i only ever practiced Lore once on a melee, because after i found how useless it was i never wasted the pracs again. i'm sure i'm not the only one.
i think there are a few possible solutions to make lore a viable skill:
1.) allow brambus to id antineutral items
-OR-
2.) significantly lower the chance of a successful lore, but make it equivalent to id
-OR-
3.) slightly lower the chance of a successful lore and increase the mana cost, but make it equivalent to id
One use for lore is that it tells you the material the item is made of.
And where it comes from. Identify does not do that. I have found it EXTREMELY frustrating with an identify class to have found some 'phat lewt' and identified it, but not having a clue as to it's location so that I can get it again after it's been looted from my still-warm corpse five moments later.
Dey
oh yah, forgot about that
Then you do this after you ID it and find it's name:
cast/commune locate
I believe any class with ID also gets 'locate object'.
Though some can't be located until 50 and even then
some can't, so those few instances would put lore
above 'locate object'. Just take a char with lore to
50, lore every object you find, copy, paste into notepad
and you've got a list of the locations. Next, make a cleric,
ID every object you find, copy, paste into notepad, and
you've got ID's and locations! 
if it is a rare, and the mob doesn't hold it at the moment, locate is not worth anything
and that's why we have bards.
best of both worlds, only...everybody laughs at you.
Also, some items can't be located, or only located when you get to certain levels.
LOL@phat lewt
Okay...so the arguments I've heard...
"if it is a rare, and the mob doesn't hold it at the moment, locate is not worth anything"
If its not there, Lore doesn't either 
because you couldn't get it.
"Also, some items can't be located, or only located when you get to certain levels."
If that's the case, chances are you couldn't get it anyway.
Okay...so the arguments I've heard...
"if it is a rare, and the mob doesn't hold it at the moment, locate is not worth anything"
If its not there, Lore doesn't either
But if you have the item yourself and you want to know where it is, and the mob doesn't have it, Lore will tell you the area. And even if you do find the mob that has it via 'locate object' you're still out of luck if you don't know where that mob is.
Lore has it's benefits that makes it useful in different ways to identify/locate object, and it is helpful to newer players who want to know where things can be found. If you think it's a waste of practices, don't practice it. Simple.
Okay...so the arguments I've heard...
"if it is a rare, and the mob doesn't hold it at the moment, locate is not worth anything"
If its not there, Lore doesn't either
"Also, some items can't be located, or only located when you get to certain levels."
If that's the case, chances are you couldn't get it anyway.
Found in corpse?
So? Then you have it. Knowing where it is if you can't get it is pretty useless. I mean it can help you down the road, but its still useless at the moment. So knowing where it is if its above your level or not there won't help you for a while.
If you lose it and want to find a new one later on?
I said it can help you down the road. But if its beyond your lvl you can't get it anyway, and if you are old enough to get it you can locate it.
find it at 17 in a pit. die to a ranksitter at 30. lose it. at 50, figure, "maybe I could get that nice shiny now that I found in the pit half a century ago". then it is nice to know where it is. this might be hard for you to understand, since you know where much more shinies are to be found. I'm quite new, so I find it useful to find out where all new things I find come from.
Guys, as it has been proven it isn't worth arguing with Warpnow. We've all learned by now that he is never wrong. If only I had known that before not going along with his role play plots.... if only....
a-g
I love it when instead of arguing the matter at hand they insult the person who disagrees with them.
such idiocy is hillarious.
Warpnow, to be blunt, your argument is BS and you are arguing for the sake of arguing, which is what a_g called you out on it.
Let me give an example of a warpnow style argument.
"Lore and locate object are BOTH useless. Why? If you've been playing the game a long time, and already know where everything is, what's the point of it?"
Here is some heartfelt advice for you that I hope you will take and understand. Don't argue about it, just take it.
You usually aren't completely right, and quite often aren't right at all. Don't act like you are. It's annoying.
You are generally being viewed, right now, as a pain in the ***. An unnecessary pain in the ***.
You do not know more about this game than most people here. You do not even know more about this game than a majority of the people here. In fact, to take it a step farther, you are not even one of the better -players- here. Your PK is nonexistent, and your RP, while solid, has failed, for the most part, in one major aspect: making people care about it. You have not played here longer than many of us, you are not a better player than most of us, and you certainly are not more educated or more intelligent than us (possibly save for Balinor). In other words, you are a very ordinary player, and your beliefs and arguments do NOT hold more weight than anyone else in this game...and considerably less than many. Kindly remember that.
Stop it. Or you will be permanently removed from this forum. You are no longer playing the game, according to you, and quite frankly, you are not a positively contributing member to this forum either. You annoy more people, IMM and mort both, on this forum, than anyone else, and engage in criticism and complaints more than anything else. I don't think many will complain if we simply banned you. I don't think many will at all. So stop it.
Please take these suggestions close to heart, as they are sincere from me. I'd rather not have to ban you, but I am very close to putting you on a zero-tolerance policy.
Thread locked.