Six maliciously fresh screens from LotRO's new player experience

Sounds to me like you read the forums more than you played the game.

Nothing created intentionally for the players huh? God forbid people have more fun with a better leveling curve? Also, maybe less on the bile and dissing the "DEVS OMG OMG WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY". No need for the (sarcasm), when everyone can easily see the implied (nerdrage). And yes, I do know the lore quite well, so please point out the travesties that they are committing simply to "make money", which if you didn't know by now, is the point of the MMORPG model. As Kyoji said, I find it doubtful if you even played the game.

I've played LotRO on and off for some time. Pretty good game as these things go. For the sake of my own amusement I've read the forums right up until the present day and I find myself thinking Kyoiji's on the ball.

For all the sanctimonious bleating by some LotRO players about how much better they are than their WoW playing counterparts, the sad fact is that their forums are little better than the WoW forums. Bizzarely, however, they don't make use of the ability to post images as creatively as they should. We need lolcats, people. If you want LotRO.com to compete with the WoW forums for the rank of Tertiary 4chan you're going to have to do a smidge better!

I was actually considering coming back for this patch. I absolutely adore Lothlorien. Being an Elf girl at heart (and with both my silver-haired mains hailing from the golden wood) the long-awaited inclusion of the archetypal Enchanted Forest was squee-inducing for me. The only thing that keeps me back is that I'm a bit burnt out on MMOs at the moment.

I am suspicious of Turbine's claims that the Lothlorien rep grind will represent something new and untrodden in their game design. But otherwise everything is looking good, including how they choose to have us fight the invading Orcs. I'm not sure if Graill the Internet Tough Guy is aware, but much of the game's content centres on things that were a backdrop to the story Tolkien was telling.

Forochel is a prime example of this. My hat is off to the devs who brought it to life from a few paragraphs in an appendix to LotR. The history of that region as well as the culture of the Lossoth were background to the background of the main storyline. Turbine put it front and centre for the game. Lothlorien is another example. Though the main cast actually went there, the action the players will be chiefly immersed in will again be based on something Tolkien mentioned offhand.

As ever, it's done beautifully and tastefully from what I can see. I was impressed with how Turbine realised Tolkien's world and I still am. I don't often praise a company so effusively but they do deserve it. In every detail, from Gandalf's glyph on Weathertop to Gollum's Cave to the fact that the /fart emote is unlockable, LotRO is clearly a labour of love.

Moria is steeped in the tradition of LotR and lives up to the grandeur with which it was described in the books, it is a credit to their design team and from the looks of things, Lothlorien is going to make me faint. I'd go on about how awesome Moria was but I've put half of you to sleep already I'd reckon!

I will just say all the screenshots are very interesting and wonder aloud if we might not have to fight our way out of Edhelion in the future...

Elitist prick.