as well?

Both I think. But, everyone has a different opinion on what is good gameplay when an MMO is concerned.

[ikir]

I've downloaded it 2 times and always says the app is corrupted. I will try one more time, anyone else have this issue?

[doh123]

ikir, on 05 November 2012 - 01:44 PM, said:

I've downloaded it 2 times and always says the app is corrupted. I will try one more time, anyone else have this issue?

disable Gatekeeper and see what happens...

[Tesseract]

Yeah, unfortunately they don't seem to be updating the code signature properly when they patch the game, so Gatekeeper correctly complains about it being modified since it was signed.

Sneaky Snake, on 05 November 2012 - 01:07 PM, said:

Is the main draw of this game a rich LOTR based world? Or are the gameplay and stuff up to par as well?

The gameplay is fine. If you're burnt out on WoW-style MMOs, that could be an issue, since that's what this is in terms of the basic game mechanics.

The world and the lore are definitely the main draw for me personally. Unlike Blizzard, they are contractually obligated not to break the lore, though they really stretch it sometimes for the sake of gameplay. There are plenty of references and details to make a Tolkien fan happy.

[Tibur]

Tesseract, on 06 November 2012 - 03:58 AM, said:

Unlike Blizzard, they are contractually obligated not to break the lore, ....

When I read this phrase I suddenly envisioned Judas Priest singing "Breakin' the lore, breakin' the lore!!"  And I'm not even a Judas Priest fan.

[Frigidman™]

Tesseract, on 06 November 2012 - 03:58 AM, said:

Unlike Blizzard, they are contractually obligated not to break the lore...

A better reference would have been "Unlike SOE with StarWarsGalaxies..."

[Nox]

Tibur, on 06 November 2012 - 12:09 PM, said:

When I read this phrase I suddenly envisioned Judas Priest singing "Breakin' the lore, breakin' the lore!!"  And I'm not even a Judas Priest fan.

Hahahah, that's GOLD! Let's not even get started on JP's other MMORPG-themed anthem, "Grinder."