Right, that's great news. I'm in the beta too since the first Stress test and I have to say I like the game, but it would be way more fun with RPers around. As I saw, there are some real nice features that encourages RP.

One of them is the Generation system, which let's players to set their generation and then adopt other players as their son or daughter. Then, those binded will have a title that can be shown. This way, clans can be built which gives many possibilities to RP.

Another nice thing is the Bio, which let's you to write anything you want, describing features of your character that the game can't show. Those close-by can "Inspect" you, and see the items that are visible, and look at your bio and titles.

On character generation, there are many options and a nice variety of face features and hair, eye, and skin colour, there is an option where you can put scars or freckles on your face.

We all know that a stupid name can break the immersion very fast, I saw names like "Awsa" and "Santaclaws", so to help the players to come up with names that fit with your character, there are naming conventions for each race, giving several examples and listing _a lot_ name beginnings and endings, so you can think of a nice name.

Another thing I quite liked is the quest system. I didn't played with WoW, but I played with AO. So I know that it's stupid that you have an arrow pointing in the direction of the next objective of your quest. In LOTRO, there isn't any arrow, you can see the important quest locations on your radar, but not on your map, so you _have to_ read the quest descriptions and sometimes only the history of the dialog can tell some important detail. Oh, yeah, and there are times when even that can't really help All in all, even with the big amount of "kill x of Y" quests, there are others that are really fun, I won't spoil it for you, but I can tell you, I could go for hours without fighting but doing fun quests.

Hmm... I guess I could go on for some time but I'll let others tell their opinion now.

Cheers,

Dustie

I don't think I'll be trying LOTRO. I used to be a big fan of Tolkein when I was younger, and the movies rekindled that to a degree, but Middle Earth has been imitated so many times that I'm finding it impossible to get interested. I'll hold out for Age of Conan instead.

As for Warhammer Online, that could be so-so. The wargames give the impression that it's just going to be a Warcraft clone, which is a shame- because the setting for Warhammer is a good one. Games Workshop has some very good creative people and does a good job with dark, atmospheric backgrounds for its games. It's just a shame it then just tackis them onto a marketing machine that aims to suck as much cash out of the younger end of the market as possible.