First of all, you need some pretty good hardware to play this game. It consumes pretty much all the recourses of my not so new computer. I have 512 MB of RAM, and a 256 MB graphics card. I would say this is an absolute minimum to play this game.

The first few minutes of game play was quite ok for the computer, but after 15 – 20 minutes it lagged badly. As far as I have experienced with other games, this is caused by the game engine to consume all available recourses of the PC, and the only way to get around this problem is to tweak the computer to use as little recourses as possible on other tasks.

Now – to the game itself. I did not capture any screen shots this time, but the graphics are pretty much the same as in most mmorpg-titles around. So, there is not so much to talk about regarding that part.

What I like so far is the fact that I can chose between first person and third person view. I generally prefer playing in first person and see through the eyes of the character.

This game is a very typical MMORPG game when it comes to the leveling treadmill unfortunately. You level up your char, then gets access to better gear, level up some more and so on. I guess it will take many ears before we will see a game that does anything different in this regard.

So, if you like leveling up (power leveling or not), you will like LOTRO.

I will post more on the game later on when I have tested more, and if I remember, I will try to get some screen shots and share them with you.

Happy leveling