From a player that's played this game since release back in 2007, playing across 3 servers, founder account, over 15,000 hours logged over the years. I can tell you that my feelings for this game are very genuine and it's taken me a good two months to write this review after leaving the game.

Now, on to the content. The developing team behind LOTRO has put out content consistently that appealed to the audiences up to Rise of Isengard, which in my opinion, was one of the best expansions I've ever played in any MMO. The content before and including Isengard (Angmar, Mines of Moria, Seige of Mirkwood) are incredible, everything from the instances, zones, questing, down to the ambient sounds, it was amazing. Now this basically talking about the expansions as a whole, (I consider Angmar an expansion in this list, but it was vanilla content more or less) but the zones in between the major content areas were amazing as well, North Downs, Lothlorien, Evendim, Enedwraith, If you have never experienced the night in Forochel, you are missing on one of the most amazing game sceneries ever. Great instance designs in all of this content, from forging into Carn Dum with your friends and overcoming the managerie of bosses and Mordirith, to conquering places like Barad Guldur and the Tower of Isen along with toppling Saruman in an incredible battle atop the tower itself. Many many memories will never be forgotten that pertain to such events that took place in the game.

Alas, many new players will never get to experience this content simply because the game has progressed far beyond all of this. Most of the players that I met during my final year and a half or so were players that were there to rush to level cap and do "end-game", that's the joke kids, there is no end-game. All it is at level cap is a daily grind for your daily reputation factions for that "highest tier raiding set" that you will never put to serious use because most of the players that play the game now will NOT run content that will challenge them. It's that simple, I led pug tier 2 challenge runs on my main server of Windfola for years for players not in raiding guilds, and people would rather run Sambrog 6 man spams for crap rewards than spending a little more time in a bigger, more challenging instance for big reward. It pained me to see that the game populace had declined to such a lazy group of "give it to me without the challenge" group of people, because let's be honest, anyone that played in vanilla LOTRO can tell you how bloody hard it was, JUST to get your resistances right to actually stand a chance in Carn Dum, let alone actually fighting the bosses. But don't be let down, there are groups of players on many servers on both EU and NA that play around the level of that old content when it was released so they can specifically run that content and have it challenge them, they are great people and they organize themselves in server world chats and forums still.


In the past 4 months or so, i reinstalled out of pure nostalgia and brought a Captain up too pre-Gundabad, raiding everything I had missed from the time I stopped primarily playing LOTRO, up too the Remm raid instance, and further into update 29 before stopping again.

My opinion still stands in regards too the game losing the feeling of ambiance, however I will note that the developers do put in good work into the over-world in the past 10-ish updates or so that was seriously declining during the big battle meta content.

The game still releases buggy instances and content that simply does not work as intended on release, but from talking too some of my older friends that stayed consistent with the game, they say a lot of time instance breaking bugs are usually caught very early and either the content simply gets taken away/delayed too fix or sitting unfixed for some time but complete-able for the most part, but not too the extent of something like Smaug T2 when that was relevant. Also note that content release in terms of raids and instances is very slow, but that has always been the case, so if you are an endgame player, be aware that you will be repeating instances heavily.

Class balance has always been pretty wonky in regards to DPS classes, not every damage spec is equal, you will hear different takes from different players, up and down, left and right, but the class identity that a player may have had back in legacy content still is non existent for the most part as I have said back in update 14. I do not have a say in how the various damage specs for classes perform since I raided as a yellow captain, but wardens are generally pretty disgustingly busted in blue/red as they pretty much always have been in my opinion. On a side note in regards too classes, stat bloat is currently massive, and as far as I have looked and seen, there are no plans too address this, I don't necessarily think it's a huge issue, but numbers are getting very large and asinine.

As for some miscellaneous stuff, there are plans for a major graphical and mechanical revamp of the game within the next 2 years from what I've heard within the past month which the game sorely needs, but the game still looks nice, even more so with reshaders. Server population is stable and in some cases rising with some NA/EU server/s (Gladden & Brandywine for NA and Evernight EU) which is good, and I have heard current endgame zones in gundabad you will be competing for mobs, and in leveling zones you still encounter other players doing their own thing around you, which is simply nice too hear. PvMP hasn't been touched since update 13, you should do your own research into the respective server PvMP communities too see if you can stomach the toxicity that I remember.

I however cannot speak about a new player experience as I am a founding player and quit primarily at a point in the game that allowed me to catch up too endgame in update 29 in a reasonable time frame of about a month or so. The game has a LOT of content to get through with the legacy zones that are mostly optional, but a lot of the best qualities of the game are in the legacy content, so take that as you will, I feel there's a lot too keep a player of any caliber interested. Meta endgame with decent virtue levels, essences and LI's though, for lack of better words, will keep you busy as they are pretty mandatory for T2+ raiding.

My overall opinion is mixed, I personally think that both single and group content in terms of strict pve is in a better place because big battles is such a bad taste in my mouth, that they could only go up from there, and I honestly think they have with the quality of instances and the raiding scene still being challenging at T2+. RP is as strong as ever, it always had it's place and never really lost it which is good. Legendary item crafting used too be a lot simpler when I was much more active, but it got expanded on over the years which is a unique aspect of LOTRO and keeps it from being a cut and paste MMO among some other things.

I wrote this review and last updated it over 7 years ago, I've grown as a person, my life is completely different from the time this review was conceived, but I feel that it is a game I CAN recommend too others that have an interest in Lord of The Rings content, a good pve scene, and an even better endgame raiding scene. Hopefully if the graphic/engine update comes too fruition in the time frame that its projected, as well as the Amazon LoTR show next year, in late 2022, there's a strong horizon for the game and that makes me very happy.


Apa i morë, lenna-in ancalima Ae
(After the darkest night, comes the brightest day)

legitimately one of the most fun MOBA's I've ever played, even as early as it is in its life cycle. The combination of survival looting into this genre was well implemented in the idea to plan you're own customized gearing routes throughout the map, pre-game and mid-game, while also allowing you to loot finished opponents in the match to finish your own builds, or on the fly changing gear out to fit the rest of the opponents in the match.

It's also very nice to play a free game where you aren't pressured into buying currency to unlock characters to play, you are given the option to buy any 1 character upon clearing the tutorial in it's entirety, and you gain the alternative currency to purchase characters and saved build slots at a decent pace every match, win or lose, depending on how well you do in the match, as well as gaining currency with 3 dailies, and every account level.

General gameplay is what you'd expect from a MOBA, QWER skills that are unique to every character and have different interactions with the terrain around you in terms of movement in some cases, as well as a D weapon passive skill that is unlocked through weapon mastery gained in a match that resets every match, and is weapon specific, like for example whips unlock a a ranged pull and fists weapons give your melee auto attacks a slightly further range and damage increase for a period of time. The emphasis every match has is that you're aiming to be the last one standing or last squad standing at the end of the match, which ties in the games survival/royale-ish setting, it really shines when you get mechanically good at a character and have a decent grasp on map spawns.

All in all I say that if you're looking for a new MOBA to dip your toes in, I recommend this one at least for the first 10 levels or so to generate your own opinion, plenty of things the devs have planned in the next few months, so I can even say i expect the game to get even better.