Now, I'm not a player myself, in fact I dislike MMORPG's. but evidently a ton of people out there disagree with me, so I was just wondering, what do you like about LotRO, what makes it special among all other games?

I am kinda surprised there have been no replies to this yet, so I am going to give it a go to explain what this game has that has me glued to my screen since I started playing it in early 2007.

First of all let me make it clear that while the world of Middle Earth is not available completely as of yet, what you do get is massive and enough to keep you exploring for very long.

The first time I loaded LOTRO I started a dwarf. I have no idea why I chose a dwarf over humans, elves and hobbits (ok..well over hobbits I do get...) but I did. My first character would be a dwarven Minstrel, not exactly the most typical of choices. I thought up a story of the life my character had led before I even created him, his name and all his history was clear to me before I even started playing.

I started character creation and loved how I could create my dwarf. Character creation may not be the most advanced and full of options you have ever seen, but it ensnared me and minutes later my dwarf was good to go. But not quite yet. There are many things you can do in LOTRO, so I wrote his Biography first, turned on the Roleplay flag and started playing. As a dwarf you start playing in the area of Thorin's Hall and even though at that time my PC was not capable of displaying the best kind of graphics, I was swept away. This looked like I would have imagened it while reading the books.

4 weeks later I upgraded my PC drastically. New Motherboard, processor (dual CPU), 4GB memory, better videocard and some other things. I reinstalled Windows, started playing again and Oh my goodness...setting the graphics options to Ultra High I could now easily move around and I was blown away by the graphical beauty of this game. I had installed Vista, so I was running in DX10 and it looked awesome. I found myself stopping every couple of minutes, taking screenshots and even finding myself sitting on the top of a mountain, watching the sun shining, leaving reflections and a stunning landscape to view.

At the moments I would be able to pull myself away from that I would do some of the easy quests and would engage some of the more important characters in the game (and the books) like Dwalin for example. I read every single quest thorougly and it actually made a difference. You would be able to find the quest objective much easier if you would read more.

From the beginner instance on, you would get emerged into an epic storyline that will get you involved in the things that happen around Middle Earth, eventhough you are not one of the fellowship members, it makes you feel like you are actually helping them accomplish all the things they are doing.

I could go on and on with this, but I simply don't have the time now. I hope other people will also post some of their experiences and their reasons for liking this game. It would be nice. ;)

What I really admired from LOTRO is how true they stayed to the books. I was swept away when I travelled through the Shire for the first time. And also the prancing pony had me exploring every corner in amazement, remember a detailed description of it in the book, I noticed all the details could be found in the game! I actually cheered out loud when I encountered good old Tom Bombadil!

One thing I also liked was the hope/dread system implemented in the game. The fact a ominous environment or being defeated had a physical effect on my chacacters self confidence was very cool. This system really gave life to the ring wrath greatest trait: the fear that overcomes those near them. (with -5 hope, you hobbit is basicaly shitting himself in the intro stage)

This detail also kicked in whenever I went near Frodo. Its an amazing detail that added by giving you -1 hope whenever you get close to him, giving you an actual sense of despair just for being around him.

The reason I stopped playing however, is the fact that gameplay flaws caught up with me at a certain point. I was lvl 38, and even though I recently reached Rivendell and caught up with the Fellowship. I got bored with the grind.

The main thing that makes lotro stand out is the consistant high quality in my opinion. Near enough MMO has a few good traits, but lotro seems to have managed to get more than it's fair share.

It's visually stunning, however it can also be lowered so that those with less powerful computers can play it.

It has a wonderful world, straight from the books, and is very immersive unlike some MMO's i've played.

It has a interesting and inventive PvP system, where you create "monster characters" and these fight against maximum level "normal" characters. This allows low level players to PvP against high level players (as they will be creating a lvl 60 monster character to play with), and due to this ensures a steady flow of monster characters. It also removes the need to try and balance players attacking monsters with 300k HP and then other players with 3k hp.

They consistantly release free upgrades, some including entire new areas and such. I'm aware a few other MMO's do this (city of heroes), but it's still in the minority.

It also in my opinion strikes a very nice middleground in terms of ease to play. I've played several MMO's, one of which was FFXI, which was a major grind, and incredibly frustrating. There were no quests, you just made a group of 6 people and killed monsters for hours - dying would make you lose xp and set you back hours and possibly even days at higher levels. Also cash was very hard to come by and gear was expensive, many days were spent farming to get even average gear.

On the other hand i've played WoW, which frankly bored me as after FFXI, it was like MMO's on easy mode. Near enough everything you do in the game is soloable, cash and gear seem to rain from the sky, and there aren't really any punishments for death. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as not everyone wants to be challenged, and i certainly didn't miss the insane amount of grinding FFXI required, the unfortunate reality is that the easiness of play attracted twelve year olds or various idiots who just act like they're twelve. I got bored of WoW after repeatedly being killed and then camped by someone more than 20 levels higher than me for no other reason than they could and they'd done their homework for the evening.

So yeah, Lotro is a nice balance, and consistantly high quality. There are very few areas where it doesn't deliver in my opinion, and the only real problem i could foresee an MMO fan having is possibly the amount of PvP, as lots of people seem to miss not being able to kill another person every two seconds.

Elivercury:
So yeah, Lotro is a nice balance, and consistantly high quality. There are very few areas where it doesn't deliver in my opinion, and the only real problem i could foresee an MMO fan having is possibly the amount of PvP, as lots of people seem to miss not being able to kill another person every two seconds.

I agree, and personally I would love to see PvP in the game worked out more, but also realize its impossible at the current time. It would be insane to get into the world as an Orc or Uruk Hai with the story driven game that LOTRO is. I love the balance of the game and I really don't miss the PvP that much. ;)

Biek:
What I really admired from LOTRO is how true they stayed to the books. I was swept away when I travelled through the Shire for the first time. And also the prancing pony had me exploring every corner in amazement, remember a detailed description of it in the book, I noticed all the details could be found in the game! I actually cheered out loud when I encountered good old Tom Bombadil!

Is the lore detail limited to just faithfulness to the books or is there clear obsession on the part of the developers with minutiae like obscure stuff from The Silmarillion, for example?

seitori:
Is the lore detail limited to just faithfulness to the books or is there clear obsession on the part of the developers with minutiae like obscure stuff from The Silmarillion, for example?

Well, they don't have the rights to the silmarillon stuff (only the hobbit and lotr) so no, there's so obsure references to 1st age stuff :) Also they expand a lot on some things Tolkien talked very little to expand the world.For exemple they made the Forochel zone and i believe Jrrt wrote about forochel once (it's beautiful though ;)

So, in a nutshell, they go by The Hobbit& Lord of the rings

LOTRO is simply the most beautifully implemented, immersive MMOG that has been released to date. It also has "The one gaming community to rule them all".