Today in Middle earth I started yet another character, a minstrel named Bogindoc.

That puts me at four created characters thus far on this venture into Lotro; a champion, huntress, rune keeper, and minstrel. I am impressed that even at the low levels they all play very differently, and that’s refreshing when I am swapping between them. In a lot of games when character abilities are limited at the low levels, the classes don’t feel very different from one another. I am either hitting something with a stick or shooting it with some sort of projectile. Yes lotro has that too, but from the get go each class has a hook that differentiates it from the others.

• The champion builds fervor with some attacks and spends it on others.

• The Hunter builds up focus when standing still, and looses it when they move or fire off a big attack.

• The Rune Keeper has an attunement scale that moves between battle, balance, and healing based on the spells they are casting. Cast more battle spells the better they are but you get locked out of healing. Cast more healing and the healing gets better, but you are locked out of battle.

• The minstrel has different tiers of songs, they must have recently played a lower level tier in order to play a song from the next. Which they want to do because each higher tier’s songs are stronger.

So even though, like most games, you are have a limited number of abilities you don’t feel the same as the other classes because you have to operate from within the confines of your classes hook even at level 1. I think this is the main reason I have started four characters in four weeks, something that I normally don’t do. When I start a new MMO I tend to play a DPS class for a long time, and then decided I would rather heal and finally start an alt. Right now in Lotro, I am having a lot of fun trying out different classes simply to see how their hook’s play. Someone asked me which of the four is my favorite, and at this point I really cannot say. So far I like them all, and I suspect I won’t even try to pick a favorite until I have played them all to level 20.

One thing I can say is, the Shire is my favorite starting area. It’s as pretty as the elf lands, and the good pacing of the human lands. The human area would be next, the pacing there is really good and the story lines are fun. Last would be the elf/dwarf area; it starts off ok, but the pacing and spacing of the quests are terrible. I am not sure what happened at Turbine, and why the quests here are so lacking. Apparently I am not the only one that has thought this since they are addressing it in the next patch.

We’ve completely redesigned the Elf and Dwarf new player progression and given Archet and The Shire a good polish as well. Players will find quests flow together more naturally and progression through the regions and levels is more fun!

I look forward to that.