33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

SE is great if you’re into “Making Of” and soundtrack, otherwise get standard edition, May 2, 2007

I was in closed beta for a short time. I have a pretty critical view on where I spend my money and I don’t like paying for a game that is released unfinished. This is the first MMO I have beta’d, out of five, where I continued on into retail.

LOTRO has had one of the smoothest launches ever, has made tough calls early in maintaining player economy, is selling a well polished product day one, and has already announced the first expansion (FREE) for June.

The beginning levels are fun and different for the various races, making for good replayability/alt characters. Players are rewarded beyond simple killing for exploration of areas, use of skills, etc in a way that makes players actually PLAY their characters rather than worrying about how much exp/hour they can make. Mindless grinding will get a player levels, but only by playing, exploring, and using their character’s abilities will they gain full character development. Many skills have effects that are not in the description or are synergetic with other skills that the hack-n-slash/low attention span player will miss.

MMOs have a hard time balancing familiarity with originality. Turbine has walked a tightrope between accuracy and playability and IMO has done a fine job.

Perhaps the biggest lure is that there is MUCH more of Middle Earth that will be coming over the years and getting to experience the process is something I look forward to.

Specific to the SE items, they are nice if you like “making of” info and want the soundtrack. The in-game item and map are underwhelming and should not be the reason you pay extra for the SE.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

Good MMO. Turbine released a ploished bread and butter MMO, May 20, 2007

This is a great MMO for anyone new to the genre. It’s polished and stable at release. Turbine has more then made up for it’s horibble job with DDO and AC2 with LOTRO. They set out to make a good and polished MMO using established MMO gameplay and they did it. They never promised this game would be revolutionary and it’s not but it is somewhat evolutionary in nature despite only being one step forward in the genre.

This game pretty much plays like any EQ1-esque MMO. So if you played WoW or EQ2 then you should be familiar with this style of game play. The main portions of this game are story / quest driven so that means you’ll always be engaged in the world in some way other then just grinding on mobs mindlessly for no reason. The main means of leveling are quest completion base and so that means you’ll be doing a ton of quests. If you like sand-box type games that don’t give you anything to do or which just throw you into a game world ala EvE-Online, Saga of Ryzom, Lineage 2 etc…then this game is not for you IMHO. If you like more structured MMO’s with end-game and a strong central story line in the back ground then LOTRO is a good game to try out.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

A superb effort, if a little familiar, April 24, 2007

As a World of Warcraft addict, I entered the Beta test for this game with some cynicism. WoW seemed to have everything an online adventure game could have, and I’d pretty much mastered it. What could this new game offer that was any better?

For a start, it’s prettier. Not in a color-palette sense (WoW is remarkable in its use of color) but in the environments and sense of depth. Grass blows, leaves fall, water… does everything water should. You’ll find yourself playing in pools just to watch the ripples.

And of course, it’s Lord of the Rings, the mythos that started it all. So you’ll stumble across the Prancing Pony, Tom Bombadill, and even “me old Gaffer” as you journey around the world. Quite a thrill.

Solo play is carefully structure to make you think you know what you’re doing, which is encouraging for those of us who are less than coordinated. But “fellowship” teaming is where the fun really happens. It’s not mandatory to team-up, but when you do it’s a blast.

Sure, there are a few weak points. Character generation is limited for a next-gen game, and some of the models are kinda *cough* ugly *cough*. The resource-gathering system is clumsy, and sees you fighting other players for mining nodes and randomly distributed tree branches (ore and wood respecitively). Using those resources to craft items will often break the bank, and rarely do the crafted items compete with quest-found items (so they’re hard to sell).

One thing I did find interesting was the similarity to World of Warcraft, in terms of controls and gameplay. The questing system is tried and true, so it’s hard to say that was duplicated. However, the character controls, UI layout, and even the chat system are almost direct copies from WoW. I’ve no doubt the developers sat in front of WoW and had to list all the things they liked and didn’t about the game… and then they were told to improve on them. While this is not a bad thing in my mind, it will have a lot of people thinking they’re tramping familiar ground.

Overall, the game is superb and will probably succeed in what it aims to achieve — to replace World of Warcraft as the planet’s most played online game — even if it does feel a little dated in places already.