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There's been a Lord of the Rings MMORPG in the works for a long while now, and the game will be releasing to the public soon. In honor of this the game creators have announced a MASSIVE open beta event, offering one million slots to the beta. It's a first come first serve sort of deal, but it's open to anyone. (I imagine you need to be 18, though, honestly) This, world tour as they're calling it begins in about three days.

If you're a fan of Lord of the Rings, or are just curious about the new kid on the MMORPG block, you should check this out.

Lord of the Rings World Tour site

Just go to the site and follow the instructions and you'll be ready to go.

The full game will launch April 24th and will allow you to experience Middle Earth in all its glory. The game will feature classic characters from the novel as NPCs, such as Gandalf, Gimli, Aragorn, and Frodo. The game seems to be set during the events of the Lord of the Rings novels, even, and as such you'll be able to fight against the forces of Sauron and perhaps help the Fellowship rid Middle Earth of his scourge. In addition you'll be able to create one of four races (Human, Dwarf, Elf, or Hobbit) with customizable features, and then choose one of seven classes (Champion, Guardian, Captain, Burglar, Hunter, Minstrel, Lore-Master)

This game really possesses a lot of potential, but whether it lives up to it is yet to be seen. So if you're curious, like me, why not sign up for the World Tour? Do it quick though, spots are definitely going fast.

This post has been edited by Zero_Hawk on 4th April 2007 18:09

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I've heard of this. I like lotr and I think the game will be pretty good, but I'm not too much in to those online games. Still I might sign up if enough of my friends are into it.

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Do you like Horny Bunnies?

I think it'll be something interesting and novel, but I don't see it knocking WoW off of it's pedestal as King Of MMORPG's, or really even putting much of a dent in them.

Age of Conan and the Warhammer MMORPG will fare better than LoTR, IMO.

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I just randomly clicked the link out of boredom, and there are still over 300k spots left in the US/CN/AUS/NZ tour, and it starts in a little over a day. I mean, close to seven hundred thousand people is really pretty good, but it just doesn't seem like that many any more.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

From what I've seen on other forums that center on LoTRO, it plays very similarly to World of Warcraft. They've been having a closed Beta for a while now, so there are quite a few people out there that have played it extensively.

That said, I'd much rather put time in on this MMO than Blizzard's. The LoTR world just seems more... vibrant than Azaroth to me. Maybe I'm crazy, I don't know.

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With the lights out
It's less dangerous

Quote (Rangers51 @ 5th April 2007 08:44)

I just randomly clicked the link out of boredom, and there are still over 300k spots left in the US/CN/AUS/NZ tour, and it starts in a little over a day. I mean, close to seven hundred thousand people is really pretty good, but it just doesn't seem like that many any more.

That's because it's not, really.

I'm no WoW fanboy. I would jump ship if something came along that I thought was better. I jsut don't think this is it. I mean really, the tag of LotR ALONE should have piqued enough curiosity to get a million beta testers on board pretty quick, wouldn't you think?

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Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

Quote (Hamedo @ 5th April 2007 15:20)

I mean really, the tag of LotR ALONE should have piqued enough curiosity to get a million beta testers on board pretty quick, wouldn't you think?

Not really, no. Not everyone wants to deal with being a beta tester, and I think most of the real testing went on in the closed beta anyway. Who knows if the closed-beta folks are counted in that number?

They have added something like 40k people since my earlier post, though.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I decided to give this open beta thing a whirl, since I've spent a little time with WoW and the first EQ. Neither were really up my alley, and I got bored with both a few months into starting. Guild Wars ended up being my online RPG of choice.

That said, I think there's a lot to like here.

Initial impressions:

Well, right off the bat, it's reminiscent of World of Warcraft, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The presentation here seems more polished than in Blizzard's juggernaut. Graphically, it's pretty impressive, but nothing mind-blowing. The UI is semi-customizable, but you can't change the sizes of a few important things. I like playing my games at high-res, and unfortunately this makes your skill bar incredibly small at the bottom of the screen. Hoping this is changed for the official release.

One high point is the musical score. I never found myself annoyed by it, and it fit the mood of each area perfectly.

So, on to character creation.

You're given four choices for races: Man, Hobbit, Dwarf, and Elf. If you choose Dwarf, you're stuck as a male. I guess they decided to keep Dwarf women a secret or something.

There are seven classes in the game. I'll detail them below.

Champion -- The DPS (damage per second) class of the game. They're physical powerhouses all-around, can take decent damage, and nobody else comes close to their raw damage.
Guardian -- The Tank. They can draw aggro away from everyone else, and have lots of abilities to reduce damage and make it impossible for the enemy to do anything useful.
Loremaster -- The Mage. A little different than I was expecting. They specialize in crowd control and "hexing" up the enemy, making them less effective in battle. They can keep some enemies out of the fight completely, but they're definitely not the damage class I was expecting. Oh, and they get pets.
Burglar -- The Thief. They specialize in debuffing the enemy and stealing money. And they do pretty decent damage. I can't say much about them because I haven't rolled one yet.
Hunter -- The Archer. Long range damage and trap setting. A fun class, but a tad overpopulated now. It seems every elf wants to be Legolas.
Minstrel -- The Healer. They're the main class with healing abilities, and they can protect the party pretty well. Apparently they're pretty much a prerequisite for later, more difficult areas.
Captain -- The... Leader? This is the only race-specific class (only humans can take it), and it's kind of strange. It reminds me of the Red Mage: jack of all trades, master of none. Fights up close, has all around average abilities, and seems to fill any niche a group needs.

So yeah, pretty much the standard classes. Humans can take any class... and the other races can take pretty much the classes you'd expect them to. All races can take minstrel, for obvious reasons.

I've rolled most classes and tried out the intros for all the races, and I have to say I'm enjoying my Dwarf Champion the most. His damage is great, and the dwarf and elf areas are more interesting than, say, the human and hobbit starting area. Humans/hobbits start in Bree-land, which is nice and green and lush and what-not. Dwarves and Elves start up in the frozen mountains.

There are some cameos by "famous" LoTR characters, mostly taking place in instants where you won't have some jackass air humping Gandalf. Good design choice by the team.

EXP is mostly gained by questing, and you have "titles" and "traits" to grind for, to show off what you've accomplished. Traits give you small attribute boosts and the like, and you can only have a set number equipped at a time. It's a fun little side thing that's not entirely needed.

Community-wise, it's surprisingly civil, considering it's free right now. Aside from one incident with a twelve-year-old Puerto Rican, there have been no insults thrown around, which is refreshing for an online game.

I'm going to keep playing... and if I'm not bored in a week, going to pick up a pre-order. That way, you get a couple free items, and more importantly, the monthly fee is 9.99 instead of 14.99.

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With the lights out
It's less dangerous

I just found out, not ten minutes ago, that my friend in Boston worked on some of the concept art and 3D modeling for this game. Totally irrelevant, but I thought it was kinda cool.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

That is pretty wild, Josh.

A_T_S, that's the most I've heard of the game from a beta tester thus far. Thanks for sharing. The classes sound neat, but the race options sound pretty stale and static.

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Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

Heh, I just found something kind of interesting.

Go to the world tour page where it was counting up accounts created (Click Me!). You'll notice it no longer does so because it hit 1 million, right? Change your computer's clock back a couple weeks and see what happens.



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With the lights out
It's less dangerous