How many levels does trial give me?

[dirkanator]

I have played up until the part where i am supposed to help save Archet from the assault. Now it says i need to download more content to continue ( i am level 5) ..... but i have apparently 8 more gigs to download before i can?


So i have to wait the 5 days to download this content before i can get past level 5, and i have 7 days left on the trial...
does anyone else see the issue here?

[Kentelyoo]

They made it this way so you can create your character and begin to play before the whole thing has finished downloading. The funny thing is people are usually angrier for it. Anyway, there is no level limit with the trial.

[ironlevi]

5 days to download 8 gigs?

You should get a discount from the price of free to half the price of free then.

The whole game should easily download overnight.

[DarquePervert]

5 days to download 8 gigs?

You should get a discount from the price of free to half the price of free then.

The whole game should easily download overnight.

Not everyone an internet connection as fast as yours.


One thing you can do, dirkanator, is find someone who does have a faster 'net connection and borrow it to download the full client from this link: http://turbine.fuzeqna.com/lotro.sup....asp?kbid=1554
Save it to a portable hard drive or a larger thumbdrive (The client w/ Hirez textures is about 9GB, I believe).
once you get the full game client, take it home, uninstall what you have and install from the downloaded client. You should need very few patches, and you'll have the whole game installed, and don't have to suffer with Turbine Download Manager.

The problem you're running into is trying to leave the introduction instance. The "rest of the world" content has not downloaded yet, so you're unable to leave "newbie land". You can still level up by running around killing mobs, but that will get pretty boring pretty quick, especially as you level up.

[WaterRat]

Glad I found this. I had given up (at level 5) because of this. I get a message that further download is required and will complete shortly, but no real info at all. After half an hour I gave up. I had assumed that that was as far as the free trial allowed me to go, not enough to judge the game properly, and stopped playing. So my trial period is almost finished.

There is no information given about the size of the download or the approx. time required. I am to say theleast astonished at the statement above saying a further 8giga is asked for. Lotro has already downloaded about 10giga and no way can I create a further 8 or 9 on that partition.

What then is the total space requirement needed at this stage to complete the trial - even if I now have time to continue within the 7 days allowed?

[Penter-Kar]

Glad I found this. I had given up (at level 5) because of this. I get a message that further download is required and will complete shortly, but no real info at all. After half an hour I gave up. I had assumed that that was as far as the free trial allowed me to go, not enough to judge the game properly, and stopped playing. So my trial period is almost finished.

There is no information given about the size of the download or the approx. time required. I am to say theleast astonished at the statement above saying a further 8giga is asked for. Lotro has already downloaded about 10giga and no way can I create a further 8 or 9 on that partition.

What then is the total space requirement needed at this stage to complete the trial - even if I now have time to continue within the 7 days allowed?

The total size of the download is about 9-10 GB. I think it unpacks and installs to about 12GB. The time required to download will depend on several things, including your internet connection, your ISP, time of day, etc.

- Pent

[dirkanator]

thanks for the replies. it turns out my roommate had hooked up a hub to the router and ran the connections of the hub for whatever reason, it was killing our connections... last night i put it back directly to the router and managed to download about 6 gigs overnight, which means i only have 1 gig left and still have about 4 days on the trial, should get a good 3 days out of this 10 day trial afterall ! anyways, i hope i can get to bree i wanted to see that place

[Kentelyoo]

thanks for the replies. it turns out my roommate had hooked up a hub to the router and ran the connections of the hub for whatever reason, it was killing our connections... last night i put it back directly to the router and managed to download about 6 gigs overnight, which means i only have 1 gig left and still have about 4 days on the trial, should get a good 3 days out of this 10 day trial afterall ! anyways, i hope i can get to bree i wanted to see that place

If you want to get to Bree fast, create a Man character. After the intro in Archet, you will be just next to Bree. But I encourage you to go to the Shire and to Ered Luin (N-W of the Shire) as well. You can just run there, its not dangerous if you stick to the roads.

[batitheone]

The total size of the download is about 9-10 GB. I think it unpacks and installs to about 12GB. The time required to download will depend on several things, including your internet connection, your ISP, time of day, etc.

- Pent

what is more,the exact size of lotro is 12.3GB,but i am confused about your internet connection,I thought my dl speed is the lowest,and it only took 2days, meanwhile,i had sveral times off net for school.

[Caitlyn]

1. ALL of us on the CURRENT FREE TRIAL that were still downloading (or started downloading thereafter) and hadn't left newbie land when the TDM problem occurred on 3/12 are experiencing this problem.

2. You should be able to leave newbie land.

3. While the downloading process before the 3/12 TDM problem was slow it was WORKING, I got an identical system up and running earlier in the week prior to the 3/12 TDM problem. This is a DISTINCT and CONSISTANT, NEW set of behaviors being reported by multiple CURRENT FREE TRIAL users.

4. Please see my post on the problem here: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=254956 and cross-posted below.

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PLEASE NOTE: The alternate download at LOTRO support here: http://turbine.fuzeqna.com/lotro.sup....asp?kbid=1554 does NOT work for the CURRENT FREE TRIAL because the CURRENT FREE TRIAL does NOT get a product key AND the alternate downloads REQUIRE A PRODUCT KEY. The ONLY means of obtaining the download for the CURRENT FREE TRIAL is the TDM. Please do not assume that the alternate download is the solution -- it is not and will only cause those of us dealing with this problem to lose the tiny progress we've made trying to download with the TDM. For those that want verification, information/links are at the end of this post.

=======================

The TDM is exhibiting a very specific set of behaviors for those of us currently dealing with the CURRENT FREE TRIAL. There are currently multiple posts in this forum dealing with this specific TDM FREE TRIAL problem. I have been dealing with it all weekend with UNIFORM behavior after having successfully got another pc up and running WITH THE EXACT SAME hardware and software earlier this week before the TDM problem arose.

=======================

The specifics of the behavior are as follows:

- There appears to be a two-part process for each group or batch (for instance “tutorial,” ‘introduction,” “full game,” etc) of files. First each “batch” goes through a “creating/validating” process then it goes through the “downloading” process. On all the batches of files prior to the “full game” batch both processes ("creating/validating" process and "downloading" process) completed successfully.

- On the “full/game” batch (which is a 10.13 GB batch) it is not getting through the first process -- the “creating/validating” process and therefore it never gets to the "downloading" process. In fact since the "creating/validating" process for the "full game" batch takes so extremely long and I can’t sit there watching I suspect it may even be restarting itself sometimes. I’ve left it running for **hours** (for instance over multiple nights and days now) to see and it never gets through the “creating/validating” process. To give an idea on time I have observed the process is running as slow as 10-20 MB an hour and over the last 8 hour period it only completed 480 MB and that's given I get 8 MB/s download 1 MB/s upload (I have *tested* *and* *confirmed* I get those speeds). The processing time is not uniform though and at times it does get a burst of comparative speed (say a big 100-120 KG) or slow down to what appears to be a complete stop. In fact this processing is so slow that users not specifically watching the very slowly moving MB/GB numbers above the very bottom status bar likely think there is no progress as is being reported in other posts here on the problem. This would be natural to confirm since the receive and send speeds are more often than not being reported on the very bottom status bar of TDM as being 0 KBs or < 1 KB.

- I am able (and still able) to play in the newbie areas, (both elf and human version) and complete all the content in the newbie areas. But when I attempt to access the last newbie area quest, through the associated NPC, the quest dialog window for that NPC displays a message to the effect that the game must finish downloading before I can do the quest. I therefore cannot leave the newbie areas as is also being reported by multiple other posts here.

=======================

My efforts to resolve the problem have included:

1. I've downloaded and installed the TDM "fix."

1. I’ve given firewall permissions to everything even vaguely related to the program and adjusted all other security software on anything and everything that might even be vaguely related. This caused no change in performance, the prior settings were sufficient and in fact were also sufficient to download the alternate download (that doesn't work for free trials, see below.) I've left the extraordinarily liberal settings in place for now though in a now desperate attempt to perhaps improve performance by a KB or two.

2. I attempted an uninstall/reinstall but the uninstall did not completely uninstall the game (In fact I believe it actually uninstalled very little and gave no feedback, such as a confirming message, whatsoever).

4. I ran a complete disk error check, downloaded and re-installed the Download Manager fix again and started the entire process again through the Download Manager.

5. I've rebooted the pc and network multiple times.

None of these efforts have changed or improved the behavior. Again, keep in mind I just successfully got a duplicate of this pc on this network and ISP up and running earlier this week.

=======================

I have spent a considerable amount of my time putting this information together in the hope that:

1. It will draw the attention of Turbine staff and be useful to them in resolving the problem. I would be happy to provide further information if required.

2. Other CURRENT FREE TRIAL users will confirm the behavior and report any findings of their own.

3. If there is an actual solution (the alternate download is NOT a solution for the CURRENT FREE TRIAL users, please see below) that someone will post information.

Thanks in advance for any assistance,
Caitlyn


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NOTES ON THE ALTERNATE LOTRO SUPPORT DOWNLOAD THAT CAN **NOT** BE USED BY **CURRENT FREE TRIAL** USERS

These notes deal with the CURRENT FREE TRIAL users in relation to the non-TDM LOTRO Support download here: http://turbine.fuzeqna.com/lotro.sup....asp?kbid=1554

The downloads at that page require a PRODUCT KEY.

The CURRENT FREE TRIAL does NOT provide a product key.

For verification of this we turn to the "Minion of Turbine Download Manager" TwistedVis in the sticky post here: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=161704 on this forum.

Specifically we look at this portion of his post:

There are different installers mentioned and linked to in that article:
1. 14-Day Free Trial (Includes signup for trial and download via Turbine Download Manager, includes High Resolution data)
2. Standard resolution downloadable installer (game download only, no trial flow, does not use TDM)
3. High-resolution downloadable installer (game download only, no trial flow, does not use TDM)

Going through that item by item we se that number 2 and number 3 state: NO TRIAL FLOW and does NOT use TDM.

We see that number 1 -- the 14-day free trial is VIA TDM ONLY.

For those that want additional verification I followed the advice to uninstall and reinstall using the alternate download and did so after having painfully got through 4 GB of the 10.13 GB process. The alternate download CANCELLED ITSELF because as a CURRENT FREE TRIAL user I did NOT have a product key. As a result I lost that 4 GB progress and in the painfully slow day to day and half since I have only made up 1 GB of that progress. I'd rather not repeat the experiment.

[Penter-Kar]

See Tarrant's post, The Lord of the Rings Online™ Free Trial FAQ. At the top under General Trial Questions are two links. The first link is to create a trial account. The second link is to download the client without TDM (this is the same link others here have posted). You should be able to create a trial account without using the trial client.

- Pent

[Tarrant]

There is no information given about the size of the download or the approx. time required. I am to say theleast astonished at the statement above saying a further 8giga is asked for. Lotro has already downloaded about 10giga and no way can I create a further 8 or 9 on that partition.

I would just like to clarify that TDM does not download 10 gigs and then another 10 gigs. The "first" 10 gigs is just TDM allocating the space, and then it actually begins the download.

[Caitlyn]

See Tarrant's post, The Lord of the Rings Online™ Free Trial FAQ. At the top under General Trial Questions are two links. The first link is to create a trial account. The second link is to download the client without TDM (this is the same link others here have posted). You should be able to create a trial account without using the trial client.

- Pent

Pent,

Thank you for your interest.

Yes, I created a trial account at the page indicated. That was why I was able to play both newbie lands as I indicated in my post.

And yes as indicated in my post, I downloaded and executed the alternate version on the other link. As far as the execution of that alternate version at the point corresponding to screenshot number 10 on the help page it asked that a product key be INPUT. When I attempted to advance without inputing a product key the process cancelled itself and backed out the changes.

As explained in my post, this experience appears to be confirmed by this forum's resident "Minion of Turbine Download Manager" TwistedVis in his Sticky Note here: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=161704

And so, as I explained in my post, because I uninstalled the TDM version to attempt the alternate install I lost the very painfully and slowly gained 4 MB of progress I had made using TDM.

If you have actually downloaded and somehow completed the execution of the alternate version in the last few days WITHOUT A PRODUCT KEY and can verify such, that however would be new information and much appreciated.

Thanks,

edit: for clarity