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My experience in Lord of the Rings Online
Ironically I am posting in a forum where the admin uses language that you will hardly see anywhere in LOTRO (the "sick of spamming" sticky).
My highest level is 42 now so I have not seen the game at max level yet 
Social
But yes, unlike any other mmorpg I have played LOTRO generally manages to avoid the abusive chatting and to accept and involve the people even if they're a little different. Very friendly and mature people take their responsibilities.
I almost don't chat in general chats anymore because people mostly don't do it in LOTRO and I do not feel the need to do so anymore.
This means I can focus more on my game and my in-game friends. Also it makes it more possible to group up within my kinship and to keep some chats within the kinship.
Your friends list is limited to 50 and you can rank it in order of last time online. This makes it easy to build up a good friendslist fast of players who are active and thus actually useful to have there.
Combat
I have already played all classes and find that like in any other mmorpg there are different types. What I like most is that on my guardian I can solo some groups or elites of my level and that I can use cheap food to have a faster regen while im out of combat.
Also it is nice that there are loads of tradeskill resources around (ores & wood) so that if you take everything you don't need excessive farming outside questing. It takes a little while to get hold of your inventory management but once you grasp it its not so hard to keep your bags empty. this helps to ensure combat going smoothly and steadily.
Instances
There are a significant amount of instances for every level and every amount of players. Even solo you can do so-called skirmishes to earn rewards to save up for some -pretty good- gear or raw materials. Those skirmishes can also be attuned to level and difficulty.
What i like is that some of them are really big. At level 36-37 there's an instance where you can spend hours of time doing lots of bosses with a final boss with a really good reward. I'd call it a kind of miniraid: about the same but with less people.
Housing
It's fun to have a house in a neighbourhood such as the Shire or in a huge cave with dwarven homes. Decorating and chests for extra storage are good facilities. You can also acquire trophies from dungeons to stall in your house to showoff to your friends :P.
So much more to tell. But all in all, great game. If you'd like to try it out feel free to make a char and mail Konungald on Gilrain .
Comments
GREAT summary!
Fun game and I highly recommend it to people looking for something to do.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
I am with you.
I played for a while in Lotro. I leveled slow, I got my Warden to the mid thirties, but I took my time doing it. There came a point where it became a bit grindy. I will go back to it again, probably later in the year. My favorite part was playing around in the shire.
After that it had trouble keeping my attention as I killed 75 wolves or 100 orcs to get the Achievments (Or whatever they were called) I know they have made some changes and I loved the Graphics. (the animations could use a little work) over all a pleasant expirience but one that didn't keep me hooked.
hehe
type /joinchannel glff
now you see where all the chat is at on any server for lotro
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
ive been playing lotro almost a month. now im used to asian grinders...so i have a bad habit mass killing mobs and farming stuff. The amount of quests ingame is very nice and ive gotten over 200tp just doing quests n killing mobs, id say i like how they did this game, lots of content and lots to do. Personally im pleased and atm i am level 30 so i got 35 to go till im capped. but the skrimishs's i find the most fun, that new one Forsaken inn is freakin awsome. theirs doors with riddles n 83 different riddles you have to solved then theirs traps and you need certain other classes to access the secret areas, then the boss..haha fun bit tricky on downing him. Teir 1 is easy teir 2....that ghost after u kill the first boss is wicked. i wont spoil it n tell ya wat to expect. but pack heavy as its not easy but its alot of fun. rewards are same amount marks as usual but money is around 100s-1g reward and teir 2 gives ya 2 chests so u get double the reward. Glad i saved this game for last, really is fun and i enjoy my vip XD. just my 2 cents.
Glad you have fun
I consider LOTRO among best (if not the best) MMO out there.
And lvl~40 dungeon is Fornost, so i guess you were there, but i consider it one of worst instaces ingame
Though it doesnt say much as its still pretty good 
Level 30-40 was one of the weak points in the game, there wasn't really a dedicated place for it so people where bouncing around Everswim and Trollshaws. Overall, just looking at my charlist i have more chars stuck between 30-40 than any other levelrange.
That being said they recently redid Everswim(now its actually Evendim), and its now a proper region with a nice flow of quests from 30 to 40+. The early ones in the first questhub though are hobbit themed so avoid them if you can't stand pie delivery etc.
That being said, if your on the fence just wait, the game is getting better and better and for someone new to the game there is actually a whole lot to do and see even at endgame. The whole content issue is more of a problem for those that have been at endgame the last couple of years, for someone new things like the *new* helegrond raid and the other old instances that are getting reworked and added to endgame are actually very interesting.
Personally i think turbine has some of the most interesting design in Instances, pretty entertaining and challenging without being unreasonably hard. Like the game itself, pretty casual friendly.
This is a very laid back game. I enjoy relaxing in my house, smoking some nice pipe-weed and talking to my fellow mates.
I've been playing lotro since launch (I got a lifetime sub, yay!). I still log on and play at least 30 minutes a day, if just to check in on my guild/auctions, or to play/listen to a couple of tunes in The Prancing Pony. This game is very good for RPers, Landroval always has alot of players in Bree and around the world that RP. If you're a player that wants to get to level 65 as fast as possible this game loses some of it's luster. I leveled a runekeeper as fast as possible, by level 40 i was burned out with him. I didn't go back to him for about a month, then I took it slow and made it all the way to 65 easy. This isn't a game made for hardcore gamers that want to play 10+ hours a day to get the best gear and highest level. It's for casual/laid back players that want to see the sights, and communicate with friends.
If that's your opinion, why do you keep playing and posting on LOTRO forums, I'm curious.
So if Im reading this correctly, you stay inside your pretend "house",, pretending to "smoke" a pipe?
Really?
Is your "pretend" girlfriend with you while doing this? lmao j/kidding
Whatever happened to the IN BIOWARE WE TRUST signatures?
I will return to LOTRO to try to play it more on my own terms. I played for 2 years+. I loved the first 6 months and I liked the first year. I grinded the 2nd year.
Then I got caught up in skill based, always moving but triggering skills type of play and spent some time in warhammer.
Then I got tired of mmos and played a lot of miniclip pool and wordbiz scrabble.
The heights of my "i'm going to do a good job with this and have a strong character" were raiding rift, raiding first boss in harder dungeon, trying but failing at watcher, and selling a legendary axe for 56 gold as well as regular raids out there to grind for relics or something at annuminas and a little pvp.
Look I play hunter however they stack up. It goes along with my roleplay ideals, and by that, I mean what I want to fantasize about in my head when I play... not out loud...heh.
People can have their zappers that can move and heal. I'm going to play casual anyway. I'll play waterborn and brittlebeard a little and see where it goes but I don't want it to go to that soul sucking grindy spot where I'm trying to worship some dark lord's ring (for example I gotz leet gearz and my kinship is awesomes and I'm working on completing every single everything. Look inspect me.). Capice?
Oh and I shouldn't say it but I will. Honestly the scenery sometimes is great but sometimes not so great. The storyline quests in my opinion are mostly poorly written and I could definitely write them better, much of the time, and I'd be almost as faithful to the story. Overall I am not terribly impressed with the writing part of Lotro and am moderately to highly impressed with the actual books the game is based on.
Now for something nice since I was mean. No mmo has ever given me more for my money. My wife played it and enjoyed it also. I paid 200 dollars at release. I have never once regretted spending that money. Thank you Turbine/Lotro creators for your hard work and for the good times my wife and I have been able to spend in the game. We've thoroughly enjoyed your game.
(I quit last time after seeing the new elf area after the part where you see the sun, past the part where you grind to make the archers let you pass. The part you had to pay for. I didn't like it.)
I know you're not joking. I don't care, really. I've decided to make my own Hobbit home and will now live in a hill away from all the trolls.
*looks back and scuttles away*
Overall, LotRO is a very well-designed game. I love how Turbine has appraoched Middle-Earth, but there are a few things I hoped they would have done differently.
1. Housing: The housing zone, near Bree at least, is too far away from the city. I would have preferred to see housing integrated into the town, rather than a village of its own some distance away. Players should be able to rent rooms at the Pranching Pony as an option.
2. Gameplay: I found that fighting became a routine of pressing 1-2-3-4-1... Hit one style after another, and wait for them to recycle. Rinse and repeat. As a veteran of DAoC, combat became boring quickly. Every MMO should have positional and reactive openings for their styles.
3. The cloaks: The different design of cloaks were very limited at release. It has become better, but I still would love to see kinship emblems being blazed across people's backs, or tabards across the chest.
The Warden was a fun class to play, and I might go back and check out the new expansion in the fall.
There's about 15 posts in this thread going into detail about why and what they like with Lotro. Specifics from ppl having played a long time, enough to help ppl make their own mind up I guess?
And then there's this guy.... O_o
edit: agree with the guy above. I really dont see why housing has to be so far away from bree. makes me less inclined to go there.