So I got my invite a few weeks ago. The NDA was lifted last week. Yay!

This is the single most gorgeous looking MMO I've ever seen. It's also a bit different from other MMO's I've played. Gone is the "gotta grind for XP" crap. LOTRO gives you buttloads more XP from doing all the different quests than your typical MMO grinding.

I've got my dwarf to level 21 so far. As the quests go, there's actually too many! I find myself out-leveling quests because I take so many. There are no shortages here.

Anywho, enough about that. Here's some screenshots!

Tom Bombadil!



Riding Past Weathertop



There's just something funny about an MMO where you can grow pipe-week and smoke it.



Gorgeous graphics...



The Ford where the "Water Horses" took out the Nazgul on the way to Rivendell



Rivendell

 

Brandywine Bridge



The Shire



Outside the Green Dragon



and Inside



Rainbow over the Shire



and Bag End, home of Bilbo Baggins





Tons more screenshots in this thread here. Didn't want to do 7 posts of pics in here. hehe.

Anyway, a game well worth checking out if you love MMO's.

 

yeah, it's pretty all right... but looks like it plays way too much like WoW for my tastes. Still, I'll give it a shot just to shut you and the Aussie up.

 

Not enough races for me to try it out. I'm not a fan of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, or Hobbits. But if it's easy to level up, that's always a plus. Looks nice as well.

 

All I care about is the music system. Hows does it work?

 

dayum, nice environ graphics.

 

My buddy at work was playing this on his home comp... says it rocks. Can't wait for the final release.

 

Looks cool! I'm not really an on-line roleplayer type but I would like to play that.
Too bad my computer probably won't run it... 

 

but can you grind and/or mash potatoes to stick in a stew?

 

They haven't done anything really with it at the moment, except allowing you to purchase and play instruments. On the keyboard, keys 1-8 are musical notes. Holding down shift or Ctrl will change the octave or whatever it's called. No bonus' for playing music yet either. Don't know if they'll put that in. There's also an ongoing thread in the beta forum with people posting the keys to play songs like "Stairway to Heaven" , "Back in Black" and tons of other songs with it  

Each class gets 1 proficiency skill for playing an instrument.

The Minstrel class is the only class that can play every instrument. They're also the healers of the game. They do minor buffing as well as being mid-range damage dealers.

If you choose "cook" as one of your 3 crafting professions, yes.  

I also should have taken pics of the random wildlife generator at work. You'll be walking along and see Deer, Squirrel's, Cony's, etc wandering around.

 

I really want to give this a whirl.

I've had enough of WoW, I need something new...

 

Question, can you sell the pipe-weed that you grow? Cause I'd almost play it just to sell weed in game.

 

It has a lot of similarities to WoW, but plenty completely different though. I'm sure you can see from the pics that the UI and all are near identical. If anything can knock down WoW's popularity though, this could be it.

It has a history. Something WoW really lacks. It has a different PVP system called "Monster Play" where you actually create a monster (3 different types of Orc, a Giant Spider, or a Warg) and do quests with it, increase it's powers, etc. All seperate from your main character. There's (thankfully) no PVP throughout most of Middle Earth. All PVP takes place in one location in the Ettenmoors.

I'm really loving this game so far. I hope it

Right now, only the Eriador region (shown below circled) is open. Which is actually HUGE. 3 weeks and I still haven't been able to travel everywhere. Gondor, Rohan, Mordor, Harad, etc will be added with later expansions.

 

If you choose a crafting profession with Farmer in it, absolutely. Even if you don't, you could buy it off of farmers and re-sell it.  

 

I'd like to try this even though I'mnot a big MMORPG fan.

 

That is awesome. I'm so tempted to do it now.

 

There should be an open beta starting in mid-late April, if you can wait it out, or sign up for beta at http://www.lotro.com

No guarentee you'll get in, but they've been having open stress test weekends twice a month. If you sign up for beta, you'll get into the stress test weekends at least.

 

IT IS JUST TOBACCO. Jeez!

 

Yes, but the kiddies don't realize that  

 

Holy crap, it really does look like a complete take on WoW .