I signed up, got the binary and made my character yesterday, as well as began the intro missions. The first 5 to 6 levels fly by and are pretty typical, and pretty easy to complete. Typical stuff, go here, kill this, go there kill that…walk back and get your reward. The imagery is fantastic, and I am a big LOTR fan so seeing the setting was awesome.

Today I finished the intro quests and began the ‘real’ game. It’s lame. More of the same. Take this here and get it fixed, go there and kill that thing. Blah. Also, and maybe I need to read the docs, but I am spoiled by GuildWars and the map warp feature. LOTRO has a TON of walking in it. I seriously spent an hour all told today walking from place to place. When you pay by the month there is little reason for the developers to make traveling easy. I gotta say though…I have better things to do than watch my short legged dwarf walk from town to town and back again. I wouldn’t pay to play any way, but spending all that time walking, means I really wouldn’t pay.

One thing I liked was that since it’s a persistent world, and because it will be pay to play, even during quests there are other people all over the place. A few times I was invited to “Fellowship” with other avatars (though I declined all offers, I need more friends and commitments like I need a shotgun blast to the face). But also, even if the other people are not in your group they can help you slay things. I was the receiver and benefactor of this type of help a couple of times and it was quite cool.

All in all, if you like LOTR, and you like the typical MMORPG game play, you will like this. If either of those are not your bag, you will likely hate it.