Thread: First Impressions of LOTRO

As a vetran mmo player myself a friend of mine recently convinced me to play lotro and here are my impressions.
Pros:
Non-repetitive
Easy to get in to
Leveling isn't hard and everything is pretty straightforward
Community is the nicest i've seen (Coming from a more competetive area.)
Smithing ect is fun but not too hard
Cons:
My biggest problem so far with the game is roughly 75% of it is running to the places i need to go, now i understand the scale of the areas, and trying to keep it realistic, but it's a struggle if the map is a little off, or you don't have a mount yet to run all the way too the four corners of the map for 400 experience and 4 silver. It just seems a bit too taxing for the reward you get.

I don't mind the currency cap, i understand what it's for, but it could be 150 points instead of the 300 some it costs now, it's a waste of time trying to get that much just so you can move on in the game if you don't plan on spending money. If you want to advance the cash shop, put better items in it, most of the stuff in there is useless.

Lack of direction: When i hit level 20, i had NO clue where i was supposed to go, or what to do, I lost all sense of goals, now mind i have only been playing three days but it's like wandering around in the dark. Maybe some guidance for players at level 20 would be great.

The Mini-map, now i hate pressing M every three steps with auto-run on. Would it be possible to make a zoom out option? So we can see the quests farther away?

Hobbies! I know this is probably a big one for long time players, but there is only fishing? A whole skill or area, for just fishing? It would be nice to see some newer content on that, higher level even, maybe hunting.

That's about it, any comments are welcome. Thanks for reading.

the whole fishing/hobbies thing kind of fizzled out, now pretty much just a mining node for cooks

For knowing where to go. My first toon I pretty much just followed the Epic quest line. They lead you from one area to the next pretty easily. If I remember correctly level 20 is about where I am moving on to Lone-lands or north downs if I'm trying to level quickly.

Welcome to middle earth, and yes, until you reach twenty , or buy your riding skill before 20 , it can be taxing. Running from one corner of middle earth to the next... The quests usually take you to the area you need to be in, if you follow them , as does the Epic books,,, and if you stumble into an area that is red or purple . RUN RUN RUN.. Way to high of a lvl... being twenty you should be in Bree, and working towards the barrow downs ...The people for most part in this game , I have found to be very nice , and many like helping . Will on the server , I am on any way...Hope you enjoy LOTRO,, and find many hours of enjoyment here.

Oh yeah,, the hobby part is very lacking. Hopefully they will introduce golfing, or even baseball , ect would be nice...

I didn't find any trouble getting direction at 20. Quests point you at the Barrows and at the Lone Lands, and there seems a fairly clean progression.

I am new here too, but also wish they would either add more hobbies or change it from 'hobbies' to 'fishing.' As it stands it just looks strange and makes every new player feel like they are missing something.

As for crafting, one thing I am not keen on is that most of the crafting guilds (the actual guild HQ's, not the crafting hallls) seem way out in the boonies.