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I joined LotRO at the start of Beta and have played it ever since. I was amazed from the first day how polished the game was, even in that early stage of testing. I have tested a good number of games and none had been that stable until open beta, some not even on release. But the game has changed a lot since then, as all do during the beta process, and every change has been an improvement to a game that could have been released by the time Turbine was only moving to Beta2.

Turbine has been true perfectionists with this title, as can be understood. After all its J.R.R Tolkiens Middle Earth. Fans of the mythos are sticklers for details, many can and will quote the Silmarilion at every opportunity. This is not a franchise to cobble together halfway. Its an all or nothing situation. If they got it wrong they would face being flamed by thousands of fans on hundreds of web forums and game sites. This has not happened. The reviews so far have been singing the praises of LotRO.

Turbine isn't new to the pressure. Their Dungeons and Dragons Online franchise faced the same type of fan base. I took part in the beta test for that title as well, and played after release, until i got the nod for LotRO beta. It turned out to be a solid title, and as a D&D player and Dungeon Master from the time of 1st edition through the 3.5 rule set i can attest to its worthiness to the name Dungeons and Dragons. The ruleset, gameplay, module based instanced dungeons are the dream of every old time D&Der. It IS D&D played online.

The problem i had with DDO was exactly its very group oriented gameplay and heavy reliance on instanced dungeons. For awhile i had a regular group that played together with on weekends and the game was just like the old weekend D&D games we had back in the day around the game table. But i'm old now and game time often has to come when RL allows it, so keeping a good group together is hard.

LotRO doesn't suffer this problem. It is very solo friendly but also friendly to groups and those who like the occasional raid. It is also more MMOish, if you get my meaning. There are some instanced dungeons but most of the world is wide open and explorable. You can move freely across the terrain, cut through the woods to shorten the distance between towns (but watch out for baddies when you get off the main road). And the terrain is vast, as one would expect from Middle Earth. I remember the first time i saw Weather Top i was in awe at its sheer size. You are not going to just run

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