Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2706 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Codemasters Limited
• Released on: 2007-04-24
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: Windows XP

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Codemasters is not the sort of company to ignore a new market trend, and indeed they were one of the first companies to speak up in praise of the enormous success of World of Warcraft. Since they own the official license to The Lord of the Rings books (this game is not based directly on anything in the movies), a massively multiplayer online game to rival Blizzard’s blockbuster was all but inevitable. Angmar is the domain of the Witch-king, the leader of the Ringwraiths, and the game world is set during the events of The Fellowship of the Ring as Frodo and company set out from The Shire. In the game you’ll have the chance to meet all of the major characters as you play as any one of four races: human, elf, dwarf or hobbit. Your character can also be one of seven different classes – from burglar to hunter or minstrel. Not all races can be all of the classes though, so you must choose carefully.

In gameplay terms things work in a similar manner to World of Warcraft and other fantasy games, with up to six characters grouping to gather to form a "fellowship", which in turn can team up with up to 24 others to go on larger raids in enemy controlled areas. The game includes seven crafting professions and three gathering professions, allowing each character the chance to learn and utilise unique skills, from manufacturing armour to cooking. Player versus player combat is allowed to a degree; although instead of two player controlled characters facing off, one will temporarily take control of a monster for the duration of the fight. Whether the game can truly challenge the success of Warcraft remains to be seen, but if anyone can do it Tolkien can.
HARRISON DENT

Manufacturer's Description

The LOTRO: Gold Edition comes complete with 4 European Exclusive In-game items including an all-new player horse (available at level 25) and a welcome mat for you new home in Middle-earth all housed within a stunning Steel DVD pack. Features include:

NEW player and kinship housing!

Over 200 NEW quests and 14 NEW dungeons.

Over 500 NEW monsters.

Over 250 NEW skills, 2 dozen NEW titles, 200 NEW NPC's.

NEW monster play features let you enter Middle-earth as a monster right from the character select screen.

NEW High-level armor sets and quest rewards offering advanced battle enhancements.

NEW massive region of Evendim PLUS huge expansion in the Misty Mountains and Trollshaws.

Customer Reviews

Hobbits!
In the Beta Test. If you can bare us LOTR geeks this game is amazing.

There is real dedication from the dev team to make it as true to the Tolkien universe as possible.

yes, the game IS very quest orientated but I see this as a major pro. The quest stories are engaging and in some cases hysterically funny (The Shire quests are as hobbity as is possible.)

No player houseing as of yet, but who knows what the future holds.

I think the game plays more like Asheron's Call (1 or 2) than WoW, and any similarities between WoW & LotRO are purely coincidence. There are only so many ways a game can be set up and WoW wasnt the first.

Looking forward to playing the game for real and taking my hobbit out in to the world!

beta testers view
I am presently beta testing this game and the NDAs have been lifted so we are free to report on it and so I thought I would just give some feedback in case anyone was interested in.playing.

Pros:

- friendly community, most people you meet are helpful and pleasant.

- it is VERY accurate to the books (though you can see heavy influence of the films in the look and feel) though it is too quick to travel about the place so you lose something of the feeling of scale, i.e I can run from Bree to the Shire in about 5 minutes.

- monster play - you can play as ebil mosters in a particular region and fight pvp style against player characters - i have a nice warg character :)

- the graphics are nice, if not spectacular. It is a lot less cartoony than WOW which I like. The trouble is it reminds you a bit of games like Oblivion and so you have to stop expecting oblivion like graphics. However i have to admit while my pc is decent its not amazing and if you could ramp the settings right up then I bet it would look pretty incredible. Get 2gb of RAM and a very good graphics card if you plan to play this game.

- the combat special atacks and defences are good and quite nicely animated.

- crafting is pretty good fun and I like that you cannot just swap between them as powergamers would otherwise soon become amazing at everything, this forces people to specialise and to help each other.

Cons:

- it is VERY quest focused, which is good in that there is always something for you to do but bad in that it makes normal exlporation almost pointless as anythign interesting you come across 9/10 you cannot enter if you do not have the relevant quest active. It is also very tempting to just accept every quest going and you quickly lose track of the stories behond them or what you are supposed to be doing.

- levelling for the most part is fairly uneventful, often I have gone up a level and not even noticed

- lotr nerds - there a LOT of lotr nerds playing (not surprisingly) and heaven forbid if you should fail to know the original sindar name that gandalf is known by amongst the house of glorfindel every other tuesday.

- the time at which the game is set is a negative over the long term i think, it is right before the fellowship of the ring and this means that you know what is going to happen and how it will all end and so you cant really do anything about it or feel like your actions will have any lasting effect, also you know that you can never get to that period cos then it would be game over, so it feels like you are always stuck in the prologue.

I know it looks like more negatives than positives but its just the kind of critical person I am :) I am enjoying it!

Brilliant
I've played LOTRO since the pre-release and love it to death. I never liked the feel of other MMORPG games, but I easy rolled into LOTRO and enjoy the atmosphere and the wonderful world.

This a great all round game for all ages.

It may still have a way to go to suit others but in all honesty this game is still in its infancy, and in my views is still well worth the money.

If you play it alot its worth looking into the founder options for a lifetime subscription.

All in all 10/10, my best by so far.