Lord of the Rings Online.....free and awesome!

[EX500rider]

Steam has it for download and so does Turbine (the maker) Loving it so far, about a week in.


If you use Turbine make sure you say you have a account and go to the download page and select the "PC Download" NOT the "PC play instantly", 'cause that one downloads the 1st map and says you can "play while the rest downloads in the background"...not, the download hogs all the bandwidth and the game will be very laggy. (12 gig download)

But once it's installed it is wow!

The graphics are outstanding, this is a ingame screenshot of me headed into the Lonely Lands, that's Weathertop in the distance where Frodo got stabbed by the Nazgul.
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[uriel1972]

1. Played it a few years ago...

Thanks for reminding me. May look into it again.

[uriel1972]

2. Uh oh a cash shop...

cash shops are my kryptonite. I've blown hundreds in cash shops, I can't do that again. Sooooo, whilst I would like to play LOTRO I can't risk being sucked into cash shops again.

[EX500rider]

5. Discipline!

You CAN play with out spending any $....at least at the lower levels I have been at, 1-25.....most the stuff u can buy at their store they also make avail something similar somewhere on the map with in game fake $ or via quest...

[Whisp]

3. It's a beautiful game.

I played the trial a few years ago when I had a borrowed PC.

I'm on a Mac and when news came out not long ago it was available for Mac too I got very excited - but dammnit my system is too low to run it.

[EX500rider]

4. You sure?

'Cause the min specs are VERY low it seems to me, any computer in the last 10 years oughta make those specs...i have it on my 4 y.o. quad-core 8-gigRam-2gigNvida gaming tower but i also tried it on my $330 dell laptop with dual 1.9s-2 gigs ram-built in video and it runs smooth at med to high settings so i tried it on my bought for $400 new from dell in '06 office tower POS and it even runs OK on that system which runs nothing smoothly game-wise. Don't know much about macs though..

Minimum
Specifications
• Processor. Intel Pentium 4®
1.8 GHz or equivalent
• Video. 64 MB NVIDIA
GeForce® 3 or
ATI® Radeon® 8500
• RAM. 512 MB
• Disk Space. 7 GB available
• DirectX. DirectX® 9.0c
• OS. Windows® XP
• Connection. 56kbps Modem
• Optical Drive. 2X DVD ROM

Those are specs my gaming towers reached or passed about 14 years ago..

[Whisp]

6. I'm on Mac OS 10.6.8, an oldie

and LoTR requires Lion OS which is OS 7.

I should probably update.

[PennyK]

7. Hubby loves it

Few years ago, we both got lifetime accounts, but I was never into the books, and I find the game somewhat slow-moving.

[EX500rider]

8. Having recently read the books helps...

....lots of the characters and places in the game are from the books and not just the movies and the story weaves in and out of the books. I am actually rereading all 3 (kindle'ed the Hobbit for a reread last yr when the 1st movie came out) of the books which i hadn't read in over 30 years i think...which got me to thinking how long it had been since i saw the Pete Jackson trilogy movies, 1st one came out in like 2002 i think, so maybe 12 years, so watching them again too....lol And now the 2nd Hobbit movie is about to hit the theaters!

[Systematic Chaos]

9. EverQuest 2, LotRO and Rift are our three favorite MMOs.

My wife LOVES Rift's PvP system! I do too and frankly it's the only MMO we've played PvP in. The arenas are kickass!

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

10. LoTRO rocks :)

I've got chars on Arkenstone (my original), Riddermark, Gwaihir and Anduin. (Note that the last two are German servers if you're looking to start up a new account.) I'm not as thrilled about the recent changes to the skill setup, as I'm guessing they were implemented solely to 'dumb down' the interface a bit to make the game more accessible to the mobile types, by leaving fewer buttons onscreen at any one time for combat. But the graphics are incredible, and make me want to take up sewing again so I could try my hand at recreating some of the outfits.