Lord of the Rings Online Beta Impressions

Yes, I'm in the beta. Actually, I was in the beta just after it came out of Alpha, so was part of the second group to get in. Stepping back a few months, however....

When news came out that a Lord of the Rings MMO was in development, if you put a group of fantasy MMO fans in a room and told them that, you could have visually measured the excitement levels.

If you then told them that Turbine was doing the developing, you could almost watch them deflate with disappointment. After all, it was Turbine that had two MMOs go south in a hurry, with Asheron's Call 2 growing stagnant then dying less than two years after going live, and then the much-awaited Dungeons and Dragons Online opening to tepid reviews, especially as the power gamers hit max level (of 10) within a week of the game hitting shelves. No PVP (at the time, now fixed), no crafting, nothing to do but (for the most part) dungeon crawl over and over and over again..

Well, I have some good news for everyone. Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar is more of what Turbine was when Asheron's Call was new, as opposed to what they seemed when D&D Online went live. The game, quite simply, rocks.

You have four base races: Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit and Man (broken into I believe three different groups based on where in Middle Earth you're from (I recall Dalelands, Gondor and the Horselords off the top of my head). Each race has its own classes: Champion (DPS Deluxe), Captain (Alt tank / party buffs), Guardian (Main tank), Hunter (ranged attack / debuff), Minstrel (buff/debuff), Burgler (debuff and stealth, DoT), and Lore-Master (pet class / DD spells / stuns).

As with any post-WoW game, LOTR Online has a metric crapton of quests, both standard ones (denoted by a golden ring above the target's head) and Main Storyline quests (which have the One Ring above).

The game also features PvP, of a sort, as players can play as monsters (once they reach level 10). Granted, the monsters are rather limited as of yet, but generally are made to challenge higher level PCs. There's a lot of tradeskilling in the game, but each group of tradeskills is very heavily dependent upon the other groups in order to make their items.

The game also allows for player music, with the keyboard acting as the keys (or strings) of the instrument you play, with every class capable of learning at least one musical instrument. In the beta forums, there's a heavy thread on how to import actual songs into the game, which is really quite nice. The controls are complex enough that it allows for two-note chords, which is really nice.

Also one of the interesting things is Achievements, which is similar to EQ2's system, except it's quite a bit more advanced. You also have a Virtue system, which allows you to slot extra abilities that you can gain along the way.

Want more? How about Kinships, where you can actually adopt other characters as your children, as far down as 20 generations? Marriage, also, is in the game.

I'll be doing a preview for Gaming Trend here in a few weeks, but really, the only thing that can really kill LOTR right now is the pre-order package, which allows players to get into the Open Beta, and keep their characters when the game goes live, as long as they pay for the retail game within 30 days of launch.

Specifically, the problem with this is that the uber guilds will all pre-order, be max level by the time the game comes out....and then that's that.

But....give it a shot when open beta comes around, you might just find something worth playing for a good while.