LOTRO: A nice surprise... 88% from me.

(For the benefit of those who haven't tried this game yet)

I began playing the open beta not so long ago, and with all the forum reports of lag and poor performance, I wasn't too hopeful that this would run well on my system. I have a pretty crappy graphics card you see - an onboard NVidia 6150 sharing system RAM, which struggles with most new games. So after I downloaded the beta and logged in, realising too late that I had downloaded the US version and not the European one (oops), I was shocked that the game ran... okay.

The game had configured itself for medium settings and high textures; I only had to turn off the "post processing" option for a nice boost in frame rate. LOTRO looks pretty great even at such lowly graphics settings. Beyond a little lag and choppiness, it runs smoothly on my AMD Venice 3000 (1.8GHz), with 2GB of RAM, but that's likely due to the amount of RAM I have (even though my graphics card eats 128MB of it).

I'm one of those MMO gamers who love the character creation process. I'm pleased to say that LOTRO has a broad array of options to get your character looking the way you want him or her. A nice touch was the little introduction movies for every race and class; LOTRO works pretty hard to involve you in the story and the lore of Tolkien's world right from the very beginning. I liked the look of the Lore Master class, so I created a human with a long beard, a scar over his eye, and then chose the sort of trustworthy, middle-aged face that I thought would fit well with my chosen profession. After picking my heritage and choosing a name (and the game gives you some pretty good lore-based suggestions for this), Andred of Rohan, Lore Master, was good to go.

The first scripted newby quest was a nice way to start the game. It brought me up to speed in about two minutes flat, which isn't really surprising as the interface and control system is much like any other MMO. The starter quest was a good, solid story to begin with, and I had fun whacking the bad guys with my staff and setting them on fire. The quest led to Archett - a small village in Bree-land - and more newby quests that I was expecting to see at such a low level - collection, kill, talk-to and a few wildcards to keep them interesting. Archett, the npc's and the surrounding area somehow made LOTRO seem more alive than other MMO games. Just little touches like the npc's walking around, carrying stuff, sitting around, or talking to each other. Or the little white flowers swaying in the breeze as you run through them, and leaves falling from the trees. Another great touch is the keyboard-playable musical instrument feature, and I recently saw a band of players in Comb trying to play the theme tune from the LOTR movie. They are are all admittedly small but I think great touches that make LOTRO feel like a living world.

Combat seemed to be a little rough around the edges to me, and after reading a few posts on the LOTRO forums, that's something the devs want to improve in the first month of the game. It's all very standard and what you would expect from an MMO here, although I think the animations are pretty nice. The Lore Master is a kind of a big debuff, secondary heal, crowd control pet class (who the devs say needs a few tweaks), but although a little gimped, I was enjoying the playstyle quite a bit. The social group (or fellowship) system is so easy to use, and so well designed, that I doubt anyone would ever have a problem finding a group.

This game is focused upon the stories and quests, because grinding on mobs gives little experience reward. It is the quests that give the big rewards and returns here. Mobs are tied in to the quests, of course, but they are also mainly tied in to certain tradeskilling professions for materials. So rather than simply mob grinding your way up the level ladder, you are instead following a series of short stories and quests - all of which are interesting to read and follow - and give that important feel of adventure to the game, leading you ever futher into the world. There is also an exploration and skill system built into the game that goes one step further from most MMO's, and gives you bonus skill and ability rewards when you complete a series of explorations, or even when you use a certain skill quite a lot. These are called "deeds", which in turn reward you with "Talents"; further improve your class skills and abilities. Special titles are also available early on, for killing creatures, completing quests, or even simply not dying to whatever you fight as you go along. All of this seemed fresh and interesting to me and after quite a few levels I was still having fun and enjoying myself.

To sum it all up, LOTRO feels like a good game with great potential, but still in it's early, glitchy stages yet. You might have to turn a blind eye to an unpolished feature or two and forgive the intermittent lag here and there, but it feels to me like LOTRO is headed in the right direction for PvE story-driven fun. I think I will be pre-ordering this one.

Edit: After playing a good while longer, I'll give LOTRO a score of 88% overall: Not AMAZING - but pretty DAMN GOOD.