Little Bit O LotRO's All I Need

This weekend I also dusted down the Lord of the Rings Online account and indulged in a little Hobbit mischief on my very cute, yet hard as nails Hobbit Warden.

She's only level 33 at present, but I managed to take her from 30 to 33 with a few hours play over the weekend, which I don't think is too bad. Granted she has about 1 trillion points of rested exp and you can continue to buy the stuff but that helps in my opinion. Saying that though, I am in no way saying you should rush the levelling process in this game as it really is a joy, from the sheer volume of quests to do and be rewarded for to enjoying the, I think, best looking scenary of any MMO to date.

I also managed to find a VERY helpful Kinship upon my return to the game by the name of Stars of Elentari, which again make levelling and general game playing so much more enjoyable.

I'm on the EU Snowbourn server if anyone wants to find me :)

Back in the LotRO Saddle

So I've returned to LotRO about a month ago and I thought it would be worthwhile giving some of the Pro's and Con's that I've found since returning to Middle Earth.

Pro's

• The game still looks and handles as great as it always has
• There plenty of content for even the die-hard role player and even if questing isn't your thing there's some tasty rewards to tempt you
• The new classes (Warden, RuneKeeper) are great fun and are definitely worth a try
• The Free 2 Play function that Turbine have implemented is good, there's lots to buy (with your Turbine points) including expansions, mounts and experience boosts.

Con's

• The PvP is still lacking, even though they've updated it a little, it's not really anywhere near enough to keep people there that prefer a little PvP now and then
• For a F2P game I believe it takes too long to level, and although that may be blasphemy in some parts of the MMO world I'd like it to be quicker. Dare I say that the option to buy a free level or two every now and then from the store would be useful too.

Regardless of the con's though I'm enjoying levelling my little Hobbit Warden, mainly due to them being pretty kick-ass and I'd happily go on record by saying Hobbit's are the best class of any MMO I've even played, period.

Ish

So I'm playing LotRO again

There, I said it. Even though I thought I'd never go back to LotRO again after a year and a bit of fun here I am. I mean don't get me wrong the game looks nice and there's lots to do, but for some reason Monster-play never really gave me the PvP hit I wanted.

I've been playing after finishing work for the past week after hijacking the girlfriends lifetime account (we paid £150 when it was released and never had/have to pay Turbine any more wonga) and bastardised it as my own, making the little Hobbit to the left. I have this thing for Hobbits as pretty much, bar a few experiments all my LotRO avatars have been of the hairy variety.

Since I left a week or so of the Mines of Moria expansion being released a lot has changed since I was last logged in. I mean for starters the game has now gone Free to Play (f2p), which I had my reservations about initially but after playing it for a little while I don't think it's too bad and Turbine seem to have implemented the micro-transaction system fairly well. Other changes would include the Mirkwood expansion too and there is soon to be another update fairly soon, which shows that the game must be making some money.

I do however think I'm only playing it because I have a 'lifetime' subbed account as I don't think I'd be willing to pay the ~10 euros a month for the right. I will add though that I do love the graphics and the LotRO setting is brilliant in places (the Shire for example) and I would tell you to go and give it a go just for that as it is free to play so what have you got to lose?

Ish