Let me start things off by saying I'm not a fan of the Lord of the Rings. The movies were a lot of fun, the books were good enough. The setting... well it doesn't really get my heart pumping. It just isn't that interesting to me anymore.

Now that we've established I'm a heathen, LotRO is bland and uninspiring. The visuals are realistic and overall nice. But on the flip side, bland. Very bland. Compared to the over the top flavor of WoW or the shear beauty and detail of GW LotRO is just... boring. Every weapon I've seen has been realistic at least, which is a nice change from over the top and stupid like some of WoW's weapons, yet, for all that a world with immortal elven smiths and dwarven Master Smiths really should be able to have better looking gear. I don't need flaming swords (mind you they would be nice) or The Aegis of the Blood God but damn guys. Give me something.

This really goes for the armour, hell especially goes for the armour! Now we all know I'm a whore for style and I want things to look *good* this has been... well... problematic so far. You see I'm level 14 and so far I have yet to get one piece of armour that wasn't the same colour and model. And that's awful. Absolutely awful. Frankly none of the armours I've seen even on high level characters are all that compelling. It's realistic and that's not a bad thing, but after say... WoW with the tier armours (I'm still drooling over War tiers 2-5) I don't get the same thrill. It's just... bleh.

Which brings us to PvP. And I absolutely don't care. I don't consider LotR to have "honest" PvP. Some players take the roll of monsters / monster classes with separate gear and all that. Half of the time you're not on your own character that you know and use, whom you geared and gained your skill on. Or at least half of the players aren't. And that's just... well bleh. It's still a contest of skill but it's not one I enjoy.

On the plus side, the Traits and Titles system is really cool. Really really cool! Not talent points cool but still awesome. I enjoy it, it's fun, and there's a great sense of accomplishment when you get a new trait or title.

Another thing that... well it bugs me is that major characters from the setting are all around. I really don't like seeing these big name characters running around and doing things. Frankly, the setting is rich and well fleshed out enough that they could have set it at a different time and had events that aren't covered in the books happen. We could explore new territory, this could be set after Return or even well before The Hobbit and be utterly amazing. But no. And seeing Strider giving out quests or watching Elron one shot a Troll just bugs me. I don't want to be following the story of the books I want to be making my own story! I'm here to do things that the story NPCs are too lazy to do and I'm not really doing anything but watching it happen. I've complained numerous times about games where the player isn't the main character of the story. I hate that. It bothers me. It's *wrong.*

Let's talk about crafting. It's awful. End of story. Too much interdependence too much detail, and well. Ugh. WoW struck a fine balance and managed to make a really good system. Warhammer looks to be making a really good system. This has good animations, but, overall the system is crap. It's overcomplicated and cumbersome. I suspect that it has great end game gear that you can craft and have it be really useful unlike WoW but... uh... yeah no.

You know the other big thing? This game made WoW flinch. I don't even see how that's physically possible at this point. Side by side there is no comparison. WoW still disgusts me but it's better than this. End of story. LotRO is... at the end of the day... not even a contender for being one of the major MMOs. It's got a strong fanbase of... fanboys and probably diehards. And I don't care.

Oh, and can I bitch about being disappointed for a second? Please. Look at the in game map. You can zoom out to see the full "world map" including all the other regions. In truth, you're restricted to one comparatively small region. And that sucks. It's disappointing. They either shouldn't have let me zoom out that far or they should have fleshed out the world. Damn it.

So, in the end, I don't think the game is worth my money. At all. I don't think it's a good game. I don't think it's compelling. BUT I have friends that play and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning isn't out yet. So I'm going to continue to give it a try and probably buy it for a few months. But unless end game content is spectacular I don't see myself playing this overmuch. Hell VC in WoW has a better storyline and overall is more fun.

Things I don't know / haven't seen yet:

The guild (kinship) system. I think my friends have a guild.... I don't really know. If they do they certainly haven't brought me in. And they don't use Xfire. bastards.
The Playerbase. I haven't had any really positive or negative interactions yet. We shall see.