Okay, having actually played some now I absolutely love the Minstrel. He has the best looking attacks in any game I've ever seen. I devastated the crap out of a mob while rocking it with my lute. A LUTE! Don't you understand how awesome that is?

Wow! Good to see you here Erebrandir! I hope you are doing well lately. Yep the game is still cooking and the new expansion is fine. My main is a minstrel too and I like the class so well I now have a minstrel Elf and a Man. If anyone is on Elendilmir server look me up. Makalaure (minstrel), Cotumo (hunter), Erdebryt (minstrel), Laurefinde (loremaster), Widwise (burgler), Singyll (warden) and a some bad guys too - Bolvag my warg and Shakatrogat my Uruk war leader. Now back to your regularly scheduled program. Oh and by the way, I play the game with my game music turned off and Radio Rivendell turned on. It's great!

Update: Still playing (lifetime membership) and I decided to move to the roleplay server Landroval. Most of the roleplayers in the kinship followed me and we are now in our kinship Leaves of Laurelin. Who else is playing still or has anyone recently started playing it for the first time? Over the years the game is really getting polished. Enough content for both solo and group play. Speak up!

I just bought three months, but slipped back to WoW again pretty quick. It was just in the beginning. I bet it's much better now? Do they feature free trials? Warhammer Online has a neverending free version, and I think some other got that as well. Level and location capped though of course

It is much better now than back in the early days, funny how things work like that. I am a casual player but also raid and use lots of the options available including playing music in game on instruments. Free LOTRO Trial (Europe) Free LOTRO Trial (US) I am on the US servers. Anyone downloading the game PLEASE do not use their download manager. Just download it the normal way without their manager. It takes quite awhile (generally 5 - 8 hours).

Perhaps I should try it out some day! If they have a mac version. I'm a macaholic nowadays

I know what you mean. I have a mac too but an older one and I always wished for the game to play on a mac. Unfortunately the game is only for PC unless you have a new mac that can utilize Windows programs. So I play it on my gaming PC instead.

It's weird, they should do a mac version. World of Warcraft as well as Warhammer Online is on Mac No time to play either of those though

I bought the game a while back after playing the trial for about a week. Been really fun and mellow, I have to say the community is really nice, friendly and mature. Only ran into some fool who was running around abusing the /slap emote, but other than that haven't encountered any sort of disruptive behaviour. I play on the EU RP server, Laurelin. If anyone here is on the same server, feel free to /tell me hello or tug my sleeveif you happen by. Character name's Morhan.

I loved the lore and, of course, the music. Unfortunately, the quests were too much of the "messenger" and "kill 10 rats" variety for my tastes, in the long run. Very cool community, though. Way nicer than the crowd I ran into on the Guild Wars servers. Might be worth a revisit, now that it's going F2P.

FWIW, I got a Beta key and found myself liking it more, now. Part of it was that there is way more solo-able content, which is key for all the interruptions I have. But the content is pretty good, too. The imagery is just amazing. I was never able to get it working on my Linux partition, although I have been able to in the past so, for me at least, this is a Windows only thing. Since it has additional optimization for DirectX 10 and 11, playing on WINE would give you a reduced impact, anyway. F2P goes live Friday so if you wanted to give it a try without spending any money, your opportunity is almost here.

Free to Play (F2P) is now available The download for the game can be found HERE for the US servers. (There are many Europeans on the US servers.) If you join up, select the Landroval server, it's the unofficial roleplay server and there is much music and plenty of player-run events. The download takes a LONG time so please be patient. It took me 12 hours to download the game, but it's worth it. I am on Landroval and leader of the Leaves of Laurelin kinship. Look for Cotumo - hunter, Laurefinde - loremaster, Makalaure - minstrel, Gloros - guardian, Witred - hunter, Aur - champion and some others I rarely play.

Yay! It's on!! Weird, I haven't gotten an email about it, perhaps I signed up for the European edition.. hmm.. Perhaps this is the way back into online gaming for me

yaaay its f2p now

Codemasters (EU) doesn't have f2p yet. Turbine (Us) does. US Free to Play (F2P) download

I'm downloading it since 4 hours and there are 2 still to go. Hope that the game is it worth. Let you know on which server you can find me

I do not know if there will be a big impact, because, like World of Warcraft, I really doubt it. However, it is expected to be a fun and exciting game. They should release it from the movie three years ago to obtain results....

The free to play is a nice preview, but if you plan to do only free to play then you will face somewhat degraded gameplay. For example, you can't trade in coins with another player, and other little absurd limitations like that. This game (including the crafting system) is all about slow grinding and following the quest sequences with little real strategy or roleplay. If that's your thing, then you will enjoy it... at least until the free quest areas run out. Then you'll need to pay to quest in the larger world. On the positive side, they did capture the atmosphere of Middle Earth quite nicely and as a Tolkien fan there is something to be said about that feeling of immersion.

Turbine has announced that it will be taking over LOTRO Europe from Codemasters in June! It means we will all be on Turbine servers now.

This game (including the crafting system) is all about slow grinding and following the quest sequences with little real strategy or roleplay. Good description. I loved the world. They did a great job making you feel like you were in Middle Earth. It was beautiful and the music was incredible. The game itself, however, eventually became a boring grind.