This post was born when I realized my last post started in with my character at level 6, and did not talk at all about the processes to get there.

When I first saw the thread on Quarter to Three, I got my client patched up. It took a while but was a painless process; one I could do without actually having an active account (very handy).

Once I had my new account activated, I logged in and started looking over the races. Last time I played as a Hobbit so this time I went with a Human.

Next up was class choice, which was a bit tough. I wanted either a healer or a dps, but not a burglar since I had played that before, and I did not want a caster. The minstrel is sort of a healer, but did not read like a dedicated one, so I was left with a hunter and Champion.; ranged or melee dps. I usually choose ranged but since I have a high level hunter in wow, I went with melee.

For a face, I clicked random a few times and took the firs that looked “ok”, named him and clicked Play.

The tutorial area was the same one I had done before as a hobbit, and it still works. It did a great job of pulling into the story and teaching me basic concepts, all in my own little instance. Then with a movie intro I was in the Human village of Archet, continuing the story started in the tutorial.

This extended tutorial continues teaching me through text and experience how the game works. The town may be threatened by bandits but they are not sure and not prepared. I proved the threat is real and try to help give them time to prepare. In the end we fail, and the town is raided, burned, and my guide is taken. It was epic in its own little way and I felt like part of the story.

After another movie, I am back in Archet. Though this time it is all burned and people are working to rebuild. I love it when the world actually changes even if its faked like this is.

Because the Qt3 group is meeting in The Shire, I skip all this quests and start my way down the road to Bree. From there I take a horse to the township of Michel Delving, where I log out and await the start of the group night.

Now as I usually do time for some bullet point thoughts:

• The rate of advancement felt good those first six levels. Just fast enough to make me feel strong, and they lasted long enough to learn my abilities at each level.

• The story telling was very good, I was pulled in and almost sad to not continue in the human lands.

• Their mechanic for some gathering quests is great. I need 6 of X bush, me and my buddy run toward a bush and we can both gather from it once. The bush did not go away, it just is no longer a valid gathering point for me. Yay, no more ninja gathering.

• I love starting with bag space!

• I long for a game to include better inventory management. Let me sort and filter what I see in my bags.

• I miss the ability to link quests into chat, like wow allows.

• More than linking, I miss the the ability for a group leader to set a quest as “active” so everyone in the group knows what quest we are focusing on next. City of Heroes does this, and its handy.

• Combat feels a bit soft. Meaning that I don’t feel as though my abilities activate when I click on them. I think this is because they use an ability queuing system, and seem to have a warm up time before an ability fires. after six or so levels I started to get the rhythm of combat, but it did take some time.

• Being a melee dps in a group full of ranged casters makes me wish for wow’s “charge” and “death grip” abilities. If I re-create my character on my real account, he may end up a hunter.

And finally in response to my google maps comments last time, people sent me two links that rock:
Lotro dynamic map viewer
lotro google maps style at adra-online.