Lord of the Rings online is free for Beta

http://lotro.turbine.com/

I'm signing up for my free account now.

The great thing about LoTRO is that it has solo-play for people like me.

Gandalf's hat looks like a traffic cone.

these gfx are the best reason for an indie developer to get a job and just play games instead of trying to make one.

Wait a minute - if you are in Europe then you have to go here:

http://www.lotro-europe.com/

Gandalf's hat still looks like a traffic cone.

Having said that - they don't just give out the betas like lollipops. They will review my application - sniff. I bet I don't get selected. I bet they don't like me. They'll probably just add me to a spam system and spam me all day about anything but my access to LoTRO - sniffalisation.

I may as well have not bothered - sniff.

when you put it like that, then yes it does look like a traffic cone.

I wonder if they know about me nicking media out of Oblivion?

I shouldn't have used my "puki" nick - they are probably Googling it now. They asked questions like 'Do you work in a company writing/designing computer games?'.

Good job they didn't ask 'Are you likely to get excited and reverse engineer our media?' - I might have panicked at that point and flubbered it up.

I only want to play to see the elves and the hobbits and stuff, and walk through the meadows. Just to take a lickle peek.

I bet they don't approve me - they asked what online games I had played before - I've only played Guild Wars. They asked what games I had beta'd before - I told the truth and said none - I should have lied and clicked on everything in the list.

Sniff.

assume everything puki.

assume they have your phone number, assume they have your ip, assume they have your criminal record, assume they have your dna.

I just downloaded the E3_HD trailer - it was a 79.4MB archive - when I unpacked it, it was a 80.4MB WMV file.

Hardly seems worth archiving it.

odd. i assume it's because wmv is already a compressed file format.

Thorin sits down and sings about gold.

:)

Cheers

Garion

"Gandalf" opens the round, green, door.

Not too shabby looking an MMO, now I wonder if Turbine is trying to do things to make this stand out of the stagnating MMO group and put it on competing terms with other MMOs like World of Warcraft that try to do things you dont normally see in said genre.
(god why did I get myself hooked on an MMO that so far appears not to be aging well over its 4-year lifespan...)

I've been interested in this one for a while.
I was afraid at first that they'd really mess it up by having the player joining up with one of 500,000 Frodos/Sams to save the world, but from the looks of it they haven't done too badly in that departent.
Still the same guy giving everyone the same quests, I assume, but that's almost unavoidable.

That is why I don't bother with MMORPGs, actually; I'd prefer a game that wrote its own story by actually having the players as its population instead of just little ants running around on the surface.
The ideas all sound like they'll be the one to do that at first, but they never are. It's just another game where, if you're online at the right time, you will see the territories on the map mysteriously change.

My dream MMORPG would be where I can single handedly run out late at night, sword in hand, and take over some highly fortified city because nobody else is playing.
Yes, it would be remarkably stupid, but it would also be fun and Individual!

Anyway... Lord of the Rings...

It's recieved a far better video game treatment than Star Wars (not counting KOTOR 1), The Matrix, and Star Trek (not counting the Star Trek text adventure game).

And this is a cool game :)
As long as I don't talk to people about my quests, they're just like really smart NPCs.