LotRO welcomes lapsed players back to Middle Earth

"a taste of the newest game content" If you quit playing at Max Level. I'd still be running the same boring ass quests over at Weather Top.

nope, many of the lower and mid-level areas have been changed as well, XP curve is addapted and more quests are added.
When you log on you probably get +3 levels and you'll see there are more quests to finish in a smoother phase.

I was surprised when I started a new character recently just how different the starting areas are and how much nicer it all is (not that it was bad before, mind...)

I do not like this by the book grapics of this game when I see the over map of the Dwarf city and how boxie it was! They did not even bother put nice over maps in the city like World of Warcraft got. Also way too many loading screens! And way less content them World of Warcraft and monster pvp is just a joke! I do not like PVP but I do like to have options! I am happy that WoW does not need a welcome back week like there players always come back over and over!

Thats not true!

Thanks to radiance gear, gear-gated instances, the legendary item-grind and several other new "cool features" introduced with Moria, LotRO isn't that far away from WoW anymore. Since I quit two months ago, I don't think I'm returning that soon...

I am annoyed how developers, in order to try and grab player's attention, they offer things like experience boosts to cut through levels faster... all because if an MMO has been on the market for any length of time, the low level play experience just sucks (and is quite lonely).

When will MMO developers realize that if your game is about the end-game, just don't make a level game. Create your entire game end-game so that new players can join right in. Take Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, and more - and you will find all sorts of advancements in rewarding players and keeping them engaged at the end-game without the need to "level up". I wish the effort put into creating 40,50,80 or whatever number of levels was put into that end-game and the level system was just killed all together.

Which is why I won't try Lord of the Rings again. My characters are still too low of a level to catch up to my friends in any short time. Even with the experience boost, I would spend a few weeks trying to solo content so that I might eventually be able to play with my friends. When the fact is, we can always go play a different game together were we are all at the same level.

Hear that developers? Talk about barrier to entry.

I did try it again this weekend, I found the hour+ update process the most interesting part of it. I just cant do level trog games anymore, maybe im burned out on mmo's entirely.
It was still the grainy "you whack I whack, you whack, i whack" game I remembered. Maybe if I had the patience to play it past the 40's it would turn into something exciting but being shouted down by jack___ses every time I asked if there was anyone doing the "book questX" mission reminded me too much of barrens chat.
Think ill play peggle lol

Um, shouldn't this have been reported back when the free week started, rather than when there's only a few (workweek) days left?

How many more of these "welcome back" weeks will Turbine run until they decide to make LotRO free to play like DDO? This is the 2nd time this promo has run in the past couple months, and the 4th or 5th time in the game's history. Clearly things are not going as well as Turbine would like them to be...

Yup. Ultima Online was great with it. Most "big production" MMOs have gone the way of WoW. I am crossing my fingers for some of the new MMOs coming out. I saw Fallen Earth in action and I was super disappointed. Hoping for the others.

By the way... with all the inventive ways to handle inventory using WoW addons, why do developers keep offering the lame box/icon design with little to no sorting?

LotRO was a fairly fun game, but until they give me a good reason to come back, I don't intend to.

A good reason might include (1) better, faster travel options; (2) making more of the content/epic quests soloable; and/or (3) faster rep gains.

I find it strange that Turbine would implement faster xp gain -- which means nothing to me (if the game is fun [ and it is] I am NOT in a big hurry to level) -- but retain irritating rep requirements: "you must gain xx amount of rep in order to use the travel system in this region". I found stuff like that to be extremely exasperating and not fun in LotRO.

I thus have no desire to go back yet -- even when it's free.