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And so far I'm enjoying it. Has a Titan Quest feel to it as far as graphics go. Pretty polished although the character models are lacking a tad. Each race does things that will remind you of the LOTR world. Dwarves give this crazy ass laugh when taking on more than one mob. Very Gimli'ish. The elves look like elves and so forth.

The combat is similar to Titan Quest unless you go into first person. Then it feels more EQ'ish. The first person feels a lot more comfortable than first person in WoW. The UI is much like WoW, with a few add-ins that people commonly use in WoW. Quest window resembles monkey-quest add on etc..

Pretty cool story going so far. You start off with the prison break ala EQ with you a ranger and two hobbits. The hobbits are named Brandybrook and Baggins. You are soon visited by a Nazgul (which looked awesome btw) and it takes you into the playing world. Lots of quest that give a much better storyline to follow than WoW or EQ does at low levels. In fact it peaks when you go into an instanced zone to save the starting town. After that you enter the big world (farther zones open up and most are lvl 6 plus). This is where I am at now.

Classes. Fighters, Champions, Hunters (they are everywhere) and the one I am playing Lore Master. The Lore Master has animal pets much like a beastlord/hunter from WoW. They also get enchanter like mez spells. and shammie like dots. Pretty fun class so far.

My pc is as follows:
AMD 4200+dual core
Asus A8N-SLI Premium mobo
Nvidia 7600GT x 2 running in SLI
Creative X-Fi Soundcard
2gb of Corsair XMS TwinX DDR 400
OS:Windows XP Pro/Media Addition

This system is running the game in 1280x1024 with all settings maxed. Game runs smooth as silk. Graphics far exceed what I expected after looking at the video's. In /ooc people are stating the game is running smooth with much less of a system.

The gameworld really has a LOTR feel to it. Rolling hills with torn buildings and ancient shrines. Big use of bloom effect also. The story is taking place much later after the LOTR trilogy. In fact, the storyline so far is a Nazgul searching after the Baggins/Brandybrook hobbits for info of an ancient tool. The Baggins hobbit keeps referring to crazy story told by dead and gone "mad" Baggins and swears he has no knowledge of what they seek.

With Turbine's track record with MMO's I am still skeptical. I'll have to see further into the world to see if it keeps sinking you in. They have taken a lot of WoW and EQ features (much like all upcoming MMO's) and used them pretty well. Their biggest accomplishment will be making the game feel unique. We will have to see how all this plays out....

It's good to hear that the graphics are better than what the trailer showed.

Sounds interesting

I looked into this game a long while back. Sorta lost intrest when I found there was little to no magic ingame (casters) is this still true? Albeit it may still be worth a looksee regardless. Was waiting for it to be more polished

Well my class is about the most magic based. I can dot/mez/summon/leech mana, but not nuke as a Wizzie would per se. I think it's sticking true to the true magic casters grey/white council with only a dozen or so true caster people in the world.

I will say I am amazed at how smooth this game runs to still be in Alpha.

Dear xKALECx,

I hate you. Please die in a fire.

Love,

Donnel

P.S. can you send your alpha materials to me before you die in said fire? thanks.

Yeah, I want to play ~ O.o

I would share the client with you guys (like I've done in the past), but the key code marries itself to your PC. You can't install it on a second machine.

Excuses excuses :P

More infoz plz!

Methinks you need to start a daily journal!

So last night I started doing quests that centered around pickup up items. A team of those spiders (from LOTR3) attacked a nearby farm and was slaughtering people left and right. I was supposed to go in and try to retrieve some items for an NPC that was left behind in his escape. Well come to find out...items spawn ala EQ instead of staying static like most in WoW. But the respawn wasnt bad. People were working together since we are all the same lvl, and were forming lines. So I came back late at night and it was empty and a lot more fun to fight to them and retrieve.

Also another thing I noticed was the Champion class ability. They are seen as combat leaders and have an ability called Battlecry. When they shout it a tall pole with a centered flag spawns around the group and gives them combat bonuses. In fact, when you are close to the flag you can hear drums like the orcs banged when marching to battle. Pretty cool effect.

The other melee class also has instant shouts, and the hunter class has traps. When shooting their AOE arrows they actually point there bows up at an angle.

Still having a good bit of fun. Actually played until 4am. They are stressing the servers today to test server loads, so I'll let you know how that plays out.....

I thought, according to their website, it was the Captain class that placed battle flags on the ground? They list 7 classes:

Champion: DPS fighter

Guardian: Tanking fighter

Captain: 2nd tier fighter, but does battle shouts and drops buffing flags

Burgler: standard rogue

Hunter: Ranged DPS + traps

Minstrel: group buffs, enemy group debuffs, fight a little

Loremaster: what you said.

All that from: http://lotro.turbine.com/index.php?page_id=73

-Arlos

Not a very large selection of classes. The only purecasting class is the loremaster? Maybe they will add more classes before launch.

Can you post screenshots? Like of the UI? Is that totally against the rules?

Ginzburgh wrote:Not a very large selection of classes. The only purecasting class is the loremaster? Maybe they will add more classes before launch.

Magic in that world is supposed to be rare.

I like a large variety of classes in my MMORPGs.

Indeed, the only "Wizards" as such in Tolkein are converted Maia like Gandalf, etc. They're not human, they're not elves, they're basically powerful spirits that agreed to come to middle earth to help the mortal races against Sauron. (who was himself a Maia, though one of the strongest of the bunch.) Balrogs are corrupted Maia, which was done by Morgoth, who was Sauron's old boss in the previous age.

-Arlos

Looks like someone read the Silmarilion.

Yalp. Long long time ago, though.

-Arlos

arlos wrote:I thought, according to their website, it was the Captain class that placed battle flags on the ground? They list 7 classes:

Champion: DPS fighter

Guardian: Tanking fighter

Captain: 2nd tier fighter, but does battle shouts and drops buffing flags

Burgler: standard rogue

Hunter: Ranged DPS + traps

Minstrel: group buffs, enemy group debuffs, fight a little

Loremaster: what you said.

All that from: http://lotro.turbine.com/index.php?page_id=73

-Arlos

It may be Captain's that use the flags. (Loremaster is all I played) Burglers are not in the game right now. I'll see if I can take some screens to post.

I WANNA MAKE A RANGER AND NAME HIM LEGOLAS. BET NO ONE HAS THOUGHT OF THAT!

Okay I was mistaken. Burglers are there. Just have to play Human/Hobbit to be one, and I didnt see it. Loading up screens now...

There ya go. Now I'll probably be kicked out of beta, lol! Anyways thats of my elf and newly created hobbit. The screens didnt seem to pick up the heat shimmer etc... All the foilage etc sway with the wind. One of those also have a "Dark Rider" with showed up a little differently in the hobbit beginning quest.

You were not kidding when you said wow like,

It looks exactly like WoW UI with DAoC graphics.