The Lord of the Rings Online Review
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After all the piles of praise we've heaped on it, why does LOTRO still not get the coveted 10/10? Blizzard even like the game so much, it seems to have named their art director after Samwise Gamgee - so why do we have qualms? Firstly, because, despite all its advances, despite the Deeds achievement system, and the believable world Turbine has crafted (where it's very careful to avoid Blizzard's occasional frame-breaking humour, so that you're encouraged to take the plot more seriously), this is still very similar to WOW and its predecessors. And, because of that, it shares the genre's flaws: there's still a lot of needless, tedious running about; the gaps between the excellent story quests stretch wide, no matter how good the scripting of the other quests is; and there are still irritating "kill a billion slugs" quests (some deeds literally ask you to perform an action 1000 times). Monster Play, though promising, isn't quite there, and many of the updates (e.g. faction reputations and collectible armour sets) make the game more like WOW, not less.
If you played LOTRO at launch and hated it, it's not changed sufficiently since then to justify you coming back. Otherwise, it's as polished and stable, and a better written and more believable world than the elephant in the corner. It doesn't have the same player-base as WOW and all your friends aren't playing it, but maybe if you move, they'll follow, and you could have fun together. You could be the ringleader.
