This is the best thing to happen since Lego and Star Wars teamed up.

It does a great job of feeling like Middle Earth and keeping the lore, but the gameplay felt a little too close to WoW for me and couldn't keep me interested.

MERP was pretty badass for its time. Overly complex, ultra-detailed critical hit/failure tables ftw! I remember rolling up a wizard character one time, and the VERY FIRST time I tried casting a spell, it was a critical failure. Ended up in a coma for 3 months. Great stuff.

@Joeshie:
But... it's LORD OF THE RINGS.... ... You can't copy that at Kinko's.

You don't simply LICENSE mordor.

While the 3d modelling and design was a heartwarmingly faithful expression of the source material (Bombadil's house especially) The game was a failure - Farming was nerfed a few weeks in, and no potions from vendors meant they were uselessly expensive. The world was 90% the same shade of green-brown, and horrible, crippling in-city lag made me walk around Bree rather than through it. All the same problems as the DDO engine. Why can't I just walk into a building? Why does every door have to be a loading screen? I quit after my first month.

The only problem I had with LOTRO is that fighting didn't feel right. Even playing a melee class (which is what I like to do), you just feel so detached from it.

It really is a beautiful game. If you're an MMO or LOTR fan at all you really should at least check out the free trial. Good news on the licensing extensions.

I have the game but don't keep my subscription active for long periods of time. I re-open the sub every few months to admire the beautiful graphics and hear the musical score, but it just doesn't keep me entertained for very long. It's a good game, it just can't get me to break my WoW addiction.

Well.. what a good MMO need is lotsa lore, giganteous zillions of lore facts. And what LOTR can provide is just that. If you need a zillion names of Elfs', you just iterate over The Silmarillion.

What I don't understand is why neekerbreakers are the size a dog. I have read LOTR like eons ago, and don't remenber giganteous size insects everywhere. Other than (maybe) some spiders hidden on woods or mountains.

Besides being off lore here and there, I still think it is the best game out there, made under the license of LotR. The feeling is just right. The White Council may have outrun it, but since it will never come to life, LotRO is going to be the best LotR gaming experience out there, for a long long time.

Yeah. I like how closely they kept to the lore. You go down surrounded by a score of Orcs? No problem! You just "retreat" to some safe location! Dwarves and Elves running around the Shire? No problem! Hobbits are cosmopolotian, open-minded folks!

This game violates lore in so many ways its not even funny. They *have* to violate lore or there would be no game. Hmm...

Borefest of the rings online..
This is not an original game either, but a copy of all online games...except..

More boring...

Fantastic game, glad to see one licensee happy with the success and staying true to the lore like Turbine did.

It was a good game, but got old fast and the complete lack of endgame material really drives the stake into the Tolkien legacy - but one things for sure - they did it right.

Just not the MMO player kind of right ;D

@Shocky:

You mean they didn't appease the world of warcraft crowd enough right?

Because, you see, when normal gamers beat a game, they stop playing it.

Unlike World of Warcraft players, who sit and rot like an old couple on a farm.

Good to hear it is working out for them, even if I felt the game to be dull. 2014 is a long time, expected life of the MMO or them making new games?

@openedge
not your type of game, but Lotro suits me fine ^_^ especially when i can decide when i want to play. (lifetime sub)
imho, i think more companies should implement a lifetime membership model. Doesn't have to be 99 pounds or 150 pounds or even 300 pounds, just have it there so that ppl like me don't have to feel forced to play every month just because we paid.
@shocky
i'd like to enjoy the journey to endgame ^_^ not just rush there. Sure open warfare pvp has its time and place, but after a day's work i'd just like to find like-minded people to just chat back and forth whilst doing quests. The community in the eu version is surprisingly mature fyi.
In general, if Turbine keeps up with the level of quality with the patches it has been doing, i'll be even less inclined to switch to War.

Ramble On.

I wonder how many people have played this game lately... ya know... with all the newest end-game related content and the Angmar revamp...

Furthermore, complaining that it doesn't have "endgame content" is pretty superfluous, neither did WoW a year after it was launched. Heck, WoW was a VERY different game from when it was launched and now.

Either way, without a doubt, the BEST MMO currently available.

I'm on LOTRO to play with my brother every now and then, and I'm constantly surprised by how much content they keep adding and adding, beyond just new quests, balance fixes, and seasonal content - they've been adding entire features as well as new class skills that change how you play. Also, more recently I've noticed that I haven't been getting gold farmer /tells, so I'm guessing they're doing well with the spam killing. My only problem now is that I'm only level 20ish with a single character, so a decent amount of the new stuff is still out of reach...

I wish other MMORPGs would also adopt the "lifetime" subscription LOTRO has, where you have a single fat fee you pay and then no more monthly fees ever; I'm just not a fan of the "auto-renewing" monthly stuff, though I still do it for Tabula Rasa.