LOTRO Screenshot

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 10, 2009

Filed under: Pictures 99 comments

I want to try a little experiment, if you’ll indulge me. Take a look at these two screenshots from Lord of the Rings Online:


lotro_example1.jpg

lotro_example3.jpg

At first glance, is there anything that bugs you / looks wrong / seems off? If so, what?

Obviously there is for me (or I wouldn’t be showing them to you) but I wonder how much of the problem is my own eccentricities. Don’t obsess over the image or anything, you’re not looking for anything secret or hidden.

I’ll post more on this later, after I see how people respond.

 


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99 thoughts on “LOTRO Screenshot

  1. Teiran says:

    So, what are we looking for here?
    The complete lack of shadows on anything but you?
    The way every texture seems to be of a radically different resolution, thus making the central pillar look blurry and out of focus?
    What? I must know!

  2. Legal Tender says:

    That pillar/altar thingy looks awful and it seems to be just sort of floating on top of the platform. Well, not floating as such…I can’t explain but it makes me want to play table air hockey with it.

    Is this related to that texture problem you showed us from DA:O’s bit up in the mountains?

    Edit: oh, shadows! @Teiran: for a variety of reasons I haven’t had access to decent rigs until very, very recently. This means I’ve played a lot of games with video options set to minimum and I’ve just realised how much I’ve learned to tune out things like shadows, particle effects, etc. But no more, yay!

  3. Drue says:

    I’m going to take this chance to suggest that people post their own comment before reading the comments to avoid picking up on whatever the first few people say.

    The first thing I noticed is that the big alter thing in the middle seems to have a ugly or low res texture. It seems at odds with the brasiers which look more detailed to me. Also the very top of the stairs uses a squished version of the texture around the outside of the dias thingy. It seems like all the textures are inconsistant with each other in terms of scale or resolution or whatever.

    Actually it almost looks like the stairs and the base were designed by one person, the brasiers by a second person, and the thing in the middle by a third without anyone knowing what the other stuff looked like.

  4. Robyrt says:

    The fact that the central column is just a 400% scale version of the tiny columns, and thus looks awful?

  5. Huckleberry says:

    OMG! It’s deep winter, and she doesn’t even wear shoes!

  6. Judiah says:

    The center pillar looks godawful. No shadows except for the character… and really the whole sense of perspective seems screwy.

    I played LOTRO a while back.. I don’t remember anything so fugly…

  7. Turbosloth says:

    huh… the graphics look awful in general, but the only things that would seem to me to be a ‘bug’ is the texture on the top of the third step (from the top) which seems actually broken (as opposed to just bad graphics) and the fact that the centre pillar is at a WAAAY lower resolution than everything else for some reason…

  8. Vegedus says:

    The relative resolution of the textures seem very uneven. Stairs, ground, character and the torches have nice, pretty textures (high-resolution). The surface of the platform is a bit blurry (mid-resolution). The big, pillar thing in the middle has a very, ugly smushed surface (low-resolution). It’s probably not the actual resolution size, but the relative sizes of the objects they’re draped over, or how many times they repeat. I rather dislike low-rez textures, but it doesn’t make it better that they’re inconsistent in how pretty they want to be.

  9. Andrew B says:

    The central pillar does seem kind of odd. Especially as I’ve been there in game, and I don’t recall it looking that weird. Some texture FUBAR?

    (The lack of shadows suggests that Shamus has them turned off to me, or turned down at any rate. Mind you, the textures could be set oddly as well. LOTRO does have a lot of graphical options to twiddle.)

    The otehr thing is, of course, that you’re an elf in a Dwarven town, which is of course totally wrong lore wise in my mind.

  10. nerdpride says:

    The thing that’s odd about the central pillar is that it has snow on it when the floor around it is spotless. It’d probably look fine if it weren’t pulled away from its intended home (probably on top of a tower or something).

  11. Pickly says:

    The pillar is really blurry, and the snow behind doesn’t look quite right. I’m also not sure where that is supposed to be.

    Nothing appears glaringly wrong, however, just a bit odd.

  12. Axle says:

    The big pillar in the middle looks like a ‘zoomed in’ version of the smaller ones. Everything else looks like a photoshop work gone wrong….

  13. Deoxy says:

    Being a “low end” sort of guy myself (I generally play 3+ year old games, usually with the graphics turned down… or REALLY old games that still look pathetic with the graphics maxed out), I didn’t really think it looked that bad…

    Of course, I didn’t really think it looked abnormally GOOD, either, which is really saying something pretty pathetic about the computer that is running on, the game itself, or both.

    I did notice that the character has a practically “true to life” shadow, but nothing else has any shadow-ish thing at all. It was very incongruous.

  14. Rosseloh says:

    @Andrew B: the game intro for Elves and Dwarves takes place in the same general instance of the world (that is, a pre-main-storyline version of the lands surrounding “Thorin’s Hall”). It’s similar for Men and Hobbits, except that they’re over in Archet in Breeland.

    Anyway, not only is that pillar messed up, but I don’t remember it being there. As far as I can recall, in the intro, it’s a statue of Skorgrim Dourhand, which then is changed to a statue of Thorin after the intro is over. I just ran that intro 2 or 3 weeks ago…
    (It’s obvious the pics are in the intro because A) Dwalin is standing there (he moves after it’s done), and B) you’re only level….2? 3? Hunters get “Stance: Strength” at 4 so you’re below that unless you just hadn’t put it on your quickslots.)

  15. Mephane says:

    The big pillar/rock/statue/whatever in the middle obviously has a texture resolution far below that of all the surroundings, and especially the character.

    However, I am similarly picky about these little details as you are, Shamus, so me seeing it doesn’t tell anything about people in general. ;)

  16. Ingvar M says:

    There’s some strange banding about halfway down on the right-hand side. It MAY be some sort of meters (health? magical energy?) but looks kinda odd.

    The big thing in the middle is a bit strange. It doesn’t quite fit where it is.

    The small humanoid on the snow field (?) top-right is popping quite a bit, but that MAY be intentional.

    Everything looks as if you have roughly co-axial viewpoint and light source, so there’s next-to-no depth cues from shadows (you can get a similar effect in real life by wearing a lamp strapped to your forehead, makes it surprisingly hard to walk through forests).

  17. Aquarion says:

    That looks like LOTRO with minimum textures and shadows turned off. The middle column looks awful. Usually LOTRO textures are a lot higher res than that, so that surprises me.

  18. Goggalor says:

    I don’t know specifically what you are looking for, but here are some random thoughts.

    The interface looks very much like World of Warcraft’s, which is probably a good thing. Consistency and all that.

    The graphics look odd -the floor textures and the big plinth look out of focus, but the braziers and the steps are in-focus. Also the fact that only you have a shadow, makes the statuary look unreal.

    Your character looks out of scale -she looks like a child. I presume the spindly arms and legs are because she’s an elf.

    Overall it looks very unappealing. I personally would prefer more “Art” and less realism in these sort of games. One thing Warcraft was very good at was replacing fancy high-end graphics horsepower with skilled artists when designing all the regions.

  19. Rosseloh says:

    @Ingvar M:
    If we’re looking at the same thing, the “banding” is his quest tracker. It shows the title of the quest, the “color” (difficulty relative to your level), and the current goal.

    @Goggalor:
    See now, I love the realistic bent that LotRO has (well, as realistic as you can get with Hobbits and Elves running around). No funky glowing armour, no way out of proportion buildings (I’m looking at you, Stormwind)
    disclaimer: I played WoW for an hour or so, got bored, and went back to LotRO. Not a bad game, but not my cup of tea.

  20. McNutcase says:

    The texture resolution mismatches are horrific. The lack of shadows isn’t great, but that central pillar thingy, THE PIXELS ARE EATING MY EYES!

  21. BK says:

    That’s a rather lot of bloom in some places – is that character supposed to have ridiculously white skin? (Oh, and a bunch of the textures don’t match up with each other, but that’s already been mentioned.)

  22. Dagnal says:

    Since it’s an experiment, for once I’ll comment before reading instead of the other way around:

    1) the texture on the middle column seems to be scaled up from the smaller ones, which makes it look pixelated/blurry.
    2) no shadows on those columns; they seem to float.

  23. Henebry says:

    The central altar or pillar is really blurry. Looks like it a low-res texture map was stretched over a large model. By contrast, the little rose-colored pillar on the right is in sharp focus.

    The contrast between the big pillar’s blur and the rest of the scene makes us “read” it as floating in front of the rest of the image: its weirdly blurry in just the way that things very close by (say 6 inches to 2 feet) look blurry when you’re focused at infinity.

  24. So, a couple of things. First, the detail here is all over the place. The main altar is clearly stretched, the tiling on the dais is lower-res than that on the stairs, and the sides of the dais look stretched too.

    Then there is the lighting. Only the avatar has a shadow, which points to a clear light source. The shading on the main altar and braziers is consistent with this source point, but no shadows. The gamma is way off, however: the main altar looks like the very light of heaven is shining on it with pinpoint accuracy, while everything else looks basically torchlit.

    Also, your character needs a coat. It’s cold up there.

  25. MJG says:

    The only thing that really jumped at me was that the big pillar looks terrible, almost N64-like.

  26. I checked the comments first, but no one else is saying what I saw: Based on those screenshots, the first one makes it look as if the central pillar is actually hanging, and when I scrolled down to the second one, it looked like it ought to be obscuring the player character and there was a weird moment while my eyes were telling me the PC should be obscured, but was visible, before it all worked out in my head what is actually happening.

    However, I doubt that effect could be obtained if you were interactively moving the camera around…?

  27. Factoid says:

    The lack of shadows jumped out for me as well.

    Also the fact that the center pedestal has a texture LESS detailed than the much smaller corner pedestals.

  28. Peter H. Coffin says:

    Bad shadowing gets to me. Ever since I first noticed that the torch flames in Diablo II cast shadows of the flames.

  29. Nova says:

    Definitely the pillar in the centre; it’s all blurry, like it’s been blown up too much – and what’s with the general lack of shadows?

  30. potemkin.hr says:

    Look at image:
    http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/843/texture.jpg
    Blue square – original texture
    Red square – resized texture, looks disgusting next to the original texture, hard to miss
    Purple square – Ugly vertical line, i think they just used a generic wall texture for the stairs
    Also, the central pillar is just a small one humongously enlarged.

  31. Pez says:

    Yeah, that central column is the most offensive thing…

    Additionally, the top step and the “border” around the platform are clearly the exact same texture, just squished/stretched to different sizes. (But with less horrific results…)

    Also, what’s up with the sides of the image being cropped? Did you do that or is the game taking 4:3 screen shots at widescreen resolutions?

  32. Lupis42 says:

    The texture resolutions have no consistency at all. There aren’t any shadows (except when there are).

  33. nine says:

    Looks like a game from the Dungeon Siege era. Does it really look that bad?!

  34. Volatar says:

    The central pillar is merely a blown up version of the smaller pedestals sunk into the ground a bit.

    Wow, thats… lazy on the part of some mapper somewhere…

  35. Andrew B says:

    @Rosseloh: I know that it’s a shared starting area. Still wrong, damnit! (But I’m likely fighting a losing cause ;) )

  36. GoodApprentice says:

    The texture on the top step is the same texture stretched to cover the large area on which your character stands. It’s either very sloppy texture work or a graphical bug, but that top step most definitely has the wrong texture covering it.

  37. Gregory Weir says:

    1. The center pillar is textured at too low a resolution.
    2. Your character has a crisp shadow, but there are no shadows on anything else.
    3. No sign of any snow at all anywhere in the plaza.

    I didn’t notice the maltextured step until someone pointed it out in the comments.

  38. fscan says:

    it must be freezing with this clothes in the snow, but i don’t know any games that get this right.

  39. geogscott says:

    Everything looks clear except the central pillar. It looks like it is much lower res than everything else.

  40. Rosseloh says:

    @nine:
    No. But then again, my rig runs LotRO on Ultra High with even the most hectic situations (24 people in my groupo running around last night, for example). Your results may vary.

    OK, I should stop posting to defend LotRO…it’s not like you’re reviewing it here or anything. ;)

  41. Sesoron says:

    Before I got to the comments, I noticed that the rock in the center of the pedestal had way low resolution texture compared to its surroundings, and that there don’t seem to be shadows on any of the objects, just the characters. I think my trial might not be up, so I’m going to jump in and check it out right quick…

  42. SatansBestBuddy says:

    Random thoughts:

    Text is impossible to read.

    Did you cut off the edge of the screen on purpose?

    Are those pillar things torches that light up when it’s dark, or do you have fire effects off?

    Why no shadows?

    Your elf looks like she’d be freezing her tits off in that outfit.

    And, like everyone else here has pointed out, that big pillar looks horrid.

  43. DmL says:

    The texture wraps up the steps continuously instead of having face and floor textures.

  44. larryboy114 says:

    the first thing I noticed was the terribly blurry texture on the central column, but someone mentioned the lack of shadows and once I saw that it really bothered me also

    speaking of textures though, the texture on the ground of the platform is also very different in res from the steps…

  45. AnZsDad says:

    I haven’t read anyone else’s comments yet, so this may have been put forward already. My take is that the texture details between the central obelisk and the surrounding braziers (and the background buildings, for that matter) don’t seem to have the same level of detail. It seems obvious that they are intended to look like they’re made of different materials, but it’s more like they were made with different electron charges.

  46. Cogfizzle says:

    Complete lack of shadows/shading on world objects and glaring inconsistencies in texture resolution, by far.

    The resolution difference between the player / braziers / pillar is startling. The player appears to be very well textured (this is larely expected though), the braziers aren’t bad either. Then… the pillar is a giant amorphous blob, screaming “LOOK AT ME SOMEONE GOT LAZY”.

    You can notice it elsewhere, too. Look at the stairs leading up to the platform. Then look at the platform’s floor itself. Stairs: relatively crisp, pretty “cut marbled stone” look. Floor: did someone take a photoshop blur filter to this?

  47. Ben N. says:

    The first and only thing that jumped out at me was the horribly ugly pillar.

  48. Zukhramm says:

    The middle pillar does seem to clash with the stone it’s standing on. Like it’s just been dumped on there. Even with the low texture, I think a thin block for the pillar to stand on would have made it look less strange.

  49. Maldeus says:

    Having skipped over all the comments: The big stone thing with the runes looks all wrong. Something looks very wrong with the textures, but I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is.

  50. neolith says:

    Since LotRO is way prettier than in your screenshot I’d say the thing that bugs you is the barefoot elf in the middle of frozen stone.

  51. Nathon says:

    Ow, my eyes! Please to getting higher resolution textures on incongruously low-res object in center of screen.

  52. Viper says:

    Your shadow turned a bit (How fast does the day go by there?), and the texture quality is highly inconsistant (the platform vs the stairs). That’s all I noticed.

  53. The big pillar is the only thing that looks off to me

  54. krellen says:

    I don’t remember LOTRO looking this ugly.

    In fact, I remember it looking like this.

  55. Guibod says:

    My pick : your character seems to pause the same way you’d did in front of Tour Effeil or Coliseum.

    I also took a bunch of souvenirs at the top of various towers in Champions Online. ^^

  56. Jibar says:

    Uhhh… excuse me if this is horribly wrong, as I haven’t played it yet and I’m going by screenshots, but that looks kinda like a couple years old version of Dragon Age.
    The character, the setting, the hud. Looks like Dragon Age to me.

  57. elias says:

    Shadows make everything look more normal… especially in games where the textures and such were not created specifically to look good with shadows off. So in most games lack of shadows on everything looks odd to me, especially in screenshots. In a small few (generally with a non-photorealistic art style), I don’t notice.

  58. Tesh says:

    I notice the bad UV layouts first, but then, I’m working on building UVs every day, so that’s an easy pick.

    Really, I can grab pretty much any game screenshot and find some UV issues with it, especially in an MMO where there are just SO MANY bits of geometry to get through the production pipeline. Well, that, and the normal fudging of scale that we get in these games. It’s to the point where I don’t much notice any more, and if I start to care, I just fire up Doom or something to shake myself out of it.

    Ditto for shadows; I miss them, but I just don’t care most of the time. I’ll take solid gameplay over niggling visual details like that, given the choice. Of course, the gameplay in MMOs is another thing to complain about, but that’s an entire topic in itself…

    Ultimately, smart art direction will strive to keep UV scale similar and minimize warping. It will also keep shadows consistent, even if if means simple blob shadows for everything. (Especially in a starting zone, for crying out loud…)

  59. Jon says:

    He’s clearly trying to draw attention to the overbearingly masculine symbolism of the dwarves. His female character must be feeling quite frightened and intimidated by this smelly, misogynistic little race. I understand your pain, Shamus – there will come a time (I know not when) when femininity is cherished in video games, and female elves will be as comfortable in dwarven squares as the testosterone-driven midgets that created them.

  60. Rhykker says:

    “At first glance, is there anything that bugs you / looks wrong / seems off? If so, what?”

    That enormous, important-looking centerpiece on the pedestal, which is ostensibly the focal point of the area, has horribly low-resolution texturing relative to its surroundings.

    That was my immediate thought, before I even read your question.

  61. Aulayan says:

    Hm..

    I’ll be the only one who doesn’t say the Pillar. (or barefoot elves)

    I’ll go with PoV. I don’t know LOTRO at all. So I’m going to assume the first view was the normal view you have, at that weird angle. Second view, where you see MORE of the world, is a special unmoving view for taking screenshots or something. (I believe I have seen such a view before in some games).

  62. mark says:

    firstly, all of the above. Also, your character’s legs seem far too thin. her thigh could snap at any minute!

  63. someboringguy says:

    Uh, you’re facing the middle pillar in one scene, and stand with your back turned to it in the next scene?

  64. Treb says:

    lets see…
    the stark difference in textur quality (center piece)for one, the partial lack of shadows and yes, Thorins Hall is kinda barren nowadays

  65. WWWebb says:

    Well, either you’ve just been hit with a spell that affects your vision or you’ve just been transported into a ten year old Half-life mod?

  66. Macil says:

    As the comments before pointed out, the pillar looks awful. The textures are either stretched over the surface or low-res or something of that nature. The floor is also a mess, as well as the walls of the platform. The difference is stark vs. the stairs. The (stretched) floor texture is also repeated at the top of the stairs — or vice versa, if you prefer.

    After having looked at it for a bit, I also get this “bathroom tile” vibe from the whole structure. Like the tiles were manufactured … rather than handmade or cut from different colored stones, as would be seemingly appropriate for a medieval setting. Well, it made me curious enough to look up a history on how tiles were made in the middle ages, anyway.

    The braziers/firebowls not being lit also seems like a waste, but I guess there’s no reason they have to be. :)

  67. ifriit says:

    Gut reaction: the textures look terribly mismatched. The steps look detailed, the top of the platform looks a bit fuzzy, the pillar on the platform looks blocky and out of place… It’s pretty obvious the texture on the top step is reused on the nearest edge of the platform, too. Characters look as detailed as the steps, making them stand out, and the complete lack of shadows just looks weird.

  68. Chuk says:

    No minimap on the second one. It’s horrible!

  69. MadTinkerer says:

    The horrible pillar texture is distracting everyone from what’s behind the pillar in the second picture. Just look at it: why the heck is the ground in the distance behind the pillar stretching?

    Is it supposed to be a heat blurring effect? Is the pillar magic? Or is it a bug?

  70. King of Men says:

    The central pillar is what jumped out at me. I didn’t notice the shadow thing until after I’d read the comments, so that likely doesn’t count.

    I’m not a frequent RPG player, so maybe this wouldn’t seem too odd to a veteran, but the character in the middle seems to be female, yet she doesn’t have the most common superpower. Unusual?

  71. noneofcon says:

    I’m not really a graphics person, but it almost looks like all the graphics start out the same size and then are stretched to fit. So the smaller objects look fine, but the bigger the object gets, the worse it looks.

  72. Ian says:

    The steps have a similar size texture to the top of the steps which makes the steps look much higher quality then the top of the platform. They very top step is actually a complete copy of the platforms leading edge.

    The mapping of the texture on the steps as well is poorly done. You see a similar effect on a sphere where the applied texture doesn’t wrap to the 0th position and so it nicely applies the texture then completely reproduces it between the “last” and “first” position.

  73. pnf says:

    This isn’t the sort of thing I usually notice when I’m playing a game, but yeah, the big central column thing looks way off to me, like the image has been expanded without additional detail. The rest of the stuff pointed out by others I would have completely missed.

  74. Gildan Bladeborn says:

    Can’t say I notice anything other than how terrible those screens look, like they came from a much older game when graphics could get away with sucking that badly.

    Seriously, those are really ugly.

  75. Susie Day says:

    definitely the texture resolutions, which annoyed me before you asked for feedback. But then, I’m a graphic designer … so …

  76. JTA says:

    Not read comments yet in case I end up polluting my brain with other people’s ideas. But FWIW, it looks *freezing cold*. I mean, there’s snow and everything, and she has no shoes, and is the only one with a shadow.

    I figure that makes her a reverse-vampire, or something. Do I win a prize? :-)

    [Edit: Ah. Kay. Been and looked at the consensus now. I guess that was obvious. But in my defence I’ve been mostly been playing Colonization for Win95 and Oregon Trail lately, and they look… uh. Actually, less choppy. But I’m sticking with the excuse anyway.)

  77. Catiff says:

    Um, is it me? or does the big pillar thing she’s standing in front of look like Darth Vader?

  78. Atarlost says:

    Well, I think the textures on the stairs are a little wonky. Those huge black lines on the — um — fifth and eigth steps from the top are really quite garish and the top step uses part of the texture from the top, but stretched, which makes the diagonal tiles rhombuses, which are not a common shape for tiles to be made in.

  79. kikito says:

    Small pillars have appropiate-sized textures, but the big one does not.

    Similarly, the textures of the stairs look more “condensed” than those on the floor.

    It seems as if these guys had a very low-res max for their texture size (512×512, or even less).

    Light on the big pillar doesn’t look right (too shiny).

    None of the pillars (big or small ones) is casting any shadows.

    The player names appear on top of the other players but not on top of yours.

    You can’t see the minimap or “right dwarven energy bar” on the second screenshot. I hope this doesn’t happen because the main character is looking at the camera.

    This is all I could think of.

  80. karln says:

    Well I looked, and I looked, and couldn’t see anything major. After staring for a while I noticed there are no shadows on anything but the PC, but that’s fairly standard.

    Based on everybody else’s comments I take it we are supposed to notice the low res texture on the big column, but while I may have been subconsciously aware of this, I guess I just brushed it aside because, y’know… it’s a game. Games look like that. I can see I’m not going to be able to walk there, and that it represents a big stone monolith, and that’s enough to be going on with.

    Also, upon going back to look again, it seems my eyes really don’t want to look there. When I’m not forcing myself to look directly at it, I’m naturally focussing a little to the right of the pillar. I wonder if that’s because my eyes can’t find a good focus level for the pillar and so search for a nearby point they /can/ focus on. Hm.

  81. Nikos says:

    Camera position seems to affect character’s shadow.

  82. Shishberg says:

    Commenting without reading (much of) the comments so far…

    The big stone thing in the middle, and to a lesser extent the tiled floor beneath it, have lower resolution textures than the rest of the world.

  83. hevis says:

    Those pics have been taken pre-Mirkwood? I have totally different mid-pillar there.. There’s one big pillar in mid and 4 obelisks around it, and statues in the corners of the platform. The lack of shadows on other objects than own character is because grapics settings are so low, I have shadows everywhere. Also, you can change the visibility of your own name and others’ names in the options. Only thing that I can see that’s “wrong” is the textures..

  84. Galenor says:

    I was gonna say that the main column looks super-low-rez. Everyone else’s comment pointed out how it was just an inflated version of the tiny ones, with absolutely no regard to stretching the textures on the original pillar.

    It looks hideous! :D

  85. Carra says:

    Euhm, it’s textures are uglier then five year old games?

  86. Daf says:

    When the character turned around, her shadow stayed the same… Her staff is still over her right shoulder but when she’s facing forwards it’s pointing in the wrong direction.

    And the ugly stone pillar is ugly.

  87. Greg says:

    You’re using a high resolution and a low texture detail, which is a combination that results in rather appalling appearance in some parts of the architecture in this game.

    And I’m not sure how you got where you are, because the pillars in that court don’t look anything like that in my game. Hmm, maybe one of the add-ons fixed it.

  88. Lochiel says:

    The fact that the characters front wasn’t instantly distinguishable from their back bugged me. But it could just be poor choice in hair color.

  89. Alan De Smet says:

    The mix of high and low resolution textures (relatively speaking) makes me weep. The central pillar, and to a lesser extent the floor it’s on, are so jarring that I can’t help but focus on them and think, “Wow, this game has crappy graphics,” despite the fact that there is lots of nice looking stuff around it. It also causes the smaller bowls/pedestals to look like like they’re floating.

    Also, the lack of shadows is a bit jarring. But I only noticed that on my third or fourth revisit to the top of the post to review it.

  90. mixmastermind says:

    Your shadow changes position based on where the camera is?

  91. wererogue says:

    At first glance – massively scaled up thingy in the middle with low-res textures.

  92. Nickless says:

    The character’s hips look disproportionate to the rest of her body

  93. neminem says:

    Yeah. Add me to the growing list of people saying “that pillar in the center looks like it came from a game only slightly newer than Doom. The original Doom.”

  94. Scott says:

    Posting without reading any of the comments:

    Textures resolutions are all over the place. The ground, buildings in the background and the steps leading up to the… alter-thing look fine, but the floor and pillar itself look terrible; it’s like they took a smaller object and just scaled it up along with the textures.

  95. AshyRaccoon says:

    *jumps in without reading any comments yet*
    I first noticed the blurry texture on the huge squareish column-thing in the middle. Also, the “lighting” on it – the white part – looks too white. The bump mapping or whatever’s going on with its light and shadows doesn’t look good.

    Then I saw the texture the character is standing on is kind of blurry.
    Then I notice the same texture is used on the block at the top of the stairs, squished.
    The stairs and the brazier things have sharp textures, while the rest of the platform is blurry.

    There are no shadows anywhere but the character?

    There is something weird about the character’s pelvis, the way it joins to the legs. Shadowing, the clothes, something’s not right. I guess it’s the shape of the clothes.

    I’m getting more into “pick on everything” than “at a glance”, so I’ll stop here.

  96. Squash says:

    The background is sharper and more detailed than the foreground.

    The textures on the foregroung items (the steps and the pillar) are just a blurry mess.

  97. It wouldn’t hurt to bake in some shadows for the static objects but the main issue for me is the massive texture stretching. It looks like somebody decided to keep all the textures exactly the same size no matter the object size.

    Now I’m going to see what other folk say.

  98. felblood says:

    I couldn’t tell why it looked so bad, mostly because I was focusing on the pillar itself, and trying to decide why an old school gamer like me was so offended by what’s actually a fairly decent texture resolution.

    I needed an expert to tell me that the problem was the way the pillar relates to the objects around it, not the pillar itself.

    Also, why is there no snow on the immaculately preserved dais, when the ground around it is covered with the stuff? Is somebody shoveling the snow off of it, so that heroes can make last stands on it, without slipping?

  99. PETER says:

    I have a bad problem with LOTRO graphics on ultra high , the game started freezing up about 2 or 3 times then the PC screen would paint the components of 3D characters 2D components face , hands etc and environment textures on the screen one layer after another like fluorescent coloured Graffiti , the same problems occurred with The Witcher PC game , funny enough The Witcher worked really well on my old PC but no such luck on my new PC no matter what I did , when I lowered the graphics resolution requirements for LOTRO by about 2 or so notches from extreme ultra high it worked fine even though my PC could easily handle the ultra high requirements and started working somewhat okay with some array of similar bug symptoms that plagued Gothic 3 before and somewhat after the community patch came out , but as for the fluorescent coloured Graffiti painted on my pc screen from LOTRO , THE WITCHER only these two games have offended . As for Runes of Magic and Allods etc they are great along with the 50 + or so games I have installed on my 1Tb hard drive but I’m wondering if the reason LOTRO has a free account option is because of some dodgy coding/programming issues , maybe customers are getting fedup with these annoying problems that don’t get addressed and going elsewhere !!!
    PS John Cleese training hint hint !!!! lost a customer lately hint hint !!!!!!!!!

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