Tried and played LOTR for a month or two - absolutely hated it. I own a laptop so it's really not the ideal gaming machine, but honestly I cannot get over how Ryzom still looked totally beautiful on it, compared to other games out there where I have crank stuff down just to be able to avoid running off of cliffs. (Obviously, that was never a problem in Ryzom in the first place, but secondly, somehow I could even afford to crank some settings UP.) And that was just /one/ issue I had with LOTR.
Nothing impressed me...at all... even playing on a computer that can handle maximum settings. (I won't even get into
this.) Sure it looked pretty nice, but there was nothing original about it. Nothing like running through a portal into an underground iridescent world full of things you have never seen before. You might think, given the opportunity to stretch creativity to the limits - of which there really are none - you'd run into so many more impressive games out there.
Of course, being based on a world in a bunch of books I guess they did have some limits... But I digress.
I do have to admit there were some neat ideas I ran into... I chose the minstrel class - yes, I who falls asleep while healing in Ryzom lol - and it had pretty good potential - if you can get beyond the mildly retarded concept of plucking a ukelele to heal someone. (Which brings me to comment...why must I /see/ my target for them to be able to hear this afore mentioned ukelele? Way to be realistic...) But for all the potential it had, there were strings attached to everything that just completely ruined it for me. I'd get excited about some new "spell" I received only to find out it's useless in the situations I need it most.
Anyway this is turning into a long ramble: Summing it up: LOTRO sucked.
Soooo... Saraii is biding her time in EQ2 (three cheers for SOE, eh? lol).
*hugs from a dig-deprived hominette*