lord of the rings online

Lord of the Rings Online is a casual MMO very much in the mold of World of Warcraft. After the stress test ended, I hoped I could play some more and will likely pre-order it. I don’t see this becoming my primary game, but I usually have a “serious” game and a “relax” game. My serious game at the moment is EverQuest 2. LotRO is well placed to be my “relax” game.
Here are the pros and cons I saw in my six or so total hours of play over the weekend.

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Returned to the game only to be put in a queue. The game initially said it would be fifteen minutes before I got in the game, but it was more like five. I hate queues. Not for the first time, I wonder what “Game Experience May Change During Online Play” really means.

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Ah, Captain Brackenbrook wants me to kill stuff. FINALLY.
Browsing through character window, come across a family tree. I wonder if this would let me form relationships among my characters? That would be cool. I can change my generation here but that doesn’t seem to affect anything.
Loading window tells me that the first player or fellowship to hit a monster gets credit. Powerleveling technique?
Amdir directs me to my trainer and gives me more copper. What a guy. Maybe he could just give me all his copper now so I could stop bugging him.
Minstrel trainer says hello and lets me buy a new skill, which I then must drag to my hotbar. Yup, WoW. UI problem: The cost for my other skills is listed in silver and copper. The little icon for a copper piece is… silver. I check out the merchants in the vicinity but I can’t afford anything they sell yet. I need to shake Amdir down for more money.
I bank into my turns while running like an airplane. Wheeee Zooooom! Ah, now Celandine will talk to me! She wants me to gather kingsfoil with which to treat Amdir’s wound. The finished potion will heal “morale”. That’s Amdir’s problem? He just needs some cheering up? I have a song that adds 51 morale. Why can’t I just sing him well?
Sigh. Didn’t work. But it should have. Dangerous looking guy with a wicked pike needs ME to kill the wolves attacking his flock. Okay! Kung fu wolf killing action! Oops, sorry, I thought your sheep was a wolf in sheep’s clothing! HAHAHAHA! Huh, no exp….

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I’m writing these notes as I am playing the game. They may be a little scattered 😛
Character creation: No female dwarves? I suppose they could be male or female and you just don’t know. Hobbits look decent. The Hobbit movie makes hobbits look too long in the torso and short in the leg, but the character models in the selection screen look good. All the races look good in character selection.

Hobbit class choices are Minstrel, Guardian, Hunter and Burglar. At this screen, I don’t know any details about the classes. Those would probably have been described in the manual. Years of MMOs have taught me that I like support characters best, and since Dina on EQ2 is a hobbit bard, I’m going to make a hobbit minstrel here.

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